A50

This is what the Chinese government does when the Chinese stock market collapses, to prevent people from jumping off buildings.

In China people mortgage their homes to dump into stocks at 10x leverage. So when the market collapses >5%, which these days seems to be fairly common, you see a lot of jumpers on the tallest buildings in the city.

The current PE of an average listed company is 300! That's how much of a bubble we're currently in now.

Grexit

This is the latest term that's hitting the investment world right now.

As if this Greek tragedy of a story has become an overplayed record, the latest development seems pretty serious.

If Greece really leaves the European Union, all hell is going to break loose in the investment world.

Particularly for securities and derivatives, what will Greek stocks, bonds and other exchange traded products be worth? In Euros? In the old Drachma?

What new currency will rise from this crisis?

Who knows?

We will have to wait and see...

Long Time No Post

It's been a long time since I last posted. Hardly could do any investment analyses since I was so busy in Shanghai.

Anyway it was good as well since zero investing equals a lot of money saved!

FXCM

Recently invested in FXCM stock.

After the whole Swiss Franc saga, FXCM had problems meeting its capital requirements. Then came a loan deal from Leucadia National Corp which sort of rescued it. You can read more of what has happened on its wikipedia site.

I just think they have a very good business model and are still making tons of money.

Hopefully I'm right, haha.

Prospect Capital (PSEC) Risks Ahead

So I've been holding this stock for the longest time. It pays a very good monthly dividend of >13% annualised.

Since my last posting, the stock has been holding steady within the $8-$9 range. Recently there has been new developments that may be cause for concern.

Here's the view from Seeking Alpha and here's another from The Motley Fool.

Hopefully it can continue to move upwards.

FX Trading - Repeat Offenders

One extremely bad habit that I still cannot seem to rid myself off is having that indiscipline to prevent history from repeating itself. 

This has gone on for very long time.

I know I trade too frequently. I know trade too large sizes. I know I trade irrationally. Yet every time I consciously cut this down and reduce the above mistakes to a bare minimum, it's just rears it's ugly head once in a while to make me regret all over again.

Granted, with my low level of determination I have somehow managed to reduce the frequency of such recurrences, but each time it happens again I just feel like beating myself up all over.

I really need to stop this somehow before I end up losing my pants.

Self-discipline and emotional control, an FX trader's worst nightmare.

Charisma Energy Services Update III

Since my last Charisma Energy posting, its current price has dwindled to the current 0.022/23

How terrible!

It has dropped below the 0.025 mark where the warrants strike price is. As such the warrants are definitely worthless now and it would make sense that sellers will now want to turn the support into a resistance level, to prevent the share float from expanding by >10%. This would mean we will see sub-0.025 prices for at least till end 2016.

WTF.

Anyway, here are it's latest unaudited results for FY2014. Probably the catalyst for the breach of support.

Long XAUUSD

It's been in the doldrums for so long.

The time has come for Gold to make a comeback!



Huat ah!

Property - Sengkang Is Too Crowded

After 7 years of living in Sengkang and having blogged about how densely populated it is (read: here, here, here and here), I have finally moved out of Sengkang. And what a relief it is.

Sengkang is definitely too crowded.

Even at this stage of moving out, there are still stacks upon stacks of uncompleted HDBs and condominiums still under construction. Even at current capacity, the roads are visibly heavy (just look at the morning and evening jams), there are very few inlets and outlets into Sengkang and Punggol, and public transport mass is saturated (trains are full at Sengkang and Punggol stations).

I wonder if the next General Elections will see a rezoned Sengkang being it’s own SMC (Single Member Constituency).

I had this conversation recently where given what we have correctly projected of Sengkang some five years ago, the next five will also be fairly simple to project.

Basically as the various HDB dwellers (akin to ourselves previously) meet their MOP (Minimum Occupation Period) and can finally sell their BTO HDBs, the more affluent ones will almost definitely move out, being sick of the population density. This means that those who remain will be of the lower income bracket or those who choose to stay on and bear with the dense crowds. Couple that with the oversupply of flats, prices of apartments will be cheaper than most of Singapore and will be more affordable to the lower income. Finally add the upcoming hospital attracting older folk coming up and you can see where I’m going.

Sengkang has the potential of turning into a slum in ten years.

Not that I want it to turn into one, but if the government doesn’t do anything about it (or worse yet, is deliberately forecasting it!), then this is what Sengkang will become.

There is no better time to move out of this town.

FX Trading - Trading Smaller Sizes

Of course in FX trading every broker drums into you how using leverage of 50 - 200 times is a key selling point of trading FX. Yet it is actually the key reason why the vast majority of traders lose money. However, if you've read reputable educational sites on FX trading, the key takeaway is actually to trade no more than 5% of your account value at all times. This equates to a maximum of 20x leverage at most.

In FX terminology,

1 Standard Lot = 100,000 in nominal value of the currency pair where 1 pip usually equates to about $10 of the currency equivalent.
1 Mini Lot - 10,000 in nominal value of the currency pair where 1 pip usually equates to about $1 of the currency equivalent.
1 Micro Lot - 1,000 in nominal value of the currency pair where 1 pip usually equates to about $0.10 of the currency equivalent.

It is very important to know this because some brokers impose minimum trade sizes in order to coax traders to trader in larger volumes.

With that said, since the turn of the year, I have switched from trading in Standard lots to Mini and even Micro lots at times. This is the primary reason that firstly, I am hardly losing any money in FX trading in 2015 (touch wood!), and more importantly, I can concentrate on appreciating other things around me like my family and my hobbies without feeling the strain and stress of having to constantly check FX prices.

It is well known that the biggest indicator that stress and strain has gotten the better of you when trading FX, is the frequency in which you feel the urge to check FX prices. And these days I hardly check them any more than once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once at night. Truly a far easier task by far.

So I urge all traders to review their trade sizes and not fall into the leverage trap that I've emerged from.

Trade safe.