Monday, January 29, 2007
Friday, January 26, 2007
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
And TASI goes below 7,000… It’s down by more than 3% at this moment. Btw, there was no way for me to make money on my prediction because you can’t sell short in the Saudi Stock Market (which I usually don’t anyway, but it would’ve been nice to make money on the way down from +20k to where we are today. If you shorted at 20-21k and covered now you’d end up with 3 times your original investment in only a year or so!
Sunday, January 21, 2007
“Every tradition grows ever more venerable — the more remote its origin, the more confused that origin is. The reverence due to it increases from generation to generation. The tradition finally becomes holy and inspires awe.”
-- Friedrich Nietzsche
Monday, January 15, 2007
Saudi Stock Index at 7,000
More than a year ago I said that Saudi stock market levels around 20,000 were insane and that I thought the index would reach the 7,000-8,000 level. Most people thought I were insane. In fact, Saudi Commerce and Economic Review, the magazine I used to write a monthly column for, refused to publish my article where I made that prediction and because of that I stopped writing for them. Well, TASI today stands at 7,274 up from yesterday’s close at 7,180. So now that my prediction turned out to be correct, where is the market heading? That, unfortunately, I can’t predict. Those who know and/or share my style of financial analysis understand that predictions are very hard unless markets or stocks are way off the market. In other words, I can’t predict if a stock or a market (it’s much more difficult with a whole market) is overvalued or undervalued by 10 or 20%, but I can tell you it’s 50% over- or undervalued. TASI now stands in that difficult-to-predict range, so I can’t tell you if it will continue its downward spiral. However, the fact that it is in this range makes me believe that while I don’t know where the next 2,000 points are going to be (to 5,000 or 9,000) I think it’s safe to assume that today’s levels are much more closer to economic reality that a year ago. Note, however, that I don’t think the market is cheap, at least It’s not seriously undervalued, but it’s within a reasonable range of fair value.

