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Fired up about the stock market, like before…
The stock market has been heating up rapidly. These days, stories about securities and real estate investments are the main topics of conversation among friends at cafes and over lunches. Which carries with it an element of concern…
At a bustling café in the centre of district 1 in HCM City, a man was telling his friends at the same table that as the VN Index kept rising, those investors who injected 1 billion dong in stocks two months ago now could get 2 billion dong. Other men expressed regret that they did not dare spend money at that time.
A few moments later, a real estate broker called the writer of this story, saying that the owner of an apartment had changed his mind about the asking price of a particular apartment, and wanted more money.
“Prices will go up sharply. People are now earning big money from stock investment deals and they will pour money in real estate, which will lead to real estate prices skyrocketing,” the broker said.
The excitement of investors in the stock market these days recalls the seething atmosphere of the market two years ago, when nearly all people and all families rushed to surf securities or real estate investments, when getting rich quickly was the prevailing topic of all discussions.
However, just some days after the peak of the excitement, Vietnamese people faced inflation of up to 30 percent, while a lot of other people worried themselves sick over the freezing real estate and stock markets.
Now, while the world’s economy has yet to escape from recession and Vietnam’s economy is still facing big difficulties, the dream of getting rich overnight has once again returned to hold court in the minds of many people.
Meanwhile, even the most optimistic economists dare not say that the global economy has recovered. The winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Economics, Paul Krugman, though saying that the worst period for the US and world’s economy is over, still predicts a period of stagnancy ahead.
In Vietnam, economic indicators are not good enough to make experts more optimistic. Vietnam still has difficulties with exports, which is the main foreign currency earner. Reports about unemployment are causing concerns, while investments have decreased.
Meanwhile, capital keeps flowing strongly into the stock market these days with the average trading volume of 2 trillion dong per day.
Experts say that this is not a surprise at all, because volatility proves to be in the nature of newly-emerging markets like Vietnam. The market can go up very quickly but also can fall very dramatically.
And the real estate market is the same.
“I hope people have realised that markets do not go up all the time,” said Brett Allston, Managing Director of Savills Vietnam.
He added that while he thinks the return of the stock market could help the real estate market, he hopes the real estate market will not see prices increase dramatically like in the past, because dramatic price increases are never stable.
VietNamNet, SGTT
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