The Thailand SET was up 0.63% on the last trading day of the quarter with trading volume of 52.9 billion shares, or about five times the 50-day average trading volume, according the Wall Street Journal. The Thailand SET managed a 1.55% gain for the first quarter. The unusually high trading volume could have been due to the end-of-quarter window dressing activities by mutual fund and portfolio managers.

For those who are not familiar with the “window dressing” strategy, here is how it works. Mutual fund and portfolio managers will sell stocks with large losses and purchase high flying stocks near the end of the quarter to improve the appearance of their portfolio and fund performance. These securities are then reported to clients or mutual fund holders as part of the fund's holdings.

The Thailand SET seemed to ignore two pieces of good Thai economic data reported on Monday and was more focused on foreign headlines, as both Japanese and Chinese economies are still wobbly. The Thailand Industry Ministry said yesterday that factory output in February rose 3.55% from a year earlier, beating expectations for a 23rd straight month of contraction. The Thailand Finance Ministry said that the number of tourist arrivals in February was 2.69 million, 29.6% more than a year earlier. January's number rose 16.3%.

The Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), said on Monday the Japan's industrial production fell 3.4% month-on-month in February, worse than expectations for a 1.8% decline. The People’s Bank of China (PBoC) announced yesterday that it is lowering the required down payment for some second homes to 40%, from 60%, as the slumping property market weighed on economic growth and cut demand for commodities from copper to steel.

In addition, the China Finance Ministry said select homeowners will be exempt from a sales tax if they sell after holding a property for two years or more. The previous minimum to avoid the 5.5% tax was five years. Most analysts believe that both efforts to prop up its softening real estate market is not enough. They say that the PBoC may need a series of interest rate cuts as well as to reduce the reserve requirement ratio (RRR) to keep the China GDP growth at 7%. 

The major headline risk this week is still the unemployment report due to be released on Friday. If the unemployment rate inches lower toward 5%, the U.S. Federal Reserve may be forced to accept the fact that the Phillips curve doesn't work anymore. Hence, the Fed could gradually start to hike the rate despite that inflation is still below the 2% Fed target.

In economics, the Phillips curve is a historical inverse relationship between rates of unemployment and corresponding rates of inflation that result in an economy. That means a decrease in unemployment, or increased levels of employment, in an economy will correlate with higher rates of inflation.

One should also keep an eye on Greece’s debt crisis, as Greece is dragging their feet and has failed to reach any deal with the European Union and the IMF. If there is no deal, Greece’s government faces the prospect of running out of money in a few weeks, meaning another déja vu for the global financial markets.