The Rise of Rupiah: Opportunity!

Throughout 2015, the Indonesian stock market has almost always haunted by frightening stories about the economic slowdown, one of which related to our beneamata currency, Rupiah, which continued to slide down from Rp12,500 at the beginning of the year, until almost reached Rp15,000 per US Dollar in September. And the Jakarta Stock Exchange (JCI) itself continued to drop from 5,500’s to as low as 4,120 on Sept., when the market psychology was so bad to the point that almost everyone thinks that Indonesia could fall into a crisis like in 1998 (but I myself had said that there will be no crisis, you can read the article in here).

Undervalue Opportunity: Bank Bukopin

Last week hundreds of taxi drivers, especially from two cab companies ie Blue Bird (BIRD) and Express Transindo Utama (TAXI), rallied in downtown Jakarta to protest against Uber and Grabtaxi, which almost led into a riot. Shortly thereafter, the issue of ‘online versus conventional taxi’ became a headline in the media. While in the stock market, the stocks of BIRD and TAXI became the center of attention, in which TAXI, which previously freefall from Rp1,200 per share to below 100, suddenly is now above 200 again. Similarly, BIRD, which in last January dropped to Rp5,400 per share, but it is now traded at 6,800.

Indonesia, Ten Years from Now

Berkshire Hathaway has released the annual letter for the year 2015 on February 27 (luckily, at the age of 85, Warren Buffett is still in good health and still regularly writes), and there are some interesting points in the annual letter. One of them, which we will discuss in here, is about Buffett’s viewpoint about the US economy, which, in my opinion, we can use it as a reference to look at the economy in Indonesia in the future. Okay, let’s get it on.

'Smart Money' of Stock Market

On January 8, when the Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) was on 4,500’s, I wrote an article entitled ‘After the Despair, Then What?’, where the point is that JCI was in a period of consolidation, and this period can lead to a bull or further bear market. But considering the economic conditions etc., I said that the consolidation would lead to a bull market, or at least the JCI would move several percent higher (you can read again the article in here). And here we are: When this article was written, the JCI has gained significantly and is now on 4,800's.