Endowus releases some surprising findings from their 2023 Wealth Insights Report.
It apparently takes less than a year to change things around so much to the point that the recent past seems unrecognizable.
As of last August, finews.asia was at great pains to describe the many ills afflicting Hong Kong. A declining population, constantly changing Covid-19 social distancing measures – and so on. You get what I mean.
Now, according to Endowus, a private Asian wealth manager, all that belongs to the great big dumpster fire of discarded, forgotten memories.
Higher Confidence
In the 2023 edition of its «Wealth Insights Report» (email registration required), Hong Kongers have apparently put all that behind them, with a significantly higher number of them (53 percent) more confident of economic recovery than Singaporeans (39 percent).
Maybe this is simply an initial post-pandemic euphoria given mask restrictions in Hong Kong were only fully lifted in March - at the same time that the now notorious government quarantine facility, Penny Bay, was shuttered.
That might indeed be the case, given that 71 percent of citizens in Hong Kong were confident about economic growth attributable to the Covid-19 recovery compared with 59 percent of respondents in Singapore.
Cultural Difference
Or it might be deeper cultural differences at play here, given that Singapore residents gave themselves to be more cautious when it comes to investing, with less than half (41 percent) willing to grow capital by taking «some» risks. That compares to 54 percent of Hong Kongers who were willing to do so.
Still, citizens in both cities were prepared to invest more this year, with 1 in three of those surveyed fully cognizant of the damage that inflation is potentially doing to their retirement assets.
That being said, Singaporeans had a greater habit of attempting to time markets, with half of them saying they would only do so when the time was right. That was significantly higher than in Hong Kong, where only 31 percent of those who answered said they would do so.
