This year the Santa rally doesn't come from the North Pole - it's a Hungarian-Israeli-Australian with a British knighthood.
Nothing like Sir Frank Lowy dropping $22 billion into the local market to light up the ASX.
Not that the Lowy family itself is splurging that much, but their decision to accept the $32.76 billion bid for Westfield effectively does something very much like that.
It's all ready reckoning at present, but if Westfield is about 70 per cent locally held, there's $22 billion looking for an alternative home, never mind tax details.
Yes, in theory much of that price is in French shares - but how comfortable are locals likely to be in holding European shares in an asset class that the wily Sir Frank believes was so fully priced he decided to sell?
There's a story maybe apocryphal, maybe not - about Kerry Packer and a mooted Frank Lowy property deal.
While Lowy was a master of running retail property trusts and taking fees for the privilege, he was a disaster when it came to television, losing what would be a fortune to anyone else by buying Channel 10 in the 1980s.
As he tried to get rid of the thing, a rumour went around that Packer was going to buy the 10 studios at North Ryde.
When the question was put to Packer, he's alleged to have said words to the effect of: "Me do a property deal with Frank Lowy? I'm not that ******* stupid, son."
So if Frank thinks the price is right for the international mall empire he built, odds are that on top of the cash component, local Lowy followers won't care to hang in there long with French management that's paid the price.
Hence the expectation of a summer wave of money building up, looking for a new home.There's an immediate expectation that much of it will be redirected back into the local REIT offerings.
The market was more than a little excited by just that prospect when Westfield was placed in a trading halt. Scentre climbed 4.1 per cent yesterday, Dexus jumped 3.1 per cent, Mirvac 2.9 per cent, Vicinity Centres 2.5 per cent, GPT 2.4 per cent.
On the other hand, when cooler heads have had time to digest the deal, Lowy bailing might increase nervousness about the sector. You might think local institutions already had all the local Australian shopping centres they wanted - having extra money from the sale of foreign malls would be a poor excuse to go longer Australian REITs.
So, all else being equal, the overall local market should feel the anticipation and pleasure of a cash injection, not just REITs, minus tax and a proportion that wants to retain international diversification.
And that's the thing about waiting for Santa - the anticipation is often more thrilling than the socks and handkerchiefs you end up with.
