The King of Thailand passed away yesterday.

A few things I noted:

• PM Prayuth stated that there will be 1 year of mourning, that the Crown Prince shall be the next King, 30 days no entertainment (but to your best judgement)
• Walking around Central world in the evening after a dinner, you’d see quite a few people crying in public.
• Taking the BTS home, nothing changed, people were still playing pokemon, facebook etc etc with their eyes glued to their phones.
• And perhaps that’s the most interesting thing, this succession thus far has been very well executed, sadness reigns but uncertainty now is at a minimum. There aren’t really any major questions left regarding the future of Thailand.
• The Stock market rallied hard in the last hour of the day, why? Rumours point to Dr. Somkid wanting to ensure stability and perhaps one major local institution bought up the market to provide the image of stability.

So now what?

• The market didn’t drop by the 20-30% that I had expected (and a lot in the industry thought as well)
• What’s interesting is that several local funds have HUGE amounts of cash (50%+) and will they be chasing a potential government driven rebound to make up for their underperformance?
• Fundamentally, nothing has changed, whilst we may see slowdowns in the media industry if concerts, events, ad’s are cancelled, consumer spending may have a slight blip but I’m fairly certain that they country will just move along, tourists still are coming in droves, exports are doing ok, government projects are ongoing, it is still a military government with the aim of having an election next year, so…whilst it’s a period of mourning, things still go on and I think that’s been the biggest message from the government.