Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Over-reaction?

The Japanese stock market fell more than 16% in two days. If that reaction is rational it means that the net present value of the future profits of Japanese companies will be 16% lower than would have been without the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear accident. This seems to me to be an over-reaction. How much will Japanese GDP fall this year? The main economic impacts are damage to ports, oil refineries, and power stations on the east coast of Honshu. The impact of the tsunami damage and nuclear issues is unlikely to be very significant by comparison for the whole economy of Japan IMO. Some of these issues will be fixed fairly quickly (I'm guessing the oil refinery damage comes into that category) and others like the Fukushima nuclear power station cannot be fixed. I don't see why any of this should have pushed the German stock exchange 5% down at one point on March 15th. Anyway, I doubled my position in GTAA @ $25.11 using the money I transferred.

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