I started serious Investing Journey in Jan 2000 to create wealth through long-term investing and short-term trading; but as from April 2013 my Journey in Investing has changed to create Retirement Income for Life till 85 years old in 2041 for two persons over market cycles of Bull and Bear.

Since 2017 after retiring from full-time job as employee; I am moving towards Investing Nirvana - Freehold Investment Income for Life investing strategy where 100% of investment income from portfolio investment is cashed out to support household expenses i.e. not a single cent of re-investing!

It is 57% (2017 to Aug 2022) to the Land of Investing Nirvana - Freehold Income for Life!


Click to email CW8888 or Email ID : jacobng1@gmail.com



Welcome to Ministry of Wealth!

This blog is authored by an old multi-bagger blue chips stock picker uncle from HDB heartland!

"The market is not your mother. It consists of tough men and women who look for ways to take money away from you instead of pouring milk into your mouth." - Dr. Alexander Elder

"For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them." - Aristotle

It is here where I share with you how I did it! FREE Education in stock market wisdom.

Think Investing as Tug of War - Read more? Click and scroll down



Important Notice and Attention: If you are looking for such ideas; here is the wrong blog to visit.

Value Investing
Dividend/Income Investing
Technical Analysis and Charting
Stock Tips

Wednesday 30 April 2008

Portfolio update: Bought Synear $0.595 and Cosco $3.22

Hyflux: Won more projects in China

Hyflux has been winning more projects; but, it does not seem move any higher and also daily volume is low. Why? Smart money not interested in the next big thing - water after oil meh? I used CPF fund to hold Hyflux for long term till 2011 - another 3 years to go. I believe in Olivia's dream


The Moisture Merchant
Dealing in Liquid Assets
By JAKE LLOYD-SMITH

Posted Monday, April 5, 2004
Olivia Lum, head of the fast-growing water-treatment company Hyflux, never knew her biological parents. She was adopted at birth by an elderly woman she called Grandma, and home was Kampar, a poor Malaysian mining town where an exodus of jobs had left most residents with no income. After Grandma sold her house to pay some gambling debts, Lum was brought up in a wooden shack without running water—unless you counted the rainwater that would regularly seep in and flood the floors. To keep Grandma's spirits up, Lum used to say that when she made it big, she would buy her a new house. "Of course it never happened," Lum says. "She died before I became successful."

Lum found her success in the water business. She worked her way through college and earned a chemistry degree, but she always saw the business world as the way to climb out of poverty. Fifteen years ago, drawing on her meager savings, she founded Hyflux (NCC: $20K from her saving), a company that pursued a wide range of water-related ventures in Asia, from cleaning wastewater in China to investing in desalination plants in Singapore.

Today, Hyflux is one of the hottest firms in the Asian water market, and under Lum's leadership it has scored a number of R.-and-D. breakthroughs. In the 1990s, the company developed an ultrafine membrane filter (pictured above) that is used in all the company's major products. More recently, Hyflux, in association with a U.S. group, began manufacturing a condensing device called the Dragonfly, which produces potable water by extracting moisture from air—and could change the way water-scarce countries meet their daily water needs. There are some drawbacks: the surrounding air must have at least 40% humidity, and each device costs about $1,000. Lum, however, insists that the unit price will fall as her team refines the design, and says Dragonflys may soon be found in refrigerators and even cars.

Hyflux is now a $270 million company, and Lum's biggest challenge will be to sustain its rapid growth. "There are further good years ahead," says Kerryn Tay, an analyst at GK Goh Research in Singapore, pointing to growing demand for Hyflux's products in China and government support at home. For her part, the hardworking Lum wants Hyflux to be worth $3 billion within five years. Grandma would approve




-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AWARD OF WATER TREATMENT PROJECTS ESTIMATED AT RMB 371
MILLION IN CHINA

Hyflux is pleased to announce that its wholly owned subsidiaries (collectively referred
to as "Hyflux") have been awarded two water treatment projects worth about RMB
361 million in the Jiangsu Province in China.


HYFLUX WON BID FOR WORLD’S LARGEST REVERSE OSMOSIS MEMBRANE
DESALINATION PLANT IN ALGERIA
· Project value is S$632 million
· Project almost doubled order book to S$1.5 billion
· The largest contract undertaken by the Group to-date
· The single largest ultrafiltration plant leveraging award-winning
proprietary membrane
Singapore, April 22, 2008 – Hyflux Ltd (“Hyflux”), a leading provider of integrated
environmental solutions, has won the bid for the world’s largest seawater desalination
plant in Algeria, with a project value of US$468 million (about S$632 million).

Monday 28 April 2008

Sunday 27 April 2008

Kep and SCI - XD on 29 Apr 08

Let see any buying interest on Kep and SCI after last Friday selldown on Kep and SCI. Monday will be the last day to collect dividend, Kep $0.55 and SCI $0.15.

Good dividend yield play.

Saturday 26 April 2008

FerroChina 1QFY08

FerroChina continues strong performance, posting
triple-digits revenue and earnings growth for 1QFY08

Will it run up on Monday?

Friday 25 April 2008

Portfolio update: Sold STX 3.74 ROC 17.1%. Bought YZJ 1.10, WMI 4.66



Bought STX @ $3.17 on 7 Mar 08 after its pullback; but, it came crashing down all the way to $2.32 (-27% paper loss).

Thursday 24 April 2008

Tuesday 22 April 2008

Trading For A Living

By Geoff Turnbull

There can’t be many traders who haven’t at least considered the idea of telling the boss what they think of him, throwing it all in and going off to trade the stock market for a living. It’s a big risk financially, and that uncertainty is what stops most from jumping ship. Is it really possible to trade for a living?

The Dream

You know how it is, you’re sitting in a traffic jam at some unearthly hour of a particularly wet and miserable morning, on the way to the same office you have sat in for too long to remember, and you’re thinking - there must be a better way – life shouldn’t have to be like this.

Your mind starts to wander and you find yourself thinking back to that stock you bought only a week ago, and how it skyrocketed giving you enough profit to takes the kids to Disneyland in the summer, and you begin to consider if you couldn’t make a fulltime living at this trading game.

The advantages are certainly tempting; no more pointless meetings with the manager, hours to suit, holidays whenever you feel like it, and with your home-office - no more traffic jams.
Heck, come to that you could even make home anywhere you want it to be! By the time the traffic starts moving again. you’re busily calculating how much cash you could make if all your trades went like that last one - you’re almost ready to write your notice letter there and then!

The Bad News

Time for a reality check. Certainly all of the above benefits are there to be enjoyed, but it’s a huge step from full time employee to full time trader. Are you really ready to give up that monthly pay-check just yet? Can you really cope not knowing how much money you’re going to make month to month? Are you prepared for the months when you actually lose money instead of make it? There are many things to consider before taking the leap of faith.

Considerations

Before you even think about trading for a living you have to know how much money you need to live on, that is, how much cash do you need to generate every month in order to survive. As a financially minded person you already have good home accounts, or are at the very least vaguely aware of where the money goes. So take the annual figure (monthly is no good, you need to account for annual recurring items like insurance premiums, car servicing, and vacations), add 50% and divide by 12. Why add 50%? Because there will always be unexpected expenses, and as traders we are always prepared to expect the unexpected.

Now you know how much money you need each month, you can look at your savings and work out how much buffer money you have, that is, how long you could survive without earning anything at all. You can’t expect to be an instantly profitable trader, and even the best and most experienced have periods of drawdown, so you need to be ready for the worst. If you can’t live for at least six months from your savings then you are probably under capitalised and are not ready to give up that pay-check just yet.

An important but often overlooked aspect of under capitalisation is the effect it will have on your trading; if you are trading because you need the money, then you are trading scared and you’re almost certainly going to lose. You cannot distance yourself from the money-aspect of the trade if you are relying on the money.

Living expenses are only one part of the financial equation. Next you must consider how much trading capital you need. This is the money actually facilitate trading, in other words your account balance for trading margin, and the money you will be spending on data feeds, software, and internet access. You must account for this separately, you cannot start eating into your daily living expenses money just because you took a bad trade and need some more margin.

The amount of trading capital you require will depend very much on your trading style. To day trade the US Stock Markets for example, you must have at least $25,000 in your account, so budget for $30,000 to allow for positions moving against you (if you fall below the $25k minimum even briefly, your account can be frozen for up to three months). If you are holding positions overnight you may manage with a lower balance but bear in mind your buying power and consequently returns will be reduced.

If all this is starting to sound expensive, well it is. There’s no two ways about it, you simply cannot survive long term as a trader if you are under funded.

This article will be concluded in part two.

About The Author
Geoff Turnbull is a full time day trader, and a contributor to http://www.stock-trading-world.com

In part 1 of this article I started to look at the financial implications of giving up the day job to instead start trading full time for a living. There are more than just monetary considerations as we will see later, but for now, there are some more costs to ponder.

More Costs!

Let’s move on to equipment. Presumably you already have a PC and internet connection by virtue of the fact you are reading this on the internet. But are these both up to the job of trading full time? Again the specifications for both hardware and ISP will depend largely on your trading style, but if you’re relying on a 100Mhz Pentium II and a dial up service, you’re setting yourself up for failure. So budget for quality equipment, budget to keep it up to spec, and budget for some repairs too – expect the unexpected.

Many traders make the mistake of saying “This will do me whilst I start out, and I’ll get something better when I make some real money”. This is quite simply false economy, you are unlikely to ever make real money with a substandard setup (and this applies equally to substandard software and data feeds). This is a cut-throat business and 95% fail, you must give yourself every advantage you can. You wouldn’t enter the Indy 500 in a go-kart with the intention of buying a better car when you’ve won a few races, and the same thing applies here.

Earnings

When you’ve added this all together, you have a pretty good picture of how much money you need to generate from your trading in order to live. Does your past performance suggest you will be able to meet this target? It’s tempting to say “When I go full time I’ll make much more”, but how do you know this is the case? Perhaps you can take a couple of weeks holiday and try it out – if you don’t make enough in that two weeks then you’re not ready. A few weeks really isn’t enough time to know if you’re going to succeed though. An ideal next step then is to cut your day job hours to part time and trade maybe two or three days a week. This way you know you have some money coming in, you get to trade for real, and if it all goes horribly wrong you are probably better placed to get back into full time employment than someone who quit the working world completely.

The option of part time work is a luxury many of us don’t have however. So does it have to be all or nothing – trade or work? Why not keep the day job and trade outside your working hours as well. If you are trading and end of day strategy, then this is easily achieved by doing your research in the evening and placing the appropriate combinations of Stop and Limit orders with your broker.

For day traders, certainly practising is easier if your intended market is not your home market, for example if you want to trade the US and you live in the UK where you can come home and paper trade in the evening.

There are other try before you buy options open to the day traders who want to practise trading their home market outside of normal hours though. eSignal allows you to download tick data for any symbol and play it back in real time or speeded up so you could trade the whole day in an hour. Other vendors have similar offerings, and if you have an IB account you can use AutoTrader to record tick data during the day for playback into a demo version of SierraCharts or QuoteTracker for free.

The bottom line here is that before you take the plunge, you need to have done everything in your power to prepare yourself for what lies ahead. It will still be harder than you ever thought, but it will be nigh on impossible with no preparation whatsoever.

Other Considerations

There are a few non-financial aspects to consider before going full time with your trading. If you have a family, how will the change impact them? Do you have the space to work uninterrupted during the day? It’s important that the family don’t assume that because you are at home you are automatically available to take the kids to school, or walk the dog. Make sure from the start that everybody knows the ground rules and that you can separate your working time from your free time effectively.

Consider also the social impact of leaving your full time employer. Again, if you have a partner or family are you going to drive each other nuts being in the same house all day? Relationships can be tested to the limit! Or if you live alone, are you going to drive yourself nuts being on your own all day? Trading full time can give you enormous amounts of free time, but if you have nothing to fill that time with you can quickly lose the plot – I’ve seen it happen and it’s not pretty.

Is It Worth It?

Nobody can tell you if trading for a living is for you, it’s something you have to find out for yourself. I’ve seen traders go through highs and lows to challenge those of any stock chart, but for most it has proved to be a good move. The long list of benefits are all there for the taking, as with any change of career or indeed any major life change, as long as you go into it with your eyes open, and above all prepare, then there is no reason why it cannot work for you.

About The Author
Geoff Turnbull is a full time day trader,

Sunday 20 April 2008

Semb Corp

With dividend of $0.15 and XD on 29 Apr, will there be panic buying by funds the next week in view of DOW closing +1.81%

Friday 18 April 2008

Stocks Take Flight on Earnings Blast

U.S. stocks soared at the opening bell Friday amid renewed hope that the worst is over for financials. Solid earnings from a few Dow components also gave the market strength.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average surged nearly 200 points, or 1.5 percent, in the first five minutes of trading.


Does this means the worst is over?

Bear market end tonite?

I think DOW will rally tonite and put the bear to sleep. STI on Monday will rally. Don't miss the boat.

I did not take profit lately as I am expecting big rally in STI should be coming soon.

Monday 7 April 2008

Book: The Disciplined Trader by Mark Douuglas

Available in NLB. This book has been recommended by some top traders themselves. It is about preparing ourselves psychologically for trading.

Is the worst over?

Reuters
World stocks power to one-month high
Monday April 7, 4:07 am ET
By Natsuko Waki


LONDON (Reuters) - World stocks hit a fresh one-month high and the dollar rose on Monday, bolstered by firmer commodity prices and growing expectations that banks are close to cleaning up their credit-related troubles.
ADVERTISEMENT


Optimism also stemmed from speculation that finance chiefs from the Group of Seven rich nations, meeting in Washington this weekend, are considering drastic steps to fix banks and markets battered by the U.S. mortgage meltdown.

Portfolio update - add more SCI @ 4.18 on its pullback

Wednesday 2 April 2008

Is Market Rout Nearing End? Cheers!!!!

UBS, Lehman Capital Raisings May Signal Market Rout Nearing End

By Elena Logutenkova and Aaron Kirchfeld

April 2 (Bloomberg) -- Securities sales by UBS AG, the world's largest money manager, and Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. underpinned a rally in financial stocks yesterday that may signal an end to eight months of market turmoil.

UBS, battered by the biggest writedowns from the collapse of the U.S. subprime mortgage market, announced plans to seek 15 billion Swiss francs ($14.8 billion) in a rights offer to replenish capital, while New York-based Lehman, the fourth- largest U.S. securities firm, raised $4 billion in a stock sale.

The fund-raising plans quelled speculation the companies might follow New York-based Bear Stearns Cos., which agreed to sell itself last month to JPMorgan Chase & Co. for a fraction of its market value after a run on the company. Investors looked past Zurich-based UBS's 12 billion-Swiss franc first-quarter loss disclosed yesterday after record writedowns on debt securities, as well as Deutsche Bank AG's $3.9 billion of markdowns.

``When UBS does a massively dilutive deal and the stock still goes up, that's helpful,'' said Henry Herrmann, chief executive officer of Overland Park, Kansas-based Waddell & Reed Financial Inc., which manages $65 billion. ``It's a rally associated with the presumed elimination of survival risk. The market's getting a little more comfortable that the crisis is over.''

UBS rose 12.3 percent in Swiss trading, the biggest gain in two weeks, leading a 5.1 percent rally in the 60-member Bloomberg Banks and Financial Services Index. The company has lost 55 percent of market value during the past 12 months.

`Enough Demand'

Chairman Marcel Ospel, 58, who helped form UBS through a merger a decade ago, will be replaced by general counsel Peter Kurer. UBS said it plans more job cuts at the investment bank and will set up a separate unit to segregate assets at risk from the credit-market meltdown.

Lehman advanced 17.8 percent in New York Stock Exchange composite trading, the most in two weeks, after increasing the size of its sale to 4 million convertible preferred shares from 3 million and saying demand ``significantly'' outpaced supply. Investors paid $1,000 for each Lehman preferred stock, which can convert to 20.0509 common shares once the stock reaches $49.87, or 32 percent higher than the closing price on March 31.

``Investors were worried that these big writedowns were going to impede their ability to raise capital,'' said William Fitzpatrick, an analyst at Optique Capital in Racine, Wisconsin, which owned 565,000 Citigroup Inc. shares as of Dec. 31. ``The way Lehman was able to bring in capital, that mitigates a lot of that risk. Clearly there's enough demand for these companies that raising capital is no longer the major overhang.''

Debt Writedowns

The debt market turmoil spurred by rising U.S. mortgage defaults hasn't abated, and presents the most severe crisis for banks in 30 years, Morgan Stanley and management-consulting firm Oliver Wyman said in a joint report yesterday.

The world's biggest financial companies reported about $232 billion in credit losses and writedowns since the start of 2007, data compiled by Bloomberg show. In all, investment banks may post $75 billion in markdowns in 2008, the report from analysts led by London-based Huw van Steenis said. Revenue from investment banking may drop 20 percent in 2008, with credit businesses declining 60 percent, the analysts said.

Deutsche Bank, which operates Europe's biggest investment bank by revenue, said yesterday that it expects to book first- quarter writedowns on leveraged loans, commercial real estate and residential mortgage-backed securities. The Frankfurt-based company said market conditions ``have become significantly more challenging.''

``I don't see how many banks are going to sustain revenue because parts of the business have disappeared due to the financial crisis,'' said Stefan Mueller, a managing partner at Proprietary Partners AG, a Frankfurt fund management company.

Federal Reserve

While investors agree that more writedowns and share-price swings are inevitable, Kevin Rendino, who runs the $6.5 billion BlackRock Basic Value Fund in Plainsboro, New Jersey, found cause for encouragement.

``You want to get all the bad assets off the balance sheets, and the banks are in the process of doing that,'' Rendino said in an interview. ``You're seeing the writeoffs, the charges and the replenishment of the balance sheets, so all that's good.''

The U.S. Federal Reserve cut its main lending rate on March 18 by three-quarters of a percentage point to 2.25 percent. The central bank also started a lending program for brokers, which is similar to the so-called discount window used by commercial banks, after the run on Bear Stearns.

``You can't ignore what the Fed has done,'' Rendino said. ``It's been a game-changing set of events over the last couple months. It doesn't make the bad assets worth more but it's going to be good for banks and it creates a better environment for financials going forward.''
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