The market has every excuse in the world to be down right now -- higher oil prices, higher interest rates, and negative Intel news.

I have no interest in sailing around the world. Not that there is any lack of requests for me to do so.

It's amazing. For all of the talk there was a while ago about higher rates slowing down growth, nothing has been made of it recently. It's something that needs to be looked at and will likely be talked about next week.

I think one of the key reasons right now - with oil increasing it is creating price issues within the world economies - people are now looking at outside the US dollar and at hedging their portfolios and that's creating demand for gold in that area.

The dollar is a mess, interest rates appear to be on the rise, oil prices are going up and some earnings are looking weaker - it all adds up to bad news. I'm taking some profits on certain stocks, but it's not time to go running for the exits just yet.

Despite uncertainties on interest rates and oil prices during 2005, about 70 companies would be listed on the main board and the Growth Enterprise Market this year and funds raised could reach HK$192 billion.