S'pore investors more optimistic than HK ones: study

S'pore investors more optimistic than HK ones: study

Singapore - Even as Asia succumbs to the impact of "Brexit", Singapore investors are more optimistic about the performance of their current investments than their Hong Kong counterparts, Hong Kong marketing research firm CSG has found.

Its study has revealed that 65 per cent of Hong Kong investors believe that the performance of their current investments will worsen over the next 12 months, but only 53 per cent of Singapore investors feel this way.

It also found that nearly half of Singapore investors expressed confidence that the economy would recover in 24 months, while only 31 per cent of the Hong Kong investors said they believed so.

CSG's survey, launched within a few hours of the official results of the UK referendum on staying or leaving the European Union, collected data from 211 investors in Hong Kong and and 225 investors in Singapore.

Asked for their take on global investment opportunities, the Singapore group again emerged the more positive lot: 63 per cent said global investment opportunities would remain the same or improve; 53 per cent of Hong Kongers thought likewise.

Among Hong Kong investors, 13 per cent said that global investments would decline drastically; only 8 per cent of the Singapore respondents thought so.

Amid the flux and shock, CSG's executive director Simon Tye said financial advisors should see the economic uncertainty as an opportunity to connect and develop strong relationship with their customers.

But while respondents from the two cities differed on the prospects for their respective economies and investments, they agreed that Brexit would open up new opportunities. More than 40 per cent of both Hong Kong and Singapore investors said they would look for new opportunities; over a third said they would carry on their original investment plan.

South China Morning Post reported that Hong Kong investors were leveraging the weaker pound by snapping up London properties after the results of the referendum on Friday. A third of participants in Hong Kong and Singapore named the buying of the British pound and holidaying in the UK as priorities.

The Singapore sample differed from the Hong Kong one in that the younger set in Singapore (aged 25 to 29) were more enthusiastic about investments performance and global investment opportunities; in Hong Kong, this relative optimism lay with those in their 40s.

In both places, about a quarter of investors aged 50 years and up are putting their investment plan on hold, while the younger set indicated they would look for new opportunities.

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