Photoshop Techniques

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

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.

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....

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. :)

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....

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.

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 :)