Today is the so called “Singles’ Day” in China. The name derives from the fact that it is 11th of November, thence 11-11 #foreveralone (though I can be certain that you won’t be reading this on the 11th). Mainly because I had to gather some data (population growth, policies, and equity market index figures to be precise) which took far more time than it should. Could this be the time that I bust out the charts and tables? No. I already have a shit time doing that for my actual research project (No, seriously, so many tables and charts. I feel that I should have taken pure maths, which seems to have ironically less maths than finance… also, on a different note the spelling for ‘ageing’ really irks me. If I ever start learning German, English grammar is the culprit that drove me into it. )so I don’t want it to flow into this, which is something I actually enjoy immensely. As for why I gathered the data, I’ll get to that in a little bit. Anyways, the reason I bring up Singles’ Day is several folds. I want to talk about the loosening of China’s One Child Policy (OCP) which is now a Two Child Policy (TCP); Japan’s rapidly ageing population; purchase patterns according to population change and how that interacts with our markets.

Now, now, I know that the TCP has been all over the news and I promised to cover things that isn’t so mainstream. Well, to draw the parallels, today’s story needs to start here. China is feeling the weight of its OCP in the recent years. With an ageing population and massive gender imbalance, China sense, correctly, that it is not going to have a good time if the OCP persists. A close neighbor, close distance wise at least, Japan, is already a strong cautionary tale. Faced with a declining workforce, and an ever ageing population that just refuses to die, the next generation has work cut out for them. Good luck! This is made worse by the recent social phenomenon where young adults actively avoid marriage due to financial burdens.

Now, a correlation between population growth and economic growth is undeniable. If I had one person working, and now I had two, then I am going to assume that I’m getting more work done (though GDP per capita isn’t really directly correlated. It’s more to do with technology and policy choices but I digress…) Taking Japan once more as an example, post World War Two population boom really pushed the economy to a whole new level. Contrary to widespread belief, Japanese policies back then were not really great. The boom pretty much came from an immense boom in population and a focus in technology.

It should be noted that the policy changes are affecting how many condoms and adult diapers are being sold. It should also give you some longer term investment goals in mind. For example, Okamoto Industries (Japanese condom maker) dropped in price as soon as the TCP was announced. I didn’t check the stock prices for the parent companies of Durex or Trojan because I’m lazy like that and you shouldn’t expect too much from me.

On the other hand, milk powder and nappies… holy shit! Expect a rise in that. The fucking power (this is one of the rare cases where ‘fucking’ isn’t being used as an adjective) of 1.5 billion people should not be underestimated. Given the problems with Chinese milk, milk powder should be considered on the near and medium term future. Possibly more if the Chinese government takes up more actions to loosen policies regarding population control. On the ASX, anything to do with milk is getting boosted via the powers of what is expected to be an incredible population growth.

I am going to keep this short because I just got better so if you were expecting another thousand word entry, sorry. On the other hand, if you were looking for shorter snappier entries, then yeah, totally did all of these just for you, so be thankful! So that’s all for now.