A COLD Christmas

Christmas is just around the corner, but looks like it is a different kind of Christmas, a COLD Christmas. Singapore is a tropical country, it can never be that cold in terms of temperature. At most it is wet and cool. The rain brought by the annual monsoon lower the thermometer by quite a number of degrees, but that is not what I meant by a COLD Christmas. It is the mood.

Look around, do you actually FEEL Christmas is actually approaching? It is all nice & quiet in the office. There is no Christmas deco, no Christmas party. Few people talk about Christmas at all. Unusually COOL this year.

Went to IMM today around dinner time. Few shops decorate for Christmas. There were not that many shoppers, either. Giant Hypermart, which is usually jam-packed on weekends, had surprisingly short queues. Dinner time, MOS burger, Subway still had plenty of tables. Ajisen and Ajitei were half empty. One puzzled customer asked "why is this restaurant so empty, like a ghost shop?"

Where is the crowd? IMM is not an isolated case, a number of other shopping centres I went to had the same situation. Dinner time on a weekend, you can still easily find a table in the foodcourt. That was quite impossible a couple of months ago.

Have all the people gone to Orchard Road? Mmh, I am not sure. Anyone has any field report? Or with the booming economic, everybody is on an overseas holiday? I hope so. However, I still couldn't help fearing the worst. The inflation had taken its toll on the economy. People are spending less. STI seems to be in the process of the ugly head-and-shoulder formation. In the next couple of weeks, we will know with more certainty whether STI's uptrend will remain intact, or it is heading towards 3300, and then 3000. The bull & the bear are in a fierce fight right now. The bear seems to have a slightly upper hand. Once the bear wins, more ugly things will gradually unwind.