Ten-year cycle of market crashes?

By OOI KOK HWA

In this article, we look at three stock market crashes from the recent market crash to those in 1987/8 and 1997/8

Q: Are we in the 10-year stock market cycle, pending a big stock market crash?

The market crash in 2007

The recent heavy sell-down on the bond and stock markets caught a lot of retail and institutional investors by surprise. What appeared to be a haven in investment like the bond market was still subject to panic selling from institutional investors.

We believe the crash in the bond market was mainly due to the withdrawal of some foreign funds. As a result of tight liquidity, unwinding of yen carry trade and potential high losses in some hedge funds, some foreign funds might have been forced to withdraw their investments from the Asia-Pacific market.

The plummet in our stock market was mainly due to the fear of sharp drops in the US, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Japan markets.

Even though our banking institutions were not really affected by the US subprime issues, the international contagion and fear of more crashes, margin calls and panic selling from retailers caused heavy losses on Bursa Malaysia.

Nevertheless, the magnitude of our losses was far less than those in the regional markets.

The market crash in 1987/8

The market crash in October 1987 was partly attributed to strong market performance of most markets during the first nine months of the year. For example, the US market experienced more than 30% increase during the nine-month period.

However, from Oct 12 to 16, the Dow Index tumbled by 9.5%. On Black Monday of Oct 19, it plunged 22.6%, or 508 points, within a day. It was the largest single fall since 1929, in both absolute and percentage terms.

In Malaysia, the KL Composite Index (KLCI) tumbled by 12.4% on Black Monday. As a result of the overnight crash in US, the KLCI plunged another 15.7% the next trading day.

The market crash in 1997/8

The Asian stock market crash of 1997/98 began with a currency crisis in July in Thailand and quickly spread to neighbouring nations. One by one, overheated markets crashed in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea. This was mostly due to the rapid industrialisation in these countries.

The US market was affected by the turmoil in Asia. Its share prices began to collapse at the beginning of October 1997. On Oct 27, the Dow Index tumbled by 554 points, or 7.2%, within a day. However, it recovered by recording a rise of 337 points the next day.

In Malaysia, the KLCI tumbled from 1,231 points in the beginning of 1997 to the low of 262 on Sept 1, 1998, representing a total percentage drop of 78.7%.

Comparing the three market crashes, the KLCI suffered its biggest daily drop of 21.5% on Sept 8, 1998. The crashes in 1997/8 and 1987/8 were also far more severe than our recent market crash.

We are not too sure whether we have seen the worst of the crash in 2007. However, the sell-down has caused a big disruption in our uptrend momentum. It appears to be quite difficult for the KLCI to touch the recent peak of 1,392 again.

Any market rebounds may prompt fund managers to continue offloading their equity exposure. Most of big losses in 1997/8 and 1987/8 happened in October.

As we can only know the actual exposure of the subprime issues for most of the US financial institutions when they report their third quarter results in early October, we are expecting some market volatility in that month.

Ooi Kok Hwa is a licensed investment adviser and managing partner of MRR Consulting.