The same notion has always bugged me about the lack of understanding between "trading" and "investment".

We trade stock, and we invest in companies. A stock is a price that we trade in the equity market whereas a company is something we buy in a boardroom with the assistance of lawyers and accountants.

The only reason there is any confusion here is that financial services companies want you to believe you are buying (and hopefully holding) a financial product (that hopefully they are selling to you) rather than your trading of prices in the capital market.

This is the issue that is at the very heart of the problems in our financial system. Once you get past all the nonsense that the banks throw at you " they expect to control the global financial system via playing all sides " broker and dealer " then the capital market is pretty simple really. It comes down to trading prices after assessing the drivers that push or pull those prices.

So, the issue on the table today is "hard" or "soft" landing. And there are traders who don't even know the difference between the business/economy cycle and the stock cycle, which is a pretty basic requirement if you are going to trade prices.

It's no wonder people are confused. They're all excited about something and they don't even know what they're excited about.

Morgan Stanley China last week issued a pretty good research report on the "landing" issue. Bearing in mind the report is on China, here's what they had to say:

• Economy soft-landing

" Even if we see an external demand shock from the US consumer, driven by the downturn in the US housing market, lowbase Chinese domestic consumption and half of investment demand are likely to remain robust.

" Asset de-pricing, i.e., pricing decline of energy, material & property, will be the major driver at work in the coming 12~24 months.

• Market hard-landing

" De-pricing is positive for the economy,

" De-pricing is a net negative for the stock market, 70% of which (energy, material, properties and banks) has earnings exposed to negative revision.

" "Residual greed" sponsored market "neutral zone" will break with global tightening.

" The market has been focused on liquid blue chips mostly, and trading volume is 33% off " all
pointing to a sit-close-to-the-exit strategy.

" We maintain our defensive portfolio strategy so as to mediate the de-rating risk. In our China Model Portfolio (China MP), we overweight domestic consumption, telecom, and service industry; equalweight energy, transportation, and utilities; and underweight materials, financials, auto and properties.

Download Morgan Stanley Sept 20 report on China.

Just remember, it's all Chinese.