I hate to name-drop, but I spent 15 minutes with Marc “Dr Doom” Faber in Chiang Mai recently. It wasn’t a proper, proper conversation in the strictest sense. The bar was noisy and he, sporting a ponytail that resembled a small furry animal, was accompanied by some mates, one not-unattractive lady of local origin and a Ducati superbike — all of which conspired to make him a tad antisocial to an uninvited, nosy journalist.

Henceforth, what emanated from him that night was the usual palaver, which was something along the lines of “in 2017 some markets will rise and some others will fall”.

Which in fund manager demigod-speak means, “I’m not keen to discuss financial markets with you at 11pm on a Friday night, so please bugger off”.

So that dismissive, throwaway remark, not meant to be taken seriously, was just that — until Apple released its results last week, to reveal that it had sold a lot more mobile phones than expected.

At a record 78.4 million iPhone 7s in the first quarter, it sold an eye-watering two million units more than the street expected — revealing the truth, throwaway or not, of said demigod’s remarks.

And that is instructive, because in spite of Donald Trump and all the uncertainty and fear that he stands for, some markets, prices, assets and other assorted what-have-you will indeed rise, while others will fall.

But wait. There’s more.

Sales of the Huawei P9 and its combined variants have also been going through the roof, most likely exceeding the company’s sales target of 10 million units in 2016, helped in no small part by its mammoth battery life, twin Leica cameras, 4GB RAM and iPhone-beating price (about RM2,499 for the P9 Plus, versus over RM3,000 for the base iPhone 7).

While 10 million Huawei P9s remain a puny 3% of Apple’s total iPhone sales in 2016, it is still a massive achievement for a China manufacturer.

Which begs the question: is there something going on that we don’t know, like perhaps a too-early sounding of the the death knell for smartphone makers?

And does this trend portend a trade in some related asset, like perhaps stocks in widget makers that supply to the Apples and Huaweis of this world?

A hint might be found in Apple supplier Globetronics’ share price, which was negative 19.9% in calendar 2016, but up spectacularly year to date in 2017, with a generous 19.25% bounce — coinciding nicely with Apple’s best-ever first quarter.

One also wonders: did the lack of holiday season euphoria in physical stores instead shift online, where, if Apple results are an accurate barometer, sales did not taper off but in fact rose?

Everyone, but everyone, knows that Apple products are a tad cheaper online at Apple dotcom.

In fact, smartphones, among a host of other electronics goods like cameras, tablets and printers, are a whole lot cheaper on Amazon, Lazada, Shopee and the veritable cornucopia of online sites, which are (still) throwing huge amounts of cash to capture customers.

For those who don’t know, statistics clearly show that e-commerce has well and truly arrived, and early adopters — mainly the young — are striking a rich vein, with deals like free deliveries, vast discounts off the list price and access to great deals from (the slightly racist-sounding) Black Friday and Singles sales in the US and China respectively.

Again, there is a trade here:

Amazon took forever to get profitable but after decades of patience, shareholders are finally getting rewarded handsomely.

If Malaysians had bought Amazon stock at this time last year, they would not only be partaking of a handsome 43% return in 2016, but would also have seen gains extended by a further 9.8% in 2017 alone — not to mention the additional 6.3% forex gain in the USD/MYR cross-rate this past 12 months.

Anyway, speaking of foreign things, something else also recently caught my attention that bears mentioning.

At E&O Bhd’s Straits Quay, which is an upmarket retail/commercial enclave in Penang (some say it resembles Marbella in Spain), there is a swanky corner pub owned by an Australian.

But he’s not just any ordinary Australian.

The pub is actually his second job because his main gig during the day is his role as head of economics in a quite famous international school on the island.

Try and get your head around that: a teacher who owns a pub.

As if that’s not enough, what about the fact that he is able to — on a teacher’s salary —

afford to finance the quite considerable capital outlay to refurbish premises worthy of a place as plummy as Straits Quay?

Perhaps not from his monthly salary per se, but it would be entirely possible if he had been the beneficiary of several accumulated gigs over the course of a number of years at international schools all over the region, where salaries for experienced teachers have been driven into the stratosphere by huge demand from wealthy locals and expats.

I have anecdotes galore of this zany world of international schools:

One must therefore ask: is this a world gone mad?

While parents are scrimping and saving to send their children to a school where they think a premium education awaits, the teachers are instead living it up, buying luxury condos and owning swanky pubs.

Little wonder then, that developers continue to make healthy margins on their projects and are choosing to go into private education, beneficiaries of a country that misspends billions on an education system that churns out unemployable graduates while creating massive opportunities for private players keen on filling a necessary niche.

It really is a funny old world.

But it does proves Monsieur Faber right: some markets will indeed rise — especially if you peddle smartphones or are a canny international school teacher willing to ply your trade in high-growth Asia.

Khoo Hsu Chuang is contributing editor at The Edge Malaysia

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