Life For Rent

DJ Charles Ming says – You know, I don’t really know where this track hits me from, and where. How did I got to know this track? Corinne first came out with the single “Put your records on”. And then I went to UK to study along with the hostel mates and all and on one of my visit to this lady’s room, she happened to be playing Corinne’s CD on her lappie. Apparently I was there quite a while cause the whole CD went through at least one complete cycle but this track stood out. Was it because I could somehow relate to the harmonics? Or the tune? Perhaps it is the lyrics? I don’t really know. Love at first hearing it is for me and it hasn’t stopped since. After that visit, I had to have that single and I kept it on repeat mode on my own lappie. It was one of those periods where I either drowned my ears with very doom-doom beats, or something like Corinne’s track for a change of mood. The song means a lot to me and it always takes me back to those days when I studied there. The people, the studies, the food, the smells, the experience. More importantly, the healing process. It worked. Thankfully. Sometimes, life needs a little push to get you going again when you stall for whatever reason. Everyone seems to need a different kind of push. For me, there is nothing anyone alive can do to help, so why bother. I’ll figure something out, find ways as I always to, to get the job done. One could say, this song was my sole companion deep within my heart. And when you hear it say, 50 times a day, it is forever etched in memory. Computers have different memory. They have RAM, cache, registers, virtual memory and so forth (thank you ISC for forcing me to learn all the internal boring components of a system in the CISSP book of knowledge). In humans, we too have different memory spaces. In our minds. In our hearts. And in areas we rather not have. Regardless whether we want it or not, it is there. Unlike a computer system, for better or worse, contrary to how it seems, we have infinite memory in all our memory ‘addressing’ spaces. While it is there, it sometimes require a little provoking and a trigger mechanism to invoke a reaction from us. Reactions such as flashes of the past, accompanied by smiles (hopefully) or sadness (unfortunate). So here is the song, which I would like to share with one and all. Originally I wanted to upload the mp3 file up here but I found the lyrics and video all in one and I thought, most people seem to be in youtube and all and seem to work with visual and audio stimulus combined. This will cut me some slack on IP as well. This song is specially dedicated to Rach. Perhaps, she can relate to the 4 lines well.

“It’s late and I’m feeling so tired
Having trouble sleeping
This constant compromise
Between thinking and breathing”

Song lyrics | Trouble Sleeping lyrics

I am at home, playing games online.. (yes, the prince does play this cyber game. The only game I play it seems!) and tuning into class 95′s BMP which goes on air weekend nights. Surprise surprise, so many pop remixes! They have since evolved to very new hits. Well okay maybe not all but you got Jordin Sparks and that new one from PCD with the usual remixes heard in the club. The kinda remixers that I favor as well. Freemasons, Ralphi Rosario (great mix for PCD) and Jason Nevins etc etc. Even Jojo’s too little too late came back on. And good news to those who’s ears are hungry for it. I believe you can hear it over the internet, along with title and artiste info too. Neat eh.

I feel inspired to come out with a new mix.. Rihanna, Jordin Sparks, PCD and a couple new ones that aint on air, but very catchy. Anyone heard of this track Let Me Think About It – Ida Corr? Sounds good?

DONE!!!! Now time to hope for the best.

Recuperation time…

Wanton mee with extra ingredients from my favorite stall at Golden Shoe food centre!

Someone suggested I update on what goes down into my gut, so that they may be inspired as and when they run out of ideas. I am one of the worst people to expect this of as I can have very routine choices but let’s see how it goes.

I had a terrible night and all and I needed something extra in the morning so apart from the horrid hotdog ‘indented’ for me, I got my coffee and the salmon with egg mayo toast from Coffee and Toast. Honestly I don’t really like their coffee and the stuff around here are far overpriced. I suppose, what does one expect out of this area anyway.

Bon appetit!

Before I get down to stuff, I wanna mention, I have re-ignited with Class 95! I have been in the office till late these  days and I take the bus home thereafter so I have love songs accompanying me home. It’s nice. Since I was a lil kid like 7 or so I have been tuned to Class 95 and it is nice to see with changes comes familiarity still.

I have set up my CMC trading account today! I will have this DVD for forex trading as well as a 2 day seminar on technical analysis. Not like I need it perhaps (looking at the line-up) but I will attend anyway with a friend of mine. Can explain some stuff to him along the way if it gets too deep too. I now have access to gold and oil including US stocks and trades from regional markets. The CFD utilizes Direct Market Access unlike poems so one can put in a position forever literally. Subject to margin requirements of course. They offer better margin at 10-20%, unlike phillip’s 25%, and best of all, there is no re-occuring charges. The long and short positions carry a finance charge like the usual CFDs, but as the rates are pegged to SIBOR, putting in short positions actually carries ZERO charges! VS a long position which carries 3% charge. This is better than phillips which charges more on short positions. WOW. What’s next? I anticipate the US will try to fix up inflation before growth. This means eventually the feds will increase rates, dollar strengthens, and as a result gold and oil could come substantially down. Target? For a rebound to settle down before I place in short positions for gold.

I also wanna highlight that I have been asking people on what they expect of my performance for this year when I report at the end of the year. Some gave pretty big expectations and I don’t know if I can even meet those! I will try though. Hey it is my first couple years in the market man. One thing I gotta say. It seems so easy I carry profit. I can honestly say I also make mistakes. Most of them are through long positions which I have to cut loss eventually. Rebounds have been small where each of them lead to a dead cat bounce. What do I foresee? Well, the STI has broken the major uptrend line, drawn from 2001 till the peak at 3900 last year. Breaking this, AND falling below 2750 and 2720 is extremely bearish. My target for the downside? Let’s not even go there. What positions do I hold? I hold STI put warrant, and short positions on Wilmar, Noble, StraitsAsia, SPC and Parkway. I plan to add HSI put warrants on strong rebounds, as close to 21100 as possible.  I also own my high yield paying counters which generate yields for me. More details will come when I report my earnings for 2008. I don’t wanna sound like a broken record but, I don’t really understand why people enter positions bucking the trend. I have said time and time again, FA does nothing in a bear market. If anything, it will kill people. In a bull market, you take long positions, in a bear market you take a short position. Is it so hard to understand? Short sellers are not really the ones that drive down prices and u can see very quick rebounds which is when shorts are covered. How big are the rebounds? Less than 5% usually.  The reason for the sell downs is NOT due to short sellers. They are part of it but they are not causing it. It is due to a lack of buyers. If you got 100 sellers and 10 buyers who are queuing way below, what happens? U get a sell down. Some of these buyers may realise they got into a bull trap and decide to cut loss. The cycle repeats. A rebound cannot be sustained without buying support. Will u buy now? Yes? No? So isn’t the answer obvious?

I will draw charts over the weekend. The trend is pretty clear to me which is why I have so many positions. And I wanna add that, despite how ‘easy’ it seems, it is not easy. I do profit, but does it come easy? I am still a noob in this whole arena, but I put in a lot of effort. While everyone goes home and play games or whatever, I come back and even at 1am I am looking at charts. Why? Majority of the profits comes from homework done after trading hours, NOT during trading. U look at the chart, u identify trends, look at entry/exit prices, and put in all the what-ifs. During trading hours you merely execute what you have researched and formed a conclusion on. It is quite tiring and I really whack myself to learn whatever I can on econs (I do not believe in all the uni econ grads talking rubbish doing buy and sell calls as an analyst. No offense to any who’s reading, but I know what happens in the background) to form a conclusion on where I think the market will heed. Will US handle inflation or work on growth? How will they curb inflation? Stuff like that. I am a technical student, not an econs student. There is a lot to absorb for me. I am also a contrarian. Basically when everyone talks bout things going one way, I will go the other. Lots of people looked for national day rally, olympic rally. Hello. Bear market. What rally? I put in positions to go against what people expect. When oil was 147 and everyone said it will go to 200, I knew it wont in the immediate term. It is just too bad I did not have access to short crude oil. So I played with SIA instead, going on a few trades with it. It worked well enough. When everyone expects a result to be good and the price rallies into reporting, what do I do? I will put in a short position. Regardless of news, price has already been factored in. It was a simple case of the price being inflated for BBs to offload. If one knows how to read signs of bearish divergences in the indicators, one can actually foresee such actions. It doesn’t happen always, but if it does appear, divergences tell you a trend reversal is coming. So in short, I put in a lot of work. It is not luck or a fluke if I report profits. It has not been easy one bit. I don’t ask everyone to do what I do. I just hope some will not be so stubborn in climates like this. There are bull, bear and flat runs. U just gotta know what to do in each situation. The market is always right. U think you got the idea, but the market proved you wrong. Who is wrong? YOU. Not the market. Market is always right. Never, ever go against a trend. You will end up being a BBQed fish in an ocean swimming with sharks.

And I think this is a valid point. In one of my thinking modes, I did the ‘what if’ thing. Now, Nikkei was once like 40,000 points at the start of the millennium. The bubble pricked and burst and it tanked. Last year at the bull’s height, it was only 15000 or so? Look at the vast difference. It doesn’t matter that they ‘regulated’ the index. The fact is, if I bought XXX stock at YYY price then, what was it worth last year? Think bout it. How long will it take before the price can hit my buy price again, if ever? If it does, a few cycles later, would inflation have killed half the value alone anyway? A lot of people around me are going into s shares still. They felt that it has tanked so much, way below the normal retracement in a bear cycle. And they ask me, drop so much already, how far can SSE go? 2000 points being the most pessimistic  opinion now. What if I said 800? Why not? I said I will buy SGX if it hits $5. This was earlier this year. Now, when it does hit, I won’t be buying even. When SGX was $16, did anyone think it will tank to $5? What about DBS at say $8? Question is, was there a bubble burst in the SSE? Like how Japan went.  What if you bought cosco at $5, it tanks all the way to say 80c, and even in the next bull run the highest it reaches is $3. Impossible?  FYI, Charted was once $11.  Looking at my chart, that was in March 2000. Today what is it trading at? It closed at 51c today. It hit that peak of $11 and never went back there since. We have been through 1 bull cycle. If you bought at $11 and still holding now, how? Hold somemore?  I also can’t answer.. the price now is virtually zero. What difference does it make holding and selling anyway. But can you sleep well at night, and through these past 8 years? So what happened? Tech bubble? Hell yeah. When it bursts, believe me, you will rather smell fart. I kept drilling, cheap can be cheaper. Apparently few have heeded it. Sometimes, even I tend to forget and I make mistakes and I get taught a lesson as well. Human nature. As this goes on, the market will NOT form a bottom. As long as there are those suckers who are buying, they will dump eventually to someone who will buy from them. And they cut loss and dump again to some other sucker. When will a bottom form? Only when things become so dry. There are virtually no buyers left. And there are no sellers left. No panic. You smell death only. It is a period where even traders can’t trade, cause the price no longer moves. Without volatility, it is impossible to trade. With no traders, there is no volatility. Vicious cycle. And that’s when things begin to recover, as buyers start coming back in (within the dead of the night literally) and scoop things up.

In the bull market they say buy and hold. Ride out all the volatility and short term plunges. So what do you do in a bear market? Do I even care if there is a rebound, as long as the rebounds don’t hit my trailing stop limits. So am I a trader? I don’t know. I am not much of an investor although I still have some 7 or 8 companies in my list. Am I a trader? Good question. I have no idea. I just take a short term view of things. Holding long positions for too long is not a good thing. I got fried twice. I held KS Energy with good gains twice. I took profit for once, the other I held. What happened? They did a trading halt and they proposed rights issue. Boom. Stock died. Ausgroup was another. Riding on gains. Held for too long. One fine day it had a trading halt. What happened? It was a profit warning. Boom. Fell 50%. I had to cut. Loss a fair bit too. Painful lesson. But that is what I have learnt. I will employ a contrarian strategy, with rules I have learnt along the way. My yield stocks are ok. I do dollar average them and I will be employing the rule of 72 on them. So what’s the big deal? No big deal. Tank 50% is also ok. As long as there is no fundamental change that will question the yield payouts in the future.  I have REITs, funds, shipping trusts and defensive stuff to generate yields for me. I have SMRT which I chose over Delgro or SBSTransit as SMRT runs on trains primarily and isn’t hit as bad as oil. Now things have changed a little and the yield has also fallen to levels unfavorable to me so I will be looking to take all profits off the table.

So where do we go from here? It doesn’t matter where we go as far as I am concerned. If a recession hits, one would be more worried over jobs, so I am not gonna let worries mount from big losses on the market. There is no right or wrong strategy. The only clause is, as long as you don’t suffer losses.

From the property expert himself, he told me one thing cause I told him are the property stock prices an omen of what is to come? He said who knows but I may be right. Historically, property stock prices tank before the market itself tanks. There is this lag between the two. If it does come into fruition, good for me? Hopefully I have enuff money to buy my land then…

I have no idea why I am blogging bout this now but yeh, somehow my area of interest has always been things that people often overlook. So i generally don’t talk bout HIV (you can die from it) or Syphillis (you can go crazy and die eventually) due to the symptoms it shows. Some are easy, some not so.

I feel Hep B is often overlooked, and statistics show. Hep B, unlike Hep A, is transmitted through blood and body fluids. This makes it an STD in my terms. Generally the progression of the infection takes quite a while before the infected person gets liver cancer. The virus attacks the liver, and increases the risk of Hep B 300 times.

Liver cancer itself is fatal, but there are chances of a cure if detected early. Often enough detection is not made till you get swelling and yellow skin (jaundice). This makes screening important.

Those born beyond 1987 should be vacinated but it is a good idea to test for the presence of the antibody, AND the presence of the infection. I will be doing mine during the next routine screening too.

Sexually active people and those in high risk groups (eg family history of liver cancer) should go for a booster vaccination, and be screen during routine checkups. By the way, receiving a booster while still carrying the immunity has no ill effects.

PS : Liver cancer is the second largest killer among cancers, trailing lung cancer. The HPB estimates 1 in 35 adult Singaporeas carry the virus. Some will be in the active stage while others could be dormant. 1 in 35, this is far worse than HIV. But the end result is the same. An AIDs victim may die from a chest infection like pneumonia eventually, while a liver cancer patient dies with a yellow coating literally. I suppose not all types of yellow represents sunshine and joy.

I haven’t really been following all the cease fires and details of it but I am going to look at the whole case from an information security professional’s perspective. I don’t speak for all but this is how I look at it anyway.

There has been this thing known as a cyber war that happens very often. When a political thingie breaks out like this, all the more the cyber war becomes apparent. From spy planes to Chinese-Taiwan conflicts, the Estonia episode last year.. the list goes on.

The way things go are largely similar and predictable. Some event happens, the media goes online to find a new perspective to report. The community online from various angles read stories, get involved in cyber wars and the media is only too happy to report it.

In the case of Russia and Georgia, specifically Georgia, something new has happened.

Now, botnets are common everywhere, even in small little countries like Georgia. You also get the usual crimminal attacks, and denial-of-service attacks. This creates the so called ‘noise’. It has always been there, is there, and possibly will always be there as they are extremely hard to erradicate.

So an event happens, like the one in the news now. Media begins going online to hunt for stuff and woala, dumb into all these. To put it into perspective as how one put it, it is like turning on the lights in a room and u see hundreds of cockroaches. U could see it 2 ways. One of which is, you have a damn roach problem and u gotta kill them all and fix it, or, turn off the lights! Boom. All cockroaches have now magically disappeared.

The crux of the issue now is, web page defacements etc are all common, with or without any real event occurring. But the media will bump into one in these times, and co-relate it as an action-reaction from the actual event occurring.

They report it, the online community gets interested and goes see the details for themselves, resulting in a massive denial-of-service attack (too many users going to the same destination at the same time), especially when it is usually a sleepy webpage that few people have ever gone to. The ‘victim’ country then blames the ‘enemy’ of the attack. The citizens of the ‘enemy’ country is also interested in seeing what all the fuss is about and what happens? Their visits log entries and strengthens the allegation from the ‘victim’ that the attacks are indeed from the ‘enemy’ and have evidence to support it, when in reality it is just due to cyber tourists from the country of the ‘enemy’ curious on what the heck is going on. People of other countries now get curious too after hearing all the juicy stuff and it escalates into a multi national ‘attack’. In the midst of all these, there are real attacks going in, masquaraded by all the ‘noise’ as described above.

So is this a cyber war? No I do not think so. However human behavior being as predictable yet unpredictable, the media will continue to go online to find something to report, and will in future, still bump into all these noise, call them cyber wars, report it in the news and it eventually leads to a bigger war. Isn’t it similar to the wars we have seen in the world we live in too. Someone says something, the other sees it in a different way and sparks off a huge conflict.

Again to put it into perspective, it is like someone happens to blog bout gays from Singapore being suicidal people.  Media happens to be online searching for material on suicides, chances upon this. Reports it, and the blog gets hit with people from all over the world. Blog owner blames gays for attacking his site so much so it went down due to the sheer traffic. He sees most of the visits come from Singapore (and why not, if half of the entire population of Singapore decides to read what was written) and concludes that it is all the gays from Singapore who are attacking his site. Media sees it again, and reports that as well, creating a snowballing effect. Not a perfect example but just at the top of my head.

I was in the car and someone was talking bout her worrying that she and her bf will drift once they don’t see each other as often. Doesn’t help there is this threat. This ‘other girl’ even. I can understand how she feels. But when I look at myself. Me. What do I see?

I see a blind person. And I hear a mute. Tell me oh tell me, how will these 2 communicate?

Who’s blind and who’s mute? Does it even matter?

I have been really busy all day. First trip during lunch to the Singapore Flyer to eat Popeye’s Chicken. Good chicken, terrible staff. And through the whole day… this song keeps playing over and over… how apt. My mind is fantastic when it comes to pulling out the right songs in its library of lyrics.

You and me
We used to be together
Everyday together always
I really feel
That I’m losing my best friend
I can’t believe
This could be the end
It looks as though you’re letting go
And if it’s real
Well I don’t want to know

Our memories
Well, they can be inviting
But some are altogether
Mighty frightening
As we die, both you and I
With my head in my hands
I sit and cry

I didn’t watch the national day rally but it seems a lot were covered. Including our low birth rate. We are really a victim of our own success? Back then LKY had this policy that says ‘stop at 2′. We were so obedient, we really followed it and all these 20 over years they have been working hard to undo that, to not much avail.

The prime minister has also given some dating tips. Seriously, it is sad to see that our PM has to teach us how to date even?

Here are the points-

Make time to go out and meet new friends. (I say – Give me a 4 day work week!)

Join a dating agency, be it the Government’s Social Development Unit/Social Development Service or a private agency. (I say – How bout trevvy, MSN, IRC?)
Have realistic expectations. You have to make an effort for the relationship to work. (I say – Even if he/she is ugly…)

Bring your social graces up to scratch. For instance, do not wear slippers when taking your date out for a romantic dinner at a nice restaurant. (I say – Pay for your own meal, and perhaps for the other too.)

 natdayrally  - Here’s what else that was covered!