The chart of the Dow below and even our own STI index on an intra-day basis shows the volatility that I mentioned above.

 Singapore's April 2010 industrial production data expanded strongly by 51% year on year and 31% year on year excluding bio-medical (see chart below).

 I thought the Dow would close flat last night - so was suprised to see it shed about 127 points at the close pusing the Dow to 10066.6.  The intra-day chart below shows that the bulk of selling came toward the end of trade.

Last week was painful for many investors especially if you were trying to trade the market or were leveraged as you may have had margin calls.  The table below gives a snap shot of what happened to our STI Index and some component stocks.  You will notice exceptional weakness in commodity related stocks such as Wilmar, Noble and Olam on specific cocerns such as alleged tax evasion to the imposition of taxes on excessive profits for commodity companies.   If we survived 2008 and 2009, this weakness is not new so dont panic.

 I dont follow Wilmar shares - at one point in time it had a market cap that was almost the same size as Singapore Telecom.  Wilmar shares declined sharply today by 6% today (at time of writing on 31bn shares and itself contributed to an 11 point decline of the STI Index's fall.  At the centre of the weakness is was alleged tax evasion - the following article in the Jakarta Post gives more details on the case,   Technically we could see the shares fall further to S$4.96 where I see some support - this may provide a buying/trading opportunity as the lost in market cap now is about 5 times the value of the alleged tax evasion.   Wilmar has come out to deny any wrong doing in a statement filed on SGX.  The statement is set-out below:

I was asked yesterday during a TV interview about why the market was reacting so negatively to the EU's US$1 trillion rescue package. The VIX initially fell to below 30 after it rocketed to above 40 and is now just trading above the 30 level.   A fall below 30 would signal to me that sentiment is improving. 

 Sinomem's Q1-2010 results continued to show strong improvement with revenue higher by 55% to S$32.44mn.  Net profit after MI was S$6.86mn up 39% with EPS of S$ 1.37 cents and NTA of S$ 51.66 cents.  Key highlights in the results:

 Armstrong was one of the counters that I removed from my Stock Picks on March 25, 2010 because it was about 17% away from my price target of S$ 40 cents.   The stock remained a BUY and I wanted to review its Q1 2010 numbers to see if my forecast for 2010 was too conservative.

 Hock Lian Seng reported its Q1-2010 results last night.  Revenue rose 5% to S$61.7mn while net profit was up 79% to S$7.7mn.  Excluding the profit from the sale of investments, net profit growth would have been 33% mainly from an expansion of margins. EPS was 1.5 cents with NAV of 15.8 cents.

 For 2010, I was looking at Innotek to report strong earnings growth over its net profit of S$9.4mn in 2009.  2009's profit came on the back of a 14% decline in revenue, ie cost cutting.  The story for 2010 was top line growth and a maintenance of the better margins.  The highlights of Innotek's Q1-2010 results are appended below:

 On April 27, 2010, I added ASTI to my Stock Picks as I felt that our analysts forecast of S$5.2mn for the full year 2010 was too conservative. This was because when I walked around the factory, it was very busy and close to 100% utilisation. The Q1-2010 results were just released with revenue higher by 23% to S$113mn, gross profit higher by 88% to S$21.9mn and net profit of S$5.2mn compared to a loss of S$5.5mn in Q1-2009.  This is an excellent set of results with the company meeting our full year forecasts in Q1-2010 alone.  I was expecting profits to be better than our S$5.2mn profit for the year but not this much better.  The company in its own results commentary said the results were unexpected.

 Ellipsiz has released its Q3-2010 results.  Revenue rose 23% to S$37.6mn with net profit of S$1.53mn from a loss of S$28.6mn over the same quarter in 2009 from the fire.  For the nine months, revenue was lower by 10% to S$104.8mn and a net profit of S$14.9mn.  EPS for the nine months is 2.93 cents with NAV at 17.5  cents.  But investors should be aware that about S$0.9mn of the Q3 and S$19.2mn in the 9 month results came from its insurance claim income.  Excluding this would show what is the recurrent operating income for the company,  The figure is small for Q3-2010 and a loss for the nine month period.  The growth in revenue and weak profit is consistent with the guidance that management had given us earlier this year, ie that they were facing pricing pressure despite the recovery in the business.

 I attended the Cerebos Q2-2010 or H1-2010 results briefing yesterday.  The results were strong and robust for a company that many believed was in a mature industry even after excluding exchange gains.  You can read my review in our top picks section.  Key points to note is that Thailand accounts for about three quarters of its net profit and about 37% of its revenue.  The next big market is Taiwan which accounts for about 23-24% of net profit.  The other markets are marginal contributers.  The PER valuations are reasonable with the biggest attraction being its dividend yield is more than 6%.  The main negative besides its huge exposure to Thailand is its low liquidity because Suntory controls more than 83% of its issued shares.  But this shareholding is probably why the dividend yield is so good because Suntory is using this to extract cash back to it.

The EU rescue package is not unexpected given that the memories of the ripple effect from the closure of Lehman's is still fresh in the mind of many Governments, policy makers and investors.  So while the more than US$1 trillion gives us reason to cheer - we should expect a  bumpy road ahead as this package still needs to be approved by the parliaments of the individual EU members. This could be difficult and we already see a potential change in Government in Germany because of this.  This reminds me of the difficult road that the Obama Geithner package had before it finally went through the US Senate and Congress.

 Some relief this morning but I note a lack of strength and depth in the mild rebound this morning which is probably driven by some short covering.  I spoke to a trader this morning who had closed all his long positions last week.  That plus a market which is now looking a bit oversold points to a technical rebound.   This might continue into tomorrow given that as I am writing this Blog, I notice that Dow futures are up more than 200 points.  This might provie some relief to the market and hopefully bring the VIX back down to Earth.

 US markets tumble again overnight with the Dow off by 140 and the Nasdaq by 54 points to 10380 and 2265 respectively.  The positive Dow futures of last evening failed to bolster markets and what is more worrying for me is that the VIX has had another sharp rise to more than 40 - this is NOT Good and is likely to weigh on market sentiment in the coming weeks.

 China Animal reported its Q1-2010 results yesterday.   The results are good and confirm that the momentum seen in the second half of 2009 is maintained.   Key results highlights are:

 The sell off over the last few days has seen the STI Index cut through its 50 and 100 day moving averages.  Technical support seems to be at the 2670 level.  But we could be in for a short covering bounce as our market is beginning to look oversold on the G50 chart below.

 Surprised by the red ink on Wall Street but most the news and wire services attribute the sharp decline to a trader error ie selling 16bn instead of 16mn Procter and Gamble shares.  This almost halved the price of P&G and led to the 1000 point fall in the Dow.  If true, and investigations are being done now, the trade will be reversed and the so call sharp fall will be removed from the indices trading history.  So while I was shocked when I saw the fall....digging into the details gives me more comfort.

 Sing Holdings gave profit guidance for a loss in Q1-2010 last night (before wall Street crashed).  The company announced that as at the end of Q1-2010, Sing Holdings had sold 36% of the units at Laurels wth revenue of S$218mn but as as construction work had not commenced - none of the sales proceeds could be recognised.  It however has booked the costs associated with the launch of the Laurels in Q1-2010 accounting for the loss.

 EU debt woes and China's credit tightening and potential re-capitalisation of its banks caused Asian markets to decline yesterday....Singapore was one of the worst hit among Asian markets.  Overnight, we saw sharp declines in US and EU markets again on concerns about the worsening EU debt crisis.  Although Greece has already agreed on a debt restructuring plan with the EU and IMF, this has led to civil protests which the "bears" take to me that it will need more refinancing down the road.   There is also a growing fear that the debt problems will spread to other PIGS which in total will be about 3.7% of world GDP.  Of the PIGS, Spain s the biggest at 2.4% - the other three are tiny.  So unless Spain cracks - which their Prime Minister has denied, then we might see a slightly bigger ripple effect.  Again the quantum of the amount to rescue is small relative to what was needed to save or rescue some of the US corporates.

 Innotek is one of my Stock Picks - the shares went ex-dividend yesterday.   An investor asked me what to do with the stock.  

 Hisaka has just released its H1-2010 results.   Revenue was S$36.6mn up 368% while net profit was S$4.19mn compared to a loss of S$0.8mn in H1-2009 with EPS of 2.23 cents on 188.6mn shares which has now been reduced to 172.8mn shares because of its share buy back program.  On 172.8mn shares, the EPS is 2.4 cents.  In its item 10 (forward looking statement), the group attributes the improved performance to the global recovery and its foray into new businesses areas such as medical and eco-friendly industries.  It adds that the second half is usually better than the first half.  Balance sheet remains strong with net cash of S$12mn - no debt.

 I took Armstrong out of my Stock Picks because it was about 10% from my price target of S$0.40.  Last Friday, it came close to my target and while I have asked investors to take profit on China Animal and Ellipsiz, I am inclined to wait for Armstrong to deliver its Q1-2010 results before making that decision.  The reason is Broadway Industrial Group - which beat my old forecasts by more than 20% and which subsequently led to a 40% increase in Broadway's price target by me.  Armstrong and Broadway are dominant players in hard disk space in their own special niche which is why I suspect that Armstrong could surprise on the upside.  I believe that the results will be released sometime next week - so worth the wait.

The Dow fell more than 150 points last Friday with all the Dow component stocks being in the red.   This came from slightly lower Q1-2010 GDP data and from weakness in financials caused by the investigation into Goldmans.  The movement of the major Dow stocks below sheds some light on where the bulk of the weakness came from.