Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Strange Calls

In the last week or so, I had been receiving strange calls to my mobile phone. It is not uncommon to receive calls from those telemarketers, and the moment they start to talk, you will know they must be from one of the banks offering you credit cards or credit lines or whatever, but then at least they will get your name, open their mouth to talk, and you know where they are from.

But then the recent calls are very strange. Caller ID always shows 'private number', when I pick up the call, it is always silence. After a few hellos from me, the caller will just hang up. It happened not only once, twice, but many many times.

I will pick up those calls with 'private number' being shown as the caller ID because I have friends who would call me from overseas. Sometimes their numbers don't show up. I don't want to miss those calls from my dear friends.

However, the recent strange calls really make me feel a bit scary. You don't know what is in the making.

Sunday, September 28, 2008

Villa Olmo



Villa Olmo is the residence of some noble family situated in a small little picturequette town of Como in Italy, facing the picturequette Lake Como.

Construction started in 1782 and completed in 1797. It has this neo-classic style in architecture. Currently Villa Olmo is used for international conferences and events organized by Alessandro Volta Centre of Scientific Culture.

This small little 'palace' is not well-known to the general tourists visiting Italy. And I didn't expect anyone would bother to download photos of such a less-known palace from microstock sites.

Then something interesting happened. In the past week or so, my photos of the villa had been downloaded from different stock sites. Two of them are even enhanced license sales.

Mmmmh.....What is brewing there?

Saturday, September 27, 2008

Imperial Treasure Nan Bei Restaurant

Lunch at Imperial Treasure Nan Bei Restaurant at Ngee Ann City today.

Ordered some dim sum and one Green Wresse. The dim sum was not bad, they use whole prawns in every single dim sum dish. You can only see this in some more expensive dim sum places. The mass produced Singapore dim sum does not use whole prawn, maybe just a slight bit of prawn meat.

The Green Wresse was nice, tasted good. The tenderness and the freshness are evident. However, at that price of S$14 per 100g, it had better be. For the one we ordered, it set us back by 84 bucks.



The shark's fin Chinese dumpling is a disappointment though. There is little shark's fin in it, although there is lots of sundry fish 'air-bag' (?). The soup is tasteless.

My over-all rating for this restaurant is at most a 3.5/5.
The total cost of this meal for two is S$133.00, one of the most expensive lunches I ever had :(

Sunday, September 21, 2008

Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple - Update





Went to Buddha's Tooth Relic Temple in Chinatown a couple of weeks ago. They now have some new additions since Vesak Day this year.

Two new Boddisava(?) statues have been added to the two sides of the main buddha statue in the main hall - Hundred Dragon Hall on the ground floor.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Short Covering

STI went crazy today, up 139 points! You saw many shortists covering their short positions before they burn a big hole in the pocket.

The short position I had didn't go up to hit my original stop-loss price, but anyway, I closed the position, with S$200 loss. Well, now all my short positions are closed and I can have peace of mind.

The market is expected to be volatile in the coming week. I only hope the preference shares can go up and recover all my paper losses.

However, what has changed over the past week? From extreme pessimistic to extreme optimistic? Lehman went down, Merrlyn sold itself, AIG bailed out. Then it is said Federal Reserve is going to setup a permanent institution to take in all the junks. Fundamentally, do you think the storm is over? Junks are junks.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

FED the helping hand

Today is a very dramatic day. STI went down more than 100 points by 12:00 noon close, then it went back up 100 point to close with 0.88 point down!

I had a short position in KS Energy. When the counter was re-opened for trading in the afternoon, after its trading was halted in the morning for company announcement, my profit in the counter was still S$900 plus, but by the time market closed, my profit had gone down to S$300 and was triggered out.

I shorted one more counter today. I am not very sure what will happen to that counter. Hopefully it will bring me profit.

Bless me, please.

Entry of the Panic Stage

DJIA went up 100+ points last night, and STI opened with 27+ point gain, then it still ended the day with close to 60 points down. The Fed's bailout of the insurance giant AIG didn't seem to impress investors much, not even giving them much assurance.

Looks like the market is entering the panic stage. STI is technically into a zone where a rebound is imminent, but then it has not happened yet. People are still dumping their shares.

It will be interesting to see what will happen in the coming days.

Something sad for me. I am still making S$1000 loss per day. And also heard that the biggest loser of the collapse of the American financial system is not really the Americans, but the Chinese. The Chinese holds a large portion of the Lehman brothers' debt. Poor Chinese.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

A Gentle Fall

STI extended its fall today, but ended the day with a drop of 25 points only. Considering over night Dow Jones went down by 504 points, this drop in STI is considered really small. Some of the counters actually even recovered a bit. For example, SGX managed to gain a bit today.

I learned the lesson of not to be greedy, so I set the exit point a bit higher for the not so good counter that I held a short position. Luckily, it triggered out. The counter is MapleTree Logistics Trust. I entered at S$0.68, but then it went up to 73 cents, and oscillating between 0.655 & 0.73. There is no sight of it going down further. So I am pretty happy that it was triggered out and I can still exit with a little bit of profit. Profit is better than loss, right?

Now, I am only left with 1 short position. I will let it run. The trigger point has been set to a very low price. Hopefully it can generate more profit to offset the huge losses from all the big 3 local banks' preference shares that I am holding :( The rate of falling of those preference shares is steep. I am losing almost S$1000 a day over the past two days. Sad...

Monday, September 15, 2008

A Bloody Day

With all the bad news around the Layman brothers, the Merry Lin & All-In-God, STI was slaughtered like nobody's business today. It droped 84 points or 3.3% for the day. The blue chips, including banks, GLCs are all tanking.

The sentiment is so bad that even my 5.1% OCBC preference shares nose-dived below its only recent IPO value of S$100. The 4.5% OCBC preference shares must be being dumped by all the institutional investors. The price went down by a full S$2.00! You really don't want to be the one holding on to this counter. Luckily, at least it offers you a minimum of S$4.50 per share dividends every year. Those fixed income preference shares are for you to hold well into your retirement days and maybe even pass onto your offspring.

My losses in this single day went up from S$4000 plus to $5000 plus and almost reaching S$6000! My gosh, NO EYE SEE liao. Don't wanna log into my account to check that sea of red.

To add salt to my wounds, just this morning, I adjusted my exit price for my short position on SGX. I adjusted it higher. Then SGX went for a downward coaster ride, from previous close of $6.12 down to S$5.88 at market close. Anyway, my short position was triggered exit at S$5.96, still some gain, thank God it didn't trigger at S$6.01.

The 2680 point resistance level had been broken, now we are on my way to 2380 points, the next support level. Unless some positive news coming out from the states, I don't think we can reach the bottom there. Now, must build up cash positions to bottom fish.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Friday, September 12, 2008

Full Body Tattoos

Found a video on full body tattoos. The tattoos are really nice, but then I don't think I will ever want to have one on my own body.

It is nice, it is cool, but then only when you are young. Imagine when you are old and with all that loose skin, how the tattoo will look like?

The Japanese gangsters can afford to have those full body tattoos as most probably they will leave this world with the tattoos still at its prestine state.

Here is the link to the video:

http://nl.truveo.com/Full-Body-Tattoos-is-Art-/id/209922051

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Crazy Data Feeds

Was checking the Dow Jones tonight and then different portals gave me different readings. The most crazy portal is yahoo finance. It first said Dow is up by 25 points, but once I refreshed, it became down 200 points. Everything refresh gave me some crazy readings.

Then went to DBS Vickers, the data was at 60 points up. Bloomberg gave me another reading, Reuters gave me yet another reading.

I thought the whole world went crazy. Then one hour into the trading day, finally all of them settled to some more agreeable number.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Greed

Greed took the better of me. The sharp fall last week lured me into shorting two counters. And I started with a couple of hundred dollars of profit, but greed made me hold on to my short positions, hoping to profit more.

Probably that's the mentality of all unsuccessful gamblers, punters, whatsoever. My short positions went from profit to big losses in a day's time. The stupid counters went down a lot in a day, but it also went up a lot in a day.

The moral of the story? In such a volatile market, whenever you get some profit, grap it and run. Faithfulness is more of a flaw in your personality than a virtue.

Licking my wounds now....

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Ebene Bio-ray Knee Guard - Continued

This is a follow-up post on a previous entry:
http://fearstar.blogspot.com/2008/07/ebene-bio-ray-knee-guard.html

My mum has been using the Ebene bio-ray knee guards for more than a month now. Her knee pain was relieved just after a week, but then her legs became a bit swollen. So she stopped for a few days for her legs to return to normal, and then started using the knee guards again, for reduced time.

She used to wear the knee guards over night, but now she only wears them for a few hours a day.

The result so far are very good. Her knee used to look like a big trunk, the knee cap was not even visible. bBt now, the size of her knee has reduced, the knee cap can be seen. She no longer afraid of cold, the pain in her knee also significantly reduced.

Those knee guards are selling at Guardian stores with a 20% discount now. A good time to give it a try if you have not. :)

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Sharpt Fall

Today STI had one of its biggest fall for the year. 80 points down, breaking the previous low of 2688 points. The next few trading days will be important. If the fall continues and the trend is confirmed, then we will be saying good bye to 2700 points, and will be heading down to 2400. I hope the downtrend will stop at 2400, not any further down. The next level after 2400 will be 2100. I don't think you will even want to know what is level after 2100. It is not going to make many people happy, except the shortists.

DJIA as I am writing now is down 230 points. Not very sure whether STI will follow suit tomorrow. Scary. You don't want to be an 'investor' who applies the 'buy & hold' strategy. If you do, you must have a big enough heart to bear the huge losses.

Let's see what will happen tomorrow for STI....

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

False Rebound

Yesterday's rebound of STI was short-lived. Over night at Dow Jones, DJIA started with a 200 point gain, but ended the day with a loss. Think about it? What has changed so far to make the market feel optimistic about the future?

Yes, oil has come down from its high of US$147 a barrel, to US$105 a barrel. Other commodities are also coming down from their highs. It is good news. But what has caused the down fall of yester year's darlings? Sluggish growth, high inflation. They put a halt to the rise of commodities.

Comparing with 2007, we still have a credit crisis, we still have a housing slow-down in the states, and many other countries. Fundamentally, nothing significant has changed.

In my view, the market will continue its downward spiral until a bottom is found. Looking at the charts, it is quite scary.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

A Sudden Rebound

I had been warned that STI is due for a technical rebound, but yet I was still caught off-guard when the STI gained 40 plus points today. STI was down for about 10 points right from the start in the morning all the way to around 4.30pm, just half an hour before market close. All of sudden, it shot up 44 points, and closed the day by a gain of 45 points.

US dollar also went up strongly to 1.43 Singapore dollars to 1 US dollar, a high in the past few months.

I think now we are at a water-shed point. It STI can break the 2680 point threshold, then STI will be on the way down to ~2400 points; but STI can substain its gain and break 3000 point, then there is a higher chance of STI going up trend again. Mmmh, very hard to decide now.

OCBC issued a 2nd tranch of preference shares, and the 4.5% NCPS are being dumped in the market. The price has dropped below its face value of S$100, down to $98.06 today. My heart is bleeding :(

UOB also started issuing preference shares at 5.05% per annum. The application through ATM started on 28 Aug, and will end somewhere around 18 Sept.

The preference shares are good for your retirement days :)