The Bangkok Bank will make available more than Bt50 billion in cash at its 1,000-plus branches, including micro branches, and its nationwide network of 10,000 ATMs. The bank will also top up its ATMs more frequently.

Kasikornbank will reserve Bt48 billion for the occasion, from February 2-5.

In the Korn Ferry 2019 Global Salary Forecast, Thailand is ranked fifth in terms of real-salary forecast – tied with Azerbaijan – at 3.9 per cent, among some 100 countries included in the study. The real-salary forecast in Ukraine, Turkey, India and Vietnam are expected to be higher than Thailand, at 5.9 per cent, 5.5 per cent, 5 per cent and 4.8 per cent, respectively.

The data was drawn from Korn Ferry’s pay database which contains data for more than 20 million job holders in 25,000 organisations across more than 110 countries.

It shows predicted salary increases, as forecasted by global HR leaders, for 2019 and compares them to predictions made at this time last year regarding 2018. It also compares them to 2019 inflation forecasts from the Economist Intelligence Unit.

As a region, Asia is expected to see the highest real-salary growth globally, with an expected inflation-adjusted real-salary increase at 2.6 per cent, but down from 2.8 per cent last year. There will be a 2.0 per cent increase for Eastern Europe, 0.7 per cent for Western Europe, 1.3 per cent increase for Latin America, 0.9 per cent increase for Africa, 0.6 per cent increase for North America, 0.4 per cent for the Middle East and 0.3 per cent increase for the Pacific region.

The Thai economy reached its strongest pace in 2018 since 2012 with a GDP growth of 4.5 per cent, and had resulted in a low unemployment rate of 0.9 per cent. While it is forecasted that GDP for 2019 will drop to 4.3 percent, the Korn Ferry 2019 Global Salary Forecast predicts that at the individual level, the salary increase will remain at 5.5 percent (no change from last year).

However, the rising inflation (1.6 per cent) will drive real-salary down to 3.9 per cent, from 4.5 per cent in 2018, Mana Lohatepanont, Managing Director, Korn Ferry Thailand, said.

Thanavath Phonvichai, director of the centre, said that the confidence index on modern trade reached 52.1 in the last quarter of 2018, compared to 51.7 in the previous quarter.

The survey was conducted on 78 large-sized modern trade operators in Thailand from December 25 last year to January 19 this year.

Arrivals of foreign tourists rose in the quarter and the New Year period, while the government introduced stimulus measures including low-income earners’ welfare card, shopping for the nation, reduction of corporate income tax, Thanavath said.

Chantanon Wannakejohn, deputy secretary-general for the Office of Agricultural Economics, said that Thailand, as Asean chair, was invited by Japan to attend as a guest country. Japan will play host to this year’s meetings of leaders from the world’s top 20 economies.

The council also approved power plant projects in Surat Thani and in the Western region.

Energy Minister Siri Jirapongphan said that the NERC agreed on the new PDP – covering 2018 to 2037 – at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha yesterday. The Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (Egat) was tasked with planning for Thailand’s power transmission system development for higher power security, grid modernisation and for a regional grid connection centre covering five countries – Thailand, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia and Cambodia.

The Egat will also team up with the Provincial Electricity Authority to develop a smart grid in the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC) to facilitate the needs of investors and enable power discounts.

“In the new PDP, although Egat’s power production will be lower, it will take more responsibility for the system security from the grid connection. It will not only receive fees from transmission lines but play a role in joining in with investments. Egat is expected to finish its planning late this year,” Siri said.

The NERC also agreed on a 1,400 MW power plant project in Surat Thani and a 1,400 MW plant in the West, of which a part will replace Ratchaburi Power Generating Holding’s 700 MW Tri Energy power plant. The company’s contract will end in July 2020.

The Committee on Energy Policy and the Energy Regulatory Committee will also consider a solar power plant project for community needs, with capacity of 100 megawatts per year for 10 years from 2019. The project is expected to begin in the middle of this year.

This project’s power generation is not only aimed at people’s homes but also for rural schools and subdistrict hospitals.

In the new PDP, the country’s power production capacity will rise from 46,090 MW in 2017 to 77,211 MW in 2037. New capacity is expected at 56,431 MW from 2019 to 2037.

Of the total estimated new capacity, 20,766 MW will come from renewable power plants, 13,156 MW from combined cycle power plants, 2,112 MW from cogeneration power plants, 1,740 MW from lignite or coal-fired power plants and 500 MW from pumped storage hydropower plants. About 8,300 MW will be from new or replacement power plants, 5,857 MW from imports and 4,000 MW under the energy conservation plan.

In this new PDP, the NERC also approved an increase in power production capacity from waste by 400 MW. Combined with the 500 MW capacity in the earlier plan, the new power production capacity from waste will be 900 MW. Biomass power production capacity will rise to 120 MW.

In 2037, 53 per cent of the country’s power production will be generated by natural gas, 35 per cent from non-fossil fuels and 12 per cent from coal. The retail power price throughout the PDP will be Bt3.50-Bt3.63 per unit, or about Bt3.58 per unit on average. The plan will be reviewed every five years or upon significant changes in factors.

Preeyanart Soontornwata, chief executive officer of B Grimm Power Plc and chairperson of the Association of Private Power Producers, said that the extension of cogeneration SPPs’ contracts after a two-year delay will boost the confidence of investors.

Still, given that we all know that the financial market is extremely dynamic, an investment outlook shared at the beginning of the year could prove to be completely wrong as the year closes.

Let’s flash back to the beginning of 2018 when the market cherished ideas of “global synchronised growth” and “rising emerging market”. Investors might have believed in a brightening earnings outlook for equities, especially EM equities. However, the EM market actually went down about 14 per cent.

Rapid change in market outlook seems to have been carried on to this year. One can now see the seeds of uncertainties, including the unclear US-China trade tension, global economic slowdown, “global liquidity outflows” from quantitative tightening (QT) and political uncertainty around the globe.

Therefore, outlook alone cannot save your investment from a volatile and eventful market. This is especially so when it is intensified by human heuristic biases, which occur when the brain takes shortcuts to solve a problem. However, those shortcuts may sometimes be suboptimal – or even illogical.

Two of the most common biases are confirmation bias and anchoring bias.

If, at the beginning of 2018, you were a diehard Apple investor and someone told you that Apple’s earnings growth would deteriorate tremendously from 30 per cent to 2 per cent in 2019, would you have believed that person and sold your Apple stocks?

You were more likely to “anchor” your decision at holding Apple stocks. You might think the company still had new products lined up, along with lots of avid Apple fans. There was no way Apple stock would go down, you might think.

Even when you heard about Apple’s suppliers cutting their earnings forecasts, or a Chinese purchasing power drop leading to weak demand for Apple’s products, you would still find counterarguments to “confirm” your view. For example, a number of stock analysts still recommended buying Apple stocks with an alluring target price. Once the price went down, you might still find reasons to buy even more Apple shares due to their compellingly cheap P/E ratio given their shining growth stories.

In contrast to your anchored belief about the vivifying future of Apple, the company’s stocks went down over 30 per cent in just three months after Apple’s CEO cut their sales guidance for the first time in 15 years. As a result, you – who made a decision not to sell Apple shares – are suffering from a tremendous loss due to your Anchoring Bias and Confirmation Bias.

Now let’s think about a case in which a lot of people fell into the heuristics trap. One prominent example is the most recent cryptocurrency bubble (as well as other historical bubbles). When investors anchored their decisions on the exponential growth of cyptocurrencies’ adoption, more and more investors (regardless of being amateurs or professionals) will find additional confirmation to reassure their views. Hence, few investors listen to any warnings about the cryptocurrency bubble until the bubble bursts.

Heuristic errors are as unavoidable as they are innate. Yet, investors should recognise that these biases exist and be aware of them when making investment decisions. For instance, investors should always find “dissenting voice of reason” so you could discover any loopholes in your investment thesis. Additionally, investors could implement a solid framework for investing or even utilise systematic trading and algorithmic trading. Surprisingly, “quant” hedge funds – which invest based on their computerised codes – beat traditional hedge funds by meaningful margins last year. For example, Ray Dalio’s flagship Pure Alpha fund returned 14.6 per cent net of fees in 2018, a year full of market turmoil.

Views expressed in this article are those of the authors and not necessarily of TMB Bank or its executives.

Contributed by DUANGRAT PRAJAKSILPTHAI and POON PANICHPIBOOL. They can be reached at tmbanalytics@tmbbank.com