There Must Be A Solution and Other Observations

I need to find a way out of some of my health ailments. I'm not very healthy. At 40, at times, I feel that I'm one foot in the grave. At times, I can't even get up from bed coz my body's aching. I'm about to embark on an experimental drug to try to get relief from my ailments. I don't know if it will help. I will try anything that will make my loved ones feel better, and make me a more productive and useful person.

As for observations, my trip to Taipei enlightened me. The infrastructure in Taipei was an eye opener. The subway was world class. The subway malls connect one station to another and the underground facility was first class. Singapore should have more of such underground malls, especially those that connect Clark Quay to Raffles Place, which allows people form the Circle Line to walk in the cool comforts of an air conditioned environment to walk to Raffles Place. Orchard Road is another place where the underground subway malls can connect from Orchard to Sommerset to Dhoby Gaut to City Hall. Clean, orderly, the people were civic minded and kept to the right side of the escalator at all times. The young gave up their seats to the elderly, parents with kids and the pregnant immediately. I've never seen that kind of civic mindedness in Singapore. It's shameful that you see people stealing the seats reserved for the handicapped in Singapore. Perhaps the massive, indiscriminate immigration policy of the government here has destroyed the social fabric. Perhaps the SOME foreigners who come here have no regard for civic mindedness. As a result, Singaporeans don't care as well. I'm not against foreign talent, make no mistakes. They boost our retail sales, push up our home prices and attract MNCs to situate here. But I'm against indisciminate immigration. The foreigners must be truly talented whether via work experience or via superior academic records.

As for infrastructure, Taipei is chaotic. There was no real city centre. The pavements were minimal, the ground almost always chipped. There were no real cluster of food places, nor clusters of night life. They were just scattered all over. The only real food cluster was Yong Kang street where I could eat good beef noodles and fried chicken steaks. The other good food was the usual Ting3 Tai4 Fung1 in the malls. In most night markets, I could see lots of litters. Hygiene was suspect because I had LS several times. Most of the food were street food. In terms of shopping, I preferred Bangkok, Singapore, even Tokyo / Osaka to Taipei. Even Seoul and Camden in London was better.

It was a mixed experience in Taipei. The constant bell ring from my office mail did not help as I was called to resolve one issue after another. I could not really get my mind off work completely. In any case, I've had my break and it's now back to taking care of my clients the best I could till my next break, which will probably be London in January to visit relatives and look at some properties in what will probably be another big, deep recession.

Apologies for Not Being Able to Reply

I can't seem to reply comments made on my posts. I've had one comment asking me about whether Asian bonds are a good hiding place. My answer is, "it all depends". If you're just gonna hold on to yields, dividends, coupons, whatever, and don't care about mark-to-market losses, then go ahead. But if you wanna make some real returns; i.e. capital gains + yields, then don't.

The reason is simple, I won't touch convertible bonds, pref shares at this stage. Euro pref shares have a high chance on not paying dividends, although I don't think any major Euro bank will default. But there will be massive mark to market losses, mark my words. the last 3 weeks have seen massive outflows from emerging market local and foreign currency debts.

Gold is very volatile. I will cap it at no more than 30% of the portfolio. If the recession cannot prevent a deflation, like in Japan, then I'm sorry, gold may fall by 35% like it did in 2008. So far it has fallen by 20% so there may be 15% more downside to go. But there's a caveat; gold fell by 35% prior to QE1. In this age of QE, gold may not have such downside.

I like CTA. I continue to believe that CTAs like Winton and Man AHL Trend will achieve 10 - 20% in a bear market. Nothing makes money in distress like trend followers that can short all assets. I am shorting myself. I've shorted Direxion Triple US Small Caps from 60 to 35 now. That's a very decent return over 6 months.