Taipei is certainly a problem. As is Kinmen for some strange reason (yeah, I know they get a number of benefits for being on an outlying island, but the place is a ghost town, yet some areas are built up like Linkou…with few people living there/businesses that are open)
The fastest way to make home ownership affordable in Taipei would be to
a) tax property at its actual sale value and not the 20% of it that they currently tax at
b) raise taxes on 3rd, 4th, and 5th homes.
c) tax the sh** out of unused (but developed) properties. This would need to be done by requiring household registration from different families at each home or something. Of course people would find loopholes, but it would force people to rent out their properties instead of sitting on them, which would further drive down the cost of rent, further pushing the home prices toward a nice correction.
As if that would ever happen…the people in government’s entire net worth is in the 50+ homes they own!
Or get yerself in a nice index fund. The market goes up? You make money. The market crashes? You, along with everyone else in the stock market, loose money.
There are too many studies that show a “monkey with a dart board” can do a better job of picking stocks than an “expert” and that when “experts” “make lots of money on ‘well-picked’ stocks” its actually just luck, cuz ya can’t time the market.
That’s definitely the driving factor in the housing boom. Waaaay too much easy credit being offered to people who are already leveraged up to the eyeballs (eg., building companies).
Same thing happened in Ireland in the 2000s, IIRC, except that the music stopped pretty quickly.
Ireland had a hard limit to credit as it was mostly from outside the country. Taiwanese people and the Taiwan government and corporations have very deep pockets. Taiwan’s economy is pretty robust. While the rest of the world is going to have a huge pandemic Taiwan likely will avoid that.
That’s not to say the air can’t go out of the balloon very slowly, over years and decades . Or China launches some missiles. Who knows.
I was thinking more along the lines of low interest rates propping up the stock market bubble (as well as other asset bubbles such as property).
I’m not sure what the central banks can do with the current crash and coming recession. Their policy of cutting interest rates to keep the bubbles growing has pretty much reached the end of the road.
I agree with you but the market doesn’t seem to care about fundamentals. Look today had a 7% drop and stock figures are nearing +3% for tomorrow. It’s all sentiment.
All the feds have to do is try to get the media to shut up about the virus or simply wait a few months until its old news. People will forget and market up again. Perhaps start a war to distract. Or stir people up about some cause locally.
Everyone was all about Hong Kong until the media got bored with them and moved on to a new toy. Iran before that. Fukushima before that. None of the fundamental economy flaws were fixed after the 2009 crash but mr market don’t care.
Of course I could be wrong and we are seriously screwed.
I agree, the economy fundamentals have gone to shit but that’s not what the US market cares about. Any good news and they lap it up. Which is good in anyway otherwise we would be stagnant like Japan’s market. I still think once the beer virus is out of the news stocks will keep going up.
I also remember when a few years ago Greece and Italy were in the news with all the EU bailouts. US market shrugged it off, if it’s not directly affecting the states, it doesn’t exist
Okay, it’s been over 10 years since I did some investing. I’m ready now.
I want to go with mutual funds to begin with. I believe a worldwide recession is imminent. Germany, Italy, Singapore, Japan, Korea will be hit. The US too eventually but perhaps less so.
If I want to start buying into three different mutual funds (a small, fixed amount for each), which ones should I buy? I mean, which areas of the world or perhaps which commodity? Anyone want to help out with this?
I still say index funds. Vanguard (if you’re American and maybe Canadian?) seems to be the highly recommended one from everyone these days, since they’re founded on the idea that everyone should have access to good investing and f-ing over anyone with an account with them fs over themselves. Or something like that. Maybe just the low fees?
They also have “target retirement funds”, where you choose a fund based on the year you plan to retire and the funds get balanced based on how much risk you should be taking (more risk the younger you are therefore the more time you have to recover).
It seems any financial adviser that isn’t trying to get money from you based on how many shit stocks they sell you recommends the above.
Anyone who feels differently feel free to chime in.
I really wanted to keep things local without having to worry about taxes in the US, transferring funds, etc.
I guess what I’m asking for is if you could pick three areas to invest in, what would they be? I’m thinking the US, Korea, and gold. I might switch one of those with Taiwan because I would enjoy learning more about the market here and since I do some work with local high tech companies. I think I could get a decent idea of which areas of technology will do well, especially if I paid more attention like I used to in the past. Having some skin in the game will make me pay more attention.
If you’re in it for the thrill, by all means invest in specifics. If you work with tech, you might have better access to what you’d need to know. Just avoid insider trading
I know what you mean about funds transfers. NTD isn’t on any currency exchange app so you loose quite a bit when you transfer to another currency account.
I will say this again with regards to picking stocks:
I agree with you. But what I’m after also is a small first step after years away. What’s that, “Motley Fool” articles I used to read religiously? That was a message they made very chance they got. Again, I agree.
