Managing Relationships

I winced through my blog and realised I seldom write about love relationships - a topic that is tender to many.  Most probably because I am guilty of writing in vacuum, I have forbidden them from entering my blog.   

  

Nonetheless, two friends conversing recently has prompted the need to write what I am going to say and I am parking this piece under the "Investments" label, simply because it IS pertained to ROI - return on investments.  

Every so often, you would hear a friend complain about a fading love. 

"My once lovey dovey scenario has somehow vanished and lost in passing time.  Do you think I've picked the right person?"  

"What constitutes as "right" anyway?"  

"Do we know?  We don't, but I seem to think that time has bleached the love we once had and hence we became lazy."  

"No.  You are wrong.  If you think about it, love grew pale the minute you guys became lazy."   

Some people tend to constantly look elsewhere for a better one when things aren't working out.  We tend to miss out the fact that we can actually work on the existing relationship.  

I am thinking this can be exactly the reason why many people prefer to be jumping in and out of relationships rather than tying the knots - simply because they have the impression that marriage can make couples complacent and lazy!

Picture this, if a married couple with kids cannot be arse to sweet talk, to listen with a heart or to install surprises every now and then - just because they now got an extended family to attend to, it ain't rocket science to figure out this kind of marriage isn't here to stay for the long haul. 

And the notion of keeping up appearances in a marriage for those without kids calls for an even higher regard - you can't blame your short temperament on the kids - 'cos you have none.  At the end of the day, it is really down to the two of you to work things out.  

The Beatles once said "Can't Buy Me Love."  There are a number of ways to invest and not all of them have to do with stocks or bonds or real estate.   The effort you put into improving yourself is an investment, and the way you use your time to cultivate a relationship is also an investment.

Make love or make peace - do whatever you have to do tonight before your investment turns sour.  Might be wise to have a drink while you do it.  

Yet Another First In Asia

Just imagine this:  having your own personal car porch that requires a car lift to park your vehicle next to your living room up in the sky.

What?  I heard you murmured.

The Hamilton Scotts -  a luxury high-rise residential project in Singapore that allows its residents to park their cars right next to their own units – even 30 storeys up.

Yes, you heard me. 

Parking is set to reach a whole new level, with a high-rise condominium where every apartment comes with its own private garage in the sky.

First of its kind in Asia (after New York and Dubai),  its residents are now able to drive their million-dollar baby (has to be), into a special glass elevator that will lift the baby from the ground floor to their 'porch' on the same level as their living rooms.
 

Any filthy rich billionaire only requires to pay a mere US$85M for a 3-bedroom flat to make this fantasy come true!

Moved?

Oh well, don't get too excited even if you have the money, because all of the flats were sold shortly after they were released out in the market.

Did The Economist say we are pretty much in recession?   They must have overlooked this crouching tiger!

Should You Be Selling Gold?

Mr Market has been in manic form over the past month, desperately gloomy one day, smiling brightly the next.  Plunging and rising 4 to 5% a day and that turmoil eats you alive.

With gold prices ascending at record high, looks like investors are leveraging precious metals as a hatch against the volatile market situation. Cash is always king in a recession and this probably provides the perfect timing for the emergence of - Jewel Cafe from Japan.



I got given a leaflet today and that was how I discovered Jewel Cafe - which specialises in purchasing second-hand jewelry from individuals.  They seem keen to take in any used jewelry from curve chains, coins to diamond pieces which you no longer want.   They have over 250 stores throughout Japan and have recently invaded Hong Kong with 9. 



If you were thinking to put those away anyway, because they are so old and tarnished and rather useless?  Think again.  



You might want to consider bringing them for a free evaluation and who knows, you might be in for a pleasant surprise.

Extending Trading Hours

My father was once a brilliant stock broker and I am guessing no matter how good he was, it must be hard work for him to explain what his career was to an 8-year old kid - who - hasn't got too much of a brain back then.

Adding to that inherent mystery of stocks and shares, his office hours seem rather mysteriously short to us as well: out at 9:00am, back home by 4:30pm, with an extremely long lunch hour in between.  So lengthy that he could drive and drop us off to school before heading back to his office and appeared at home with our afternoon tea - not much later!

I read from the news that starting from 7 March, 2011, the continuous trading session of the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing's securities market will be from 9:30am to 12:00 noon and then from 1:30pm until 4:00pm.  And a year later, trading times will be further extended to another 30 mins from 1:00pm instead of 1:30pm. 

Well, it is no longer relevant to my retired father, but if this were implemented years ago, then father couldn't have been our chauffeur and we wouldn't have had those memorable bonding hours between father and daughters. 


Those bonding days were fun, but trust me - back then whenever people asked what my father did then, I hadn't a clue!  

$ vs ¥

I could have been a few percent richer on my balance sheet.


Six months ago, HK$10 were worth about  RMB¥8.730 and that figure has steadily fallen to a recent ¥8.429!

I should have looked into RMB Savings and Fixed Deposit services as part of my investment portfolio ages ago. 

If you have done that long ago - well done. You are a smartie. 

Though the Central Bank only allows individuals like us to buy or sell 20,000 yuan a day, no harm exchanging bit by bit from today, right?  Given their fixed deposit interest rate is substantially higher too, no reason why not. 

I am going for it starting from the next trading day in the year of the rabbit - better late than never!


And by the way (and I HAVE to do this), even I graduated with an Economics degree, any actions taken based upon any of the information contained on this blog is done entirely at your own risk!!

Steve's Brand

Would Apple be at risk with Steve Jobs' imminent medical leave?


I surely hope this news was created by rumour spread by Apple's rivals, who would love for nothing more than Jobs’s illness to cripple this powerful brand. 
 

I wish this man well and hope he can come back from medical leave fit and healthy and tell the world not all good things will come to an end.  

A Metal I Adore

I like this metal, nearly at any price, for one specific reason:

I believe it'd always make sense to allocate some portion of your investment portfolio to this precious metal, and hold it as a hedge against both currency and stock market fluctuations.

If you still have doubt...

JPMorgan has just re-opened an underground gold vault in New York which was mothballed in the 1990s. 

They have also recently built a vault in Singapore, while Deutsche Bank and Barclays Capital are considering opening new vaults in London.

Need further proof?  

Okay.  How about supply and demand?  

While demand is soaring, supply is limited.  Considering it takes many years to develop new mines, this constrained supply picture is something that is not going to change quickly. 


Simply put, here's my two cents:  

Gold is where you want to be.  It’s one of today’s best investments and it has been mine for years.






 

Non-existence of Opportunity Cost

Would you get annoyed with yourself because you didn’t make the most out of something or stepped back from an opportunity? 

No good beating yourself up and start hating yourself because I don't think it will help, it would only make you feel worse than already is.

Instead, I think you can consider to be brutally honest and ask yourself what you have gained from the situation and what you lost out on, then deduce what you would do differently the next time.

A person who leaves $10,000 in a bank denies herself the dividend that could have accrued by investing the $10,000 on a stock. 

The opportunity cost of the decision to place the money in the bank, would be the value of the dividend. 

That is - if you get paid dividend, but everyone knows there's no guarantee.

Say if you get presented another chance to invest.  Would you do the same?  The thing is:

Some opportunities might never return.
And hence opportunity costs can never be earned. 

Why didn't I think of challenging the Economic opportunity loss taught in my degree?  This could well earned my way to a PhD in Economics!





 

Exchange Rate Madness

USA is probably the poorest country in the World (if you include the national debt they have)!

What can we do when we have our currency pegged with the US Dollar?  I can't get any sense that it is going to get better by the look of the weakness against other foreign currencies I have exchanged recently. 

I guess pretty soon the Kleenex you blow your nose on will be worth more than the dollar!   It's pure madness!

Taobao...I woulda coulda shoulda

Taobao.com won't come alien to you if you are a shopaholic.  

You would have likely owned an account with them already if you are a shopaholic that shops online.  

And I can say it with certain degree of confidence that if you are a shopaholic that shops online and lives in mainland China, there's a high chance that you'd have purchased something from this eCommerce Goliath already. 

I have always been amazed by Taobao's wealth of products on offer. Their range is simply humongous and you can find virtually ANYTHING from aged collectables to the latest tech gadgets.  They recently went an extra mile to enable international shipping and payment and that was exhilarating.  I could have long tested the shopping experience myself, if only the site contents were in English, it would have been more inviting. 

The very exciting tie-up from June 1 between Taobao and Yahoo Japan Shopping will see Japanese consumers shopping on Yahoo Japan in a new section called “China Mall”.  

This C2C unit is no doubt a gem for Alibaba.com and I am saying woulda coulda shoulda bought their shares long time ago....with Taobao going international, I think this is still a valuable stock to keep an eye on. 

The Dilemma of Shortening Jeans

A common problem that I come across when buying premium denim jeans is that the length often need adjusting.

I recently invested in a pair of Levi's Premium that I adore but I cannot simply have them taken up without ruining the vintage look I have just paid top dollar for.

I can't believe how lucky when I found a tailor that can shorten jeans and then reattach the original hem with an invisible seam. Don't ask me how they do it, but I guarantee you wouldn't be able to tell mine have been shortened - an investment that is definitely in the money.

Inspired by Goldfinger

The James Bond film Goldfinger was on TV last Saturday and I caught a glimpse of it.

In an attempt to make the dastardly Auric Goldfinger's personal bullion stash 10 times more valuable, he tried to make the US government’s gold reserves worthlessly radioactive by detonating an atomic device in the vaults at Fort Knox.

Though this plot was needlessly complex, comparatively low-tech and I laughed through most of it, the film, 4 decades later, has somehow inspired me to follow a more time-tested mantra on an investment strategy: buy and hold.

If Goldfinger had snapped up the yellow metal in 1964 and clung on to it, his bars would now be worth 26 times more in nominal terms!! This would have been a very respectable return and would not involve murdering anyone by coating them in gold paint or threatening them with lasers.

Right - there you go, everything happens with a reason. The Goldfinger film, the enduring wait at the bank, the gold account promo. OK, I told myself it is time to buy some more gold when market opens, it ought to be a better bet against the minimal savings rate banks offer these days.

Ready, get set, go...only to find out my bank still hasn't linked up my gold account with my online banking account. They have not done a thing in the past 22 hours?! Crap!

How many oz is to 1 tael?

Today, while dawdling aimlessly at the lounge of the bank, waiting for an apparently easy task to complete (which literally took them ages), I picked up a leaflet on opening a gold account.

Spooky as it seems and within 10 minutes, traded 1 tael of gold which is equivalent to USD1,128.00 at market close - Just like that!

Now you understand how banks operate. It almost always cost you more time to withdraw money than depositing.

There I also learned today, this world that we are living in, hasn't at all gone metric. What gets complicated is 1 tael does not equal to 1 ounce and there are indeed many different weighting standards of tael depending on the region or type of trade.

Just how absurd can it get?

In Hong Kong, one tael is 37.79936375 grams and with the limited mathematics brain cells in me, I figured 1 tael equals 1.33333 ounces or 1 ounce for 0.75 tael flipping over.

Why did I have to go through this pain?

Because I can't find any gold prices listed in tael at all. They are all in ounces. Splendid! Now what did I just got myself into?

Buying & Selling

M&A activity has ebbed in 2008 and its no surprise as history taught us recessionary environments tend to result in lower activity.

However, the phrase has been popping up quite actively in the news, in this month alone we have:

Mar 19: Cisco > Pure Digital Technologies (USD0.59B)
Mar 18: IBM > Sun (USD6.5B)
Mar 12: Roche > Genentech (USD46.8B)
Mar 9: Merck > Schering-Plough (USD41.1B)

Well...I can understand Counter-cyclical industries, such as healthcare might be able to see strength in M&A. As for the rest, does it mean they are distressed deals where sellers have no choice but to sell out?

Farewell to Woolies

Got to bid farewell to some really pleasant memories from the old days.

Despite its American roots, the century old Woolworths managed, from the moment it arrived on U.K. shores, to assume a quintessentially British identity (Unlike McDonald's incongruous golden arches or GAP's preppy khakis).

"Woolies" has always been the seemingly perfect fit for British's High Streets. Sad enough, it is the next victim pulled down by the financial crisis massacre.

Well, can't blame the macro climate entirely for Woolworths' demise, because nowadays, who wants one-stop shop when there are so many well-stocked niche retailers out there and who wants cheap clothings that look cheap, when you can buy cheap clothing that don't?

Once upon a time, variety of its product range was a strength, it is now Woolworths' curse.

Bye bye pick'n' mix!
Bye bye 2.99 CDs!

Who Said Brown Is Blind?

Less than a month ago, his popularity plummeted after a long series of political missteps and he nearly went jobless.

As if he didn't have enough on his plate, Gordon Brown is said to be having increasing problems with his eyesight. Close friends of the Prime Minister said that he can now only see extremely large print and needed guidance at public events.

Yesterday with his well-funded program of bank nationalization and guarantees for deposits and loans - Brown, despite his left blind, has "shown us the way".

Liu Xiang Limps While Nike Beams

Liu Xiang has been China's secret weapon - an athlete who bore the hopes of 1.3 billion people on his shoulders and simply not allowed to lose.

Well, yesterday in the Bird's Nest, incredibly, he lost.

Guess who's the biggest winner?
I'd say the advertisers.

Liu advertises everything from milk to Nike, Cadillac to Coca-Cola - are on every hoarding, on the side of every bus and features in numerous TV ads.

The bespoke pair of Nike Zoom Aerofly LX spikes, which made its debut yesterday got all the attention "on the side-track", as opposed to "on the track".

Not due to its distinctively colours, it was because Liu was limping and all cameras naturally zoomed in to the limping feet wearing the tailor-made spikes.

Didn't that alone enough to make Nike the biggest winner?

Real Cheap To Borrow, Where's The Catch?

I just received a call from my bank, luring me to accept an instant loan from them.

Knowing the economic equations, Banks always try their hardest to turn us into debtors and why on earth would I want to bear more debts than I should?

With the inflation rate staying at levels above the deposit rate, there really is a strong incentive for consumers like us to spend rather than to save. So this time, I thought why not and I listened patiently and waited for the catch.

USD100,000 Loan
USD400 interest per month
Repayment spread across 6 months

Where's the catch?

In an essay at the website of the monetary authority, it reads: "Generally speaking, negative real interest rate is an abnormal phenomenon that has implications for economic and financial stability. Given a choice, we'd prefer not to have negative real interest rates."

We don't have a choice, do we? Hong Kongers are bounded by the currency peg and must keep our interest rates low as the U.S., troubled by the fallout of the credit crisis, is cutting the cost of money to stave off a recession.

The catch is, we are currently in a negative real interest rate era. Be warned!

The Catastrophic Quake

A Chinese proverb has it that “heaven is high and the emperor is far away.” Beijing responded swiftly to the catastrophe to prove this saying wrong.

Premier Wen - a geologist by training, was at the scene of the earthquake in Dujiangyan, 15 miles from the epicenter, within 6 hours.

Did you know how long it took U.S. President Bush to visit the devastation of Hurricane Katrina? 4 days. Relatively impressive as it seems but...halt.

Although Wen and his military arm's swift response represented a genuine effort to rush aid to those in need, will he and local governments care to address the underlying issues of irresponsible construction and uncontrolled growth that may have indirectly led to the deaths of scores of children in Dujiangyan school, built only 10 years ago?

I read an analyst commenting the economic impact being limited, because the epicenter of the quake, Wenchuan county of Sichuan province has limited industrial and agriculture production.

For crying out loud, how about the ever-increasing death toll reported? They could have been the pillars of China's future economy!

If economic growth remains the standard by which Chinese political decisions are measured, I think the government must find itself engaged in a perpetual clean-up mission before anything else.

The Kebab Economics

Haven't been cooking for a long while. All associated skills seem a bit rusted which included onion chopping, the tolerance of heat etc.

What really took me aback today, was the shopping experience in the supermarket for preparing the steak and lamb kebab.


It was then I realised the true inflation effect and how expensive things are nowadays.

Don't need rocket science to figure the "Why" when you rub in the persistently cold weather damaging crops in mainland China, the drought cutting back Australia's wheat production and flooding affected European harvests. Just to sprinkle salt on the wounds for us all, food inflation is ever more apparent propelled with the high oil price.

Next time when you think about the seemingly good domestic retail sales from the outset, think again what drove that. Cuz I think what really contributed to that mirage, was nothing but the hefty increases in food prices.