Is Singapore still in recession 2?

No chart on this entry, just an observation.

I have spent more time catching up with the chart analysis and I noticed 2 phenomena:

1)  There are a very very large herd of penny stocks in the market, in fact, you can easily hit one if you throw a stone;
2)  Many of these stocks, and I mean MANY! Which started life before 1998 have actually been shot down during the period of recession and has never ever recovered.

These 2 observations tell me that in general, Singapore has been in a slump since 1998, more than 10 years! Why has STI instead deviates so much to the extend that it not only recovered, superceded, shot down and then rised up one more time?

I recall that STI has been re-adjusted once and again with removal of the less performing counters and replaced with the higher performing ones, at the same time weightage were adjusted. In fact, you will see that the few performing counters are the blue chips link to the index.

So am I right to say that STI can no longer be a benchmark for the Singapore economy since there have been so much manipulation on this index?

Ever since the recession in 1998, I moved from a production base job to a sales and marketing in the Electronic field, what I saw was a sorry state of the industry and gone was the glory days of the 90s. Many companies, especially the distributors, actually depended on trades with China to survive. There is almost 0 business in the country.

I suspect my industry is not the only one, while running outside the company visiting customers, I also noticed buildings owned by some listed companies. They were all so quiet, as if they are seeing flat line coming.

The more I think about the economical situation in Singapore, the more I can relate to Japan. In fact if one look at Japan's chart, they will likely find Japan is in a recession longer than anyone else. But I think the most important lesson from it is that the people managed to pull through and survived.

If base on the chart, we are in our 15 years of recession. We are surviving this which is somethign worth celebrating.