The market's initial reactions to the Government's seven-point stimulus package announced on Friday are just like the package itself - stop and go.
First, we have the punters on Saturday thronging to snap up Cheung Kong's latest offering of new flats, with property agents moving among them to bid for the chips entitling holders to flats.
The suspension of the Government's prohibition on the resale of uncompleted flats before assignment had made everything look like old times before the prohibition was imposed in order to restrain speculators.
Then, on Monday, the stock market nosedived. The stimulus package had not persuaded share-buyers, who thought it not enough and had in mind the negative growth rate of the economy in the first quarter and the continuing troubles of other Asian markets.
There are reasons to treat the Government's package with some uncertainty. Band-aids are removed when the open cuts they cover are healed. At what point will the Government decide that this one is healed and rip the Band-aid off again? What we need is someone in authority to tell us just what the official definition of a speculator is.
Is a speculator a nasty person with greasy hair and shifty eyes who makes himself undeservedly rich by driving prices up so that the rest of us can no longer afford the things we need? Or is he someone who provides liquidity to the housing market, so that homeowners can more easily sell and buy their flats when they need to; someone who also fills the economic function of taking the risk from the hands of the developers, so that they can get on with their business of building more in greater security? Personally, I think there is a lot to be said for this second definition, not the least of it being that the first definition makes me greasy-haired and shifty-eyed; you too, probably.
Have you ever bought shares on the market not for dividend income but in the hope that the price would jump and you would make a rapid profit? You nasty speculator, you.