Jake's View | Sentiment rarely counts, but on Hong Kong property market it does
Confidence indices are usually reverse indicators - sell when they're up, buy when they're down - but current sentiment on HK property is right
"Always wonder what sentiment would look like once you filter out movements correlated with stock market performance.."
As should be perfectly apparent from my friend's musings, he suffers from the peculiar malady of having a social conscience greater than his personal ambitions. Who else would want to understand sentiment except as a guide to the movements of the Hang Seng Index?
I'm not sure anyway that the market can really be filtered out. It is an integral part of the picture, not just the colouration.
The sentiment my friend had in mind was specifically the Public Sentiment Index compiled by the public opinion programme of the University of Hong Kong. It seeks "to explain and predict the likelihood of collective behaviour".
This is, of course, a vile objective redolent of totalitarian states and junk food marketeers. Go mess with your own minds, you HKU academics. Mine is off limits.