So a plethora of economic news regarding Thailand has come out over the past week and it all has pointed to the same direction which is a slowdown in growth for the country

So a quick summary of whats happened:

• Retailers are revising down growth targets across the board (Bangkok Post)
• Agriculture – growth expected to only be 1.5-2.5% from 4% for this year b/c of drought and EMS which killed shrimp farming (Bangkok Post)
• GDP for this year likely to be around 4% b/c of weak exports, slowing consumption and private investment falling, plus the government’s spending is unlikely to come through until next year. One scary fact is that household debt is now 80% of GDP (Bangkok Post)

So what? Well take a simple step back and remember whats happened over the past few years, 2010 was a recovery from ’08-’09 and then just as 2011 was shaping up to look decent we had the floods in 4Q11, so 2012 was a strong recovery (I’d argue it was as if the year equated to 5 quarters worth of performance) from there with tonnes of debt being thrown at people to buy new homes, applicances, cars, condos, then companies reinvesting to get operations up and running etc etc. So now with government spending slowing down (for now), companies finally up and running, consumers over indebted it’s only natural that a slow down is happening, plus with equity valuations at “lofty-ish” levels there’s really no surprise in terms of equity market performance. So are we going to crash and burn? Nope this just reminds of 2004 when the market had a fantastic period during’03 and then the market needs time for EPS growth to catch up with the P/E levels, til it happens, stock picking is the way go 🙂