MCLC: Ting Hai effect

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: kirk (denton.2 at osu.edu)
Subject: Ting Hai effect
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Source: NYT (4/2/13):
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/business/global/for-hong-kong-markets-bad
-omen-in-a-movie-premiere.html

For Hong Kong Markets, Bad Omen in a Movie Premiere
By GERRY MULLANY

HONG KONG — There are all sorts of reasons for the Hong Kong stock market
to have the jitters these days. The Chinese economy remains wobbly. North
Korea is threatening nuclear war. And perhaps most worrisome this week, a
leading Hong Kong actor has a new movie coming out.

Hong Kong investors call it the Ting Hai effect: When the actor Adam Cheng
has a new television show or a new movie, the Hang Seng index often takes
a dramatic turn for the worse. And in a city where superstitions can guide
daily routines, the financial sector is worried.
Mr. Cheng’s new movie, “Saving General Yang,” has its debut in theaters
Wednesday, and investors in the Hong Kong market, which has been generally
buoyant of late, are on guard, while acknowledging that it is unlikely
that a movie opening could drive a major market index.

“Of course, investors need to be wary to an extent,” said Thomas Wong, a
Hong Kong banker. “That is part of the job, but they shouldn’t let a movie
decide whether the stock market will do well or not. That is not how the
market works. People may talk about it, but they are not going to take it
seriously.”

The Ting Hai effect has its roots in the 1992 debut of a television series
called “The Greed of Man,” which turned a critical eye on members of the
city’s investment community and their supposed shady doings, with Mr.
Cheng in the role of Ting Hai, who made it rich selling derivatives during
a bear market. As the first episode was being broadcast, the Hang Seng
dropped an alarming 13 percent at one point.
Investor concerns about his acting appearances were reinforced two years
later when the market took a drop of nearly 14 percent with the debut of
his television series “Instinct.”

The unpredictability of financial markets has long fed superstitions about
stock market behavior. One school of thought suggests that market
downturns coincide with the construction of the world’s tallest building:
Think the Empire State Building in New York in 1931; the Sears Tower in
Chicago in 1974; and the Petronas Twin Towers in Kuala Lumpur in 1998. And
until recent years, there was a notable correlation between bear markets
and victories by teams from the American Football Conference in the Super
Bowl.

In Mr. Cheng’s case, the Hang Seng declined in early trading Wednesday,
bucking earlier jumps in the New York and Tokyo markets hours before the
movie was to open. (“Saving General Yang” has the actor in the lead role
of a drama about a general in the pre-derivatives Song Dynasty 1,100 years
ago.)

“Hong Kong investors can be very superstitious,” Francis Cheung, an
analyst at the brokerage firm CLSA, wrote about the Ting Hai phenomenon.
“And Adam Cheng is a very well-known actor with a large following.”

Investors spooked by superstitions already have reason to worry. This is
the Year of the Snake, and four of the past five snake years, beginning
with 1953, produced down markets, according to the financial services
group CLSA, which publishes a tongue-in-cheek “Feng Shui Index.”

Snakes are skin shedders, whose years are associated with major
transformations and change, like the Tiananmen Square crackdown, bombing
of Pearl Harbor and the onset ofthe Great Depression.

A CLSA report on the Ting Hai effect — again, tongue in cheek — found that
the more tragic the story line in an Adam Cheng movie, the worse the
impact for the market. While the details of the plot of “Saving General
Yang” have not been revealed, in history, the general met a bad fate —
dying of starvation after being captured in battle.

Calvin Yang contributed reporting.