The week ahead

The apathy of a trading week with a holiday will collide with the excitement and price discovery of a post-BSP rate cut. Make sure you adjust your calendars for the last-minute shift of Ninoy Aquino Day from Wednesday, August 21, to Friday, August 23.

> PH:  The week starts today with the delisting of the Cirtek warrants (TECHW), and ends with the relocated observation of Ninoy Aquino Day with a non-trading day on Friday.

> International:  I’m going to pay light attention to the Bank of Thailand and the Bank of Indonesia interest rate decisions on Wednesday, and the Bank of Korea on Thursday.

MB BOTTOM-LINE: Glass half-full analysis of the holiday shift is that now we get a 4-day weekend instead of back-to-back weeks that are broken up by non-trading days. Glass half-empty analysis is that most of us drones in the corporate world have had to arrange for our leaves months and months in advance, and making this change at the last minute is just another aggravating instance of elitist calendar management that completely ignores how people on the ground (the ones actually doing the work) manage our lives. I’m not even getting into how weird it is to shift a date celebration holiday (which is on August 21 for a specific reason), supposedly in aid of domestic tourism, with just six days’ notice. Why is there always such a lack of foresight? Anyone who has ever arranged an event will know that last-minute shifts in timing are disastrous to participation because people have lives and they need to make plans well in advance. Why not just wait for this holiday to pass and THEN make this shift for future Ninoy Aquino Day recognitions? Maybe I’m just feeling a case of the Mondays because my holiday plans were absolutely blind-sided by this change and we can’t be the only family/business in this situation.

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