Lai See | CLSA's Chris Woods assesses death and markets

To the CLSA Investor Forum, which as chairman and CEO Jonathan Slone proudly proclaimed, was the 21st and the busiest with more meetings and more delegates from the bigger financial institutions. He was upbeat about markets and the engagement with the firm's new masters, state-controlled Citic Securities. "It's an exciting time to be in financial markets," Sloane purred.

However, things took a more ghoulish turn with CLSA's equity strategist Christopher Woods observing in his briefing to the press that while he is bullish on India on account of Narendra Modi's elevation to prime minister, "by far the biggest risk in India is that somebody assassinates Mr Modi". His appeal is based on his successful track record in Gujarat.

"He's not part of the Delhi political establishment. He's basically changing the way the government works. So if something happens to him in the near future before he's had a chance to create momentum that would have a significant effect on markets," Woods said.

Death also cropped up in the discussion on Thailand. Woods was asked if markets had priced in the death of Thailand's ailing king. "If the king dies the market will go straight down," which he said is one good reason not to overweight the Thai stock market. "On the law of probability that [the Thai king's death] is a more likely statistical development than Modi being assassinated, I would say the downside in dollar terms in the India market is way higher if Modi is assassinated than if the Thai king dies."

In another interesting observation Woods drew attention to the high capital inflows into China from Hong Kong and Singapore banks, noting they appear to have been driven more by the carry trade than by foreign direct investment. That is, Hong Kong dollar funds are being swapped into renminbi and invested in high yielding renminbi wealth management products on the mainland. This is because they both have large offshore renminbi markets.

Another factor which suggested the existence of a carry trade was that trade finance loans in Hong Kong have surged significantly higher than the total value of trade. This, Woods said, suggested the funds weren't being used to finance trade. In recent years this trade has benefited from the appreciation of the yuan and the higher yields on offer on the mainland. This will start to unravel if there is a big correction in the mainland property market and on concerns of US monetary tightening and a stronger dollar, which would see investors reducing their exposure to the yuan.