Life For Rent

Done with day 1 of the TA course with bummy and TT. In the office, waiting for the other folks to finish some work and then we’ll head for dinner. I think I need a beer.

Some stuff to note. The projection done by the guy, is pretty much the same as mine. I don’t know if at least 2 people make it any stronger on the STI, but let’s examine the broader market.

The markets did a hard sell after the house passed the bill. Sell on news perhaps? I am anticipating a technical rebound. The good news is, I don’t know what the trigger will be (a rate cut maybe?) but we are very over sold and we need to catch up. The good news is, it is likely that a new bottom will be set by mid of Oct. Why is this good news if it means the markets are gonna dump again? Well I anticipate this new bottom to hold for a while. This suggests one could do some bargain hunting within this month when the new low is set but please refer to the charts to determine this. The bad news is, I looked at the S&P charts and it is UGLY. I am looking at a support just around 1100 or a tad just below that. If this is true, the Dow would have broken 10000 for sure. Perhaps somewhere along 9000-9600 perhaps. So keep that in mind.

But that’s all useless so I will refer to the STI. Remember, the monthly charts showed a fibonacci level at 2240. I do not really expect this to break in the immediate term. I am looking for some sort of a rebound, but I feel any cap will be at 2550 max. It may never hit that high in the first place but just remember, my advice is not to do any buying at the moment. In fact, I will be switching my stance to the negative side for a short on a rebound. The STI is likely to mirror the dow and make a new low. When? I don’t know. This month? Maybe. Price, pattern and time. These 3 are my key trading strategies. I shared with bummy that my projection for the STI is around 1800 for now. So my question is, if you believe it will drop to around that level, do you wanna buy now? Of course, you could look at it in disbelief and go right ahead and buy. And we need these suckers else we have no one to sell to right? Earlier in the year when the index was 3200 or so and I projected the downside, few even paid attention. Today you do see a lot of people who will listen to anything a learned person will say. This prepares me for my next strategy, but I will not mention it yet. So bottom line, 2550 on top, 1800 at the bottom. May never hit both sides but we are right in the middle, do you wanna gamble? I think it is not a good idea. Keep long positions as a quickie.

So here’s the STI chart. Bummy asked me why don’t we draw a trendline from say 1998.I told him it is too long ago, and as a cycle doesn’t take so long it is no longer meaningful. So here is the example of a long term trendline. Obviously we did not break it yet ,and we do not appear near. But do we really wanna wait for this to be tested? I think not, and at this point  I do not expect that line to be tested. At this point… So basically I use the start of the bull-trend as a rough guide. If that line is broken, then we move further back, or use fibonacci.

Let’s look at the HSI too. On a daily chart (not shown) we are in the middle of the channel. The downtrend resistance has the 20 moving average just over it so we have a trendline AND a 20MA resistance which will prove to be very powerful and I do not expect that to be broken. The monthly chart sees 61.8% where it is too. Notice it is a monthly chart. So there is definitely reason for the index to continue selling down, and then rebound towards the end of the month. It is with this reason that I foresee a rebound at the end of the year as the indicators bounce off the 61.8%.

So stay wise. There are tonnes of daily chart patterns that show a new low will be made in the immediate term. I hope it doesn’t happen, but the idea is, if it happens, I am mentally prepared to react. I hope you will be too. Feel free to ask questions.

Another NSF had died during the course of a routine morning work-out. He collapsed after doing chin-up and was pronounced dead at NUS some 100 mins later. Readers have questioned the SOP of the time lapse between the collapse, and admission into hospital. It is SOP that a medic be present during all physical activity, and they will be the first to attend to any emergencies. Resuscitation will commence while the call to evac the patient to the medical centre is made. At the medical centre, doctors will try and stabalise the patient and may continue to do so en route to the hospital.

I believe this is where the problem may lie. In such scenarios, every second counts and this is where public outcry comes. Why does it take hours for the patient to reach the hospital? Could he have been saved if the patient was evacuated to the hospital immediately? I believe the SOP calls for the medical officer to make that call only. Medics are not doctors and cannot make that call for evactuation. Having a doctor present at every training is also not practical.

I was an instructor at a training facility during my NS days and have had my fair share of drama. I had a case where a trainee basically collapsed into fits. Twice. The MO was aware of his case but when he appeared to be unconcerned over the seriousness of it. He did permit the evac to hospital for further evaluation though. It was not code blue and clearly the MO couldn’t do much there and then.  Did not appear like a priority 1 case, but then again I am no doctor. Another trainee once came up to us coughing in fits literally. As he was speaking to us suddenly he coughed out a substancial amount of blood. Every cough came up with mouthfuls of blood. I looked at it, bubbly bright red blood. Looks like bleeding from the lungs to me (cause bubbly blood in bright red suggests oxygen rich blood) and as he coughed he explained this had happeend before in the past, diagnosed as chronic bronchitis and he was downgraded because of it. Geez we were not aware of it. But then again, such details are probably only present in the medical docket which is P&C. Anyhows, I ran to the medical centre to call for a medic and stretcher.

Medic responded fairly quickly. Could be quicker but no complaints there. Patient was evac to medical centre immediately (thankfully it was near) and the look on the MO’s face was worth a million bucks. He put in an IV but there was nothing else he could do other than to call for an evac immediately. We stood there, for 5 minutes, no ambulance came. Well there was one out there, but there was no driver. Where was the driver? Somewhere else… shouldn’t the duty driver be present at all times while on duty?

Ours is a small camp and we have SOPs that ensure an MO is on duty at the medical centre during most physical events. If it was a weekend or for some reason there is no MO, the SOP calls for an immediate evac to hospital.

Now, I am not saying MOs are greenhorns, but they are new doctors after all, and are GPs at most. I am not sure if they are trained to handle military related incidences. I mean, do they administer resuscitation drugs? From what I see, it is mostly first aid and stabalising work, similar to that done by the medic. Most medical centres (other than the big camps) do not have facilities to handle a broad range of emergencies. I know the one in tekong and some other camps have facilities to handle heat exhaustion and heat stroke victims but end of the day they still need to be sent to hospital. Even if the doctors are given more emphasis on emergency medicine, I doubt many medical centres have enough facilities and usually it is better for the patient to be sent to the emergency room where they are handled by specialists in emergency medicine.

If there are improvements that can be made, for one, ensure compliance to SOP by the medics and driver. Any delay can mean life and death. The medic is usually first at the scene so every second counts. The driver for evac had better be on standby to be activated anytime. No such thing as going to the cookhouse for lunch and all. Seriously, how long is it gonna take to phone him, and have him rush back? That takes minimum a couple minutes. Too long. In fact I wonder if it is possible for the medic to dial back to the medical centre for the doctor to rush to the site when an incident happens? The medic is equipped to deal with the simple cut or sprains. But a code blue or massive bleeding needs to be handled differently by a doctor. Would it be quicker to rush the doctor to the site instead cause he can make the call to do an evac right there and then, saving precious time.  The doctor should then continue resuscitation along the way to the hospital, assisted by the medic, as seen in the latest case.

I feel sad when I see an NSF flat-line. Back in NS I have always told my trainees that they come under my car with all 10 fingers and toes intact, and I want them to ORD with everything intact too. I don’t question when a trainee feels unwell and will sideline them immediately, especially since I am not a doctor and it is not my call if they are to continue training or not. I also try to observe people who are not well but pretend to be well. It is not easy though and throughout I had to keep watch for any anormaly throughout the training. I have only 1 pair of eyes though. It did help that there are normally more than 1 instructor per platoon. The min standard should be 1 for each section, where a section strength is around 10 or so.

The latest case of death found that the deceased actually had an MC from the government doctor from a hospital for a sprain. Seemingly unrelated to the death, but let’s see what the investigation shows.

My condolences to the family of the deceased…. training safety is of upmost importance and yes I fully agree, one death is one too many. While it is impossible to eliminate the risks totally, the SAF should ensure training procedures are not only present, but they are adhered to. This is where I find the most problem, even during my course of work here. Procedures everywhere, but no one is aware of them, or that they are not followed. It defeats the purpose of having one in the first place. Commanders should ensure their staff understand the importance of following SOPs. Having an SOP isn’t just ‘covering your ass’ when something happens, but it is there to ensure when a situation occurs, people know what to do. So no point having an SOP but it is locked in a drawer and is only presented to auditors. When i conduct audits, I have my ways of finding out if people follow procedures, if they understand them, and what to do if there are no SOPs for a particular situation. Sadly usually I find that while procedures are there, sometimes they are not endorsed by management (making it unofficial), other times they are aware, but fail to understand why the SOP is the way it was writen (so they dismiss areas where they feel is troublesome as they do not see the point, which could end up to be a very critical mistake in the end).

Whether or not ‘people die all the time in training, in and out of camp’ or that ‘people are getting too soft’ is not relevant. Have the procedure, endorse it, and ensure compliance. It is not possible to have an SOP for every single situation, but here the ‘S’ stands for standards. It is not a guideline. A standard is rather brief. If a patient collapses, do this, then do that. Doesn’t matter if it is a cardiac case or not. If there is no pulse, no breathing, do this and that. If you suspect heat exhaustion, do this, and then that.  There is only so much things a medic can do. If a person collapses and turns blue, no pulse no breathing, it could be due to choking. If the person is blue because of choking, a tracheotomy (stab through the throat with a hallow object so air can get past any obstruction in the throat) may need to be performed on the spot, sometimes even with a blunt tool. End of the day, enough is done only when the procedures are reviewed (and on a regular basis) and everyone is happy it is sufficient to minimise the risks of deaths. Only then, can we say, the death was but an unfortunate event.

What a super duper crazy 2 weeks it has been! Kuddos to Alvin for being dilligent in doing home work and all still. I will run through some charts along with comments.

Let’s look at the US markets first. The dreadful plunge in the market was due to the rejection of votes for the bailout plans. I can understand how the man on the street is skeptical over it. I mean, why should tax payer’s money be used to bailout mistakes by the financial insittutes? The bush admin recognises this, but maintains if a bailout is not done, we are in for a very very rough time. As it is, markets have plunged at the speed during the great depression. The effects of NOT having a bailout could be a scene worse than a great depression. I do not think people will like that very much. Still the guy on the street wonders why he is responsible for his own investment failures, but when the FIs fail, he has to pay for them?

Makes a lot of sense. So what happened yesterday? A powerful rebound, closing at the halfway point of Monday’s huge drop. A technical rebound aside, I see it as the average guy realises, crap, if this bailout does not happen, his retirement funds and investments are gonna be screwed. Within 1 day, he would have seen how much his portfolio would have lost. Now he is inclined to think the bailout is really necessary. Bargain hunters also came in to sweep up some badly bruised stocks. But as the holiday season is in this week, traders in the US are largely not at work. The volume on this rebound was rather light, and when volume is light, a rebound is usually ‘exaggerated’. The Dow closed at very critical levels and we need certain resistances to clear.

But I reckon people here are more interested to look at our STI. So here goes.

Let’s see. I did a fibonacci retracement just out of curiosity where we are. I used the top, with the bottom as seen in the chart. Look at where 61.8% is. Right smack at 2240, which was our STI intraday low. Unbelievable? If you remember, I did say chances are, whenever a stock hits 61.8% there should be a rebound. 2320 was on a fibonacci level on the daily chart. Remember, the above is the monthly chart, ie, Long term. The daily chart is short term. Different time horizons that is all. But the critical levels are still there. So 2240 is a long term support. The way I see it, we should see a rebound. Technically. It is not impossible for this level to tank though. I will expect this level to tank in sometime in the future however.  You will also see a 100m MA support (green moving line) and we are resisted at the  50M MA. Projection for upside is the same as what I did before. Look out at around 2850 to see if this can be broken. Also note the area in green shadow, classic example of a bear flag. Range bound between 2 fibonacci levels. Note 20M MA has begun to turn down. Rightfully so. 50 and 100M MA have yet to turn downwards. I will expect them to begin turning down next year, which will imply roughly the stage of this bear market.

Turning back to the daily chart. For those who are familiar with candlesticks, tuesday’s action is a perfect example of a bullish counterattack pattern. If the price closed higher and into the black body the day before, it will be known as a piercing pattern. The opposites are bearish formations (after uptrend) called dark cloud cover, and the similar bearish piercing. Common sense says a piercing is more powerful as the price dug into the previous day’s body. So we had a downward move, and then we see this counterattack pattern. Bullish, but it is a weak formation compared to others. Confirmation is needed.  Confirmation comes when we can close above 2440 only. Look at the mini downtrend line and the 20MA. Both are moving pretty much the same path and we will face some resistance there. The market trend will turn bullish IF and only IF these resistances are cleared. Else we remain in a sideway movement. Do u wanna trade within that? You could, but it will be risky so do position sizing properly. I cannot tell you where we are heading. Else I will be God. But I can tell you the levels to look out for to take positions. In TA, it is common at the first test of the 20MA, the price will retreat. In a bull market, buying when the market retrace back to 20MA is usually a good trade. First test of the 20MA only, subsequent  tests are not favorable. True, the price may have climbed say 3 dollars, before it retraces back. When it does and we go on a long trade, the reward maybe lower. 50 cents. 2 dollars even. BUT.. your risk is low, cause in a bull market, supports will hold.  Your cut loss point is very near but your upside is literally endless. ie, the probability of getting the trade right is 90-95% right (confirmed with indicators). I rather go large on this trade, than to tikam on a trade that is risky. U can tikam, but do position sizing. Always do it. The reverse is true for bear market where 20MA is a resistance. A short option will be good when it touches. I haven’t seen many scenarios where a price breaks 20MA like it wasn’t there. There will be support/resistance at the 20MA and this will offer a buying or shorting opportunity depending on the type of market. Obviously we are in a bear market. I would not go long when the market is testing 20MA for sure. I will do a short, let the price bottom out, close the short, and let the rebound go back up. There is a good chance the second time round the 20MA resistance can be cleared and this is where I will go long, after indicators support it of course.

Let’s look at SIA. On hindisght, I missed this out. Look at the triple bottom formed at $13.80. Going long there would have been lovely.  Note the range SIA is in though. Heavily supported and resisted at both ends.  There are lots of mini resistances and supports along the way though. It is a lil hard.. but I will see if there are trading opportunities coming up on SIA.

Alvin will remember I have a short on SPC. The candlestick on Tues indeed is not good for me. However the price is  resisted by 20MA so let’s see how this goes. Cut loss is around $5 as seen in the chart. Alvin, learn to identify your points else you will get whipsaw out and your trades will lose money. I shorted at $4.70, and it is a 30c risk to me, Now u see why I only shorted 2 lots? I stand to lose $600.  My target is still the bottom at $4.20 so that is a 50c reward for me. I won’t throw in 20 lots to short, cuz if I am wrong, I can be slained by a single wrong trade. I have learnt, not to be greedy and take care of losses first, so that profits will ride. Heck, in a bear market, $4.20 may give way and plunge all the way down! Additional point: If the counter drops to 4.20, the trailing stop will be 4.35. ie, if the price rebounds above it, I will take profit on my shorts.  Can u see why I chose 4.35?

Ferrochina has been range bound too. I know a lot of people would have been slained by it. Alvin got whipsawed out but it wasn’t a bad thing entirely.  69c is extremely crucial, where the 20MA is now and where resistance is. I will expect this price to be tested and a subsequent pull back.  As long as the pullback forms a higher low, it is bullish. I may play a possible breakout scenario. 46c will hold as good support. At least, for now. Next month, next year, who knows.

I also have a short on Indoagri. Same story. Constantly resisted by 20MA. Let’s see how this goes. Note the bullish divergence as charted. Price was heading down, but indicators pointing up. Boom. Strong rebound. Followed by a super nice shooting star.

MIIF has a similar trend.  I am hopeful so holding onto my position. This is not hope analysis!  But let’s see how this goes cause bullish divergence don’t work very well on such counters with low vol in the past. May fail. It may be forming a bear flag too, notice the decreasing vol as it conslidates upwards. So let’s see how this plays out. One of the above 2 observation will be right. Which one will it be? I hope the bear flag will not form completely of course! Tuesday’s candle is not nice. Let’s look for confirmation.

Let’s take a look at CityDev. It was the first counter I spotted that had a bearish formation brewing. I was expecting a rebound though and did not pay heed to this. In the end, look at what happened in the mass market. I will discuss more bout some mistakes I made later. Here you will see the fibonacci retracement. Note the whipsaws in green shadow. So whipsaws so occur. That is why for heavy weights u need to cater to that whipsaw, else you get whipsaw out. The end result? Your calls were right, but you lost money instead. City Dev recaptured its support. I am bullish over this but will wait for a retracement at 20MA and see what happens then. Bullish piercing pattern observed.  As with many other counters.

I will do a review when there are updates to the market trend. For now let me discuss couple mistakes I made.

First of all, I was bullish, after 2320 level took off. I bought a lot of call warrants before any uptrend was confirmed. The uptrend is not confirmed even at this stage. On Tuesday morning you could smell panic in the air after how the US markets literally crashed overnight. I chatted with my remisier and we had a plan, and the first thing to do was to get rid of our STI call warrants. At 8.50 I was chatting with a friend of mine bout what to do as well. So at 9am, I simply sold all my calls, at 6c. 6c was 1/3 of the price  I bought so I effectively had a 2/3 loss. After a few mins the call price jumped to 10.5c! I was explaining to that friend that sell and buy queues do NOT matter in a warrant. The market maker will take in the queues as the indices move. So ultimately, early birds came in and I sold to them instead. When the market maker arrived, the price was set to 10.5c. Then I remembered. This warrant is not in the money, hence the volatility will not be there. At 6c, STI has to be around 2150. Which it was not! STI did gap down around 2240 though. That price should be around 10c! In other words, it was a huge mistake by not doing my homework of finding out the price of the warrant at a certain level. Suffice to say, whoever bought from me will be laughing. So this time I am the sucker. Lesson learnt.

It was not wrong to cut the warrants cause it went way below our cut loss point. The market did rebound but no one would know what happened. Trading rules are that if you hit the cut loss, or it went way below, cut immediately to protect more possible losses.  I still have HSI call warrants which I forgot to sell. Is it a good or bad mistake in this case? We will see on Thursday.

The other mistake of course, was to have bought too many warrants without confirmation of the trend. Whatever happened this week, or what will happen, is not relevant. The fact is I went overweight on one side without seeing confirmation. So I got smacked. I deserve it. Lesson learnt.

For all of you, one observation from me. The market movements now are similar to that in Feb and March. Where it was so volatile, the upside struggled before plunging back down, both bulls and bears got slained in the process. The subsequent trend was up, and my own calculations also showed a nice rebound. The time line is between oct-nov. So I was overly bullish too early. But am I going to hold onto my losing trades? No. A mistake is a mistake. I will CUT losses. Many have said they could not bear to cut losses and are still hopelessly bullish. I dont base anything on hope. I base on rules. And yes, I have the guts to cut, cause I knew what I was in for when I opened a trade. I knew how much my losses could go and it helps me decide when I need to cut, and to actually cut the position itself. Does it take guts and balls? Yes. If you don’t have guts and balls, grow them. Else, the stock market is not for you. This market will kill everything in its path if you are not careful. It doesn’t care and it is merciless. I am dealing with real money, not monopoly. This is not the place to go nostalgic and develop hopeless hopes that things will rebound or whatever. If you are lucky, you will see the value of your portfolio return in years. Which means you lose out on inflation. You would have been better putting money under your pillow. Worst case scenario? Ask those guys in the US. Wachovia. Bear Stearns. Merril Lynch. And the folks who bought mini-bonds here tied to Lehman Bros. Ask them. Will they ever see the value of their purchase price return?

Think bout it.

Lastly, let’s look at Singtel.

My cut loss point was $2.98, as the bottom set in Feb 2007 was at $3.02. This price was never broken on Tuesday (surprisingly, note SGX never broke its support too, which could imply strength, and true enough strength overwhelmed the bears on Tuesday) so I did not cut. I was on a coffee break with my remisier when Alvin texted me saying Singtel rebound and went green. I looked at my remisier in disbelief. I asked around, no one has ever seen such a movement within a day. You see City dev opening at $7.60, huge gap down, but climbed all the way back to close in the green at its peak at $8.80. Logic? No logic. First time in our lives. So perhaps, following my rules saved me from cutting a position that did not break its support at a loss only to see it rebound thereafter. People who do not use TA would most likely get into such scenarios. But once educated, your eyes are learned. Singtel has been forming lower highs and lower lows. A definite lousy trend.  Notice how previous highs were capped at the 100MA resistance. This line is coming down of course and Sinktel (as i love to call it) is doomed to form lower highs all the time unless this is broken. As such, I am only doing trading. Ie, I buy using CFD. Positions that I wanna buy and keep is bought using MMF. CFD are pure trades. But trades could last anywhere from 1 day, to a few months. CFD allows me to have more positions especially after position sizing. While gains are multiplied, so are losses.

And there you have it. Singapore had its first GP, and it was the first night race ever. I think that is something to be proud of really, to be able to pull off such an event within a very short period of time indeed.

I attended the practice race. Well… not up close and personal of course. I rather not anyway. But we were at the 33rd floor balcony of Suntec Tower 3 and it is really a nice place indeed. My dear’s so lucky! If my office was there, you’ll see me there more often than anywhere else for sure. With lovely company from Veron and a few others. Loads of work-related bitching, to discussions on a possible BKK trip in Dec together. Let’s see how that builds up.

So the picture above is taken off my lovely HTC mobile phone, looking over the Benjamin Shears bridge where the grandstand is. I asked, very innocently, ‘did they build this road and all that just for 3 nights of race???). There and then I realised we have a contract to run this for 5 years, with a hope of further extentions. So this could be a perm fixture on our yearly calander. Goes to show I am no F1 fan am I? *grin*

So here we have a look over the track along the padang area. There are more photos but my dear is out with the cam so I suppose these will do for now. I must add that the scene during nightfall is lovely! And you feel proud of being part of Singapore again. “But the place still sucks!” as echoed..

The race itself was filled with drama. We had the ING car smashed up early in the race, but the second one went on to win the race, driven by Alonso. Some say there was a strategy in place to bring out the safety car early in the race, while Alonso set off from the wave of the flag without a full tank of fuel, hence the car will be lighter. So while he had to make a pit stop early, bringing out the safety car early would hold up all the other cars as they have to follow behind the safety car religiously. That gave Alonso a lot of room to catch up. The favorites to win were Massa at the pole, with Hamilton at second place. A VERY costly mistake during the pit stop saw Massa from first place being dragged all the way to last. On hindsight, it was good that no one was seriously injured during that mistake. It did look terrible though and commentry said that such mistakes happened before. Drama!

I used to wonder, what’s up with racing as a sport? I mean, you drive around yes, but a sport? But when I saw how many laps they had to do, and the amount of Gs on the body, and 2 hours of nonstop concentration, heck that is no easy feat! I’d say, footballers have it easier. They get a half time break to regroup and all. Here at F1, your body takes a beating, your brain takes a beating cause every concentration lapse can imply a massive amount of loss time (we had people going the wrong way) but it could also be a career ending mistake. I have respect for these drivers and it is easy to see why the average age of the drivers are really young. It was a pretty good race, hardly any glitches and I think Singapore did extremely well indeed. People around the world have seen Singapore, giving her best. There are a few areas where improvements can be made, pre and post race. Hopefully next year there will be fewer disruptions to traffic and all. But I reckon if it is gonna be a yearly thing, people will get used to it, and retailers in the Marina area will be hit again with low sales.

It was a good (and loud) experience and while I still do not dream of being in a fast car, I respect the stamina and endurance of the driver, and see why F1 can be such a big thing where people fly in from afar just to catch the action.

Next up, the casinos as part of our Integrated Resort project. Akan Datang, in the fall of 2009!