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Investment
guru, Marc Faber, currently in India, shares his
thoughts on what the markets hold for 2007. CNBC-TV18
shares with domain-b its exclusive interaction
with Faber.
"I
think as we move into 2007, I noticed globally the wave
of optimism, the art dealers are bullish on art, and the
commodity traders bullish on commodities, the real estate
guys bullish on real estate, the stock traders bullish
on stocks, everybody has something to buy," Marc
Faber says.
He
says this type of an environment is very dangerous and
feels that this is a suitable time to liquidate some assets
and just sit back and see what happens. He feels that
there are no bargains only some relative bargains
like the price of sugar or the price of cotton.
"I
do not think that gold is terribly expensive. I think
we are very stretched in the asset markets and just looking
at the rise we had in markets since July of this year
after the correction, we have gone up almost vertically
and all the markets are overbought. One reads in the paper
about excess liquidity and soft landing and that is the
accepted view.
"I
will say that basically you should sell stocks and assets
when there are no clouds in the sky and you should buy
them when there is a thunder and storm and everything
looks dismal. Today everything looks wonderful, I could
see the global economy is expanding, we have synchronised
growth, economically everything looks good, the problem
is the inflated asset market, that is the bubble,"
adds Faber.
The
long-term case for Indian property investments is compelling,
according to Faber, as he feels that in India only about
4 or 5 per cent of the retail market is organised and
the housing market is much less developed in a country
like Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and Hong
Kong. He stresses that for the long-term there is no problem
with real estate except when there might be an oversupply
from time to time, which over a period of time would fill
up. Faber favours real estate investment from a long-term
perspective.
Faber
also talks about his concerns on the liquidity situation.
He says, "I think we are extended in asset markets,
we had huge moves. In Europe, everybody talks about the
excess liquidity; that is correct. But I would like to
remind you that even though you can have huge liquidity,
markets can go down."
He
further adds, "In the Middle East, we still have
lot of liquidity because oil prices have not collapsed
and the production is still at very high levels, yet the
Middle East, the markets have all declined by 50 per cent.
So I think that we have to distinguish between markets
and the fundamentals. Here in India, one of the problems
I see is that unlike Japan in the 80s, when the Nikkei
went up more than five times. Here in India, we do not
have the same amount
of liquidity. In the '80s and '90s, interest rates were
declining whereas now it would seem to me that globally
interest rates are at artificially low levels."
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