It’s been a week of rising figures here in China, dear readers, and we can hardly feel our neck anymore from all the slack-jawed gaping we’ve done looking up at the astronomical indicators that keep making headlines.
What’s up, you ask? Well arrests, for one. Never mind that authorities announced plans to ban China’s absurd arrest and conviction rate targets. We ourselves feel safe enough predicting that the 99.9% conviction rate of China’s courts will hold up under the weight of the recent 60,500-strong boom in drug arrests. But fret not for those found guilty, good readers: So long as they’re sufficiently creative they can shave time off their sentences with a few successful patents. Or failing that, can just buy them instead.
We expect there’ll be more willing buyers where that came from now that regulators have set up new offices to eyeball the bustling trust industry. And wonder of unexpected wonders, civil servant salaries are on the rise as well! State sector employees will get all manner of income bumps thanks to a timely new diktat. Maybe they’ll even go up enough to offset the losses they’ll be taking when paying for the latest pension reforms!
Perhaps they can plow all of that extra dough into the ascendant, nay, indefatigable Shanghai exchange. Sure, some investors toes might get chilly what with those brokers getting punished, and those new draft rules on entrusted loans could make margin trading a bit more tricky. But believe you us, if we’ve learned one thing from our many, quite frankly countless hare-brained investment schemes over the years, it’s that the market will find a way.
And, sure, China’s capital flows gauge fell, but net capital outflows are up! And as anyone with even a passing knowledge of economics knows, when the numbers go up someone’s probably winning somewhere. And that always puts us in a bullish mood.
Mm? Stocks down 7.7%, you say? Biggest one-day drop in six years, you heard? Pah! we’d point you to the next day’s rebound on word from authorities that the growth rate of China’s economy… fell to 7.4% in 2014? Really? And stocks went up? Let’s double-check that one, yes?
Huh, we’ll be danged. Seven-point-four per-cent.
If you’ll excuse us for a moment we’ve just got to make a quick call to our broker about a short position we’ve been mulling over. Regulators may preach about the risk mitigation of options in the lead-up to their Shanghai debut, but we’re suddenly more inclined toward a more… speculative approach.
And after all why not? We hear it’s done wonders for Chinese hedge funds dabbling in the global copper markets. ♦
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