Singapore Economy Time Bomb

The Government had introduced the latest property cooling measure few days ago and is the 7th measure since 2009.

The intention is not to crash the property market but to stablise and normalise the current situation.
The governement approach is obvious:using needle to deflate the hot air ballon instead of shooting it down.

We are in a similar situation as America,the collapse of housing price is one of the main factor that triggered the Sub Prime crisis and in the first place no one will ever believe housing price in America will drop, just like in Singapore.No one will believe housing prices for Singapore will drop too.Many people believe when the interest rate start to rise,we can start to see correction in property prices,however i believe when the prices of the property start to decline and stop raising ,that will be the start of the nightmare.

When the property price start to decline, people will be force to sell thier property away because when the market price of the property drop below the outstanding loan amount, the banks will do a margin call, requesting you to top up cash as collateral.If you cant pay,the banks will seize the property.Coupled with huge supply of property,the falling price can be fast and furious.

This time the cooling measure had included industrial property,we refer to the chart and the price index for industrial property had spike up from 2009,whereas the remaining year from 2000 to 2009 the prices is relatively stable.Obviously speculation is at work,this concide with the Governement measure to curb housing property price since 2009 and forced investors & speculators to move into industrial segment.Please refer to property price index chart.

http://www.singstat.gov.sg/stats/charts/econ.html

I strongly support the government move in curbing the property price and in a greater context,this will benefit our whole economy as the destablising factor will be remove thus bringing stability to our economy.

Volatility aka Standard Deviation

 

Normally we will consider 2 important areas when investing in a particular asset :The Risk & Returns of the asset.

When caculating returns,it will be much more straight forward.However when come to risk assumption between 2 different asset ,we have a method which require more work is by caculating the Standard Deviation of a particular asset
.
The Standard deviation of a asset shows how risky the asset is in terms of price variations and by comparing the standard deviation of 2 different asset ,it will enable us as an investors to make informed decisions.

Here, i will compare 2 stocks;SPH & M1.

Using current price of SPH at $4.01 & M1 at $2.75 ,we will caculate the returns of these stocks in terms of dividend yield.

SPH :$0.24/$4.01 = 5.99%  (SPH declared $0.24 dividend)
M1:$0.145/$2.75  = 5.27%  (M1 declared $0.145 dividend)

Now,to caculate the Standard deviation of SPH, we can use excel to do the job for us .

I pluck out SPH & M1 closing price for the whole year of 2011from Yahoo finance (Historical Price) and paste it to the excel sheet

First,we find the price gain in percentage of each day by using the done price on 4 Jan minus the price on 3rd Jan and divided by the price on 3rd Jan.

From there we obtained the Daily Standard deviation by applying STDEV formula for all percentage gain from Jan to Dec.

Then caculate the Daily Variance by squaring the result from Daily Standard Deviation. And mutiply Daily Variance by the number of trading days which will get the Annualized Variance.

Square root the result of Annualized Variance and we will get the Standard Deviation of SPH at  13.07% & M1 at 16.50%.

The above result show M1 is more voalite than SPH in terms of price fluctuation and if we compare the returns of these 2 stocks ,i will chose to invest SPH over M1 because not only the returns of SPH is higher than M1,it is less voalite than M1 in terms of price variance. But this does not means we have to chose SPH over M1, if you have the capital it will be wise to split your investment between these 2 stocks.

We can also compare Standard Deviation between any 2 asset class( Gold or bond or a portfoilo of an asset).And by including Gold /Bonds into our investment portfolio ,it will significantly lower the overall risks of our investments as each asset class have different correlation between each other in different economic cycles.

*Vested in SPH*

Property Banking

 

Recently my friend and i had a conversation on investment and he lamented to me how he had lost his hard earned money through investing in stocks which caused him to give up investing in equities.
At the same time ,he shared with me how he got into a property investment club which invest in overseas property market and getting steady returns between 14% to 33%.

I was skeptical and told him that this type of investment is too good to be true and he agreed but he believe in taking risks.

He shared how the club roughly work;
-Investors will join the club and pool the money together.
-They will scoop up properties in countries such as; London, Germany, USA, M'sia and India.
-Due to their large/bulk purchase, they will be quoted a 30% mark down in the asking price.
-They will refurnish the properties and rent it out .
-From there, they can start getting their returns of 2%~3% per month from 6th month onwards by renting out the properties.
-The founder or CEO of the club has close connection with the top politicians in their respective countries they are investing in, hence the club creditability have been very good.

Since he is a seasoned property agent, i believe he had done his risk calculation before diving in. However,the worrying part is that he had invested almost all his saving into this investment which i advised him to get out .

The path of investing is treacherous but filled with reward and self-satisfaction. Prudence is needed as a single wrong decision can destroy our wealth that have been built up over the years.

To invest or to trade.

 

Like many other ppl who trade, the thrill of making huge profits within a short span of time intoxicated me.Somehow is a addiction,like taking drugs,once we get the hang of it ,we cant shake it off.

For a while, i was obsessed in making risky trades and it did reward me well but sometimes i got whack down too.

However it gave me a new perspective on how we should grow our money in a sensible and conservative manner.

I will like to share 2 of my speculative trades here;Genting SP & UPP.

Genting SP,the well known stock for punters.I short(sell first) the stock at $1.77 and cover back (buy back)at $1.74.

A gain of $0.03 gave me a net profit of $2070.45 in a duration of 1 hour and 14 mins.Of course,there are seasoned traders who can earn more than this.Now we move to UPP.

 

 

 

I bought UPP at $0.425 ,hoping it will rally up but it did not.To cut loss ,I sold off at $0.405.

A loss of $0.02 resulted a loss of $2264.21 in a duration of 1 hour.

From above, only one have huge deep pockets to burn,if not the frequent trade  that goes against us will make us go bust very soon.We hear a famous quote from seasoned traders "Cut loss fast & Let profits run".There is truth in it but to execute it is not a easy task and it will need a decent capital to absorb the losses.

Interpretation of U.S unemployment rate

U.S had released it's latest unemployment rate at 7.8%.For the past 44 months,this is the first time the figure had reached below 8%.

Though the numbers look nice ,there is a flaw in the caculation.There are 2 main areas to take note when interpretating the unemployment rate.
First,we look at how U.S unemployment rate is calculated.

                      Number of unemployed & had been actively looking for jobs
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------x 100
Total Labour force(employed & unemployed who had been actively looking for jobs)


1)The figure does not include the number of unemployed people who give up finding jobs after 4 weeks,resulted them to left the labour force thus it will show a lower % in unemployment rate.

2)The figure does not include the number of ppl who are unemployed and are not actively looking for jobs for the past 4 weeks who enter into the labour force.

For point 1 ,we use an example to illustrate:
Total labour force(employed & unemployed who had been actively looking for jobs) = 100million
Number of unemployed & had been actively looking for jobs = 10 million
Unemployment rate = (10 / 100) x 100 = 10%

If the economy is deteriorating ,the number of unemployed who had been actively looking for jobs for the past 4 weeks will give up hope and stop searching for jobs.And assuming the number is 1 million people left the labour forces.
Total labour force(employed & unemployed who had been actively looking for jobs) = 99million
Number of unemployed & had been actively looking for jobs = 9 million

Unemployment rate = (9 / 99 )x 100 = 9.09%

So we will get a lower % in unemployment rate even when the economy is worsening.

For point 2,
If the economy is expanding,the number of unemployed who had not been actively looking for jobs for the past 4 weeks enter into the labour forces to search for jobs is 1 million people.

New Total labour force(employed & unemployed who had been actively looking for jobs) = 101million
Number of unemployed & had been actively looking for jobs = 11 million
Unemployment rate = (11 / 101)  x 100 = 10.89%

An increase in unemployment rate even though the economy is growing!

We can conculde that the caculation of the data did not consider the number of unemployed who have been actively looking for the jobs for the past 4 weeks who left the labour force and who have enter into the labour force thus it will show a conflicting result.

The Fed & ECB strike

Finally both the Fed and ECB have showed hands by" printing money".

ECB new steriod weapon known as Outright Monetary Transaction(OMT) will purchase distressed euro area government bonds(1 yr ~ 3yrs) ,notably Spain and Italy to bring down borrowing cost for these countries so as to buy time for these countries.

The ECB measure will give precious time for these countries to implement it austerity & economic reforms to bring thier economies back on good growth if they pursue it sucessfully.If failed,the consequence will be unthinkable.

For Fed, they created the money digitally known as QE and inject this money into the economy through Fed primary dealers such as Goldman Sachs/Morgan Stanly/JP Morgan/UBS  n etc. However this time the QE is more powerful than the previous 2 as Fed have not set the termination date and will continue to "print money" if the labour market for US does not improve within Fed's expectation.

In a ideal way,the primary dealers could use it to buy/speculate securities (stocks/bond), commodities, currencies ,Oil ,loan the money for new business or existing business thus creating more jobs.With creation of more jobs, people will have income and the desire to spend , creating huge demand for goods and services which lead to increase in hiring of workers and this positive cycle continued which in turn spur the US economy.

However, the Fed's QE will created huge liquidity in the financial world ever seen on earth.For short term effects, we expect rising inflation in Asia since the abundant liquidity will most likely flow into Asia propping up property prices and equities market.

For long term wise,if Fed QE failed which we hope not ,we will witness a crash in our century ,worse than the 2009 GFC, and the transfer of wealth which will lead to the collaspe of the old rich and the rise of the new rich.
.

Be caculative in investment returns even is 0.1% difference.

The power of compounding is the greatest wealth multiplier ever exist in this planet.We all know that with the effect of compounding , it can create astonishing great wealth over the time.

Let use an example to illustrate

Mr Tan intend to invest his $10,000 in an investment for 30 years that will generate him a return of  10% p.a .Assuming he reinvested the returns every year.

10,000(1+10%)^30 = $174494.0

So after 30 years,Mr Tan will get $174494.0

Now,Mr Lee intend to invest the same amount of money and for the same duration but the returns he got is 10.1% p.a and assuming he reinvested the returns every year.

10,000 (1+10.1%)^30=$179316.2

Mr Lee reap $4822.2 more than Mr Tan with just a 0.1%  difference in returns.

That is the power of compounding , and be caculative when seeking the returns of your investment, and the principal apply to borrowing cost too,the lower the better if we borrow money from banks to pay our house or car loans ,a difference of 0.1% can means alot in the long run.