Traverse the Nivek's Mind

Stock Traders Find Speed Pays, in Milliseconds

2009-07-29T13:30:00.002+08:00

By Charles Duhigg (New York Times)

It is the hot new thing on Wall Street, a way for a handful of traders to master the stock market, peek at investors’ orders and, critics say, even subtly manipulate share prices.

It is called high-frequency trading — and it is suddenly one of the most talked-about and mysterious forces in the markets.

Powerful computers, some housed right next to the machines that drive marketplaces like the New York Stock Exchange, enable high-frequency traders to transmit millions of orders at lightning speed and, their detractors contend, reap billions at everyone else’s expense.

These systems are so fast they can outsmart or outrun other investors, humans and computers alike. And after growing in the shadows for years, they are generating lots of talk.

Nearly everyone on Wall Street is wondering how hedge funds and large banks like Goldman Sachs are making so much money so soon after the financial system nearly collapsed. High-frequency trading is one answer.

And when a former Goldman Sachs programmer was accused this month of stealing secret computer codes — software that a federal prosecutor said could “manipulate markets in unfair ways” — it only added to the mystery. Goldman acknowledges that it profits from high-frequency trading, but disputes that it has an unfair advantage.

Yet high-frequency specialists clearly have an edge over typical traders, let alone ordinary investors. The Securities and Exchange Commission says it is examining certain aspects of the strategy.

“This is where all the money is getting made,” said William H. Donaldson, former chairman and chief executive of the New York Stock Exchange and today an adviser to a big hedge fund. “If an individual investor doesn’t have the means to keep up, they’re at a huge disadvantage.”

For most of Wall Street’s history, stock trading was fairly straightforward: buyers and sellers gathered on exchange floors and dickered until they struck a deal. Then, in 1998, the Securities and Exchange Commission authorized electronic exchanges to compete with marketplaces like the New York Stock Exchange. The intent was to open markets to anyone with a desktop computer and a fresh idea.

But as new marketplaces have emerged, PCs have been unable to compete with Wall Street’s computers. Powerful algorithms — “algos,” in industry parlance — execute millions of orders a second and scan dozens of public and private marketplaces simultaneously. They can spot trends before other investors can blink, changing orders and strategies within milliseconds.

High-frequency traders often confound other investors by issuing and then canceling orders almost simultaneously. Loopholes in market rules give high-speed investors an early glance at how others are trading. And their computers can essentially bully slower investors into giving up profits — and then disappear before anyone even knows they were there.

High-frequency traders also benefit from competition among the various exchanges, which pay small fees that are often collected by the biggest and most active traders — typically a quarter of a cent per share to whoever arrives first. Those small payments, spread over millions of shares, help high-speed investors profit simply by trading enormous numbers of shares, even if they buy or sell at a modest loss.

“It’s become a technological arms race, and what separates winners and losers is how fast they can move,” said Joseph M. Mecane of NYSE Euronext, which operates the New York Stock Exchange. “Markets need liquidity, and high-frequency traders provide opportunities for other investors to buy and sell.”

The rise of high-frequency trading helps explain why activity on the nation’s stock exchanges has exploded. Average daily volume has soared by 164 percent since 2005, according to data from NYSE. Although precise figures are elusive, stock exchanges say that a handful of high-frequency traders now account for a more than half of all trades. To understand this high-speed world, consider what happened when slow-moving traders went up against high-frequency robots earlier this month, and ended up handing spoils to lightning-fast computers.

It was July 15, and Intel, the computer chip giant, had reporting robust earnings the night before. Some investors, smelling opportunity, set out to buy shares in the semiconductor company Broadcom. (Their activities were described by an investor at a major Wall Street firm who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his job.) The slower traders faced a quandary: If they sought to buy a large number of shares at once, they would tip their hand and risk driving up Broadcom’s price. So, as is often the case on Wall Street, they divided their orders into dozens of small batches, hoping to cover their tracks. One second after the market opened, shares of Broadcom started changing hands at $26.20.

The slower traders began issuing buy orders. But rather than being shown to all potential sellers at the same time, some of those orders were most likely routed to a collection of high-frequency traders for just 30 milliseconds — 0.03 seconds — in what are known as flash orders. While markets are supposed to ensure transparency by showing orders to everyone simultaneously, a loophole in regulations allows marketplaces like Nasdaq to show traders some orders ahead of everyone else in exchange for a fee.

In less than half a second, high-frequency traders gained a valuable insight: the hunger for Broadcom was growing. Their computers began buying up Broadcom shares and then reselling them to the slower investors at higher prices. The overall price of Broadcom began to rise.

Soon, thousands of orders began flooding the markets as high-frequency software went into high gear. Automatic programs began issuing and canceling tiny orders within milliseconds to determine how much the slower traders were willing to pay. The high-frequency computers quickly determined that some investors’ upper limit was $26.40. The price shot to $26.39, and high-frequency programs began offering to sell hundreds of thousands of shares.

The result is that the slower-moving investors paid $1.4 million for about 56,000 shares, or $7,800 more than if they had been able to move as quickly as the high-frequency traders.

Multiply such trades across thousands of stocks a day, and the profits are substantial. High-frequency traders generated about $21 billion in profits last year, the Tabb Group, a research firm, estimates.

“You want to encourage innovation, and you want to reward companies that have invested in technology and ideas that make the markets more efficient,” said Andrew M. Brooks, head of United States equity trading at T. Rowe Price, a mutual fund and investment company that often competes with and uses high-frequency techniques. “But we’re moving toward a two-tiered marketplace of the high-frequency arbitrage guys, and everyone else. People want to know they have a legitimate shot at getting a fair deal. Otherwise, the markets lose their integrity.”

Buffett's $5B Goldman Investment Up $2B? Try $6B

2009-07-29T12:01:00.002+08:00

By David Clayton

Reports in the media last week indicated that Berkshire Hathaway’s (BRK.A, BRK.B) warrants in Goldman Sachs (GS) now have a paper gain of more than $2 billion.

The difference between the strike price and the share value translates into a $2.19 billion paper profit for Berkshire.

But this approach is wrong. Depending on how it’s calculated, Berkshire’s paper profit at the close July 23 was at least $3.1 billion, and could be more than $6 billion.

The recent article fails in its analysis because the author simply multiplied the number of warrants Berkshire received by the difference between the current stock price and the strike price. This approach provides just part of the story, which is the value of the warrants if they were exercised today.

But it doesn’t reflect the current market value of the warrants, nor does it recognize the value of the warrants when the deal with Goldman Sachs was struck. It also doesn’t include any discussion of the change in value of the preferred shares Berkshire acquired.

On September 23, Berkshire announced the terms of a $5 billion investment in GS preferred equity and warrants. In the eight weeks after the deal was announced, GS common stock was down nearly 60%.

Amid the market chaos, Buffett critics loudly decried the GS and General Electric (GE) investments as mistakes. “So far,” Simon Maierhofer of ETFguide.com wrote on November 18, “Buffett has lost over $2 billion on the Goldman deal.”

This article, like the ones recently, incorrectly valued the investment, and dramatically so. This article failed because it didn’t recognize how good a deal this was for Berkshire from the start.

The Simple Valuation

The easiest way to place a value on the investment is to imagine that it was cashed out today. Here are the terms: for Berkshire’s $5 billion investment:

Berkshire received perpetual cumulative preferred stock paying a $500 million annual dividend
Berkshire received warrants to buy 43.48 million GS common shares at $115, exercisable at any time before October 2013
GS can redeem the preferred stock at any time, and will pay Berkshire $500 million when it does so

If at the close July 23, GS redeemed Berkshire’s preferred shares, and if Berkshire had exercised its warrants, here’s where the accounting would have stood:

This, the most conservative estimate possible, says Berkshire’s return on this investment has been 62% in 10 months.

Of course, Goldman hasn’t redeemed the shares and Berkshire’s not about to cash out the warrants. And it’s necessary to dig deeper to really understand what Berkshire’s return on the preferreds has been.

Analyzing the Investment More Rigorously

The investment has two parts, preferred shares and warrants, and it’s necessary to analyze each part independently to get a full picture of how good or bad the investment is.

Valuing the Warrants

Many authors writing about the Berkshire investment fail to describe the importance of the warrants, all too often indicating that they are somehow less important than the preferred shares.

However, the warrants have the potential to be enormously profitable, and were integral to the deal; they allow Berkshire to benefit from common stock appreciation, while the preferred shares don’t.

"The preferred pays us the dividend, " Warren Buffett said recently on Fox Business. "The warrants are going to make us the money."

The potential to share in gains made this part of the investment very valuable on September 23.

The warrants are basically American-style call options, exercisable at any time before October 2013. While there is no standard method for valuing American-style call options, the Black-Scholes option pricing model is the industry standard for valuing European-style options. European-style options can be exercised only at expiration; since American-style options have greater flexibility in execution, they are more valuable.

The inputs to Black-Scholes and my methods for determining their values:

The value of the underlying investment – the market price of GS
Strike price of the option (Strike) – $115/share
Time to expiration (Time) – at the outset, this was 5 years
The current risk-free interest rate (IntR) – generally that of Treasury securities maturing at the same time the option expires; the value is based on the Treasury’s daily yield curve tables
The dividend yield over the life of the option (Yield) – this was estimated using the trailing 12 months of dividends divided by the market price of GS common
Volatility (Vol) – ideally, this will be the volatility of the underlying option over the option’s life; obviously, this can only be estimated. Since time-to-expiration of the warrants was 5 years, I used a volatility calculation based on the previous 5 years of daily price data. In the 10 months since the deal was struck, GS stock’s volatility has shot up; however, since I believe this to be a short-term disruption in the market, I have elected to use the September 23 volatility figure for all calculations. The result is that Black-Scholes values are lower than they would have been with a higher volatility figure.

Here’s what Black-Scholes says the warrants were worth at the close September 23:

Multiplying this by the 43.478 million warrants Berkshire received, the initial value of the warrants was $1.39 billion.

Valuing the Preferred Shares

We will never know what value the market would place on Berkshire’s preferred GS shares, since they will never be traded. However, we can make reasonable estimates based on the market prices of similar securities.

If there were exchange-traded cumulative preferred shares of GS, this would be a simple matter of assigning the yield of those shares to the Berkshire investment and backing out a market value (divide the $500 million dividend by the yield to return the market value).

However, all of the exchange-traded GS preferred series are non-cumulative. So estimating the value of Berkshire’s investment is a bit more complicated.

Preferred share values are primarily determined by two factors: market interest rates and risk, risk being the probability that the dividend won’t continue to be paid. Because Berkshire’s preferred shares are cumulative, the risk that the dividend won’t be paid is much different than for its non-cumulative preferreds; GS must pay the cumulative preferred’s dividend unless it goes bankrupt.

Therefore, the risk premium demanded by investors in cumulative preferreds is lower than that demanded by non-cumulative preferred investors, and yields are lower.

For example, there are both cumulative and non-cumulative exchange-traded preferred shares of JP Morgan (JPM). The non-cumulative always yields more than the cumulative; between September 5 and September 23, the non-cumulative averaged a 1.0% higher yield than the cumulative.

On March 6, at the market bottom, this spread had increased to 4.4%, reflecting the perception that JPM might at some point not pay the non-cumulative preferred dividend. Since April 1, this spread has ranged between 1.1% and 1.8%.

Another factor affecting the value of the preferred shares is their redemption rules. If the company can redeem the shares and end the investor’s revenue stream, the yield demanded will be slightly higher.

I don’t have a good sense of how large this impact is, and have increased my estimated market yield for the Berkshire shares by 0.2% across the board to account for this effect.

The table below shows September 23 data used to estimate the initial value of Berkshire’s preferred equity investment in Goldman Sachs, where:

JPM PrI – J-series non-cumulative preferred
JPM PrE-G – average of three series of cumulative preferred
GS-PrD – the most liquid of GS non-cumulative preferred series
GS-PrBRK – estimated yield if GS cumulative preferreds were traded

Dividing the $500 million annual dividend by the estimated yield gives the estimated value: $6.49 billion.

When the Deal Was Made

So, the market value of the $5 billion Berkshire Hathaway investment in Goldman Sachs on September 23 was $7.89 billion, or 58% more than the deal’s price.

This figure is so outsized that it begs for debunking. I invite critiques of method. Perhaps I got something wrong. But even if my calculations end up discredited, there are basic facts indicating that Berkshire significantly underpaid:

The warrants have some value; the mere fact that they’re not being exercised demonstrates this. "Every instinct in my body," Buffett said, "tells me that we will want to hold those warrants until they're very close to their expiration date." And while Buffett has stated that Black-Scholes increasingly overstates the value of options as the time-to-expiration increases, 5 years isn’t so long that the calculation would be geometrically wrong. I’ve also used a somewhat conservative volatility figure.
The yield on the preferred shares was far higher than what the market would have demanded. Remove the value of the warrants from the total investment to determine the yield on the preferreds: $5 billion less $1.39 billion is $3.61 billion. The $500 million dividend indicates that the yield on the equity investment was 13.9%. Let’s be very conservative and suppose the warrants were only worth $500 million when the deal was struck (preposterous, since they would have generated a $437 million gain if exercised that day). That would place the cost of the $500 million annual dividend at $4.5 billion, for an 11.1% yield. That’s 2.6% more than what GS non-cumulative preferreds – riskier investments – were yielding on the NYSE.

At the Bottom – November 20

On November 21, shares of GS hit their bottom of 47.14. At this moment, Black-Scholes says that the Berkshire warrants were worth $84 million, for a loss of $1.309 billion since the deal was announced:

The Berkshire preferred yield likely would have peaked at about 10.2%, based on the JPM data and the GS non-cumulative peak yield of 12.3%; this corresponds to a market value of about $5 billion.

So Simon Maierhofer of ETFguide.com was right - Berkshire had lost $2.904 billion. What he didn’t say is that at this point, at the very bottom, when GS common had lost 62% of its value, Berkshire’s investment was worth about $5.035 billion (including accrued dividends), pretty close to what it originally invested.

And had Goldman redeemed the shares then, Berkshire would have collected the $500 redemption premium.

Today

On July 23, GS closed at $165.45, up $40 in the 10 months since the deal was made. GS preferred shares are up close to 40%. And Berkshire’s investment has performed similarly. The warrants:

And the preferred shares:

Add in $404 million of accrued and collected dividends, and Berkshire’s investment is now worth $11.05 billion, not including the $500 million redemption premium GS must pay when it redeems the preferred shares.

The Bottom Line

When the deal was struck, Buffett purchased $7.89 billion of securities at a 37% discount. Ten months later, the investment had grown another 40%; the total return is more than 120% in ten months. Even using the most conservative valuation method, Berkshire’s return is $3.1 billion, or 62%.

During this period, gold has returned 5.7%. The S&P 500 lost 15.9%.

Suppose GS redeems the preferred for $5 billion on October 1. Berkshire will have received $500 million in dividends, or 13.9% of the investment less the initial value of the warrants. Further suppose that GS common stock appreciates by 8.6% per year through October 1, 2013, the warrants’ expiration date, regaining its 2007 high of 233 on that date. Berkshire would buy $10.13 billion worth of stock for $5 billion. That’s an annual return of 36.5%.

Naturally, the return on the warrants is tied to that of GS common. If the stock is stagnant at 165, the options will pay just $2.19 billion, or 11.4% per year. And if Goldman stock declines, the warrants would be worth less.

But if GS grows at 11.3%, as it did for the 7 year period starting 1/1/2000, Berkshire’s gain on the warrants would be $6.19 billion, for a 42.8% annual gain.

When properly valued, this investment certainly looks like it will go down in history as one of Warren Buffett’s greatest.

Sparkling Roger Federer - The Vintage from Paris

2009-06-08T07:30:00.000+08:00

So Roger Federer did come good on Sunday's French Open final against Robin Soderling. Who had ever thought of him winning the Roland Garros championship just before the tournament started barely two weeks ago? Yes, he won. No kidding this time -- albeit the absence of his long time nemesis Rafael Nadal in the final did make the process easier for him by beating Robin Soderling in straight sets.

Even though Roger Federer is not at his best form in the French Open, he still managed to produce good service games and some good aces when he needed it. That i think is the most crucial difference why he can still beat Tommy Haas and Juan Martin Del Potro in five sets en route to the final. A lot of his repertoires under his belt are not here to be seen but it is OK if he keeps on producing consistent service game and hold on trying to break his opponent's service game when time comes.

As for the Wimbledon in two weeks time, i don't see anybody will beat Roger Federer on grass this year. He is a different animal on grass. Last year his lost in the epic final to Nadal was one-off story. Also, i don't see Nadal can produce the best form as he did in the Wimbledon last year. Something is missing in Nadal's game lately. Suddenly, Nadal seems vulnerable. Maybe Andy Murray will give some good shows in Wimbledon this year. Who knows?

But now let savour the sparkling Roger Federer - the vintage that finally comes good in Paris. His final jigsaw puzzle in his quest for the Slams has finally put in place and sealed in the history. Salute!

Fed to buy massive amounts of short-term debt

2008-10-08T00:30:00.001+08:00

By Jeannine Aversa, AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Federal Reserve announced Tuesday a radical plan to buy massive amounts of short-term debt in a dramatic effort to break through a credit clog that is imperiling the economy.

Invoking Depression-era emergency powers, the Fed will buy commercial paper, a short-term financing mechanism that many companies rely on to finance their day-to-day operations, such as purchasing supplies or making payrolls.

In more normal times, about $100 billion of these short-term IOUs were outstanding at any given time, sold by companies to buyers that included money market mutual funds, pension funds and other investors. But this market has virtually dried up as investors have become too jittery to buy paper for longer than overnight or a couple days.

That has made it increasingly difficult and expensive for companies to raise money to fund their operations. Commercial paper is a way of borrowing money for short periods, typically ranging from overnight to less than a week.

The unstable situation has left many companies vulnerable. The notion under the plan is for the government to provide a "backstop" that would give companies a new place to get cash, the Fed said. The action makes the Fed a crucial source of credit for nonfinancial businesses in addition to commercial banks and investment firms.

The Fed's action initially helped lift investors' spirits, although concerns about the economy dampened their enthusiasm. The Dow Jones industrials -- which gained about 145 points just after the open -- fell nearly 63 points in midday trading. Monday, a huge selloff put the Dow below 10,000 for the first time in four years.

Concerns about the credit markets pushed investors into longer-term Treasury bonds, considered a secure place to park money in times of turmoil. The rush to safety drove yields lower, though.

Credit markets themselves eased slightly, however, after the Fed's move raised hopes it would quickly relieve the short-term funding problems plaguing some companies.

European stocks posted modest gains on hopes that central banks around the globe would coordinate on rate cuts. Share prices in Britain and in Germany, Europe's largest economy, rose. Iceland, however, is facing the prospect of bankruptcy, according to the Prime Minister Geir H. Haarde, after its banks went on a buying spree across Europe, accumulating massive debts in the process.

The Fed said it is creating a new entity to buy three-month unsecured and asset-backed commercial paper directly from eligible companies. It hopes to have the program up and running soon, Fed officials said.

Fed officials said they'll buy as much of the debt as necessary to get the market functioning again. They refused to say how much that might be, but they noted that around $1.3 trillion worth of commercial paper would qualify.

"The commercial paper market has been under considerable strain in recent weeks as money market mutual funds and other investors" have become increasingly reluctant to buy commercial paper, especially longer-dated maturities. As the market for commercial paper shrank, the Fed said rates on the longer-term debt "increased significantly," making it more expensive for companies to borrow.

The Treasury Department, which worked with the Fed on the program, said the action is "necessary to prevent substantial disruptions to the financial markets and the economy."

The Treasury will provide money to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York to support the new program, the Fed said. Fed officials would not say how much but believed it would be substantial. The money would not come from the $700 billion financial bailout President Bush signed into law on Friday.

If a company's commercial paper is not backed by assets or other forms of security acceptable to the Fed, the company could pay an upfront fee, the central bank said. The amount of such a fee has not yet been determined.

The Fed said it hoped its effort would jolt the commercial paper market back to life.

"This facility should encourage investors to once again engage in term lending in the commercial paper market," the Fed said. That should eventually spur financial companies to lend to each other and to their customers, including consumers, the Fed said.

The Fed said it planned to stop buying commercial paper on April 30, 2009, unless the Federal Reserve board agrees to extend the program. The Fed created a separate entity to pool and hold the commercial paper it buys. The Fed said this should allow the central bank to more easily manage the program and better control risk.

There was $1.61 trillion in outstanding commercial paper, seasonally adjusted, on the market as of last Wednesday, according to the most recent data from the Fed. That was down from $1.70 trillion in the previous week. Since the summer of 2007, the market has shrunk from more than $2.2 trillion.

Pressure also is growing on the Fed to reverse course and order a deep reduction in its key interest rate, now at 2 percent. Such a move would be aimed at reviving the moribund economy by encouraging consumers and businesses to boost their spending. Many predict the Fed will act on or before its next meeting on Oct. 28-29. And, some believe it could be part of a broader coordinated move with central banks in other countries.

The White House said President Bush spoke Tuesday with leaders of Britain, France and Italy about measures the United States is taking and the importance of countries working together.

The finance ministers of the G-7 -- the U.S., France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and Canada -- will meet in Washington at the end of this week and the White House says Bush is open to the idea of a leaders' summit on the economy, as suggested by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke may offer clues on the Fed's next move when he speaks Tuesday afternoon on the economic outlook and developments in financial markets.

President Bush also was set to talk about the government's bailout effort, which lets the government buy rotten mortgages and other bad debts from banks and other financial institutions. By getting these bad debts off bank's balance sheets, they might be in a better position to raise capital and more willing to lend to each other and to customers.

As the number of failed banks has gone up sharply this year, Sheila Bair, head of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., wants to boost fees to financial institutions to replenish the insurance fund that backs the nation's deposits. The increase would double the average paid by U.S. banks and thrifts next year.

The Fed pledged Monday to take "additional measures as necessary" to battle the worst credit crisis in decades.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has tapped a former Goldman Sachs executive to be director of the government's bailout program. Neel Kashkari, who has worked with Paulson at the department since July 2006, was chosen Monday as the interim head of the government's unprecedented effort to unclog the credit markets.

Kashkari, who was a vice president in Goldman's San Francisco office before joining the department, is one of four former executives from the firm now working feverishly to resolve the financial crisis.

The lending lockup is a key reason why the U.S. economy is faltering. Unable to borrow money freely or forced to pay a high cost to borrow, employers are cutting jobs and reducing capital investments. Consumers have retrenched.

Associated Press writers Madlen Read and Tim Paradis in New York and Ben Feller in Washington contributed to this report.

No Deal Reached Yet to Decide Lehman's Fate

2008-09-14T10:29:00.004+08:00

By CARRICK MOLLENKAMP, DEBORAH SOLOMON, AARON LUCCHETTI, SERENA NG and SUSANNE CRAIG

The outlines of plans to determine the fate of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. emerged today even as it became increasingly clear that a clean sale of the entire firm to a big bank would be too difficult to execute.

A sense of optimism that a rescue could be arranged today dimmed as a growing sense of gloom descended on Wall Street. Executives from top banks in the U.S. and Europe huddled with federal regulators in an attempt to come up with plans to either buy pieces of Lehman or prepare for an orderly winding down of the firm in a manner that would minimize the collateral damage for the ailing global financial system.

After 6 p.m., the formal meeting ended for the day with no resolution, though some participants stayed behind to continue talking. "Senior representatives of major financial institutions reconvened on Saturday with U.S. officials at the New York Fed. Discussions are expected to continue tomorrow," said a spokeswoman for the Federal Reserve.

At about 8 p.m., New York Fed President Timothy Geithner was still at the bank's headquarters. Officials from the New York Fed and various banks were expected to continue working through the night.

Under one plan, either Barclays PLC or Bank of America Corp. would buy Lehman's "good assets", such as its equities business, people familiar with the matter say. Lehman's more toxic, real-estate assets would be ring-fenced into a "bad" bank that would contain about $85 billion in souring assets. Other Wall Street firms would try to inject some capital into the bad bank to keep it afloat for a period of time so that a flood of bad assets don't deluge the market, damaging the value of similar assets held by other banks and insurers. The banks are also looking for the government to somehow financially backstop the bad bank.

The problem, though, is getting enough banks to back that plan. While teams of bankers are working through structures, it's clear that only a handful of banks are in a position to provide enough funding. Many banks are inclined to preserve capital ahead of third-quarter and year-end cash preservation moves. Also, banks aren't keen to see a big rival such as Barclays or Bank of America walk away with valuable assets by only paying a pittance.

As of Saturday afternoon, Barclays, the U.K.'s third-largest bank in terms of market value, appeared to have more interest in pulling off a deal for Lehman's good assets. At about 3 p.m. on Saturday, Barclays President Robert E. Diamond Jr. was seen entering the New York Fed's employee entrance on Maiden Lane, carrying a briefcase.

Bank of America, an obvious buyer, appeared to be cooling toward a deal, people familiar with the matter. Of course, some of this could be the posturing that happens in any auction. Neither Barclays nor Bank of America wants to buy all of Lehman without some government assistance, and so far the government has been reluctant to do so.

Both Bank of America and Barclays remain fixated on the disposal of the bad real estate assets, and are less focused on evaluating Lehman's investment bank, said one person involved in the due diligence process. Things were moving so quickly Saturday that there was little time to do extensive employee interviewing that typically happens in company auctions. "It's all triage," said this person.

The real fear in the discussions, this person added, was that the fire-sale prices, or "marks" of Lehman's real estate book could set off a cascade of problems for other Wall Street firms. If those marks were made against other banks' portfolios, it could eventually force those firms to raise more capital, too. For firms' considering funding the bad bank, the calculation has thus become the price of that contribution against the price of a widescale markdown.

There could be further effects to such an event, with the banks calling in loans from hedge funds and other clients, in turn setting off more forced selling that further depresses asset and securities prices.

"Unless something is settled, it's going to be a bloodbath Monday," said this person.

In a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in lower Manhattan, some participants also were discussing insurer American International Group Inc. and thrift-holding company Washington Mutual Inc. While those two financial firms aren't the focus of the emergency meeting, participants also are weighing the potential implications of their problems.

One person leaving the building said at least 100 people were gathered inside trying to settle the fate of Lehman, which has been staggered by its exposure to soured real-estate-related assets. By 5:15 pm, some Wall Street executives started to leave the New York Fed one at a time, getting in their cars inside a garage so they can't have their photos snapped.

Outside the Fed's downtown headquarters, a fleet of black towncars waited for bankers who were inside. At one point, the towncars blocked the narrow streets around the building, causing a traffic jam that had to be broken up by the Fed's uniformed guards. Meanwhile, bankers and Fed staffers milled around outside, smoking cigarettes and talking on their cell phones about subjects like counterparty risk.

"Everybody is hoping there will be a Wall Street solution to deal with Lehman's toxic assets," said one senior executive at a major bank. "It is a cheaper alternative than having everything unravel."

With it unclear whether the gap between the federal government and potential buyers can be bridged, a second group at the New York Fed is focusing on the possibility that there might be no alternative to liquidating Lehman and winding down its operations in an orderly fashion.

On Saturday afternoon, the credit-trading heads of major investment banks gathered at the meeting to discuss how to deal with their exposures to Lehman in the intertwined credit-default-swap market. The lack of a central clearinghouse in this market means that dealers, hedge funds and others are directly facing each other in insurance-like contracts that are tied to trillions of dollars in debt instruments.

Credit derivative traders at some firms were asked to come to work over the weekend to help quantify their exposures to Lehman and compile lists of outstanding contracts they have with the investment bank.

One person familiar with the matter said large dealers contemplated showing each other all of their credit default swap trades with Lehman. Disclosing their positions may enable dealers to find ways to offset their positions with each other wherever possible. Later in the day, some traders were told that Lehman -- with the help of Federal Reserve officials -- will try to figure out which of its counterparties have CDS trades that can be offset. Those counterparties would be informed of the offsetting positions, following which they can unwind their respective swaps with Lehman and concurrently enter into new swap contracts with each other. For example, if one dealer has bought a swap from Lehman and Lehman sold a similar swap to another bank, the two banks could agree to face each other directly.

Such moves could help prevent individual firms from scrambling to find new counterparties to rehedge their positions with when the markets reopen on Monday, potentially unleashing turmoil across the credit markets. They could also help facilitate an orderly wind-down of Lehman's derivative positions, if that becomes necessary. Still, sorting out the firm's CDS positions promises to be a difficult and time-consuming task, because many of the contracts have different terms and maturity dates.

It is not known how much in CDS contracts Lehman has. In a survey last year by Fitch Ratings, Lehman was listed among the 10 largest CDS counterparties by number of trades and the amount of debt to which the contracts were tied.

Wall Street traders poured into their offices Saturday for emergency meetings to consider the actions they would take if Lehman is forced into liquidation. They broke into teams to evaluate their positions and exposure to Lehman in everything from energy trades to equity derivatives to credit,

One trader said conditions in the credit default swap market and the short-term repo markets are more stable today than they were in March, when Bear Stearns nearly collapsed, but still, "if they go into liquidation," it is going to be a bad situation on Monday.

A disorderly unwind of Lehman's derivatives trades is only one worry. Another worry is that if Lehman collapses, its distressed assets -- such as commercial real estate -- could suddenly hit Wall Street for sale, forcing prices even lower and potentially forcing other dealers to mark down once again the value of their own holdings.

Lehman has hired law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP to prepare a potential bankruptcy filing, according to a person familiar with the situation. The New York-based Weil has a leading bankruptcy practice and advised Drexel Burnham Lambert on its 1990 bankruptcy filing.

In a Lehman bankruptcy, the firm's brokerage units would have to enter a Chapter 7 liquidation, in which a court-appointed trustee would take over, liquidate the firm's assets and get Lehman customers back their money. In general, securities that a customer holds at a brokerage firm are legally the investor's property and aren't exposed to the claims of the firm's creditors.

In trying to hold firm to their no-bailout stance even while pressing for a deal, federal officials could try to pit Bank of America and Barclays against each other. But that leverage can work only if both banks stay in the discussions.

Bank of America and Barclays know each other very well, having considered a merger several years ago. More recently, Bank of America agreed to pay $21 billion for ABN Amro Holding NV's LaSalle Bank of Chicago in 2007. That deal came at a time when Barclays was trying to buy ABN and fend off a European consortium bid. Bank of America's purchase was seen at the time as helping that Barclays bid, which ultimately failed.

At Barclays, a big question will be whether CEO John Varley and his No. 2, Mr. Diamond, both agree on buying all or part of Lehman. Mr. Diamond is eager to expand Barclays's U.S. investment bank operations. But the unit, called Barclays Capital, is also responsible for write-downs the bank has recorded.

After 5 p.m., bank executives began leaving the meeting, some getting into cars inside a garage where they couldn't be photographed. Those seen leaving included Merrill Lynch & Co. Chairman and Executive John Thain and Citigroup Inc. CEO Vikram Pandit. Bank of New York Mellon Corp. Chairman and CEO Robert Kelly declined to comment.

While some executives had left the Fed meeting, those of other firms, including three carfuls of Barclays executives, remained at the Fed office past 6 p.m.

At least 20 New York Fed staffers left from another exit. They refused to say if they were done for the night.

How J.P. Morgan steered clear of the credit crunch

2008-09-03T00:17:00.003+08:00

By Shawn Tully, Sept 15 issue of Fortune

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- It was the second week of October 2006. William King, then J.P. Morgan's chief of securitized products, was vacationing in Rwanda. One evening CEO Jamie Dimon tracked him down to fire a red alert. "Billy, I really want you to watch out for subprime!" Dimon's voice crackled over King's hotel phone. "We need to sell a lot of our positions. I've seen it before. This stuff could go up in smoke!"

That call marked the beginning of a remarkable strategic shift that helped J.P. Morgan (JPM, Fortune 500) sidestep the worst of a historic credit crisis. J.P. Morgan mostly exited the business of securitizing subprime mortgages when it was booming. With the notable exception of Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500), J.P. Morgan's main competitors - including Citigroup (C, Fortune 500), UBS (UBS), and Merrill Lynch (MER, Fortune 500) - ignored the danger signs and piled into those products in a feeding frenzy. (This is an excerpt from a story that ran in the Sept. 15 issue of Fortune. For more on Dimon and the team of talented lieutenants who helped J.P. Morgan dodge the credit crisis, read the full story)

Make no mistake: J.P. Morgan is also suffering from the credit crunch. While it largely dodged the subprime bullet, J.P. Morgan stumbled in two other areas: funding dubious deals in the LBO frenzy and jumping into the jumbo mortgage market when other banks were getting out. The third quarter is already looking tough. The company has announced that it is taking $1.5 billion in mortgage and leveraged-loan write-downs, and another $600 million to account for the decline in the value of its Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac preferred stock.

Still, J.P. Morgan is weathering the crisis far better than its rivals. From July 2007, when the cyclone began, through the second quarter of this year, J.P. Morgan took just $5 billion in losses on high-risk CDOs and leveraged loans, compared with $33 billion at Citi, $26 billion at Merrill Lynch, and $9 billion at Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500). And in this market, losing less means winning big. Before the crisis J.P. Morgan was a middle-of-the-pack performer; today it leads in nearly every category, starting with its stock. Since early 2007, its share price has dropped 24%, to $37 (as of Aug. 27), vs. declines of 44% for Bank of America and 68% for Citigroup. Last year its market cap was far below those of Citi and BofA. Today J.P. Morgan stands in a virtual tie with BofA for first place among U.S. banks, and it towers over Citi.

That is largely thanks to J.P. Morgan's decision to shun subprime CDOs - vehicles that sell bonds backed by pools of subprime mortgage-backed securities. J.P. Morgan has long ranked among the biggest buyers of auto and credit card loans, which it turned into asset-backed securities. But even in 2005, J.P. Morgan remained a small player in the hottest business on Wall Street, securitizing mortgages. Dimon wanted to build a far bigger franchise, chiefly by securitizing the loans made by the bank itself through its Chase Home Lending division. By 2006, J.P. Morgan was growing substantially in securitizing mortgages and dabbling in subprime CDOs, a business that was generating billions in fees for other Wall Street firms.

But Dimon soon began to see reasons to pull back. One red flag came from the mortgage servicing business, the branch that sends out statements, handles escrow, and collects payments on $800 billion in home loans, its own and others'. During a regular monthly business review for the retail bank in October 2006, the chief of servicing said that late payments on subprime loans were rising at an alarming rate. The data showed that loans originated by competitors like First Franklin and American Home were performing three times worse than J.P. Morgan's subprime mortgages. "We concluded that underwriting standards were deteriorating across the industry," says Dimon.

Steve Black and Bill Winters, co-heads of the investment bank, were discovering more reasons to be cautious. CDOs issue a range of bonds, from supposedly safe AAA-rated ones with relatively low yields to lower-rated ones with higher yields. Winters and Black saw that hedge funds, insurance companies, and other customers were clamoring for the high-yielding CDO paper and were less interested in the other stuff. That meant banks like Merrill and Citi were forced to hold billions of dollars of the AAA paper on their books. What's wrong with that? Doesn't an AAA rating mean the securities are safe? Not necessarily.

In 2006, AAA-rated CDO bonds yielded only two percentage points more than supersafe Treasury bills. So the market seemed to be saying that the bonds were solid. But Black and Winters concluded otherwise. Their yardstick was credit default swaps - insurance against bond failures. By late 2006 the cost of default swaps on subprime CDOs had jumped sharply. Winters and Black saw that once they bought credit default swaps to hedge the AAA CDO paper J.P. Morgan would have to hold, the fees from creating CDOs would vanish. "We saw no profit, and lots of risk, in holding subprime paper on our balance sheet," says Winters. The combined weight of that data triggered Dimon's call to King in Africa. "It was Jamie who saw all the pieces," says Winters.

In late 2006, J.P. Morgan started slashing its holdings of subprime debt. It sold more than $12 billion in subprime mortgages that it had originated. Its trading desks dumped the loans on their books and mostly stopped making markets in subprime paper for customers. J.P. Morgan's corporate treasury under Ina Drew even starting hedging, betting that credit spreads would widen. Over the next year those hedges reportedly yielded gains of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Dimon's stance was radical: He was skirting the biggest growth business on Wall Street. J.P. Morgan sank from third to sixth in fixed-income underwriting from 2005 to 2007, and the main reason was its refusal to play in subprime CDOs, which its rivals were gorging on. "We'd get the quarterly reports from our competitors and see that they'd added $100 billion to their balance sheets," says Dimon. "And they were hardly adding any capital, so it looked like their investments were almost risk-free." But in the end, of course, the decision to shun subprime made Dimon a hero.

Summer Olympics - Beijing 2008

2008-08-17T21:54:00.004+08:00

Hottest news so far...

1. Michael Phelps after all did win 8th gold medal at a single Olympics from the pool with slightest of a margin -- his 100m butterfly event was only 1/100 of a second ahead of Milorad Cavic of Serbia.

2. Usain Bolt of Jamaica is indeed running like a lightning bolt in the 100m men sprint event with a world record time of 9.69 second. The final showdown between Bolt, Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay did not materialize after Gay failed to qualify for the final. Powell finished the event in the 5th place.

3. Roger Federer of Switzerland did win the gold medal from Beijing -- not from the men single but from the double event in which he teamed up with Stanislas Wawrinka to beat Sweden pair of Simon Aspelin and Thomas Johansson in the men tennis double final.

4. Rafael Nadal of Spain celebrates his world no.1 status with an emphatic win over Chilean Fernando Gonzalez in the final of men tennis to win the gold medal.

5. Can China win the overall title from United States of America? China is still leading in the gold medal haul but USA is closing the gap fast with Olympics is only less than a week to go.

Difference between Hedge Fund & Private Equity

2008-07-29T12:36:00.006+08:00

By Matthew Lynn

What's the difference between a hedge fund and a private-equity fund?

Easy. One speculates in bonds, stocks, currencies and commodities, using leverage and derivatives, while the other uses its own capital and borrowed money to buy companies, improve them, and then sell them on.

Well, not so fast. The evidence suggests that hedge funds and private-equity funds, the two hottest growth sectors of the financial universe for the past five years, are converging.

What seems to be emerging is a new type of alternative investment fund that shrugs aside traditional ideas of risk and seeks the highest returns any way it can.

Last week at a conference in Frankfurt, David Rubenstein, a co-founder of Carlyle Group, the world's third-biggest buyout firm, said private-equity and hedge funds may eventually converge. "Funds may be created that have the combined characteristics of private equity and hedge funds," Rubenstein said.

Carlyle, based in Washington, estimates that there are 9,000 hedge funds with investments worth about $1 trillion, while 3,000 private-equity funds have $150 billion in assets worldwide.

There is certainly no shortage of evidence of the two types of fund treading on each other's turf.

First, Carlyle itself has just announced plans to launch two hedge funds later this year. And New York-based Blackstone Group LP, which manages the world's biggest buyout fund, has already set up a hedge-fund unit, which oversees about $9 billion in assets. Meanwhile, Carl Icahn, a legendary Wall Street raider, is launching his own hedge fund.

$3.25 Billion Offer

Next, hedge funds are now acting more like buyout firms.

For example, Circuit City Stores Inc., the No. 2 electronics retailer, last month received a $3.25 billion takeover offer from Boston-based Highfields Capital Management LP, which manages hedge funds. Likewise, Beverly Enterprises Inc., a nursing-home chain, last month rejected a bid worth $1.41 billion from an investor group that included hedge fund Appaloosa Management LP.

Buying out whole companies because you think they are undervalued? That's the kind of work that used to be done by private-equity firms.

So how real is the convergence story?

Traditionally, hedge funds and private-equity firms have been seen as deadly rivals. They compete in two main ways.

They joust for talent. Any bright 20-something in the financial markets who wants to make a lot of money quickly (and that covers maybe 99 percent of them) faces a simple choice: work in hedge funds or in private equity. One of the tasks for both industries is to bring those people with their ideas on board.

'Alternative Investments'

And they compete for money. Most mainstream investors put the bulk of their capital into equities and bonds. They have a small amount allocated to a box marked "alternative investments" for which they are willing to accept higher risk for bigger returns. Both the hedge-fund and private-equity managers are chasing that same pool of footloose capital.

Yet the rivalry is rather like one of those fiercely contested local derbies between football teams from the same town. The competition is intense precisely because they are, in reality, playing on the same turf.

The two types of fund are now morphing into one another. Both have always, at root, been about the same thing: using financial engineering intelligently in the hope of generating returns higher than anything available from mainstream investments. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. The plan is much the same.

20 Percent Fees

In time, hedge funds and private-equity firms may end up being the same thing. Some already are. Last month, the Financial Times reported that New York-based private-equity firm AEA Investors LLC plans to merge with Aetos Capital LLC, a real-estate and hedge-fund firm.

One of the key features of hedge funds is that they don't accept any artificial boundaries on their investments. If they see a profit, they pursue it. A hedge fund won't stop and say, "No, we can't do this because, even though it might make us some big bucks, that's not what hedge funds do." That would go against all their best instincts.

Meanwhile, for the private-equity guys, a hedge fund has a more flexible financial structure and more freedom in the kind of investments it makes. And it generates higher fees, which are typically 20 percent of any gains made. (Not that the private- equity firms were ever slouches at paying themselves.)

Three Trends

That's why we should expect to see three trends in the year ahead: more mergers between hedge and private-equity funds; more private-equity firms launching hedge funds; and more hedge funds acting like buyout funds. The result? A new breed of alternative investment, probably with the structure of a hedge fund, yet looks more like a buyout fund.

What's the risk profile of Mega-Hedge-Buyouts LLP? Don't even ask. No doubt, some regulators are already chewing their fingernails at the thought of the havoc that might be wreaked if one of them goes wrong.

Still, it will be a fun outfit to work for. And along the way a lot of smart people will make a lot of money.

Hoping for a Soul Mate

2008-07-23T15:23:00.001+08:00

By Steve Watters

“Nothing has produced more unhappiness than the concept of a soul mate.”

That’s the opinion of Atlanta psychiatrist Frank Pittman in the March 2004 issue of Psychology Today. For the article “Great Expectations,” Polly Shulman interviewed Pittman and several other marriage experts who are concerned that the growing expectation for a perfect match is frustrating singles needlessly and threatening their chances of a satisfying marriage.

If you’re still single, do you think that when you marry, your spouse should be your soul mate first and foremost? And if so, do you believe there is a soul mate out there somewhere waiting for you? If you said yes to these questions, then you’re among the majority of never married twentysomethings in America today. When the National Marriage Project asked those questions, 94 percent said yes to the first question and 88 percent said yes to the second.

David Popenoe is the co-director of the National Marriage Project. He worries that today’s young adults may be “reaching even higher in their expectations for marriage.” He points out that the idea of a soul mate isn’t exactly new, but that “the centuries-old ideal of friendship in marriage, or what sociologists call companionate marriage, may be evolving into a more exalted and demanding standard of a spiritualized union of souls” (National Marriage Project, http://marriage.rutgers.edu/Publications/SOOU/TEXTSOOU2001.htm).

In her Psychology Today article, Shulman describes what singles are looking for in a soul mate as “the man or woman who will counter our weaknesses, amplify our strengths and provide the unflagging support and respect that is the essence of a contemporary relationship.”

That’s definitely what I was hoping for. I grew up convinced there was a soul mate out there for me. In fact, I filled journal after journal imagining such a person. Here’s one short piece I wrote lamenting my endless search for my other half:

I hoped for years for perfection.
In silent thoughts I auditioned thousands.
Reading the part for “mate,”
They danced but stumbled,
They sang but mumbled.
They stole my heart, but broke it in the last act.
And I scored them; with my “perfect” pen I scored them.
But I left the auditions lonely,
Sadly aware perfection is only
Made of hope and dream stuff.

The problem was, I had an undefined longing. I wanted someone to complete me, but I didn’t know how much I could ask for. I was like an eight year old at a buffet dying to just pull up a chair, fork in hand and help myself — but suspecting that might not be quite right.

Every time a relationship didn’t work out, I went back to my journal and asked the classic questions: Is there one person out there just for me? Can someone know and love the real me?

In graduate school, I met someone who seemed to answer those questions like never before. As I spent time with a girl named Candice, something clicked. The conversation poured out, flowing endlessly. I could feel my heart in my throat as we talked about things that really mattered to me and I actually got the response I longed for.

Sitting across the table from each other at the First Colony coffee bar in Norfolk, Virginia we dreamed about changing the world together. We talked about generational issues, postmodernism, writing, editing, music and everything we could think of. We saw our talents and interests fitting together in such a way that they seemed to make us more than the sum of our two puzzle pieces. I wanted to be with her all the time. She was attractive, fun and wonderful to do life with.

Despite the incredible connection that grew quickly between us, however, I wasn’t sure about something. “Is she really my soul mate?” I wondered. If she was my soul mate, why did I still find myself looking out of the corner of my eye at other classmates?

In her article, Shulman warns that because few partnerships can live up to the soul mate ideal, “the result is a commitment limbo, in which we care deeply for our partner but keep one stealthy foot out the door of our hearts.”

Reading Shulman, I was relieved to realize I wasn’t the only guy who ever felt that way. It’s embarrassing to admit it now, but at the point in which I finally connected with someone at a soul mate level, I still felt tempted to hold out just in case there was someone a little prettier, a little more exciting, a little more crazy about me.

Female readers may be thinking, “Why are guys like that? Why do they have an appetite for someone better than they could ever deserve?” I think it often comes down to this: Guys (and many girls for that matter) have a hard time sorting out an internal longing for someone with whom they can deeply connect from cultural expectations that often border on fantasy.

Fortunately, before my confusion steered me away from my best shot at a soul mate, a couple with some wisdom came along. The Morkens, one of my professors and his wife, took time to mentor Candice and I. Spending time with them, I began to recognize where my expectations had been distorted.

They assured me that it’s natural to want a deep connection with someone of the opposite sex. That it’s a longing that goes back to the garden. Ever since man had something taken out of him to form woman, it has been natural for him to seek out a woman with whom he can become one flesh. Despite decades of cultural messages downplaying differences between men and women, there are still God-designed distinctions that fit us together like puzzle pieces into one flesh. Furthermore, God gives us unique gifts and callings that make us more suited for some partners than others.

But the Morkens helped me to see how those natural desires for a meaningful connection were clouded by cultural expectations of beauty, excitement and self-actualization.

The Morkens talked about how magazines, TV, movies and music cause us to overvalue external beauty and to look beyond the real people in our lives. Because of careful editing, airbrushing and cosmetic efforts, we actually start to believe there are people out there with no faults or blemishes — that ultimate exterior beauty is not only possible, but the most important element in our desire for a soul mate.

The people we draw close to end up facing an impossible standard and are left hoping they can either make the cut or that some day someone will have grace for their imperfections. I needed to be reminded that my soul mate would, after all, be a real person — that she, just like me, would want to be loved despite imperfections.

The Morkens also reminded me that even a soul mate would not always be exciting. The reality of marriage, they explained, is emotional slow down, inevitable conflicts, painful sacrifice and lots of mundane activities like paying bills, cleaning up after kids and helping each other through sickness.

The other key reminder my mentors gave was that it wasn’t all about me — that my hope for someone to help me self-actualize (achieve my full potential) was grossly one-sided. While I was looking for a soul mate that could identify and meet all my needs, I was ill prepared to love my wife “just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25). Christ, after all, was the only one capable of meeting my deepest needs. Instead of looking for that fulfillment from a woman, Christ was calling me to accept His love and then pour it out on the person He had led me to.

The best thing the Morkens did was help me see what I had in Candice despite my warped vision of a soul mate. Without being distracted by cultural expectations of perfection, endless excitement and self-actualization, I learned to appreciate the real joy of the connection I had with Candice. I could enjoy her beauty inside and out and see all the things that made us practically and spiritually compatible — or as the Morkens put it, “one of the best matches there ever was.”

Just before I proposed to Candice, I wrote her a poem called “Love Feast.” In it I described how my appetite for a deep meaningful connection in marriage had been ruined by the “fast food” of cultural soul mate expectations. It’s my hope that at least one guy out there reading this (even if it’s at the request of his girlfriend) will take a closer look at his desires for a soul mate so that he can see more clearly what he already has. Like I found, he may see that the lure of fast food can keep us from enjoying the truly gourmet.

I used to feast on simple fare
Tame, light spice … just heavy garnish.
Often I’d add a cup of sugar
But it seldom covered the bitter aftertaste.
It was hard to break old patterns,
Harder still to try new things.
But you were persistent and confident
Baby steps, baby bites and sips.
“Try this,” you offered often —
A great chef with the patience of Job.
“Too hot,” I’d say, “too spicy” I’d add
As I kept one eye open for a fast and easy meal.

But then the old became bland
While you served up freshness — alive with flavor.
Sweet but not sticky, bold but not bitter.
Fulfilling my appetite, you restored my strength.
Now the appetizers have led to the feast,
Where you’ve prepared an overflowing table before me
Flavors I never expected — aromas that overwhelm
And I long to sit at your table all the days of my life.

Believing in the Dream of Marriage

2008-07-23T01:00:00.003+08:00

By Kara Schwab

When I was about 10 years old, I used to dream about being married. I had it all figured out. I would get married when I turned 24. I would have four children — two boys, two girls. Of course, some days, that number would change, depending on the scientific experiment I used to look into the future. For instance, every time I ate an apple, I’d count how many times I could twist the stem around before it broke off. Whatever number I counted to would equal the number of children I’d have. Sure I got a little nervous on the days when I counted to, say 15 or 16 ... but I had faith that it would all work out.

Of course, I also dreamed my husband would sweep me off my feet. (And I’m talking he would physically lift me off the ground and twirl me around on a daily basis, because he would be so manly and burly and strong.) We would sing songs by the fireplace every night after dinner — after we ate our chocolate cake — and then dance and dance and dance ourselves silly. This would happen every night until we both went to heaven.

When I was young I knew this would happen, just like I dreamed. It doesn’t hurt to dream, right?

Oh, the confidence of our youth
By age 23, I finally had my first serious boyfriend. He loved God, and liked me a lot. But after several months of dating, I noticed that his head seemed a little small for his body. This realization kept me up at night. I also discerned that his fingernails were a bit too long — even when he cut them — and that disturbed me. Not to mention, he was skinny, so I was pretty sure he couldn’t lift me up, let alone swing me around.

Needless to say, when I turned 24, I wasn’t married. I wasn’t even dating. I didn’t panic though. Per my agenda, I had a whole year to figure things out. But then suddenly, I turned 25. You might say I began to panic. Just ever so slightly.

By this time, I had already been a bridesmaid in approximately 143 weddings — or at least it seemed like that many. These were weddings of friends and classmates from my small Christian college who met their future mates within the first six minutes of freshmen orientation. Was I in the bathroom or something? Because I totally missed that window.

And then I turned 26. Gulp, then 27. And I started to wonder, did God forget about me? I started consuming several pints of ice cream on a weekly basis. Then I remembered something one of my professors said during a class discussion about love. He told us about a woman he met in college. He described her as amazing — exactly what he was looking for. They dated for a while and his love for her grew. He thought she was the perfect woman for him. Then she dumped him. His friends told him not to worry — that God had someone better for him. But he said he was struck with the thought, deep in his heart, that perhaps God had “someone” better for him to be.

There I was, 27 years old, wondering was I the “best” I could be? So, I started to pray. I prayed like never before, that the Lord would prepare my heart for marriage and mold me more fully to His image. Months passed. More pints of ice cream were consumed. And I began to question what really was the will of God for my life regarding marriage. Did He want me to be married? Was this just my hopeful longing — or something He truly desired for me? So I prayed earnestly that He would give me the desires of my heart — not make what I desired magically happen — but that He would place in my heart the very desires He wanted me to have. I prayed that if my dream to be married wasn’t His will for me, He would take that desire away.

Trusting God for your future spouse
Well, the desire to be married did not go away. I decided to choose to find completeness in Christ as a single person. I say “choose” because I knew that for me, this would have to be a decision of the will — at least initially. But, at the same time, I also decided to trust God that someday, I would get married. I began to feel peace as a single person. Yes, I wanted to be married. I even felt ready to be married. But I hadn’t bought a pint of ice cream in months. I was enjoying my current life and felt amazing trust in God’s timing.

I decided to use that time in my life to prepare for marriage. I prayed tirelessly for my future husband, for God to make him ready. I read books on marriage. I sought out married couples I admired and asked them a million questions about marriage: What did they love most about it? What did they find most difficult? What advice could they give me to prepare for it?

I realize this way of thinking is slightly counter cultural. It’s common to hear, “Just be happy. If you’re not married, maybe it’s not meant to be. Get on with your life.” But as a Christian, if you feel called to marriage — if you truly believe God Himself has placed the desire in your heart to be married, then why not actively prepare for it? Why not trust Him that it will happen?

It happened to me. When I turned 28, I met a man and we fell in love. He wasn’t perfect (although his head was a perfect size), and months and months and many, many more months later, he eventually discovered I wasn’t perfect either … but through time spent together and much prayer, we realized we were perfect for each other. We were married shortly after I turned 30. God answered my prayers. It wasn’t the timetable I envisioned as a young girl, but it was the right timing.

Whether married or single, living for Christ is the goal
Marriage should not be the ultimate goal of the Christian life. I do feel blessed that I’m married and experiencing unconditional love from a man. And honestly, I can even appreciate the struggles that cause intense growth … on a good day, anyway. But we're not going to stand before Christ someday as Mrs. or Mr. So and So. We’re going to stand before Him alone. And we’ll be accountable for the kind of person we are here on earth, whether single or married.

If you are single, you’re not of lesser value as a person. God's plan will take each of us down different paths, paths to be celebrated. The key is to submit your will to the Lord’s, because living a life that is glorifying to God isn’t about getting what you want. It’s about conforming to what God wants. And that’s where praying — and I mean really praying — about and discerning God’s will for your life regarding marriage becomes critical. If you do feel called to marriage, shouldn’t we see God as big enough to make it happen? It may not be your timetable, but if He put that desire in your heart, is He not worthy of your trust?

Of course, not everyone is called to marriage. I have the utmost admiration for my single friends who are able to minister to others to an extent that wouldn’t be possible if they were married. I consider them heroes in the body of Christ. And not every single person who wants to be married feels unsatisfied or lonely. But the truth is, many do.

To these individuals I say, be encouraged — God has not forgotten about you. “[He] is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). Pray that God would be the Author of your dreams. If you believe God has called you to marriage, hold fast to that dream. “God sets the lonely in families (Psalm 68:6a). Use this time now to prepare yourself for marriage. Pray for God to make you — and your spouse-to-be — ready. You can trust God for your future. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:5-6).

And remember, you can find peace and joy in Christ right now knowing that you are — and will always be — His bride.

With E2 the Whole Day

2008-07-13T23:49:00.001+08:00

Today, went to pick up E2 at her house.

Initially, we went to Purple Cane Restaurant at Petaling Street but it was crowded at that time. Decided to go Bangsar area instead and ended up at La Bodega Lounge on E2's suggestion.

We had a good chat over various of topics. E2 was pretty. She has a beautiful hairdo, cutting short now. Can't take my eyes off her.

Later that night, we went to a live band performance. The vocal of the singers were fantastic and we had a great time enjoying their performance.

I will always remember this day. :)

Roger Federer post Wimbledon - What's next?

2008-07-08T18:11:00.002+08:00

Well, Roger Federer may have lost the 2008 Wimbledon final to Rafael Nadal but make no mistakes, that was by the slightest of margin. This tells us that Federer is still the man to beat in the upcoming Beijing Olympics which for the past years, many professional players had shunned it -- so that they have more time to prepare the U.S. Open, normally held after the Olympics.

Not this time.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have both confirmed their participation in the Beijing Olympics, which is a major boost for the organizer. Federer has a bit of advantages on the hard court surface judging from past history. But the gap is closing fast now by the way Nadal adjusted his game to the fastest court on Grand Slams tournament in grass court at Wimbledon. Beijing Olympics will use the same type of hard court surface like in U.S. Open called DecoTurf which tends to bounce faster and lower than any other hard court surface. This gives Federer the edge over Nadal. Besides, Nadal has yet to prove he has what it takes to be a major force to be reckoned with on the hard court. Not yet at this moment. He has some points to prove. Certainly not Federer to prove.

Roger Federer is a wounded tiger now. He is licking his wound at this very moment and will ponder his revenge over Nadal in the upcoming Olympics and U.S. Open. Federer certainly play better when he can come to the terms that he is no longer the world No.1 tennis player at this moment, no matter what the ATP ranking tells you. Ok, maybe he is still the world No.1 tennis player, but he is certainly not when playing against Nadal. He needs to adjust his game when facing Nadal just like Nadal adjusted his game on the grass court. Simply, Federer cannot play like he tends to play against other tennis players other than Nadal. Nadal's game is based on his physical approach to the game. His powerful ground strokes with heavy topspin is his weapon. Federer has to do more and perhaps do something differently than exchanging topspin ground strokes with Nadal. Federer has to admit that he is worse than Nadal in this department. Pride and ego will not save the day for Roger Federer.

Perhaps, Roger Federer should use more slice and underspin than topspin with Nadal when dealing with Nadal service game. Then, with his ever reliable service aces, or the usual one-two punch of serving out-wide first, then kill the ball with the short return from Nadal. This has to be his weapon against Nadal. Maybe he also has to mix up his choice of shots a little bit like playing serve and volley more to put Nadal off his comfort zone at the baseline.

The only real problem Federer has now when facing Nadal is his self-belief and confidence. It's the mental fortitude. Not his skills. His inferiority complex kinda creeping in at crucial stages in the game like dealing with breakpoints over his opponent. Just look at the stats of breakpoints conversion ratio at the Wimbledon final -- 1 out of 13 breakpoints won. This is not a good sign for a champion like him. When was the last time we see Roger Federer plays with such gloomy look on his face? Perhaps, in the French Open finals and the last concluded Wimbledon final. So, where is the Roger Federer brimming with confident-look on his face when he defeated Andy Roddick with such grace and elegant shots in the Wimbledon finals three to four years back?

Time will tell.

Nadal has improved virtually every aspect of his game‏

2008-07-08T16:35:00.001+08:00

By Greg Garber, ESPN.com

WIMBLEDON, England -- Toni Nadal, trudging up the steps from the players' locker room, forced a smile and extended his hand. Twilight was gathering outside at the All England Club and silver stubble was creeping through his weather-beaten face.

After a lengthy rain delay on Wednesday, his nephew and protégé (since the age of four) had utterly embarrassed the remaining British hope, Andy Murray. While Murray seemed baffled -- he called Rafael Nadal's forehand "ridiculous" -- Uncle Toni was wearily but thoroughly happy.

Rafa first came to Wimbledon in 2002 and made it all the way to the semifinals of the junior tournament. A year later, he reached the third round of the main draw at the age of 17. In the intervening five years, he has become the second-best grass-court player in the professional game.

The straight-sets match against Murray, accomplished in less than two hours, was his best grass match ever, Rafa acknowledged.

"Many people say, 'Rafael, his grass game has problems,'" Toni said. "They don't remember he is only 22 years old. Is normal to improve still at this age.

"Give him time."

On Sunday, many here have come to believe, that time will arrive. There is a growing sentiment that Rafael Nadal will end Roger Federer's run of consecutive Wimbledon titles at five.

"Can Nadal beat Federer?" said U.S. Davis Cup captain Patrick McEnroe, laughing. "The question is can Federer beat him? Based on what I've seen so far, I don't think he can beat Nadal."

For a child of clay, born on the Spanish island of Mallorca, grass is a truly foreign surface. While the bounces on clay are generally generous and uniform, the ball skids on grass and stays low. Power is rewarded far more often on grass than on clay. Nadal's prototypical clay-court game -- based on consistent power, defense and attrition -- doesn't necessarily play well on grass.

Just as Federer has struggled to adapt his game to clay -- he's lost to Nadal the past four years at Roland Garros, the past three in the final -- Nadal hasn't quite been able to close the gap on Federer's favored surface, losing in the Wimbledon final the past two years.

Much was made of Federer's desire to beat Nadal in Paris, his passion to prove he is the master of all surfaces. But when Federer won just four games in the final, you got the impression that Nadal, if he's healthy, will never lose a final there to the Swiss No. 1. For the record, he has won 115 of his past 117 matches on clay.

Contrast that with last year's Wimbledon final, when Nadal very nearly beat Federer, losing 7-6 (7), 4-6, 7-6 (3), 2-6, 6-2.

When Nadal won the Wimbledon warm-up tournament, The Artois Championships at Queen's Club, it was the first time in 36 years that a Spanish player won a grass-court tournament. It has been 42 years since Manuel Santana won here at Wimbledon.

"Unlike other Spanish players, he has always believed he can win at Wimbledon," Santana told the Times of London.

Watching Nadal, Santana said, "is like turning on an electric light."

Said John McEnroe, a BBC commentator, "A couple of years ago everybody was asking whether he could transition to winning here on grass. He's come here and improved virtually every aspect of his game -- his serve, court positioning, his backhand and his forehand."

As a left-hander, Nadal enjoys a distinct advantage over his right-handed peers. Everything comes at you from an unaccustomed angle, which only makes Nadal's shots even more effective.

If Nadal's game is passive-aggressive on clay, it has evolved into aggressive-aggressive on grass.

Nadal has grown perceptibly stronger over the past several years, to the point that his biceps have become back-page news among the London tabloids. The muscle manifests itself in raw power. After he was vanquished, Murray called Nadal's ball the heaviest in tennis.

"Yup," Murray said. "He just swings his arm so hard at the ball. When you watch Federer play it looks like he's sort of effortless power. When you see Nadal, how fast he moves the racket through the air, and the amount of spin and speed he generates -- his forehand is the heaviest shot in tennis.

"The ball kind of jumps at a tough angle. It's hard to step into the court and just go for it."

Murray probably doesn't know it, but there is scientific evidence to back this up. Recently, the International Tennis Federation commissioned a study to learn how many times a tennis ball spins on average. While most groundstrokes register in the vicinity of 2,500 rotations, Nadal's ball checks in between 4,000 and 5,000.

On clay, where Nadal's power is blunted, he is content to loop the ball more and outlast opponents. On grass, he has learned to flatten out his shots, and the result is a skidding, deeper ball.

"He's taking the ball early," said Murray. "He's hitting it lower over the net, and playing aggressive from the very first shot, which I don't think he did necessarily in the past."

More depth on groundstrokes means it's easier to play defense. At Roland Garros, Nadal typically plays three feet to six feet behind the baseline. At Wimbledon, Hawk-Eye technology reveals that Nadal has crept to within a foot of the baseline, and as many as one-fourth of his shots are hit from inside it.

"That is the most important thing," said his uncle Toni. "Court position. Before, because he always practiced on clay courts, he was comfortable way behind the baseline. Now, he …"

Coach Nadal, struggling for an English explanation, took the writer's pen and drew two diagrams. On clay, it was two arrows, pointing left and right, parallel to and behind the baseline, representing Rafa's defensive track. At Wimbledon, Toni said, the vectors form a "V" at the baseline and indicate Rafa's forward movement.

The biggest area of improvement for Nadal has come on his serve.

In 2003, the average speed of his first serve was a paltry 99 mph, according to IBM statistics. From '05 to '07, he kicked it up to 104 and 105 mph. Through five matches here, he's crushing the ball, averaging 115 mph. Against Murray, his serve brought him all kinds of free points.

And yet, despite the greater degree of difficulty -- and less margin for error -- Nadal's first-serve percentage is 70 -- better than any player in the semifinals, including Federer.

"At Roland Garros he's just pops it in because there's no free points on clay," observed Darren Cahill, the former coach of Andre Agassi and Lleyton Hewitt. "At Wimbledon, he's rewarded for a harder serve. He's hitting his serve harder than he used to, and he's hitting it harder here."

And Nadal isn't just throwing fastballs. He's hitting the black with off-speed stuff, too.

"On clay, 90 percent of the time, he serves it straight into the backhand," said Patrick McEnroe, an ESPN analyst. "Here, he's moving it around to all four corners of the [service] box and both sides of the body."

Nadal is actually serving and volleying, most often on big points, and occasionally, when he serves it out wide, he'll slip into the net when he sees the guy going for a slice.

In the return game, he has become bolder. On clay, he'll return from the baseline or just beyond. In the Queen's final against Novak Djokovic, Nadal usually stood between one and two feet inside the baseline.

Nadal's improved backhand slice has brought another important dimension to his game.

Only one man has managed to win both Roland Garros and Wimbledon in the same summer in the past 38 years. Nadal has a chance to join Bjorn Borg, who did it three years running, in that exclusive club.

A victory could well lead to a change in the 1-2 world order that has ruled tennis for nearly three years. A Nadal win over Federer in the final would leave Nadal with 6,055 points -- just 545 points behind Federer. It would place him in great position to catch Federer as the year unfolds.

If Nadal can break through, Wimbledon would no longer be the exclusive game reserve for Federer. It would set into motion an intriguing swing of the pendulum, for Nadal is just entering the period when great players win the bulk of their Grand Slams -- the sweet spot, if you will.

Federer won 10 of his 12 Grand Slam singles titles between the ages of 22 and 25, and Pete Sampras won eight of his 14 in that same age span. Nadal turned 22 last month in Paris, meaning he essentially has four years to collect some serious hardware. Winning Wimbledon would give him five career Slams and mark him as the favorite for Wimbledon as well as Roland Garros every year.

If he ever concentrates on adapting his game to hard courts, watch out in Melbourne and New York.

Toni Nadal doesn't understand why people have been impatient with Nadal's progression on grass. He correctly points out that Nadal, at 17, was younger than many junior players when he played his first main-draw match here. Juniors face a steep learning curve, the coach reasoned, but because Rafa is under such harsh scrutiny he didn't get the proper time to breathe.

"Rafael learns every year -- because he wants to learn," Toni said. "He wants to be better, and so he has worked hard to do that. I think he can get better."

Captain Cardie's gameplan unravels

2008-07-07T12:40:00.005+08:00

Dejected Roger Federer covers his face after the match

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal before the epic thriller unfolds

By Alix Ramsay

As the light faded over Centre Court, an era faded with it. Roger Federer's grasp on the Championships was finally loosened by Rafael Nadal in a final that will be remembered forever by all who saw it.

It took 4hrs 48 mins for Nadal to make his mark in the All England Club history books but finally, stunningly, the Spaniard beat the man in the cardigan 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5-7), 6-7 (8-10), 9-7.

Every superhero, however big, however strong, has his Achilles heel and Captain Cardie’s is Nadal. The man who, for five years, has ruled Wimbledon with a forehand of steel, now seems unable to counter the force of the muscular Majorcan.

Against anyone else, Federer waves his racquet like a wand and can turn any situation to his own advantage. But against Nadal, Captain Cardie's cable stitch gets snagged on the Majorcan's secret crochet hook, his defences unravel and the superhero is rendered mortal.

Grand Slam finals are often strange affairs – two tense men in search of greatness often fail to produce magnificent tennis, especially not in the early stages of the encounter. But when Federer and Nadal stand eyeball to eyeball over a major piece silverware, the result is stupendous.

From the very first point, both men bring the best out of each other – they have to because both know that the bloke on the other side of the net is capable of tearing him to shreds. And to see them in action is to realise just how far above the rest of the pack they stand. Other men may have a good day and catch one of the top two off guard, they may hit a bit of a purple patch one afternoon, but no one belongs in the same league as Captain Cardie and Muscleman.

So evenly matched are the pair that they are looking for any, miniscule, advantage to give them an edge. Nadal is a superstitious soul who likes to walk on court second, who likes to sit closest to the Royal Box to be nearer his support team and who hates to have his routine disturbed. So Federer ushered him on court first (“No, no, after you, Raf…”) and marched purposefully towards Nadal’s favourite seat.

Getting his retaliation in first, Nadal, who shares the same clothing sponsor as his foe, selected a cream coloured warm-up top to top off his otherwise pristine white outfit. It may not have been made of cashmere and it may not have had his own specially designed logo emblazoned on the front, but it made the point – I'm as good as you, amigo, and don’t you forget it.

The nagging worry for Federer is that Nadal is actually better than he is, and that thought has gnawed away at him for the past couple of years. It is all very well for the Spaniard to dominate the clay courts of Roland Garros but SW19 is Roger’s patch and he is none too keen on trespassers. But Nadal, playing in his third final, was no longer an outsider straying into someone else’s territory. He had looked around the property, decided he liked it and put in an offer for the title deeds.

At times, the tennis was remarkable. Federer’s forehand was like a heat-seeking missile, he was trying to attack the net, he was looking smooth. But whenever the match moved to an important point, out came Nadal’s secret crochet hook and Captain Cardie was undone.

For 2hrs 15 mins they slugged it out before the rain sent them running for cover. In that time Federer held 12 break points and converted just one of them. The longer it went on, the less likely he looked to take his chances, tapping his backhand lamely into the net time and again. Creating the break point chance seemed easy – such things are for superheroes – but turning it into an advantage was nigh on impossible.

And all the while Nadal was relentless, grinding on to a two-set lead and watching Federer fluff six break points in the third set until, with the Swiss leading 5-4, the rains came.

Only once before has anyone managed to put Federer on the back foot in the final – and that was four years ago. Then Andy Roddick snatched the opening set against the champion and was running him ragged until a rain delay gave Federer time to think and he came back out with all guns blazing.

History has a strange habit of repeating itself and back at work again 80 minutes later, Federer was back to his best. Perhaps it was the chance to put the magic cardie on again that did it, but having rediscovered his serve, he took charge of the third set tie-break and set off towards the fourth set.

This was a new Federer; this was the majestic Federer – this was Captain Cardie swooping to save his championship.

Twice Nadal stood two points from the title – in the 10th game and again in the tie-break – and then as the fourth-set tie-break came to the crunch, the Spaniard held two, precious championship points. The superhero in Federer puffed out his chest and grabbed the first back with a service winner and the second with a backhand that rifled down the tramline and landed in the corner. They have nerves of titanium, these superheroes.

And then it rained again.

This time there was no edgy switch in momentum, but another 55 minutes of stunning hitting, lung-bursting running and unbelievable, magnificent, monumental tennis.

As a Federer forehand sailed long, he dropped his serve and as, eight points, later another landed in the net, the Cardigan of Invincibility had passed to Nadal. Captain Cardie's reign was over.

Nadal tops Federer in 5 sets to win Wimbledon

2008-07-07T09:57:00.006+08:00

Rafael Nadal holds aloft the trophy

Rafael Nadal with the scoreboard showing time played for the match

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal at the net

By HOWARD FENDRICH, AP Tennis Writer

WIMBLEDON, England (AP)—Rafael Nadal, grass stains on his white shirt and a Spanish flag tucked under his arm, scampered through the Centre Court stands to celebrate his first Wimbledon title with hugs and handshakes.

Roger Federer sat in his changeover chair, protected from the night’s chill by his custom-made cream cardigan with the gold “RF” on the chest. Alone with his thoughts, alone with the knowledge that he had come so close to becoming the first man since the 1880s to win a sixth consecutive championship at the All England Club.

Two points from victory, the No. 1-ranked Federer couldn’t pull it out, instead succumbing to No. 2 Nadal 6-4, 6-4, 6-7 (5), 6-7 (8), 9-7 Sunday night in a 4-hour, 48-minute test of wills that was the longest men’s final in Wimbledon history—and quite possibly the greatest.

Even Nadal felt sympathy for Federer.

“I am very happy for me,” Nadal said, “but sorry for him, because he deserved this title, too.”

Through rain, wind and descending darkness, the two greatest players of their generation swapped spectacular shots, until, against a slate sky, Nadal earned the right to fling his racket aside and collapse on his back, champion of the All England Club at last.

“Is impossible to explain what I felt in that moment, no?” Nadal said after accepting the golden trophy that has belonged to Federer since 2003.

The first man since Bjorn Borg in 1980 to win Wimbledon and the French Open in the same year, Nadal stopped Federer’s streaks of 40 victories in a row at the All England Club, and a record 65 in a row on grass, thereby stamping his supremacy in their rivalry, no matter what the rankings say.

“Probably my hardest loss, by far,” Federer said. “I mean, it’s not much harder than this right now.”

No man since 1927 had come back to win a Wimbledon final after losing the first two sets, and none had overcome a match point to seize victory since 1948. If anyone could, it figured to be Federer, especially on this particular lawn.

He hadn’t lost a match on grass since 2002, and he hadn’t lost a set during this tournament before Sunday. He also hadn’t faced anyone nearly as talented and indefatigable as Nadal.

“Look, Rafa’s a deserving champion,” Federer said. “He just played fantastically.”

Indeed he did, earning Spain its first Wimbledon men’s title since Manolo Santana won in 1966.

Nadal managed to regroup after blowing a two-set lead, managed to recover after wasting two match points in the fourth-set tiebreaker, managed to hold steady when Federer needed only two points to end the match while ahead 5-4 in the fifth.

He earned his fifth Grand Slam title, but first away from the French Open, by showing fortitude on his serve, saving 12 of 13 break points. He did it by breaking serve four times—twice as many times as Federer lost serve in his previous six matches combined. And Nadal did it by being better from the baseline, winning 24 of 38 points that lasted 10 or more strokes, according to an unofficial AP tally.

“He was rock-solid, the way we know him,” said Federer, who hit 25 aces. “He’s definitely improved his game.”

Borg and Santana watched from the front row of the Royal Box at Centre Court, which next year will have a retractable roof. Perhaps Mother Nature wanted one last chance to leave her mark, delaying Sunday’s start by 35 minutes with rain. Showers again caused a delay of 1 hour, 21 minutes late in the third set, then another of 30 minutes at 2-2, deuce, in the fifth set.

When action resumed at 8:23 p.m., it already was tough to see, and the players traded service holds until 7-7. That’s where Nadal finally broke through, as Federer’s forehand really began to break down. A forehand into the net gave Nadal his fourth break point, and a forehand long conceded the game— the first break of serve by either man since the second set.

Nadal still had to serve out the match, though, and he still had to avoid the sort of nerves Federer noticed when his opponent led 5-2 in the fourth-set tiebreaker.

“I played terrible there,” said Nadal, who double-faulted to 5-3.

Down 6-5 in that tiebreaker, Federer erased a match point with a 127 mph service winner. Down 8-7—again, one point from losing—Federer hit a backhand passing winner.

A forehand winner put Federer ahead 9-8, and when Nadal missed a backhand return, the match was even. Federer jumped and screamed, and the crowd of about 15,000 joined him.

“Rafa keeps you thinking, and that’s what the best players do to each other in the end,” Federer said. “That’s what we both do to each other.”

It was their sixth Grand Slam final, already more than between any other pair of men in the 40-year Open era, and there could be several to follow. Federer is only 26, after all, and Nadal is 22. Federer has led the rankings for a record 231 consecutive weeks, and Nadal has been second for a record 154.

Nadal defeated Federer at the French Open en route to each of his championships there, in the 2005 semifinals and the past three finals, including a 6-1, 6-3, 6-0 rout last month that was Federer’s most lopsided loss in 180 career Grand Slam matches.

But the Swiss star kept reminding everyone this week that he has had the upper hand on surfaces other than clay.

Not this time.

Nadal lost to Federer in the 2006 Wimbledon final in four sets, and the 2007 final in five. Although the latter was certainly suspenseful, it featured neither the drama nor the all-around excellence of Sunday’s encounter, which ended at 9:15 p.m., when Federer pushed a forehand into the net on Nadal’s fourth match point.

Federer made clear afterward he was not pleased that play continued despite the low visibility at the end.

“It’s rough on me now, obviously, you know, to lose the biggest tournament in the world over maybe a bit of light,” he said.

Said Nadal: “In the last game, I didn’t see nothing.”

Both players figured that if Federer had broken back to 8-8 in the fifth, play would have been suspended until Monday because of darkness.

“It would have been brutal,” Federer said.

It didn’t happen. Nadal came through.

Afterward, the new champion was asked if it was the greatest match he’d ever played. Plenty of others around the grounds, including John McEnroe—whose five-set loss to Borg in 1980 gets many votes—already were calling it the greatest match they’d ever seen.

“I don’t know if it’s the best,” Nadal said.

Then he thought about it for a moment.

“Probably,” he continued. “Probably the best, yes.”

Six Myths About Oil Speculators

2008-06-29T23:48:00.004+08:00

By Rick Newman, U.S.News & World Report

So now we know who's really responsible for $4 gas. Finger-pointers from Washington, the International Monetary Fund, and even Saudi Arabia no longer seem to buy the idea that the demand for oil around the world is simply growing faster than the supply, driving prices to record highs close to $140 per barrel. There must be a more nefarious reason, it seems. So now entering this drama is a villain everybody can hate: The Evil Speculator.

At recent congressional hearings, politicians and energy experts argued that speculators have artificially added $30 or more to the cost of a barrel of oil, turned oil trading into a global poker game, and doubled the price of gasoline practically overnight.

But who are these party crashers? Where did they come from? How are they doing this? And who can stop them? We'd all like to see a superhero swoop in and smite the speculators, saving Gotham from the peril of $4 gas. The only problem is, speculators aren't quite the bogeymen that politicians want us to think--and they even play an important role in the oil markets and the global economy. Some major misconceptions:

Speculators are inherently bad for the economy. There's no doubt that speculators are out to make money, by buying a commodity like oil (or gold, or real estate) when they think the price is likely to rise and they'll be able to sell for a profit. But they also help sustain the market for buyers and sellers and provide ways for individuals and businesses to offset risks.

Many companies, for instance, want to lock in the price they're going to pay down the road for petroleum products and other supplies they need to run their businesses. So they make agreements with suppliers on a price they'll pay next year, or the year after, when they actually take possession of the oil. Buying and selling such "futures contracts" makes these companies speculators by definition, since they're placing a bet on the future price of oil.

Companies doing this kind of hedging include gasoline refiners, airlines, shipping companies, and others that spend a lot on fuel or petroleum. Often they use investment banks or other intermediaries to arrange the deals. They might be gambling, but this kind of speculation actually helps companies run their businesses more smoothly, and if they guess right on future prices, it may give them a competitive advantage against other companies that don't plan as prudently.

There's a Speculator Star Chamber somewhere. Global markets are so abstruse to ordinary folks that it's easy to imagine a cabal of evil geniuses pulling the levers from some fortified complex in London or Geneva. But that's the Hollywood version. "The market is so competitive that that's nonsense," says Bob Hodrick, a finance professor at Columbia Business School. "There's no way for everyone to communicate and get together and say, 'We're going to buy and drive the price up.' " There are thousands of investors around the world placing bets every day on whether oil prices will go up or down--and they have no way of knowing who their fellow speculators are. All they know is the current price, shown on a computer monitor, plus whatever their own research tells them.

Speculators are super-rich market manipulators. Certainly some are super-rich, including investors in sovereign wealth funds from Middle Eastern and Asian nations. But new data show that many oil speculators these days may be big pension and index funds that invest on behalf of ordinary working Americans. These huge investment funds have typically invested in equities, but in recent years they've been adding commodities--including oil--to their portfolios as a way to diversify.

Even if the commodity portion of these portfolios is just 3 or 4 percent, that can trigger big swings in the oil markets, where most investors up till now have been smaller players. "There's no malice or manipulation here," says Ed Krapels, an analyst with the research firm Energy Security Analysis. But the entry of such big institutional investors into the oil market could definitely contribute to rising prices, especially since they tend to buy and hold securities like futures contracts, instead of quickly selling--which contributes to scarcity and rising prices.

The government tracks speculators and knows who they are. Part of the reason nobody's really sure what effect speculators have on the oil markets is a lack of information. Exchanges like the New York Mercantile Exchange track the activities of their members, but even then, a trader could be a speculator one day, buying oil or futures contracts, and a seller the next day: Nobody checks a "speculator" box when making a trade.

A recent study by the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which regulates commodities markets, found a big increase in the percentage of speculators buying oil contracts for investment purposes--"paper barrels"--instead of buying because they need the oil. But oil markets are less regulated than markets for stocks or bonds, and there's still a lot that's unknown. Congress has ordered more studies, with new regulation likely as well.

Speculators are creating a huge bubble in oil. We've just seen a bubble pop in the housing market, with home values now plummeting. And before that, the tech bubble inflated, then burst. But the run-up in oil prices is probably different. The housing boom was generated by cheap and, in some cases, fraudulent mortgages, not by a huge increase in the number of people who needed housing. The tech boom was similar to old-fashioned manias, where investors raced in hoping to cash in on a gold rush and bid the price of technology shares way above their inherent value.

But in the oil markets, there is in fact growing demand because of strong Asian economies. And supply is fairly fixed for now, since adding more oil to the market means finding new sources and spending billions to extract it, not just opening a spigot a little wider. "There are pretty strong fundamentals behind this run-up," says Sarah Emerson, another analyst at Energy Security Analysis. Speculators may be pushing oil prices somewhat higher than they would otherwise be--but a bust similar to housing or tech stocks seems unlikely.

Speculators should be banned. Few, if any, economists or energy analysts advocate this. In fact, some fairly modest regulatory changes could bring greater transparency to oil markets and force them to operate more like stock and bond markets. Buying a contract for oil futures, for instance, typically requires the buyer to put down less than 10 percent of the value of the contract; the rest can be borrowed. That allows buyers to roll up big stakes with relatively little cash. Raising the "margin requirement" to 50 percent, the usual threshold for stocks, would cool demand for oil futures, while still keeping the speculators in business. And maybe get the witch hunters off their case.

Appointment with E2 at Pasta Zanmai

2008-06-28T21:20:00.002+08:00

Natto is typically eaten with rice

Today I had an appointment with E2 at Pasta Zanmai.

We had these acquired taste natto as the side dish. Natto is a traditional Japanese food made from fermented soybeans, popular especially for breakfast. As a rich source of protein, natto and the soybean paste miso formed a vital source of nutrition in feudal Japan. It has powerful smell, strong flavor, and sticky consistency.

We had a pretty good conversation and talked nineteen to the dozen at time. Later, we went to Oldtown White Coffee for a cuppa.

Luck on Ivanovic's side at Wimbledon

2008-06-26T11:07:00.007+08:00

Ana Ivanovic kisses the net after the match with Nathalie Dechy

By LOUISE WATT, Associated Press Writer

WIMBLEDON, England (AP)—Nathalie Dechy thinks it might be a good time for Ana Ivanovic to buy a lottery ticket.

Facing match point in the second set of her second-round match at Wimbledon, the top-ranked Ivanovic drove a forehand into the top of the net—it somehow trickled over.

From the brink of an embarrassing exit to a player ranked 97, she recovered to beat veteran Frenchwoman Dechy 6-7 (2), 7-6 (3), 10-8, in a match lasting 3 hours, 24 minutes.

“Someone from upstairs made the ball roll over,” Ivanovic explained, laughing. “I just feel so lucky.”

“I felt like time stopped for a moment. … I just thought the match would be over.”

“After that point I felt like it was a new match for me and I had a new opportunity.”

Dechy had an instant of thinking she had won. “Then I saw,” she said. “I was like, gee, there’s maybe somebody in the sky who help(ed) her on that one.

“Maybe today she can go and play lotto also a little bit. It would be a good day for her.”

In her first tournament as a Grand Slam titlist and the No. 1-ranked woman, the 20-year-old Ivanovic seemed to be in a big rush, trying to finish points quickly.

It worked to start. The Serbian star won the first three games in six minutes.

But Dechy, determined, patient and no-frills, rallied and took the first set in a tiebreaker.

The second set began in a similar fashion with Ivanovic up 3-1, only to fall behind 3-4, with Dechy serving well and Ivanovich having problems returning.

So it went to Ivanovic serving to stay in the match in the 10th game.

Facing two match points, she fired a big serve and followed with a forehand winner.

One to go.

The pressure compounded with a fault. But rather than back off, Ivanovic produced a big second serve and charged in, driving a forehand into the net. That’s when time stopped for both players. Ivanovic’s ball clipped the net, and dropped over.

She smiled nervously, then pulled her sun visor down over her face to stifle a laugh.

Dechy grimaced and looked up. She pushed Ivanovic for the rest of the match, but never seemed to get on top again after Ivanovic dominated the tiebreaker.

The Frenchwoman was broken twice in the deciding set to fall behind 2-4 and then 3-5. But she clawed back again to 5-5, when another slice of fortune fell Ivanovic’s way.

Dechy played a forehand volley which ought to have sent her 15-30 up on the Ivanovic serve, but her hat fell off in the process. It was extremely unlikely Ivanovic could stay in the point, but she asked for and was granted a replay—a fair call under the strict definition of the rules.

Ivanovic won that point and regained some momentum. After converting her fourth match point, Ivanovic went over to kiss the net because she felt “so lucky.”

“If it wasn’t for that net and that place, I would be booking my flight back home.”

Dechy sat down on court with a towel over her head and cried. It was her 13th trip to Wimbledon and “for sure one of my best matches so far this year.”

Ivanovic praised Dechy’s game. “She deserved to win also because she played really well,” Ivanovic said. Asked if she was still feeling lucky about the Championships, she laughed and replied: “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I think I used a lot of luck today.”

Sharapova goes for tux at Wimbledon

2008-06-25T12:28:00.004+08:00

Maria Sharapova with her tux-like outfit and shorts

By LOUISE WATT, Associated Press Writer

WIMBLEDON, England (AP)—First, there was Roger Federer’s cardigan and Serena Williams’ trench coat. Now, Maria Sharapova has set her own fashion trend at Wimbledon—a tuxedo.

“I love men’s wear in general,” Sharapova said Tuesday after beating French qualifier Stephanie Foretz 6-1, 6-4 in the first round. “I love tuxedo jackets.”

The 2004 champion played the match in a sleeveless top with a tuxedo-style bib front. She strode onto Court One sporting a single-breasted jacket with gold stitching on the collar lapel and front edge, which she hung on her chair.

Sharapova also wore shorts—the first time the 6-foot-2 player has done so in a Grand Slam tournament. But not just any old shorts: ones worn low on the hip with a wide-tailored waistband, pin stripe-effect and gold-stitched buttons.

“It’s hard to do things different with white,” Sharapova said, referring to Wimbledon’s strict dress code. “I thought ‘why not do shorts this year?’ I’ve never done it at a Grand Slam. You know, if there’s one place to do it, it’s here.”

Sharapova didn’t wear the other half of her tailored, tuxedo-inspired warmup suit—wide-legged pants.

“I love things that are actually a bit baggier and wide,” she said. “I loved it when that whole wide-legged pant trend set in. I’m tall and I can pull those things off.”

If Serena Williams can wear a short rain coat on court when there is not a cloud in sight, as she did on Monday, why shouldn’t Sharapova wear men’s clothes? Even if Williams described hers as “ladylike.”

The 21-year-old Russian’s outfit was inspired by “London’s history in bespoke tailoring,” according to her clothing sponsor. It may have been inspired by a man’s suit, but she made the seamless, lightweight vest look feminine. Perhaps the $5,000 Tiffany diamond and platinum dangly earrings helped.

While Federer played up to Wimbledon’s old-style traditions by donning a herringbone-patterned cardigan on Monday, Sharapova’s take on the classic tuxedo caused more of a stir.

Her post-match news conference was dominated by questions about her outfit, to the extent that she remarked it was “amazing.”

She thought Federer’s gold-trim cardigan was “classic and beautiful.” And Serena’s raincoat? “I didn’t see it,” Sharapova said.

What does she think of all the attention being paid to players’ clothes?

“I think it’s great,” she said. “I mean, look, tennis is not a a sport where you have to wear uniforms. It’s an individual sport. I’ve loved fashion since I was very young. … I loved working with thread and needles, making things on my own.”

Sharapova also revealed that because of retail demands she already knows what she’s wearing in fall 2009. But when asked what she will wear next year at Wimbledon, she laughed.

“Oh, goodness,” she said. “I still haven’t finished the tournament. We’ve got a lot in store.”

One player who isn’t particularly interested in all the fashion talk is Andy Roddick, the two-time men’s runner-up.

“I personally don’t care,” he said.

If attention is drawn to tennis for whatever reason, that’s fine, Roddick said. If that means Federer’s cardigan, “then so be it.”

“I don’t know if it would be a good look for me,” he said. “Or any of my friends. Or relatives.”

Russia into last eight of Euro 2008

2008-06-20T10:29:00.010+08:00

Russians celebrate on the street

A sexy Russian supporter

A pretty Russian supporter inside the stadium

Supporters waving Russian flags

Russian supporters before the game with the Swedes

Incredible! After so many group matches had finished, I really can't see any stand out teams in Euro 2008. Not anymore, I found it in Russia when they defeated Sweden two days ago. It was totally a deserved victory and dominant display by the Russians. They had really missed Andrei Arshavin for the first two group matches. This guy pulled the string from the midfield and scored one marvelous team goal himself early in the second half.

In the last eight, the Russian football team will take on the mighty Holland. Not an easy task as Holland had shown why they are the hot favorite in this tournament by defeating World Cup champions Italy and runners-up France convincingly in group stage. My friend had asked me which team in my opinion will go into the final before Russia versus Sweden game, I said Russia will go into the final if they can clear the group stage by beating the Swedes. Now, they had done it. So, I still stand firm with my opinion.

Holland coach Marco van Basten was a great player himself during his heyday in the 90's but not yet show his caliber as a great coach. Perhaps, this will be the very tournament he will announce his arrival in the international coaching arena in big time for he will be coaching Ajax after Euro 2008. But comparing coach to coach, Guus Hiddink still has the upper hand with his vast experience with other national teams that he had coached. Interesting point is, Guus Hiddink of Holland nationality will be pitting his wits against his home country. Kinda intriguing prospect.

Let's see how the game against Holland turn out.

Arshavin already cashing in on his success

2008-06-20T10:09:00.004+08:00

By Martin Rogers, Yahoo! Sports

It is rumored in Russian football circles that Andrei Arshavin refused to entertain a possible move to Barcelona because it meant the Zenit St. Petersburg and national team star would have to take a pay cut.

In all probability, some creative license has been used in the telling and re-telling of that apocryphal tale, but it still shows the incredible strides made in the Russian game in recent years and the reason for its rapid progress.

Money talks loudest in football and the noises emanating from the east are of some concern to clubs in England, Spain and Italy. Gone are the days when those leagues could snap up a player from that part of Eastern Europe, give him a respectable salary and a car and earn his undying gratitude.

Arshavin’s stock is soaring now after his latest display of talent in Wednesday’s decisive 2-0 victory over Sweden, a win that booked Russia’s place in the last eight of Euro 2008. A series of outstanding performances for club and country has made him one of the most sought-after players in Europe this summer, but it would be no surprise at all if he went nowhere and remained with Zenit, a club which barely registered a blip on the European landscape until last season.

If he does go, it will not be for the money. Arshavin is rewarded handsomely at Zenit, with a gigantic salary of around $100,000 per week plus a mind-blowing bonus structure. Given that Arshavin ran the show in the UEFA Cup final, as Zenit tore apart Glasgow Rangers at the City of Manchester Stadium, it is fair to suggest that another avalanche of roubles came tumbling into his bank balance.

Those roubles, like most of the wealth in Russian football, is drenched in oil. President Vladimir Putin encourages, gently or otherwise, the oligarchs who have made incredible fortunes from selling the natural resource to invest in sports, particularly football. As a result, the national team benefits from having a coach with the pedigree of Guus Hiddink, whose salary is paid by none other than billionaire Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich.

Hiddink can also pick his squad almost exclusively from home-based players, now that the Russian league, ranked 15th in Europe by UEFA just a few years ago, is pressing Holland for the fifth spot and rising fast.

The upshot is that players like Arshavin – who, at 27, was born in an era when St. Petersburg was still called Leningrad and the Communists still controlled the Soviet Union – need not head overseas in search of financial reward.

“Arshavin is a player who can decide very, very fast where he can create danger … he can turn left, right, he knows where an opponent is so he is a very smart player,” Hiddink said. “You can see he can make the difference, not for himself by the goal but for the other guys on the field.”

Suspended for Russia’s first two games at Euro 2008, he showed how much he had been missed against Sweden. He scored Russia’s second goal and was his team’s driving force in a performance that surely grabbed the attention of quarterfinal opponents and tournament favorites Holland.

If Arshavin can mastermind a shock victory over the rampant Dutch, his value will soar even further. But even if salary offers of $150,000, $200,000 or even more per week come flooding in, the oil company that pays his salary would not even need to scratch the surface of its coffers to match it.

Stagflation, the latest Asian export?

2008-06-18T10:54:00.005+08:00

By Stephen Roach

Fears of 1970s-style stagflation are back in the air. Global bond markets are growing ever more nervous over this possibility, and US and European central bankers are talking increasingly tough about the perils of mounting inflation.

Yet today's stagflation risks are very different from those that wreaked such havoc 35 years ago. Unlike in that earlier period, wages in the developed economies have been delinked from prices. That all but eliminates the automatic indexation features of the once dreaded wage-price spiral – perhaps the most insidious feature of the "great inflation" of the 1970s. Moreover, as the stunning surge of the US unemployment rate in May suggests, slowing economic growth in the industrial economies is likely to open up further slack in labour markets, thereby putting downward cyclical pressure on wages over the next couple of years.

But there is a new threat to global inflation that was not present in the 1970s. It is arising from the developing world, especially in Asia, where price pressures are lurching out of control. For developing Asia as a whole, consumer price index inflation hit 7.5 per cent in April 2008, close to a 9 1/2-year high and more than double the 3.6 per cent pace of a year ago. Sure, a good portion of the recent acceleration in pricing is a result of food and energy – critically important components of household budgets in poorer countries and yet items that many analysts mistakenly remove to get a cleaner read on underlying inflation. But even the residual, or "core", inflation rate in developing Asia surged to 3.8 per cent in April, more than double the 1.8 per cent pace of a year ago.

Given Asia's new-found role as the world's producer, such an outbreak of surging inflation in this region is not without serious risks to the global economy. The globalisation of trade flows is a new transmission mechanism of worldwide inflation that was not evident in the 1970s. According to estimates from the International Monetary Fund, overall exports should hit a record 32.5 per cent of world gross domestic product in 2008, more than 50 per cent above the export share of 21 per cent prevailing in 1980, when the "great inflation" was nearing its peak.

At the margin, that means cost pressures and price determination today are shaped much more in the global arena than they were during the domestically driven stagflation of the past. Asia's outbreak of surging inflation is especially problematic in that regard. Nowhere is that more evident than in China – the new engine of Asian output and exports.

Chinese inflation has surged at an 8.3 per cent average annual rate over the four months ending May 2008, the sharpest sustained increase on a year-on-year basis since the mid 1990s. China's inflation problem is much deeper than the food and energy price shocks that thus far have played a disproportionate role in driving its consumer price index higher. Also at work are serious wage pressures reflecting, in part, increases in minimum wages associated with new labour reform laws. Meanwhile the People's Bank of China has held its policy lending rate below headline inflation, resulting in negative real short-term interest rates.

The result has been an ominous increase in Chinese inflationary expectations, strikingly reminiscent of similar occurrences that plagued the developed world in the 1970s and early 1980s. History does not treat kindly a serious deterioration in inflationary expectations. The longer such a trend persists, the more wrenching the monetary tightening required to arrest it – and the greater the risk of a subsequent hard landing. That is the last thing China wants or needs.

China is hardly alone in its reluctance to take firm action against a worrying build-up of inflationary pressures. That is true throughout most of developing Asia, where hyper-growth is viewed as the panacea for the aspirations of a growing middle class. Throughout the region, central banks are keeping short-term interest rates far too low to combat these inflationary pressures. For developing Asia as a whole, a GDP-weighted average of policy rates is currently about 6.75 per cent, fully three-quarters of a percentage point below the 7.5 per cent headline inflation rate.

Such monetary accommodation in an increasingly inflation-prone developing Asia spells a persistence of elevated price pressures in this vital segment of the global production chain. Not only does that threaten living standards for newly prosperous households in the developing world; it also takes an especially severe toll on those at the lower end of the income distribution. And, of course, it provides a price shock to imported goods in the developed world, which now play a much greater role in meeting the demands of domestic consumption.

Notwithstanding recent pressures in bond markets, the world remains largely in denial over the outbreak of a new strain of stagflation. The hopes of "core inflationists" depend on a reversion in food and energy prices to take headline inflation lower in the developing world. Yet this will be the sixth year in a row when that has not happened. The "market purists" are counting on currency adjustments – especially sharp appreciation of currencies in developing Asia – to temper the transmission of price pressures from these export-led economies. Yet these are not economies that want to use the currency lever to put their growth imperatives at risk.

The risks of a new stagflation are mounting. But it will not be a replay of the 1970s. Like nearly everything else in the world these days, this one is likely to be made in Asia.

The writer is chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia

Firefox 3 comes out sizzling

2008-06-18T10:06:00.006+08:00

By Paul Venezia

San Francisco - As the window to the Internet, the Web browser is arguably the most important application ever developed, and it will only become more important in the coming years, as applications continue their retreat from the local system and into Web frameworks built on Apache, IIS, Python, PHP, Perl, Ruby, and countless other languages and tools. Against this backdrop, today's official introduction of Firefox 3 may in fact be a watershed event in the history of computing.

It's no secret that Firefox isn't the most popular browser. Internet Explorer, for better or for worse, enjoys a significant advantage in market share, but data gathered from all corners of the Internet show this advantage eroding. Judging by the traffic at a Web site that handles more than 100,000 unique visitors a day, Firefox gained almost 8 percent over Internet Explorer for the month of May, year over year, moving from just over 26 percent of all visitors to 33 percent. Internet Explorer lost a total of 9 percent to other browsers in that time frame.

Oddly, the difference seems to have been taken up by Apple's Safari, which gained almost 3 percent. These numbers will differ depending on the site -- for instance, sites focused on technology will have higher numbers for Firefox, since most tech-savvy users prefer Firefox over Internet Explorer -- but the general trend shows that Firefox is making significant inroads all over the globe. Judging by the advances in Firefox 3, this is likely to accelerate.

Turning up the heat
Firefox 3 has been in development for years. While not exactly a start-from-scratch rewrite, it's certainly been overhauled, and those changes are apparent in just about every aspect of the browser. The new look is more streamlined, less clunky, and the active elements such as the newly retooled location bar offer a new way to work with the Web. On the back end, the days of Firefox being a notorious memory hog may be over, or at least reduced, and the security measures in the new release are not only far better than any other browser, they also manage to be less intrusive than you might expect. The ease-of-use additions, such as the ability to save a session on exit, and the wonderfully implemented full-page zoom are instant winners.

I've been using Firefox 3 since the November beta, moving through to the very latest release candidates. While I've hit a number of issues over the months, they've all but disappeared in the past few releases. Over the course of the beta period, I've found it difficult to go back to Firefox 2, and certainly difficult to use Internet Explorer; they're missing key Firefox 3 features that have become instantly indispensable.

Smart security
Browser security is of paramount importance. Particularly on Windows, browsers have served as a vector for an enormous number of realized and unrealized vulnerabilities. From malware and spyware to viruses and outright system exploits, all browsers have had their share of missteps. Generally speaking, user education could significantly reduce these occurrences, but that's easier said than done. Firefox 3 makes a valiant attempt, however, with a bevy of new features tuned to the average user.

Clicking the Favicon in the address bar on Firefox 3 offers a quick view of the current site and a button for more detailed information, such as the SSL certificate data, how often you've visited the site, the use of cookies, and so forth. If you happen to come across a forged page (such as those used in phishing attempts), Firefox will block the page and display a surprisingly attractive warning screen explaining the problem and offering a link to return to your home page. There's also a small link allowing you to continue to the content regardless of the warning.

If you browse to an SSL-protected site with a valid certificate, the address bar notes the verified owner of the certificate in a green highlight, giving immediate feedback on the validity of the site. If the site's SSL certificate isn't valid, Firefox 3 presents a method of either quickly navigating away from the site or an option to pull down the certificate and continue to the site. For those of us who use self-signed certificates, this is an extremely useful feature.

On Windows, Firefox 3 now integrates with Vista's parental controls to prevent downloads and so on in accordance to the system-wide settings. Firefox 3 can also integrate with some anti-virus tools to initiate scans when downloading executable files.

On a smaller scale, Firefox 3 has improved add-on management. It will detect outdated add-ons and offer to update them if possible. Add-ons that don't provide updates securely are disabled.

All told, these measures seem to effectively prevent novice or general users from hurting themselves while sacrificing very little for the power user -- a goal that's typically all but impossible.

Smooth moves
Firefox 3 has broken new ground in browser usability. The address bar has taken on a life of its own. Going far beyond address-matching as you type, Firefox 3 also matches your entered URLs against keywords within the title or tags of the page. It sorts by frequency and recency, and tunes itself as you use it. I've found that it gets the right page or link for me just about every time.

The combination of the smart address bar and the new page-tagging feature for bookmarks can make finding pages you've visited incredibly simple. Bookmarks are now organized in a database, not in a flat file, and thus are easier to manage and search. Smart bookmark folders can be created to automatically arrange bookmarks meeting certain criteria based on tags and other information. All of these features are impressively handy no matter what I seem to be doing with the browser.

On platforms other than Windows, Firefox 3 has made a great effort to integrate better with the host OS. Firefox 2 on the Mac platform, for instance, always had the feel of a foreign app. It functioned well enough, but it didn't share the OS X look and feel. It does now, and it even supports OS X Widgets and Growl. On Linux, Firefox 3 uses the native GTK theme running on the system to provide a better visual fit.

As with Firefox 2, the customizable Search toolbar is right at home, offering any number of existing search engines from Google and Yahoo to Wikipedia, YouTube, and eBay.

As far as add-ons go, it might take a little while for all of your favorite accessories to come up to speed with Firefox 3, but I've had few problems in that area. In fact, Firefox 3 has led me to use some add-ons that I probably never would have discovered, all due to the Recommended page in the add-on manager.

Some of the most important add-ons for me, such as the simply indispensable Web Developer toolbar, have been Firefox 3 compatible almost since day one. Others will follow soon. Sadly, I can't seem to find the Abe Vigoda status add-on anymore. Surprising that Abe outlived it, I suppose.

Binge browsing
The speed and resource requirements of Firefox 2 were a sore spot for many users. There were certainly instances where Firefox 2 behaved nicely, but those were overshadowed by the times when loading a page with certain embedded elements or other code would cause Firefox to crank up the CPU and start eating RAM like candy. Often, closing the offending page would reduce these symptoms, but sometimes quitting and restarting the browser proved the only solution. Firefox 3 hasn't been free of these episodes, but the frequency has been greatly reduced.

Now I find that I can run with dozens of windows open and not take a terribly significant performance hit. Mozilla.com claims that the Gecko 1.9 rendering engine has improved CSS and SVG handling, as well as JavaScript performance. I've noticed that pages do seem to load faster, and the overall experience seems snappier in Firefox 3 than in either Firefox 2 or Internet Explorer. It might be a tie with Safari, however.

If the Web browser isn't the most important application ever developed, it might be the most personal. If you're working in a company that regrettably invested in Web-based applications that cannot function without using Internet Explorer, you have my sympathy. For those of you who have a choice, you no doubt want a browser that functions as an extension of yourself: customizable, quick, reliable, and stable. Firefox 3 meets all those criteria for me, and there's no looking back.

Jim Rogers - Hot Commodities

2008-06-11T00:43:00.005+08:00

If anyone has any doubts over recent spike of crude oil price to the all-time high of over USD139 per barrel, read this book. Written by no other than the commodities guru Jim Rogers himself.

His insight is purely based on the supply and demand of the world crude oil reserve and reasons why we should invest our money in commodities, especially in crude oil. According to him, no major elephant oil fields have been discovered over these years in the world. This is coupled with huge energy demand from China and the rest of the world.

According to him, if the world is experiencing recession or economy downturn, or bear market in equity, it always coincide with the commodities bull market. He believes there could still another 10 years or more for the bull in the commodities market.

Jim Rogers also reasons why we should invest directly in commodities itself and not the company that link to the underlying commodities in order to get a better returns.

Sometimes I wonder whether the recent sharp increase in the crude oil price is due to the speculators and fund managers who take Jim Rogers advice and hedge their investment in crude oil futures.

Believe this guy. He knows what he is talking about.

E2 -- She's the One

2008-06-08T23:48:00.000+08:00

The exam is over now -- at least for the time being. What a gruesome and time-consuming four months of intense preparation. Seconds after the proctor came and collected my answer sheet, I could finally inhale some of the freshest air of my life. Despite the fact result will not be released two months later. I felt my life has been rebooted again. Indeed it was -- only moments later.

I met her -- E2, the most gorgeous and true to herself girl I've ever known.

[to be continued...]

你不知道的賺錢秘密

2008-05-27T12:14:00.003+08:00

猶太人對全球金融市場、金融體系、金融政策、金融操作的影響力，是令人難以想像的驚人與龐大……

你知道股神華倫‧巴菲特、投機大師索羅斯、Bloomberg 創辦人彭博、聯儲局前後任主席格林斯潘、伯南克、美國前後任財長桑默斯、魯賓、保爾森，這些人有甚麼共同特點嗎？

他們都是極為成功的金融巨擘，他們都是猶太人！

事實上，不少投資銀行的創辦人也都是猶太人，眾所週知的所羅門兄弟（Salomon Brothers）、高盛（Goldman Sachs）、雷曼兄弟（Lehman Brothers）、JP Morgan摩根、摩根士丹利（Morgan Stanley）都是猶太人所創辦，而且都是從猶太家族企業起家的。

而至今在全球金融重鎮華爾街，也有高達50%的金融菁英是猶太人，像是高盛知名的多頭總司令艾比柯恩（Abby Cohen）、花旗的衛爾（Sanford Weill）等人，都是猶太人。

猶太人對全球金融市場、金融體系、金融政策、金融操作的影響力，是令人難以想像的驚人與龐大！

高度決定視野、視野決定命運，如果不懂猶太民族，不懂猶太文化，那你很難在現代這個金融體系中，獲得多了不起的成功！因為當前的全球金融體系，就算稱為猶太金融帝國也不為過！只要猶太大亨打個噴嚏，全球金融界和銀行界就得重感冒！

猶太人到底多有錢？

根據富比士的統計，美國前40大富豪中，有45%是猶太人；全美國有三份之一的百萬富翁是猶太人。但全美僅有590萬猶太人，佔全美近3億人口中不到2%。

事實上，猶太民族在全世界算是少數民族，全球目前僅有1300萬猶太人，大約比台灣總人口的一半多一點而已，然而這些猶太人卻掌握全球主要金融金脈！

為甚麼猶太人這麼會賺錢？為甚麼世上有這麼多在金融領域取得相當成功的人都是猶太人？為甚麼猶太人可以掌握全球金融脈動？而想要在金融市場取得成功的人，又該如何學習猶太智慧？甚是創造出超越猶太智慧的地位？

為甚麼猶太人特別會賺錢

為甚麼猶太人特別會賺錢？是猶太人比較聰明嗎？數學能力比較好嗎？講到聰明與數學，全世界對於華人跟印度人的聰明與數學也都有相當程度的認同。這二種人在矽谷，在資訊科技業界也都有一定的影響力跟成就，然而，卻不是在金融業！為甚麼同樣都是聰明才智有目共睹的華人或印度人，卻沒有猶太人在金融領域中出色？顯然想要在金融領域成功，光是聰明是不夠的。

視學習為終生目的

猶太金融帝國得以如此龐大驚人的3大秘訣在於：

1. 智慧才是終生財富

全世界有二個民族都非常重視教育，也以數字能力優秀見長，一個是華人，另一個就是猶太人。

華人鼓勵教育、學習，但是華人的學習是工具，是手段，不是目的，讀書、學習只是作為金榜題名、出人頭地的手段與工具。一旦達不到目的，就變成：百無一用是書生。

但猶太人同樣崇尚教育，文化精神卻大不相同。猶太人把學習當作終生目的。在猶太文化中，學者的地位是很高的，而猶太文化也深信，良好的教育自然會帶來財富，終生的學習與智慧則是人生真正的大財富，別人怎樣也不能偷不能搶。

如果你問猶太人，人生最重要的是甚麼？猶太人的答案一定是智慧。

智慧來自猶太人的宗教傳統，在猶太人的心中，佔有舉足輕重的地位。猶太人不斷地受到迫害，富貴浮雲、房子財產都可能如曇花一現，因此猶太文化不斷教育後代，唯有智慧可以伴隨終生，可以幫助後人度過任何困難與挑戰，而有了智慧，財富自然也就隨之而來。

有個猶太人的經典故事如下：

猶太母親問孩子：“如果有一天，你房子被燒、財產被搶光，你要帶什麼東西逃跑？＂

一個孩子回答：“錢。”

另一個孩子說：“鑽石。”

猶太母親笑著說：“孩子。你們要帶走的不是錢，也不是鑽石，而是智慧。智慧是任何人都搶不走的，只要你還活著，智慧就永遠跟著你，無論如何，你都不會失去它。只有智慧，能夠幫你度過所有的難關。”

智慧的觀念就這樣深深紮根在猶太人的心中。

學者遠比富翁偉大

在猶太人文化中，學者遠比富翁偉大。猶太人把僅有知識而沒有智慧的人，比喻為“背著很多書本的驢子”。

猶太人崇尚創新，認為沒有創新的學習只是一種模仿，學習應該以思考為基礎，懷疑是開啟智慧大門的鑰匙。

猶太人喜歡思考宏觀的、深度的問題，喜歡抽象與邏輯，人類歷史上學術地位相當有成就的人物如科學家愛因斯坦、思想家馬克思和列寧等人，也都是猶太人。

星洲日報／投資廣場‧2008.05.26

學習猶太人險中致富

2008-05-27T12:05:00.000+08:00

猶太人的經典《塔木德》，充滿了他們的生活及賺錢哲學；而《你沒讀過的塔木德商場聖經：和猶太人一起擁抱財富》就是一本以《塔木德》內容為藍本的財富管理著作。

近期股市之凶險，令人望而生畏，但在世上最有錢的民族─猶太人眼中，有風險才會有利潤，只要認為是值得的，便應該去冒險。

有風險才有希望

《塔木德》這部口傳的典籍，記錄了猶太人生活、宗教、處世、道德上的準則。當中提到：“兩頭狼由‘一個方向’來襲，羊倌不能視為不可抵抗，但由‘兩個方向’來襲，就可以視為不可抵抗嗎？”

我們都會碰到狼，數目可能是一頭、兩頭，或是更多的狼，問題是我們如何看待這些狼。

成功的商人在窮途末路，總會遷徒至夠生存的地方。更重要的是，他們能夠以處變不驚的態度去面對風險，並把賺錢的慾望化為行動。

冒險≠賭博

在猶太人眼中，冒險是勇敢與常識的結合，並不是賭博。

聰明的冒險者必須瞭解可能性和對能夠承受的損失一笑置之。而當猶太人發現風險難以抵禦時，就會尋找相對低風險的出路。

苦難換來豐碩成果

猶太人除了勻於面對風險之外，亦能樂觀地面羚苦難。他們認為只有嘗盡苦難和貧窮的人，才能在商場上有所作為，從而取得豐碩的成果。以下兩個故事，可讓大家明白他們的樂觀心境。

故事1：馬會飛上天

空古時有個叫哈比的猶太人，因惹怒了國王而被判死刑。這個人向國王求饒說：“只要給我一年時間，我就能使您心愛的馬兒飛上天空。如果過了一年，您的馬不能在天空自在地飛翔，那麼我被處以死刑，亦不會有半句怨言。”國王感到好奇，於是答應了他。

哈比回到牢房時力一位囚犯對他說：“簡直是異想天開，馬怎會飛到天上去呢？”哈比笑著回答說：“在這一年內，也許國王會死、也許我自己會病死、也許那匹馬出了意外送了命。總之，在這一年內甚麼事情都有可能發生，也許在這一年時間內，馬兒真的飛上天空呢！”

故事2：驢狗送命救主人

有一位猶太人拉比（老師）帶著一盞燈、一頭驢和一條狗去探望一位百里之外的朋友。夜幕低垂，猶太拉比在樹林旁邊看到一間閒置的倉庫，便決定在那兒留宿。半夜時分，風吹滅了油燈，老虎吃掉了他的狗，獅子吃掉了他的驢子，可是他當時仍在夢中，未知道身邊發生的一切。

第二天清晨，當他知道自己的驢子和狗慘遭不測後，便慌張地跑去附近的一個村莊。然而眼前所見，村莊裡血流成河，屍橫遍野。原來昨夜有一幫盜匪進了村子，搶劫財物兼大肆殺戮。

猶太拉比想到，昨天晚上如果犬吠、驢叫、燈明驚動了劫匪，自己恐怕亦難逃一劫。是狗和驢用自己的死，換取了主人的性命。是一盞燈用自己的黑暗，讓主人看到了第二天的太陽。於是猶太人悟出：看似最糟糕的事情往往會讓人進入佳境，所以人應活在希望中，不把苦難和貧窮視為壞事，更不可在苦難和貧窮中沉淪。

《塔木德》是甚麼？

猶太人可說是世上最有錢的民族。其人口僅佔世界人口的400份之一，但在最有錢的企業家之中，猶太人便佔了一半。他們的部份成功秘密，記載於《塔木德》（Talmud）之中。

書名：《你沒讀過的塔木德商場聖經：和猶太人一起擁抱財富》
作者：譚地洲、李越
出版社：漢湘文化

星洲日報／財富廣場／財富教室‧2008.05.10

Maintain Outperform on Dialog

2008-05-26T09:51:00.003+08:00

(http://www.theedgedaily.com)

RHB Research expects Dialog Group Bhd to experience significant organic earnings growth in FY09 to FY10 due to the global advanced catalyst handling expansion to the US and Europe, and the company’s Tanjung Langsat Port tankage project.

The research house has raised its earnings per share (EPS) forecasts for Dialog by 8.5% for FY08 and 3.2% for FY09, factoring in better-than-expected recovery in margins.

It said Dialog’s 3QFY08 net profit of RM22.3 million was above its expectations, driven by growth contributions from engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning (EPCC) contracts plus growing profit from the advanced catalyst handling business.

Dialog’s overall net profit of RM59.2 million for the nine months accounted for 82% of RHB Research’s full-year forecast.

“Profit margins continued to improve, since the jump in 1QFY08, indicating that staff costs are not rising faster than profits (which was an issue between 2QFY07 and 4QFY07 as the company went on an aggressive hiring programme for its new businesses), and revenue mix has improved due to contribution from higher-margin businesses including catalyst handling,” it said.

The research house said Dialog was still beefing up its technical staff from the current 1,200 for its catalyst handling and tankage businesses, implying potential further increase in staff costs in FY09 to FY10.

RHB Research, however, said the impact would be mitigated as greater profit starts to flow in from these businesses.

On the company’s contracts, the research house said the Sabah Oil and Gas Terminal (SOGT) project that was still pending could potentially be more lucrative than the RM1.6 billion Sabah Sarawak Gas Pipeline that the Dialog consortium was awarded, given its expertise in building tank terminals.

Maintaining its outperform recommendation on the stock at RM1.52 with a new sum-of-parts fair value of RM2.36, it advocated a longer-term position on the counter, given FY10 price earnings ratio (PER) drops sharply to 9.5 times on 66% 3-year EPS compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

“Dialog is conservatively run, has an asset-light business strategy and proven long-term earnings track record,” it said.

“With only four years to go to the 2012 US$100 million (RM325 million) revenue target for the advanced catalyst handling business, there is potential for earnings disappointment. In addition, Dialog’s drilling fluids business is subject to drilling activity and thus to the crude oil price,” it said.

Meanwhile, OSK Research maintained its buy recommendation on Dialog with a target price of RM2.35, and said the counter remained one of its top picks in the oil and gas sector.

“(The) catalyst that we are looking forward to is the materialisation of another tank terminal either overseas or for the Tg Langsat land. Our target price has already factored in the additional value from the third tank farm. Its catalyst handling business is also expected to creep up to US$100 million by 2012 from less than US$15 million currently,” it said.

The research house said Dialog’s earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (Ebitda) margin continued to improve, reaching 10.8% versus 9.8% in the preceding quarter.

“This was largely attributed to the better margin from the Malaysian operations. Margins for overseas dropped slightly, and we think this may have been due to some start-up costs arising from overseas acquisitions,” it said.

OSK Research said revenue and profits for the Malaysian operations grew 131% and 360% year-on-year, driven mainly by more EPCC contribution from the construction jobs such as the RM600 million Tg Langsat tank terminals.

“Current EPCC order book stands at RM1.4 billion. Going forward, we see business from all segments including EPCC and catalyst handling to grow, particularly when the construction for Sabah Sarawak Gas Pipeline project kicks off.”

“As for the SOGT project, Dialog is also one of the front runners. The project is estimated to worth close to RM2 billion. The award of contract is likely to be announced towards the end of this year due to delays in the announcements of some fabrication contracts by Petronas year-to-date,” it said.

At the close of yesterday’s trading, Dialog rose four sen to RM1.56.

Manchester United - Champions of Europe 2007/08

2008-05-22T10:20:00.008+08:00

Another thriller down to the wire. Manchester United performed yet another lucky escape in the Champions League final. This time in Moscow. It seemed to me at one time just before Chelsea skipper John Terry missed the last of the routine penalty kicks (PK) that Manchester United were all but winning the championship. But God had another idea -- John Terry put the crucial PK wide. And that was it, Manchester United went on to score the sixth and seventh sudden death PK with Manchester United goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar saved the last PK of the night from Chelsea Nicolas Anelka.

The triumph did not come easy for Manchester United though. Having scored earlier in the night through a well-placed header from Cristiano Ronaldo, but Chelsea did not throw the towel as yet and scored just seconds before half-time from Frank Lampard's opportunistic strike.

Chelsea controlled most of the play and tempo in the second half. They came close to score with Didier Drogba hit the woodwork and Frank Lampard hit the crossbar. But basically that was it. The score was 1-1 on normal playing time and both teams had to play extra-time to decide the winner.

Didier Drogba was red-carded and ejected from the pitch towards the end of the extra-time period when he slapped Nemanja Vidic on the face. In retrospect, maybe this was the defining moment of Chelsea fate on the night. If Drogba had not been sent-off, he could be the one who will take the PK instead of John Terry. As we know, Drogba's chance of successfully converting the PK is much more higher than Terry's.

The rest was history. Manchester United is crowned Champions of Europe again for the third time. The victory is reminiscent of their famous Treble season in 1999 where Manchester United were on the brink of death before miracle happened in the final seconds of the match.

Way to go! Manchester United! Way to go!

Manchester United Goes to Moscow

2008-04-30T04:45:00.003+08:00

Yes! After some nine years of waiting, Manchester United successfully made it to the UEFA Champions League final, to be held in Moscow, Russia on May 21 this year. Manchester United defeated FC Barcelona 1-0 at Old Trafford, Manchester in the second leg of the semi-final match between the two clubs after the goalless draw from their first encounter at Nou Camp, Barcelona.

Paul Scholes scored the only goal of the match from a fantastic long-range effort that the Barcelona goalkeeper could only watch in vain early in the game. Lionel Messi played really well for Barcelona but could not break Manchester United solid defense. Both teams were equally matched on the night but Manchester United held on to the solitary goal till the end of the match.

Their final opponent will be decided between Liverpool and Chelsea tomorrow night.

Two Great Classic Novels

2008-04-25T00:48:00.006+08:00

Into the final two parts of Anna Karenina, a masterpiece by Leo Tolstoy instead. It took me almost one and half year now. Of course, I stopped readin' it for almost a year. In between I've have read other non-fictions as well. Meanwhile, started on Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, her most famous novel. That's me. Always started on new book before the old ones could finish. Sometimes, I have with me six to seven books that i read concurrently. Will watch the film "Anna Karenina" once I've finished readin' it.

This 1997 film starring Sophie Marceau as Anna Karenina.

This is the trailer of the 2005 film starring Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet.

Audrey Hepburn Performs "La Vie En Rose" in Sabrina

2008-04-21T13:19:00.004+08:00

The ever beautiful Audrey Hepburn performs "La Vie En Rose" in this 1954 film "Sabrina" co-starring with Humphrey Bogart. "La Vie En Rose" is the popular song by French singer Edith Piaf and was made into a biographical feature film in 2007 with the same title about the life of Edith Piaf, which won Marion Cotillard, who played Piaf from 19 until her death at 47, an Academy Award for Best Actress.

找一个很爱很爱的人

2008-04-17T00:19:00.002+08:00

你发觉了吗？爱的感觉总是在一开始时甜蜜，
总觉得多了一个人陪，多了一个人帮你分担，
你终于不再孤单了，因为至少有一个人想着你、
恋着你，只要能在一起就是好的。

但是慢慢地，随着认识的加深，
你开始发现了对方的缺点，
于是问题一个接一个出现，
你开始烦、累，甚至想要逃避，
有人说爱情就像捡石，
总想捡到一个适合自己的，
但是你又如何知道什么时候能够捡到呢？
她适合你，那你又适合她吗？

其实，爱情应该像磨石子儿，
或许刚捡到的时候，你不是那么满意，
但是请记住，人是有弹性的，
很多事情是可以改变的，只要你有心，有勇气，
与其到处去捡未知的石头，
还不如将自己已经拥有的石头磨亮磨光，
你开始磨了吗？
很多人以为，是因为感情淡了，
人才会变得懒惰，
其实人是先被惰性征服，感惰才慢慢变淡的。

在某个聚餐的场合，有人提议多吃点虾对身体好，
这时候有个中年男人忽然说："十年前，
当我老婆还是我女朋友的时候，她说要吃十只虾，
我就剥二十只给她。
现在，如果她要我帮她剥虾壳，简直就是开玩笑，
我连帮她夹菜都没兴趣了，还剥虾壳呢。"

难怪越来越多的人只想谈一辈子恋爱，
却迟迟不肯走入婚姻。
因为，婚姻容易让人变得懒惰。

如果每个人都懒得讲话，懒得倾听，
懒得制造惊喜，懒得温柔体贴，
那么夫妻之间，又怎么会不渐行渐远渐无声呢？
所以请记住，有活力的爱情是需要适度殷勤来灌溉的，
谈恋爱，更是不可以偷懒的。

有一对情侣，相约下班后去用餐，逛街，
可是女孩因为公司会议延误了，
当她冒雨赶到时候已经迟到了30多分钟，
她男朋友很不高兴地说："你每次都这样，
现在我什么心情也没了，我以后再也不会等你了！"
刹那间，女孩的心决堤崩溃了，
她在想：或许，他们再也没有未来了。

同样，在同一个地点，另一对情侣也面临同样的处境，
女孩赶到的时候也迟到了半个钟头，
她的男朋友说："我想你一定忙坏了吧？"
接着他为女孩拭去脸上的雨水，
并且脱去外套披在女孩身上，
此刻，女孩流泪却是温馨幸福的。

你体会到了吗？其实爱恨往往只在我们的一念之间！
爱不仅要懂得宽容更要及时，
很多事可能只是在于你心境的转变罢了。
如果有个人爱上你，而你也觉得他不错，
那并不代表你会选择他。

我们总说："我要找一个很爱很爱的人，才会谈恋爱。"
但是当对方问你，怎样才算是很爱很爱的时候，
你却无法回答他，因为你自己也不知道。

没错，我们总是以为，
我们会找到一个自己很爱很爱的人。
可是后来，当我们猛然回首，才发觉自己曾经多么天真。
假如从来没有开始，
你怎么知道自己会不会很爱很爱那个人呢？
其实，很爱很爱的感觉，
是要在一起经历了许多事情之后才会发现的。
每个人都希望找到自己心目中百分之百的伴侣，
但是你有没有想过，
在你身边早有人对你默默付出很久了，
只是你没有发觉而已。

所以，还是仔细看看身边的人吧，
他或许已经等你很久了。
当你爱一个人的时候，爱到八分绝对刚刚好。
所有的期待和希望都只有七八分，
剩下两三分用来爱自己。
如果你还继续爱得更多，
很可能给对方造成沉重的压力，
让彼此喘不过气来，完全丧失了爱情的乐趣。

所以请记住，
喝酒不要超过六分醉，
吃饭不要超过七分饱，
爱一个人不要超过八分。
如果你正在为爱迷惘，
下面这段话或许可以给你一些启示：

爱一个人，
要了解也要开解；
要道歉也要道谢；
要认错也要改错；
要体贴也要体谅；
是接受而不是忍受；
是宽容而不是纵容；
是支持而不是支配；
是慰问而不是质问；
是倾诉而不是控诉；
是难忘而不是遗忘；
是彼此交流而不是凡事交代；
是为对方默默祈求而不向对方诸多要求。
可以浪漫，但不要浪费，
不要随便牵手，更不要随便放手!

The Return of Gordon Gekko

2008-04-12T01:17:00.011+08:00

The sequel to the 1987 film "Wall Street" is on its way, tentatively called "Money Never Sleeps". Personally, I think it should be renamed "The Return of Gordon Gekko" instead -- to capture the popularity of the character played by Michael Douglas.

But what I would like to do is make the following case; very few of the actions which Bud Fox (played by Charlie Sheen) and Gordon Gekko carried out and traded on were actually illegal under securities law at the time. In fact, any sequel to this film should have started with the premise that Gordon Gekko was acquitted on all charges of securities fraud.

Securities law has been materially tightened since the 1980s. I'm judging Gekko against the general principles which operated during that period rather than specific post-Boesky rules. And, Gekko was presumably charged with both securities fraud and tax fraud in the film; since Oliver Stone doesn't show us any material details of his tax arrangements, I can't comment on whether he was guilty on these counts.

All in, the charges against Gordon Gekko would be grouped into six general areas.

1. Trading in BlueStar Airlines (first operation). This is the firm where Bud Fox's father (Carl) works. Carl has become aware, as the union representative, that the FAA is about to rule in BlueStar's favour in a safety case, which will open up a few big routes to them. Bud Fox passes on the information to Gekko, who orders twenty thousand shares.

Potential charge: Insider dealing. Gekko is trading on the information provided via Bud Fox's dad. This is material and non-public information, and it would probably be illegal to trade based on it today. However, under the standards prevailing in 1987, "inside information" has to be "information coming from an insider", and an "insider" used to be defined quite narrowly; it would not have been at all clear that Carl Fox was an insider for securities law purposes. In any case, Bud Fox is certainly not a BlueStar insider; although Gekko actually finds out that his dad is a union rep, he would not therefore have been assumed to have known he was dealing on inside information. Given that at least two people (the comptroller and Carl Fox) have already blabbed about this decision, he would be within his rights to assume that, despite Bud Fox telling him it was incredibly secret, it was actually common knowledge in aviation circles. This charge would never stick.

2. Trading in Anacott Steel. Gekko tells Bud Fox to come up with some more hot tips. He suggests that looking into the activities of Sir Larry Wildman would be a good source. Bud follows Wildman about for a day, then finds out that he has boarded a plane bound for Erie, Pennsylvania (the headquarters of Anacott). Bud passes the information to Gekko, who sees a chance to greenmail his old rival. He instructs Bud to buy substantial block of the stock, then to call the Wall Street Chronicle with the codephrase "Blue Horseshoe loves Anacott Steel".

Potential charges: Insider dealing, market manipulation. Frankly, I don’t see how the insider dealing charge could ever have got off the ground on this one. It is not illegal to follow somebody into an elevator, and it is not illegal to ask their chauffeur where they are flying to. And that is all that Bud does with respect to Larry Wildman. They work out that his target is Anacott by an act of deduction from his aircraft's destination, which is public knowledge (in the sense that anyone who was in the right place at the right time could have got it; if you see a train crash, you do not have to wait until it appears on the evening news before selling the stock of the railway company). Insider information has to be specific information, and the fact that a man has flown to a town is not specific. This is the deal at which the film marks the beginning of the corruption of Bud Fox, and it is, as far as I can tell, completely honest.

The market manipulation charge is a bit more dubious. I must say that I don't like the way in which Gekko handles his relationship with the media, and I suspect that he would be caught today under the rules brought in to deal with "pump and dump" stock manipulations. But rules were significantly more lax in the 1980s, and people did indeed feed tips to the WSJ's "Heard on the Street" column about the dealings of big investors. And note that there is no false information here; Blue Horseshoe is the name of Gekko's trading company, and at the time Bud calls in the tip, it was substantially long the shares of Anacott Steel. It's a gray area, but I suspect that it would have been dealt with via an SEC disciplinary arrangement rather than a criminal charge. The actual greenmail which annoys Larry Wildman so much is not a criminal offence and never has been. It's just not against the law to buy something that you think other people will pay you a lot of money for.

3. Trading in Fairchild Foods and Roarker Electronics. It's not clear quite what goes on here, but it seems to me that Bud bribes the owner of a cleaning service to get a job which allows him to wander round the offices of his college friend Roger's law firm at night. He basically xeroxes documents relating to forthcoming mergers and acquisitions and uses the information to trade on behalf of Gekko.

Potential charges: Conspiracy to theft, insider dealing. Bud Fox has clearly gone way over his head here and is guilty of burglary and securities fraud. But how much of it can be pinned on Gekko? Not much, I'd say. Gekko calls Bud from his beach-house and says "You done good, but you gotta keep doing good. I showed you how the game works, now school’s out […] You don't understand. I want to be surprised …astonish me, sport, new info, don't care where or how you get it, just get it […] This is your wake-up call. Go to work". In the context of the film, it's clear what he means, but I think you would have a very hard time indeed in court proving that Gekko meant "Commit numerous counts of felony burglary" when he said "don't care where or how you get it, just get it".

Gekko clearly appears to be structuring his affairs in order to reduce the appearance of a paper trail linking him to Bud Fox; he asks Fox to trade through a number of nominee accounts, and to act with limited power of attorney over the money he manages. But in the absence of any non-circumstantial evidence, there are a million and one reasons why he might do this. Indeed, Gekko might say that he specifically arranged his affairs this way in order to bring home to Fox that he alone would bear the consequences of any illegality, in order to ensure that he didn't break the law. The point at work here is that Bud Fox is never an employee of Gordon Gekko (he keeps his job at the brokerage throughout the film), and so Gekko has next to no duty of supervision.

4. Conduct surrounding the tender offer for Teldar Paper. This is the centerpiece of the film, where Gekko makes the "Greed is Good" speech. Teldar is a paper company that Gekko regards as poorly managed, and he wants to take it over to break it up.

Potential charges: None? Corporate raiding is not illegal, and Gekko is perfectly within his rights to buy a lot of stock in a company if he thinks he can run it better than the incumbent management. Gekko was buying stock in Teldar before he ever met Bud Fox, and by the time of the meeting, he is the largest single stockholder. Teldar paper is "leveraged up to the hilt like some piss-poor Latin American country", but this can't possibly be Gekko's fault; he isn't in charge of it at the time of the shareholders' meeting. Oliver Stone clearly put this scene in the film in order to point out that most of what Gekko does which he considers harmful, he does within the bounds of the law (this is also true of Ivan Boesky, the financier upon whom Gekko appears to be loosely based. Boesky was sent to jail on relatively minor insider dealing charges, but his real fortune and reputation was based on perfectly legal, if sometimes spectacularly ill-advised, junk bond issues).

5. Trading in BlueStar Airlines (second operation). Gekko decides to take over BlueStar in order to carry out a similar breakup. He uses Bud as his intermediary, in order to ensure that he will have co-operation from the unions for doing so. In the course of the negotiations, he makes a number of promises; he claims that he wants to turn the company around with Bud as President (why the company is in need of a turnaround is not clear; I thought that the FAA decision was meant to mean that it was all systems go for BlueStar). Bud later learns that Gekko has no intention of keeping these promises; he simply intends to raid the pension fund and then break up the company. As Gekko buys stock, Bud and the unions announce that they no longer stand by the informal commitments they have given, and the price plummets. This allows Larry Wildman to step in and take the company away from Gekko.

Potential charges: Insider trading, market manipulation, breach of takeover regulations. Again, Bud Fox is the villain here, and he has been scandalously unprofessional in his treatment of Gordon Gekko as a client. It is not against the law to carry out due diligence on an acquisition you are thinking of making, and that includes talking to union representatives. The only price-sensitive information Gekko has is his own intention to make a bid, and that is privileged information; it can't be inside information by definition. What is highly illegal is for someone like Bud Fox to take that information to a third party (like Wildman), and having received it from what he explicitly knows to be a privileged source, for Wildman to act on it. I have no idea why Wildman is not indicted toward the end of the film; he has clearly been responsible for creating a false market in this stock in order to get it at a lower price (particularly, Bud encourages Gekko to part with a block at $17 when he knows that Wildman intends to tender $18; this is about as blatant as fraud gets).

I note that it is usually not illegal for the acquirer of a company with an overfunded pension fund to buy "minimum annuities" for the fund members and pocket the surplus, although this issue is academic as Gekko never gained control of BlueStar. Of course, these days, the likelihood of finding a US regional airline which still had an overfunded defined benefit pension plan to plunder would be pretty low.

6. Trading in Fulham Oil, Brent Resources and Geo Dynamics. These are the companies that Gekko mentions to Bud shortly before punching him on the nose. They aren't mentioned anywhere else in the film. But given the context, I have no reason to believe that anyone could make a charge stick on these companies either.

So that's basically the plot of the film. Gordon Gekko, an aggressive but perfectly legal financier, makes a mistake in hiring a thoroughly dishonest stockbroker to act for him, is made the victim of a scandalous securities fraud and then, for unknown reasons, is indicted along with the person who defrauded him, while the main conspirator in that fraud walks free. It's a travesty of justice.

Keep in mind that I did not condone what Gordon Gekko has done in the film. The points I just mentioned are just to clear a way for Gordon Gekko to start afresh in the new sequel.

Kenapa Agong Tak Suka Idris Jusoh?

2008-03-24T00:40:00.000+08:00

Came across this article on the current MB crisis in Terengganu state. Don't know how true is this.

One thing that Malaysia Today would like to raise is the matter of Terengganu's oil royalty which we hope Mahathir will address on 28 July. Since the mid-1970s, Terengganu had been enjoying a 5% royalty on all the oil and gas extracted in the state. That is what is provided for under the Petroleum Development Act. In fact, not only Terengganu, but any state in Malaysia where oil and gas is extracted they would enjoy the same. However, in 2000, this royalty was withdrawn and converted to Wang Ehsan (goodwill money). Suddenly, the RM800 million or so a year that Terengganu was supposed to get as its 5% share of the oil and gas revenue was transferred out of the state and into the hands of one man, Idris Jusoh.

Malaysia was then already suffering from an outbreak of JE. But in Terengganu it was JE of another kind, Jusoh Enterprise, Idris Jusoh's family business. Jusoh Enterprise or JE was suddenly flush with funds, RM800 million a year to be exact. Then, in 2004, Umno, under the stewardship of Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, won back the state from the opposition. But the state did not win back its 5% oil royalty. The Wang Ehsan continued and Idris Jusoh, who now became the Chief Minister, continued to single-handedly manage the fund. Even the State Economic Development Corporation (SEDC) and the Terengganu State Economic Planning Unit (UPENT) were left totally in the dark. One man, Idris Jusoh, decided how the money was spent, and it is a lot of money.

But the new Prime Minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, would not tolerate one man managing the state's coffers. He wanted Idris Jusoh's hands out of the RM800 million a year cash box. However, to revert to the 5% royalty only meant that the money would come directly under state control. That would not serve their purpose. They wanted direct control of the RM800 million. Now it was under the control of the Prime Minister's Department but passed down to Idris Jusoh's hands. What they needed to do was to get Idris Jusoh's hands out of the equation.

Then Khairy Jamaluddin, Abdullah's son-in-law cum adviser, came out with a fantastic new 'umbrella concept', better than even Mahathir's. They wanted control of the RM800 million a year. But they did not want to get it out of Idris Jusoh's hands by putting it into the hands of the state. That would merely be a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire. They wanted direct control of the money without Idris Jusoh deciding on how the money is spent.

And this is how they did it. First they appointed Wan Farid, Khairy's 'running dog', as Abdullah's Political Secretary. Then they appointed Wan Hisham, Wan Farid's brother, as the State Exco Member in-charge of tourism. Then they gave Patrick Lim, Khairy's business partner, the sole monopoly of all state tourism projects. Now the network is intact and Idris Jusoh has been cut off.

Patrick Lim's job is to create all sorts of state tourism projects at hugely inflated prices. He would then propose these projects to Wan Hisham, the man in-charge of tourism. Wan Hisham would then pass them on to his brother, Wan Farid. Wan Farid would then pass them on to Khairy. Idris Jusoh would of course be left out of the loop and he would only know about them when it was a fait accompli -- as the Malays would say, "Nasi sudah jadi bubur."

They built 30 houses at RM1 million each on an island in the Terengganu River. They launched a RM300 million a year yacht race called the Monsoon Cup. Hundreds of millions a year is being spent to 'attract tourists to Terengganu'. It seems this year the amount of Wang Ehsan has shot up from RM800 million to RM1 billion -- so there is even more money to play around with.

To ensure that Idris Jusoh keeps his hands out of the cash box, Abdullah himself chairs the state meetings though he is the Prime Minister and not the Terengganu Chief Minister. Of course, Idris Jusoh, being the Chief Minister, is allowed to sit in on these meetings though he has no say on what they propose. Patrick Lim, though he is not in the government, is also allowed to attend these meetings.

Abdullah would then propose all sorts of tourism projects conjured by Wan Hisham, Wan Farid and Khairy. Details are of course not discussed; only the gist of things and the amounts involved. Whenever Idris Jusoh raises any questions, he would be told to 'leave it all to Patrick Lim who knows what to do'. Idris Jusoh is not to involve himself in the details.

After awhile Idris Jusoh got quite pissed and tried to resist. One project that he knew nothing about was placed before him and he was told by Patrick Lim to sign the papers. But how could he sign the papers when he knew nothing about it and would eventually have to bear responsibility for it?

Patrick Lim walked out of Idris Jusoh's office and phoned Wan Farid who complained to Khairy. Within an hour Idris Jusoh received a phone call from Abdullah who ordered him to sign the papers, which he of course did straight away.

Patrick Lim's hold on Abdullah was apparent to all but somehow not to Idris Jusoh. One day Abdullah visited Terengganu to chair the regular meetings on how to spend Terengganu's RM800 million (which is now RM1 billion because of the increase in oil prices). Idris Jusoh fetched Abdullah from the airport but before his car could move Patrick Lim's car cut in front of Idris Jusoh's car and Abdullah got out of Idris Jusoh's car and got into Patrick Lim's car. Idris Jusoh should have realised then who really runs Terengganu.

Yes, RM1 billion a year is a lot of money. This money, which should belong to Terengganu, is not going to the state. It is going to Wan Hisham, Wan Farid, Patrick Lim and Khairy. And Abdullah chairs the state meetings to decide how the money is spent. And Wan Hisham, Wan Farid, Patrick Lim and Khairy help spend the money. And they spend it all. And Idris Jusoh has no say in how it is spent. And if he refuses to sign the papers he will get a phone call from Abdullah.

Now do you know who runs this country? Abdullah says he and not his son-in-law runs this country. Idris Jusoh however will tell you that Khairy runs this country. And Khairy also runs Terengganu and manages its RM1 billion a year through Wan Hisham, Wan Farid and Patrick Lim. And Abdullah chairs the Terengganu State meetings on behalf of Khairy and according to the plan on how Patrick Lim wishes to spend the RM1 billion a year.

And now do you know why Mahathir is so pissed? And he has every reason to be pissed. In fact, I too am pissed. And that is why I agree that Mahathir stays pissed with Abdullah and his son-in-law. The Terengganu issue alone is enough for me to get pissed. And rest assured that Terengganu is but the tip of the iceberg.

Yes, it is nice being able to walk in the corridors of power. And much can you do when you walk in the corridors of power. And RM1 billion a year is nice to manage if you have that power to do so. And when you walk in the corridors of power you would of course have that power.

In regards to this, let me share with you what i read about the list of honorific titles for Malaysia's PMs:

1. YM Tunku Abd.Rahman: Bapa Kemerdekaan
2. Tun Abd.Razak: Bapa Pembangunan
3. Tun Hussein Onn: Bapa Perpaduan
4. Tun Dr. Mahathir: Bapa Pemodenan (Or Bapa Kerosakan Sistem Negara?)
5. Dato' Seri Abdullah Badawi: Bapa Mertua

;-)

12 Girls Band - New Classicism (新古典主义)

2008-03-21T13:40:00.002+08:00

12 Girls Band - Hepbeat (七拍)

2008-03-21T02:41:00.000+08:00

12 Girls Band - Freedom (自由)

2008-03-21T02:38:00.002+08:00

12 Girls Band - Revisit

Malaysia opposition win shows power of cyberspace

2008-03-09T23:24:00.002+08:00

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Malaysia's weak opposition was up against a hostile mainstream media and restrictive campaign rules, but it can chalk up much of its stunning success in Saturday's election to the power of cyberspace.

Voters exasperated with the unvarnished support of the mainstream media for the ruling National Front furiously clicked on YouTube and posted comments with popular bloggers about tales of sex, lies and videotapes in the run-up to Saturday's election.

Jeff Ooi, a 52-year-old former advertising copywriter who made his name writing a political blog, "Screenshots" (www.jeffooi.com) won a seat in northern Penang state for the opposition Democratic Action Party (DAP).

Elizabeth Wong, a human rights activist and political consultant who runs a blog (http://elizabethwong.wordpress.com), won a state assembly seat in the central state of Selangor.

YouTube, the phenomenally popular video Web site, did as much damage as any opposition figure could hope to inflict, after netizens uploaded embarrassing videos of their politicians in action on hot-button issues.

One YouTube video in January showed ruling party MP Badruddin bin Amiruldin causing a ruckus in parliament over whether Malaysia was an Islamic state. "Malaysia is an Islamic state," he declared. "You don't like it, you get out of Malaysia!"

Muslim Malays form the majority in multi-racial Malaysia, but ethnic Chinese and Indians account for a third of the population and they deserted the ruling National Front in droves, partly in outrage over the religious debate.

SEX, SLEAZE, CORRUPTION

Another YouTube video that got wide distribution shows a rambling and incoherent Information Minister Zainuddin Maidin, in a live interview with al-Jazeera, excitedly defending a police crackdown against peaceful protesters calling for changes to the electoral process in November.

Zainuddin was one of several "big guns" in the National Front that fell to the opposition's onslaught.

Sex, sleaze and corruption were election issues and they all had video soap operas on Web sites.

Malaysia's health minister resigned in January after admitting he and a female friend were the couple in a secretly filmed sex video uploaded on YouTube. That cost some votes.

"We were concerned about the morality of our leaders," said Maisarah Zainal, a 26-year-old teacher in Kuala Lumpur. "It didn't help that Chua Soi Lek was involved in a sex video."

Loh Gwo Burne, who secretly videotaped a phone conversation, allegedly showing a high-profile lawyer trying to fix judicial appointments with Malaysia's former chief judge, was elected to a seat in parliament from a seat in suburban Kuala Lumpur.

The grainy video hit a nerve in Malaysia, whose judiciary has been under question since the late 1980s.

Malaysia's blogging community offer alternative views in a country where the government keeps a tight control on mainstream media. The government said last year it might compel bloggers to register with the authorities to curb the spread of malicious content on the Internet.

Government backers doubt whether bloggers turned opposition politicians could make their presence felt. "Beyond the major cities like Kuala Lumpur and Penang, there's not much the bloggers can really hope to accomplish," says Mohamad Norza Zakaria, a leader in Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi's UMNO party.

The Chinese-backed DAP, by contrast, appointed blogger Ooi to head the party's "e-campaign."

Even a barely literate 89-year-old grandmother running for parliament with little money and only a bicycle to get around on, hopped the cyberspace bandwagon with a Facebook profile and her own blog, courtesy of some Internet savvy supporters. Mamin Yusuf, however, lost. It wasn't clear how many of her potential voters were hooked up to the Internet in northeastern Terengganu.

(REUTERS by Bill Tarrant)

Letter from Anwar Ibrahim to the People of Malaysia

2008-03-09T04:28:00.002+08:00

Hari ini, melalui kertas undi, anda telah mendengar suara hati anda dengan sepenuh tekad bahawa masa untuk perubahan sudah tiba.

Rakyat Malaysia telah bersuara. Ini adalah detik bersejarah, yang luar biasa dalam sejarah negara kita.

Hari ini lebaran baru telah dibuka. Rakyat telah mengundi dengan berani dan terbuka untuk melangkah ke satu era di mana kerajaan yang dibentuk mestilah bersifat terbuka dan mengiktiraf semua rakyat Malaysia tanpa mengira agama, bangsa, dan budaya adalah satu rakyat yang bersatu.

Rakyat telah meluahkan tanpa sebarang ragu bahawa mereka tegas mahukan akauntabiliti, ketelusan dan kedaulatan undang-undang.

Hari ini, perpaduan dan persefahaman bersama antara rakyat telah menang.

Esok, kita akan memulakan gerak kerja untuk membina masa depan yang lebih cerah untuk rakyat Malaysia, dengan saling berpimpin tangan dan berganding bahu ke bahu.

Inilah harapan baru untuk Malaysia!

ANWAR IBRAHIM

A New Dawn for Malaysia

My fellow Malaysians,

Today at the ballot box, you listened to your heart with the firm conviction that the time for change has arrived.

The people of Malaysia have spoken. This is a defining moment, unprecedented in our nation’s history.

Today a new chapter has opened. The people have voted decisively for a new era where the government must be truly inclusive and recognize that all Malaysians, regardless of race, culture and religion are a nation of one.

The people have expressed in no uncertain terms that they want accountability, transparency and the rule of law.

Today unity, consensus, and mutual respect triumphed.

Tomorrow, we start working to build a brighter future, hand in hand, shoulder to shoulder. This is a new dawn for Malaysia.

ANWAR IBRAHIM

What A Shame! - Malaysia Sleeping PM on the News Again

2008-03-05T00:52:00.014+08:00

What a shame! All Malaysians should be shameful for having a sleeping PM at the helm. Pak Lah telah menjatuhkan maruah dan air muka kita di kalangan antarabangsa. Beliau sepatutnya berasa malu semalu-malunya!!! On 3rd March 2008, International Herald Tribune (IHT) titled "Seeking re-election, Malaysia's leader denies sleeping on the job" should ring an alarm bell to us -- that our PM is really "sleeping" during his tenure as PM. People is tired of all the empty promises and propaganda given by the leaders of the mis-government during this General Election campaign. All the BN leaders should be ashame for having work with him. Asyik tidur aje! Pak Lah has to go this time. Sorry. Selamat jalan! Let the opposition takes over this time!

The IHT news could be read here.

And, this is the proof of our sleeping PM. Judge it yourself.

Ezam Mohd Nor of GERAK on BN Corruption

2008-03-03T15:57:00.002+08:00

RASUAH MUSUH NO.1 NEGARA!

Great and emotional speech by Ezam Mohd Nor, the Chairman of Gerakan Demokrasi dan Anti Korupsi (GERAK), after the defeat of PKR's candidate at Ijok by-election in April, 2007. Will you vote for this kind of mis-government? God please save our country! Open the eyes of those who are still deceived by the mass propaganda from the mainstream media in our beloved country Malaysia. BN has more than enough phantom votes (undi hantu) already. We Malaysians, as people of integrity must unite our powers to vote for opposition this time. DAP, PKR, PAS sama saja, as long as they can catch the big sharks that are threatening us and defend our most fundamental rights.

Below are some of the undi hantu in Rembau, parliament seat contested by the infamous and samseng "Son-in-law", aka "The Monkey" at Tingkat 4, Khairy Jamaluddin. All these hantu are more than 100 years old. Keep the faith and pray hard so that these hantu won't haunt us during this General Election. You can verify this at Suruhanjaya Pilihanraya (SPR) website at http://daftarj.spr.gov.my/daftarbi.asp

890211050014 @ 1307762
961022505236 @ A7023350
971219750079 @ 0902843
991230710156 @ 2024648
991025740081 @ 0216550

Gerakan Member Speaks For PKR's Candidate Tian Chua

2008-03-03T14:29:00.004+08:00

BN is rotten to the core. Let's boldly change the current mis-government.

Perseverance - DAP Election Song

2008-03-02T02:03:00.008+08:00

To all opposition candidates -- this song is for you. You all are the real fighters for the future of Malaysia.

Rasuah Sayang Sayang Eh...

2008-03-02T02:00:00.002+08:00

Pak Lah Lah Lah...You Always Sleeping...

2008-03-02T01:30:00.008+08:00

Found this video clip. Funny... :D

Teruslah Tidur Pak Lah! Malu Negara Kita!

2008-03-01T03:16:00.002+08:00

The Grudge Between Pak Lah & Dr Mahathir

2008-02-28T00:59:00.003+08:00

Dr Mahathir said Dato Seri Anwar Ibrahim is innocent, finally.

Dr Mahathir On the Infamous Son-In-Law at Tingkat 4

2008-02-28T00:27:00.004+08:00

Dr Mahathir On UMNO Money Politics (RM200)

2008-02-28T00:17:00.003+08:00

Ceramah Tony Pua at SS2 Pasar Malam

2008-02-27T16:38:00.006+08:00

WE WANT CHANGE! WE WANT CHANGE! WE WANT CHANGE! -- Already people are comparing Tony Pua with Barack Obama.

Part 2 of the Ceramah could be found at http://www.malaysiakini.tv

Just Change - DAP 2008 General Election Campaign Song

2008-02-27T16:36:00.005+08:00

Lyrics by Tony Pua. Malaysia got talent.

Also available in Malay and Chinese version.

People of Taiping - Vote for Nga Kor Ming of DAP

2008-02-26T16:56:00.001+08:00

2007十大杰出青年 -- 倪可敏 will speak up for you and for us in the parliament. Defending our basic rights as the citizen of Malaysia.

Vote for Tony Pua Kiam Wee (DAP PJ Utara Candidate)

2008-02-26T16:33:00.007+08:00

（八打靈再也訊）有了未來50年的生活儲備金後，行動黨秘書長經濟顧問潘儉偉無後顧之憂地從政。他從政的理念很簡單也很踏實，即參與政策擬定，幫助更多人。

潘儉偉今年1月加入行動黨後，即成為該黨其中一顆耀眼新星。傳言他今屆大選將攻打八打靈再也北區國會議席，與周美芬一較高低。

傳攻靈北挑戰周美芬

詢及若是真的上陣八打靈再也北區，他的勝算如何時？他說，這是一場勢均力敵的戰役。

“她是市民尊敬的領袖，很多人說她是有做工的國會議員。這次她發生車禍，我們也關心她的情況。”

不過，他想強調的是，國會議員的職責最主要是處理政策事務，路燈、水溝、路面有洞是市議會的工作，不是國會議員的職責。

議員不只是處理路燈

“我們選一位國會議員，只為了要多一些路燈，或平坦的路面，這對我們國會議員的了解和要求太低了。當然，服務也是一定要的，但地方的服務工作是不足夠的。”

他認為，國會議員是把民生帶上國會，然後擬定保護國家的政策，如關注及處理回教化政策、新經濟政策、種族化的政治等所引發的問題。

提及周美芬車禍意外事件或為她帶來同情票，提高她個人優勢，他不否認有這樣的可能性，不過，這事件也為周美芬帶來不便。

自小受政治熏陶

潘儉偉希望自己可以在國會發出反對的聲音，這種理想，是他自小受到政治熏陶，近幾年來的政治發展是促成他加入行動黨的要素。

當年，潘儉偉還在讀上午班，每天陪著父親四處送雞蛋，而且常聽他聊起我國政治情況，尤其是85年的合作社風暴所造成的影響。

他說，他最常聽到林吉祥和卡巴星兩個名字及兩人為了一些事件被內安法令扣留的故事。

“當時就覺得他們非常偉大，除了名譽和民眾的致謝，他們所做的並沒為個人帶來任何利益。那時候，我感覺自己大了也要做些好事。”

曾對政府抱很大期望

“首相阿都拉上台時，我對他有很大的期望，我對凱里也有蠻大的信心，相信他會有新馬來人的新視野及國際觀。”

他說，若當時政府叫他加入有關政策的研究委員會，他會考慮加入，因為政府所發出的願景很可信，讓人很有信心及很大的期望。

“我對2006年初的內閣重組抱著很大的期望，但出來的名單只有一兩個人改變而已。我對政府失去信心，要加入國陣是沒有可能的。”

加入執政黨不如打高球

他續說，“我覺得你講得這麼多，給人家這麼大的希望，卻甚麼事都做不到，你的結構和制度都有問題。”

他說，他也瞭解民政和馬華黨內的政治文化，但他覺得自己在這些黨內的貢獻與付出是有限的。

“我覺得要我加入執政黨，不如我每天去打高爾夫球，不用去浪費這些時間。”

他說，有些事執政黨做得到反對黨做不到，但有些事是執政黨應該做的，卻沒有做到。

在乎聲音能否被聽見

加入公正黨或行動黨，潘儉偉考量的是他在黨內的聲音是否有人聽見，其付出是否有人珍惜；在黨外，其政治聲音也須能被聽到。

他說，他和反對黨領袖林吉祥和林冠英多次接觸後，讓他覺得舒服，而且覺得自己對該黨也會有所貢獻。

新經政策窮人未受惠

潘儉偉指出，新經濟政策強調的是幫助馬來人，而不是窮人；只有影響力或是聰明的馬來人才懂得使用這種政策幫助自己，而這些人屬於少數。

他指出，反對黨強調的是政府必須把新經濟政策改成‘幫助貧窮人’的政策，貧窮的馬來人才會受惠，貧窮的華人和印度人也能獲益。

“我們並沒有反對幫馬來人，我們反對的是幫助富有的馬來人，就如有能力購買25萬令吉屋子的土著，不應獲得5至7%的折扣。”

姓名：潘儉偉 (http://www.tonypua.com)
出生日期：1972年8月1日
出生地：峇株峇轄
籍貫：潮州

學歷：
Montfort 小學
新加坡萊佛士學院
牛津大學，哲學、政治及經濟系學士學位

從政資歷：
2007年1月加入民主行動黨
任行動黨秘書長經濟顧問
行動黨白沙羅支部主席
行動黨雪州州委（星洲日報•2008.01.06）

Anwar: Let's Talk About Hindraf Issues

2008-02-25T14:55:00.001+08:00

Anwar Ibrahim On Kampung Rawa Incident

2008-02-25T13:50:00.001+08:00

Harga Petrol Diturunkan Pada 9 Mac 2008? The Choice Is Yours!

2008-02-24T02:49:00.004+08:00

Jolin - 日不落

2008-02-13T23:51:00.002+08:00

Lyrics

天空的雾来的漫不经心
河水像油画一样安静
和平鸽慵懒步伐咬着云
心偷偷的放晴

祈祷你像英勇的禁卫军
动也不动的守护爱情
你在回忆里留下的脚印
是我爱的风景

Chorus

我要送你日不落的想念
寄出代表爱的明信片
我要送你日不落的爱恋
心牵着心把世界走遍
你就是晴天你就是晴天
我的爱未眠
不落的想念飞在你身边
我的爱未眠

爱的巴士总是走了又停
微笑望着广场上人群
我要把爱全都装进心里
陪我一起旅行
我的爱未眠(我的爱未眠)

Barack Obama - Iowa Caucus Victory Speech

2008-02-12T21:53:00.000+08:00

Although i can't vote for Barack Obama. I still think he can win the race to the presidency. The time is now.

Anyway, he is a damn good public speaker. Haha...

Barack Obama - The Great President of United States

2008-02-12T21:40:00.000+08:00

Just look at his speech to the public. You are seeing a great President of United States of America in the making.

Tofu (Kung Fu) Song (周大侠)

2008-02-12T20:41:00.000+08:00

Watched two movies last week. Stephen Chow's "CJ7" and Jay Chou's "Kung Fu Dunk". "Kung Fu Dunk" is undoubtedly the better of the two. Of course, that's my personal preference. This is the theme song for "Kung Fu Dunk" titled "Zhou Da Xia".

U.S. Recession - The Inevitable

2008-02-06T23:51:00.000+08:00

Well, the Fed had cut the fed fund rate by 125 basis points to 3.00 in just two weeks. This could slow the decline of U.S. equity market for now. But, could the Fed save the U.S. economy from the inevitable? Personally, i don't think so.

Look at the Baltic Dry Index (BDI) -- the leading indicator of the economy, it has dropped from 11,000 points in Nov 2007 to just over 6,000 points in Feb 2008! Container rate has crashed! Furthermore, ISM services had contracted to 44.6, almost touching the level of recession. Last quarter GDP only grew at 0.6%, terribly close to zero. These are all signs of U.S. economy is heading towards recession, which many people have already believed it had. If this is the case, George Soros prophecy could become true -- the worst recession in 60 years!

So, what to do at this time of uncertainty? Of course, the defensive measure is to liquidate all your position in equity market and remain in the sideline. For aggressive investors or traders alike, continue to short U.S. stocks on strength, particularly financial related counters by using instruments like options and CFD. Because this could be the worst credit crunch in the making.

The Fed may cut the fed fund rate further in the next meeting, but the room to cut further may have to stop one day because of the continuing weakening of U.S. dollar which put pressure on the price level in the country, particularly many goods have to be imported from China and the rest of the world. If the fed make a wrong move, it could steer the world largest economy to stagflation instead of helping it prevent a recession.

Interestingly, every time the U.S. stock market plunges, the global stock markets plunge even more. Until now, there is only a 13% decline from the peak of around 14,000 points for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, whereas the other major stock markets had certainly plummeted more than that, some even more than 20%, a threshold for entering a bear market.

So my friends, the worst is yet to come for U.S. stock market. Not even a new president could prevent the inevitable. Just be prepared!

The Worst Market Crisis in 60 Years

2008-02-04T10:36:00.000+08:00

The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years.

However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.

Boom-bust processes usually revolve around credit and always involve a bias or misconception. This is usually a failure to recognise a reflexive, circular connection between the willingness to lend and the value of the collateral. Ease of credit generates demand that pushes up the value of property, which in turn increases the amount of credit available. A bubble starts when people buy houses in the expectation that they can refinance their mortgages at a profit. The recent US housing boom is a case in point. The 60-year super-boom is a more complicated case.

Every time the credit expansion ran into trouble the financial authorities intervened, injecting liquidity and finding other ways to stimulate the economy. That created a system of asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.

Globalisation allowed the US to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and consume more than it produced. The US current account deficit reached 6.2 per cent of gross national product in 2006. The financial markets encouraged consumers to borrow by introducing ever more sophisticated instruments and more generous terms. The authorities aided and abetted the process by intervening whenever the global financial system was at risk. Since 1980, regulations have been progressively relaxed until they have practically disappeared.

The super-boom got out of hand when the new products became so complicated that the authorities could no longer calculate the risks and started relying on the risk management methods of the banks themselves. Similarly, the rating agencies relied on the information provided by the originators of synthetic products. It was a shocking abdication of responsibility.

Everything that could go wrong did. What started with subprime mortgages spread to all collateralised debt obligations, endangered municipal and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies and threatened to unravel the multi-trillion-dollar credit default swap market. Investment banks' commitments to leveraged buyouts became liabilities. Market-neutral hedge funds turned out not to be market-neutral and had to be unwound. The asset-backed commercial paper market came to a standstill and the special investment vehicles set up by banks to get mortgages off their balance sheets could no longer get outside financing. The final blow came when interbank lending, which is at the heart of the financial system, was disrupted because banks had to husband their resources and could not trust their counterparties. The central banks had to inject an unprecedented amount of money and extend credit on an unprecedented range of securities to a broader range of institutions than ever before. That made the crisis more severe than any since the second world war.

Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable. The ability of the financial authorities to stimulate the economy is constrained by the unwillingness of the rest of the world to accumulate additional dollar reserves. Until recently, investors were hoping that the US Federal Reserve would do whatever it takes to avoid a recession, because that is what it did on previous occasions. Now they will have to realise that the Fed may no longer be in a position to do so. With oil, food and other commodities firm, and the renminbi appreciating somewhat faster, the Fed also has to worry about inflation. If federal funds were lowered beyond a certain point, the dollar would come under renewed pressure and long-term bonds would actually go up in yield. Where that point is, is impossible to determine. When it is reached, the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy comes to an end.

Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.

The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse.

(Contributed by George Soros for Financial Times - 23rd Jan 2008)

Ramunia—MMHE a good fit

2008-01-31T00:49:00.001+08:00

The takeover of Ramunia Holdings Bhd by national carrier MISC Bhd took the market by surprise. One industry observer aptly put it when he said that such a level of secrecy had not been seen since the early days of the Cosa Nostra.

Judging by the swift leap in Ramunia's share price (it has gained some 33% since the announcement), the market seems to have taken a positive view of the deal, for the fabricator at least.

MISC has remained relatively unchanged since the announcement and closed at RM9.65 on Friday. Despite the lack of enthusiasm, the deal seems to be a sweet one for MISC as well.

To recap, MISC via its wholly owned unit MSE Holdings Sdn Bhd is taking up the reins at Ramunia Holdings Bhd, via the injection of Malaysia Marine and Heavy Engineering Sdn Bhd (MMHE) at a deal valued at RM3.2 billion. MMHE is a wholly owned unit of MSE Holdings.

Ramunia is issuing as many as RM1.4 billion worth of shares at RM1 each, and RM1.8 billion worth of 3.7%, 7—year irredeemable convertible preference shares of 50 sen each at par value.

A second part of the deal involves MSE Holdings making a renounceable offer for sale of 82 million of its shares in Ramunia at RM1 each, to minorities of the latter.

Effectively, the deal values MMHE at RM3.2 billion and Ramunia's stock at RM1 per share. At a price tag of RM3.2 billion, most analysts say MISC was offered a good price for MMHE.

On the RM3.2 billion price tag, OSK Investment Bank's analyst Chris Eng says, "The pricing of MMHE at RM3.2 billion is at a historical price—earnings ratio (PER) of 19.5 times and prospective PER of 14.6 times, which is cheap as oil and gas companies go."

It is also worth noting that some 18 months ago, MISC acquired 35% of MMHE off Kuok Brothers Sdn Bhd and IMC Enterprises Inc, the vehicles of billionaire tycoons Robert Kuok and Tan Sri Frank Tsao Wen King, for some RM181.6 million. After this acquisition, MISC wholly owned MMHE.

Industry sources say MISC made a massive gain as its setting up of MMHE, including the acquiring of equity held by Kuok and Tsao, amounted to slightly more than RM400 million, which means the RM3.2 billion price tag translates to a valuation gain of some RM2.8 billion.

An industry observer quips that if anyone should feel slighted, it should not be the shareholders of Ramunia or MISC, but rather Kuok and Tsao who now seem to have sold the company for a song.

The sale of 82 million shares at RM1 each will also net MISC an additional RM82 million. But the sale also gives Ramunia's minorities a chance to buy Ramunia shares at a significant discount to its current market price. Ramunia closed at RM1.61 on Friday.

Certain quarters argue that the valuation of Ramunia at RM1 a share is too low, considering that it is the only fabricator with unutilised yard space.

RHB Investment Bank Bhd's managing director Chay Wai Leong in an emailed response to The Edge, however, says, "The issue price of RM1 per share was arrived at after considering the 5—day volume weighted average market price of Ramunia's shares of RM1.16 up to Jan 17 this year, that being the last market day prior to the suspension of trading, and the audited consolidated net asset per Ramunia share of RM1.01 as at Oct 31, 2006." RHB Investment Bank is the merchant banker advising Ramunia.

Chay adds that the potential earnings of the fabrication yard had been taken into account, and the size, utilisation and potential increase in the growth potential of the yard as well.

"The acquisition will allow Ramunia to expand its fabrication facilities from 170 to 260 acres and increase its operational capacity to undertake more complex, larger scale, multiple and value—added projects such as deepwater fabrication contracts. The combined order book will be beneficial to the existing shareholders of Ramunia in terms of potential future earnings and prospects," he says.

There could be quite a number of benefits for Ramunia's shareholders. HLG Research's Jason Saw says with MISC at the helm of Ramunia, investor perception of management risks at Ramunia is eliminated. He adds that it is also likely that investors will be willing to place a premium on the company due to the merged entity's strong parentage, that is, oil major Petronas.

Saw also says the merged entity will be able to absorb an additional RM3 billion to RM4 billion worth of work on top of the existing order book of RM3.8 billion.

Management perception of Ramunia hit a snag in the middle of last year, when the company and Petronas were at loggerheads.

Ramunia was thrust into the limelight in—mid 2007, over a dispute with Carigali—PTTPEPI Operating Company Sdn Bhd, which is a 50%—owned unit of Petronas.

The oil fabricator had been awarded a contract for JDA Block B—17 in the Thai—Malaysia Joint Development Area, but had issues with pricing. The dispute was, however, settled out of court.
This issue is now in the past, with Ramunia likely to be an indirect unit of Petronas, after MISC emerges as a 72% stakeholder, after the reverse takeover. However, the company will reduce its shareholding to 68%, after hiving off 82 million shares.

Ramunia's jewel in the crown is its yard in Johor, which spans some 170 acres. Combining the two yards, the merged entity will have some 260 acres of prime yard space, fronting deepwater which will enable large—scale fabrication works to be carried out.

It is also worth noting that the lion's share of Ramunia's contracts come from Petronas, which is MISC's parent, controlling 62.4% of the shipping company's equity.

The enlarged entity would stand to benefit as Petronas is likely to award some RM10 billion worth of fabrication jobs this year, and Ramunia, being the only fabricator with available yard space, seems set to gain handsomely.

Aseambankers, in a research reports, says, "We are positive on this deal, as the merger of Ramunia and MMHE is a symbiotic fit, allowing both parties to leverage on their respective strengths. Firstly, this exercise will result in Ramunia emerging as the largest offshore fabricator in Malaysia with a yard size of 260 acres. This deal also allows MISC to unlock value in MMHE, which enhances value in both sides. We believe MMHE's capabilities can optimise Ramunia's operations, and expect a gradual but progressive transformation in efficiencies."

(taken from www.theedgedaily.com by Jose Barrock)

SocGen Uncovers Massive Frauds Commited by Trader

2008-01-25T00:13:00.000+08:00

PARIS (Reuters) - French bank Societe Generale (SOGN.PA) disclosed one of the biggest alleged frauds in financial history on Thursday, adding to a wave of gloom surrounding world markets battered by credit market losses.

SocGen, France's second-biggest listed bank, said it had uncovered an "exceptional fraud" by one of its traders.

It said this would cost the group 4.9 billion euros ($7.16 billion) and announced plans to raise 5.5 billion euros through a capital increase to shore up its balance sheet, also reeling from a crisis in global credit markets.

The fraud disclosure brought back memories of Nick Leeson, the British trader who in 1995 brought down blue-blooded merchant bank Barings after racking up huge losses.

SocGen said it was in the process of dismissing the Paris-based trader, who it did not name, and added that the trader's managers would leave the company.

It added that its board had rejected an offer by Chairman and Chief Executive Daniel Bouton to resign.

SocGen shares were suspended.

The Bank of France announced an inquiry by the Banking Commission and said no further comment was necessary after Societe Generale took steps to strengthen its balance sheet.

French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde will make a statement during the day on the issue, her office said.

"The most serious thing is that this puts into doubt the risk management systems at some banks," said Fortis analyst Carlos Garcia.

A source at SocGen said the trader was "not one of its stars" and was relatively young. SocGen said the trader had been handling plain vanilla futures contracts on European stock market indices, betting on broad share market movements.

It was not immediately clear what role French police were taking in the investigation. The French prosecutor's office was not available for comment.

FURTHER WRITEDOWNS AT SOCGEN

Analysts said the episode would have a major impact on the reputation of SocGen, which was founded in 1864 and is one of France's most prestigious blue-chip companies.

UBS said in a research note that the fraud would impact the credibility of its derivatives business, which has been one of its fastest-growing units and has a world leading reputation.

Shares in rivals like BNP (BNPP.PA) rose. The fraud could rekindle BNP's ambitions to take control of SocGen, analysts said.

The losses also echo a similar blow on a much smaller scale last year to France's biggest retail bank, Credit Agricole (CAGR.PA), which in September announced a 250 million euro charge related to an unauthorized trading position.

SocGen also announced further writedowns of 2.05 billion euros related to the global credit crunch.

Banks around the world have been hit by credit market losses related to U.S. subprime mortgages. These mortgages are the riskiest property loans, often extended to people who have payment difficulties or a bad credit history.

SocGen said it expected a 2007 net profit of between 600 and 800 million euros -- well below its 2006 profit figure.

SocGen shares closed down 4.15 percent at 79.08 euros on Wednesday. The stock has fallen around 20 percent since the start of 2008.

This is the good time to trade options & CFD

2008-01-22T23:35:00.000+08:00

The world financial markets continue to plunge because of the rising probability of U.S. recession. Of course, if you only trade conventional equity in stock market, you may wonder -- are there still any opportunities to make money in the stock market right now? Well, what i can tell you is - if you are still trading conventional stock market, whether it's the US, Europe, Japan, or Asian markets, the probability of losing money is greater than ever. Of course you can still gain. But with the effort and time required, the stress of monitoring a downtrend market is not worth it at all.

You may say, we could short-selling the stocks. But don't forget, you need to pay daily interest for that. So, the best strategy these days in this volatile market is of course trading options. In particular put options where you gain a great deal when the market is plunging. The more it plunges, the more you gain. Added in the volatility, you could gain much more than you could expect.

For short term, the sure fire strategy is continue to buy put options on all the financial stocks in the US market, selective technology stocks and retail stocks. ISM index as the leading indicator early this month had already shown 47.70, it's already in the contraction level. If it does not show any improvements early next month, the financial stocks could plunge much more because of the rising concern of US recession.

In a mature market, you must be able to make money whether market is up or down. So, at this point, the best instrument available is of course options. Another good alternative is Contract for Difference (CFD), where you could also profit from falling market. See my previous article on CFD.

There are two advantages of trading CFD over options. One is the guaranteed stop loss which you can place on all trade, provided it is available from your CFD provider. Another advantage is the money is only allocated to trade CFD, not committed like in options. For instance, let say you have USD1000 to trade. If you buy options, let say you buy USD800 worth of options, unless you sell it, if not you only have USD200 available for your next trade. But not in CFD, let say you place a trade worth USD800 with a guaranteed stop loss at USD720, you still have USD720 + USD200 = USD920 confidently available for your next trade. This is the power of CFD trading combined with guaranteed stop loss. Of course, the disadvantage is it don't have volatility counted in like in options, where you could gain a bit more in both call or put options if there is huge volatility.

Banh Xeo at Dinh Cong Trang, District 1 at Saigon

2008-01-19T23:48:00.000+08:00

Saigon, this city serves a nostalgic and peculiar sense to me. Not that i have been here. Just that i feel the name Saigon in itself is of something special. It was late in the evening. The familiar hustle and bustle scene of the traffic was back. Just returned from exploring the lively Mekong River Delta was certainly one of the highlights during my stay in Saigon. Well, this would be my last night staying in Saigon before i headed to Dalat.

So, i decided on going to 46A, Dinh Cong Trang Street for the famous and delicious Banh Xeo, a kind of Vietnamese pancake fried on pans with some shrimps, pork and bean sprouts. The motorbike journey to the place was one helluva ride. I mean, really, it was one hell of a ride for those who have not yet experienced the infamous Saigon motorbikes invasion first hand. The traffic light is of no use. Hey, it's like going into battle with you charging into a formation of motorbike-soldiers head on--in and out, in and out, without fail until you reach your destination every time when there is traffic light. That of course, provided you come out in one piece beforehand.

I ordered one Banh Xeo, some Cha Gio (fried spring rolls) and Goi Cuon (fresh spring rolls). Since this is my first time being served on this Vietnamese cuisine, i was obliviously in the dark on how to savor this delicacy. Of course, you could just eat it like normal pancake in itself. But i observed. The locals definitely not eating their Banh Xeo just like that. They prepared the vegetable leafs, put one Cha Gio in it, grabbed some pieces of Banh Xeo, with a little of every ingredients in it, rolled together and dipped into the ever tasty Nuoc Nam (fish sauce). That's how the locals eat it. And, that's how i ate it. Perfect! Bon appetit!

Banh Xeo

Cha Gio (fried spring rolls with nuoc nam)

How the Banh Xeo is prepared

Fried over a hot charcoal stove

The place to be for Banh Xeo

MacBook Air - The World's Thinnest Notebook

2008-01-16T11:22:00.000+08:00

Apple introduced MacBook Air - The world's thinnest notebook at the MacWorld this morning. Check out the specs at http://www.apple.com/macbookair/specs.html

Most Watched Economic Indicators

2008-01-16T03:03:00.000+08:00

For financial market participants, the most watched economic indicators are the ones with very high market sensitivity. There are:

1. Employment situation (http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm)
Release time: 8.30am(ET); generally announced on the first Friday of each month and covers the month just concluded
Remark: Pay attention to unemployment rate

2. ISM Index on Manufacturing (http://www.ism.ws/ISMReport/index.cfm)
Release time: 10.00am(ET); released on the first business day after the reporting month
Remark: less than 43 (recession); 43~50 (contracting); 50~60 (expanding); greater than 60 (economy is booming)

3. CPI (http://www.bls.gov/cpi)
Release time: 8.30am(ET); released on the second or third week following the month being covered
Remark: Pay attention to CPI-U

4. PPI (http://www.bls.gov/ppi)
Release time: 8.30am(ET); released on the second or third week following the month being covered
Remark: Pay attention to finished goods index

Last, and perhaps the most important of all is the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) statement. Normally release at 2.15pm on the day FOMC concludes its meeting. Decision on the target fed funds rate will be made. The whole financial market virtually comes to a standstill eagerly awaiting the target fed funds rate. Any deviations from market expectation will undoubtedly moves the financial market accordingly and sometimes substantially.

Friendly 2 Pub and Restaurant in Hue, Vietnam

2008-01-14T20:35:00.000+08:00

One of the restaurants that i think should be recommended to the readers is Friendly 2 Pub and Restaurant in Hue, Vietnam. The specialty of the restaurant is local Hue cuisine. The address of this restaurant is 27, Vo Thi Sau Street, Hue, Vietnam. Telephone no. is 054-240506. The whole restaurant is run by the family members, notably the dishes are all prepared by the sisters.

Recommended dishes are:

Banh Beo (20,000 VND) - This used to be a favorite of past kings. Always a treat during Vietnamese parties. Quarter sized rice cakes topped with crispy chopped shrimps and pork melt in your mouth.

Banh Loc (15,000 VND) - Banana leaf wrapped Loc cake. This dish is hard to prepare. Clear chewy tapioca is wrapped around pieces of pork and shrimp. The flour must be just right so that the right consistency is reached.

Ca Basa Kho To (35,000 VND) - Basa fish (belongs to catfish family found in Mekong River) cooked in the hot pot. The sauce is particularly tasty and the texture of the fish is just right.

Beef Grilled Over Charcoals (30,000 VND)

Other dishes on the menu are:

1. Banh Khoai (10,000 VND) - Vietnamese pancake. A crunchy yellow shell folded over bean sprouts, eggs, tofu and pork. This is delicious when combined with locally grown lettuce.

2. Banh Nam (15,000 VND) - Leaf wrapped with Nam cake. Open up the steamy leaf and scoop out the mixture of rice flour, shrimp and herbs. Dip in the spicy sauce and enjoy.

3. Muc Chien Nhoi Thit (35,000 VND) - Squid stuffed with spiced ground pork.

Introduction to CFD Trading

2008-01-12T01:01:00.000+08:00

What are Contracts for Difference CFDs

A CFD is an agreement between two parties to settle, at the close of the contract, the difference between the opening and closing prices of the contract, multiplied by the number of underlying shares specified in the contract.

CFDs are traded in a similar way to ordinary shares. The prices quoted by many CFD providers is the same as the underlying market price and the you can trade in any quantity just as you would with an ordinary share, you will usually be charge a commission on the trade and the total value of the transaction is simply the number of CFDs bought or sold multiplied by the market price. However, there are some distinct differences from trading ordinary shares that have made them increasingly popular as an alternative instrument to speculate on the movements of shares or indices.

Advantages of Contracts For Difference (CFDs)

Contracts For Difference (CFDs) are traded on margin so you can maximise your trading capital
NO Stamp duty is payable (saving 0.5% compared to a traditional share purchase).
You can profit from falling or rising markets by trading long or short
A single account can give you access to far greater range of financial markets.
You can limit & Manage your risk using a ‘Stop Losses and Limit orders

Risks of Contracts For Difference (CFDs)

The geared nature if margin trading markets means that both profits and losses can be magnified and unless you place a stop loss you could incur very large losses if your position moves against you.
It is less suited to the long term investor, if you hold a CFD open over a long period of time the costs associated increase and it may be more beneficial to have bought the underlying asset.
You have no rights as an investor, including no voting rights.

Key Features of Contracts for Difference (CFDs)

Traded on margin

Rather than pay the full value of a transaction you only need to pay a percentage when opening the position called Initial Margin. The key point is that margin allows leverage, so that you can access a larger amount of shares than you would be able to if buying or selling the shares themselves.

The margin on all open positions must be maintained at the required level over and above any marked to market profits or losses in order keep the position open. If a position moves against you and reduces your cash balance so that you are below the required margin level on a particular trade, you will be subject to a “Margin Call” and will have to pay additional money into your account to keep the position open or you may be forced to close your position.

Trade in rising or falling markets

CFDs allow you to trade LONG or SHORT. A Long Trade is where you BUY an asset with the expectation that it will rise, just as you would when buying a normal share. A Short Trade is where you SELL an asset that you don not own in the expectation that the price will fall and you can buy the asset back at a cheaper price. Shorting in the ordinary share market is almost impossible. With CFDs, however, you can go short as easily as you go long. Giving you the ability to profit even if a share price falls if you trade the right way.

No Stamp Duty

Because with CFDs, you don’t actually physically buy the underlying shares, you don’t have to pay stamp duty. Saving 0.5% when compared to a traditional share deal.

Commission

Commission is charged on CFDs just like on an ordinary share trade, the commission is calculated on the total position value not the margin paid.

Overnight Financing

Because CFDs are traded on margin if you hold a position open overnight it will be subject to a finance charge. Long CFD positions are charged interest if they are held overnight, Short CFD positions will be paid interest.

The rate of interest charged or paid will vary between different brokers and is usually set at a % above or below the current LIBOR (London Inter Bank Offered Rate).

The interest on position is calculated daily, by applying the applicable interest rate to the daily closing value of the position. The daily closing value is the number of shares multiplied by the closing price. Each day's interest calculation will be different unless there is no change at all in the share price.

Trade Shares and Indices

CFDs allow you to take a view on shares and indices and some CFD providers also allow trading on currencies and sectors.

Risk Management Facilities

Because of the higher risk nature of trading on margin, many CFD providers offer comprehensive Stop Loss and Limit Order Facilities so that Investors can manage their risk in fast moving markets.

How do Contract For Difference (CFD) work

The best way to demonstrate how a CFD works is to look at some key examples:

Share CFD Example: Long Trade

A long trade is a position that is opened with a buy in the expectation that the share price will rise.

Vodafone is currently trading 140 – 140.5

Investor A believes that Vodafone is going to rise and places a trade to buy 10000 shares as a CFD at 140.5p. The total value of the contract would be £14050 but they would only need to make an initial 10% deposit (initial margin) £1405.

The commission on the trade is £28.10 (£14050 x .20%) and because they are buying a CFD there is no stamp duty to pay.

A week later Investor A’s prediction was correct and Vodafone rise to 145 – 145.5 and they decide to close there position. By selling 10,000 Vodafone CFDs at 145p. The commission on the trade is £29 (£14500 * .20%).

The profit on the trade is calculated as follows:

Opening Level 140.50p

Closing Level
145.00p

Difference 4.50p

Profit on trade, (4.5p x 10,000) £ 450.00

Overall Profit

To take calculate the overall profit you must take into account the commission and financing charges on the deal.

Profit On Trade	£ 450.00
Commission	-£ 57.10
Financing Charge	£ 12.50
Overall Profit On the Trade	£ 380.40

Share CFD Example: Short Trade

A short trade is a position that is opened with a sell transaction in the expectation that the share price will fall.

Barclays is currently trading at 555 – 556

Investor B believes that Barclays is over valued and is going to fall and places a trade to SELL 2000 shares as a CFD at 555p. The total value of the contract would be £11,100. Even though they are selling short, they would only need to make an initial 10% deposit (initial margin) £1,110. The commission on the trade would be £22.20 (£11,100 x .20%)

A week later Investor B’s prediction was correct and Barclays falls to 545 – 546 and they decide to close there position. By Buying 2000 Barclays CFDs at 546p, the commission would be £21.84.

The profit on the trade is calculated as follows:

Opening Level 555.00p

Closing Level 546.00p

Difference 9.00p

Profit on trade, (9p x 2,000) £ 180.00

Overall Profit

To calculate the overall profit you must take into account the commission and financing charges on the deal, remember with a “Short” sell the financing charge is credited to the holder.

Profit On Trade	£ 180.00
Commission	-£ 44.04
Financing Charge	£ 3.80
Overall Profit On the Trade	£ 139.76

Stop and Limit Orders

Because of the geared nature of trading on margin it essential to have access to facilities that let you open or close positions if certain levels are reached.

Limit Order

A Limit order is one that is executed at a better price than the prevailing market price, i.e. for a Long CFD Trade when the stock drops to a certain level or for a Short CFD Trade when the stock rises to a certain level.

Example: Vodafone is currently trading at 140 – 140.5

Investor A wishes to buy 10000 Vodafone as a CFD with a limit of 135, therefore they do not wish the order to be opened unless Vodafone reaches 135.

This order is held by the CFD Provider until the limit level is reached.

The next day the Vodafone is 135 – 135.5 and an opening trade of 10000 Vodafone is opened at the limit level of 135.

Stop orders

A stop order is one that is executed at a worse price than the prevailing market price one of the most common uses of this is a stop loss order. It is possible to make substantial profits when trading CFDs as well as substantial losses which is why many CFD providers allow you to place a stop loss when you open a trade:

Stop Loss

A stop loss is a price level set by the client on a particular trade that if reached automatically closes out the particular position at the desired price.

Example: Lloyds TSB is trading at 467 – 468

Investor A and Investor B both believe that Barclays will rise and both buy 2000 Lloyds TSB at 468 as a CFD. However, Investor B also places a stop loss when he opens the trade at 457

The following day Lloyds drops steeply during the day trading down from 467 to 430.

Investor A has not been watching the price of Lloyds all day and therefore when he checks the price at the end of the day it is now 430 – 431 and he is running a £750 loss. Investor B has not been watching the market either however his position has been automatically closed out at his stop loss level of 450 limiting his loss to just £200.

A stop order can also be used to open a trade for instance if you wished to open Long CFD position you may wait until a stock was moving in the right direction and set a level higher than the prevailing market price.

Transitions Lenses -- My New Lenses

2008-01-11T23:13:00.000+08:00

My glasses change from transparent, when I'm inside, to dark when I go outdoors

Sunglasses or prescription eyeglasses that darken when exposed to the sun were first developed by Corning in the late 1960s and popularized by Transitions in the 1990s. In fact, because of the extreme popularity of the Transitions brand, these lenses are usually referred to as transition lenses. The correct term for these glasses is photochromic or photochromatic, which refers to a specific chemical reaction the lenses have to ultraviolet (UV) radiation.

Photochromic lenses have millions of molecules of substances such as silver chloride or silver halide embedded in them. The molecules are transparent to visible light in the absence of UV light, which is normal for artificial lighting. But when exposed to UV rays, as in direct sunlight, the molecules undergo a chemical process that causes them to change shape. The new molecular structure absorbs portions of the visible light, causing the lenses to darken. The number of molecules that change shape varies with the intensity of the UV rays.

When you go indoors and out of the UV light, a different chemical reaction takes place. The absence of the UV radiation causes the molecules to "snap back" to their original shape, resulting in the loss of their light absorbing properties. In both directions, the entire process happens very rapidly.

In the original PhotoBrown and PhotoGrey products made by Corning, the lenses are made of glass, and the molecules are distributed evenly throughout the entire lens. The problem with this method was apparent in prescription glasses where different parts of the lens were of varying thickness. The thicker parts would appear darker than the thinner areas. But with the increasing popularity of plastic lenses, a new method has been developed. By immersing the lenses in a chemical bath, the photochromatic molecules are actually absorbed to a depth of about 150 microns into the plastic. This is much better than a simple coating, which would only be about 5 microns thick and would not provide enough molecules to make the lenses sufficiently dark. This plastic lens absorption process has been popularized by Transitions, the leading manufacturer of photochromic lenses.

An important note about photochromic lenses: because they react to UV light and not to visible light, there are circumstances under which the darkening will not occur. A perfect example of this is in your car. Because the windshield blocks out most UV light, photochromic lenses will not darken. For this reason, most sunglasses with photochromic lenses also have a certain amount of tint already applied to them.

(Article from http://www.howstuffworks.com)

Bloomberg Profile on James Harris "Jim" Simons

2008-01-11T01:33:00.000+08:00

Jim Simons, Renaissance Technologies Corp., founder, chairman and president, poses during a reception at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, on Sept. 29, 2007. Simons, a former code breaker and math professor, has built the world's largest hedge fund firm. Photographer: Jin Lee/Bloomberg News

On a hot afternoon in September, Renaissance Technologies LLC founder Jim Simons is too busy to take a phone call. It is, he says, from Cumrun Vafa, a preeminent Harvard University professor and expert on string theory, which describes the building blocks of the universe as extended one-dimensional filaments.

"Get another time when I can talk to him," Simons tells his assistant.

Then he mentions that the next day, he'll be meeting with Thomas Insel, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, to discuss autism research. And he's slated that Saturday to host a gala honoring Math for America, or MFA, a four-year-old nonprofit he started that provides stipends to New York City math teachers.

"I'm undoubtedly involved in too many things at the same time,'' Simons says in his 35th-floor office in midtown Manhattan. "But you make your life interesting.''

String theory, autism, math education: It's fair to ask how Simons, 69, manages his day job overseeing the world's biggest hedge fund firm. The answer, judging from the numbers, is very well.

Renaissance is on fire: Its Medallion Fund -- which uses computers and trading algorithms to invest in world markets -- returned more than 50 percent in the first three quarters of 2007. It had about $6 billion in assets as of July 1.

Simons registered that performance as subprime and related markets were collapsing, sending two mortgage-related hedge funds run by Bear Stearns Cos. into bankruptcy. The turmoil pummeled the Goldman Sachs Global Alpha Fund, a rival to Renaissance's funds, which fell more than 25 percent during the same time. Morgan Stanley's computer jockeys lost $390 million in a single day in early August.

Life Story

Medallion's returns are no anomaly. The fund, which trades everything from soybean futures to French government bonds in rapid fire, hasn't had a negative quarter since early 1999. From the end of 1989 through 2006, it returned 38.5 percent annualized, net of fees.

More surprising than those returns is Simons's life story. At an age when hedge fund pioneers such as Michael Steinhardt have long since stopped managing other people's money, Simons is building on Medallion's success. He's adding funds and strategies and accumulating assets, which totaled $35.4 billion as of Sept. 28.

In August 2005, Simons started Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund, or RIEF, which invests in U.S. stocks. Through Sept. 30, it has returned 12.8 percent annualized. Unlike Medallion, which turns over its holdings dozens of times each year, RIEF keeps its positions for months or longer. Simons said at the time of the fund's inception RIEF could theoretically manage as much as $100 billion.

'New Possibilities'

In December 2006, he limited new investments in the fund to $1.5 billion a month. As of Sept. 30, 2007, it had $25.6 billion in assets.

In October, Simons started Renaissance Institutional Futures Fund, or RIFF, to invest in commodities. It's up 5.2 percent for the month. He says Renaissance's research shows the new fund can manage as much as $50 billion. Along with RIEF, it will promote cross-fertilization of ideas inside Renaissance, Simons says.

"Challenge is good,'' he says. "It opens one's eyes to new possibilities.''

When not in Manhattan, Simons runs his empire from a 15- foot (4.6-meter) by 20-foot office in Renaissance's gated and guarded campus off Route 25A in East Setauket on New York's Long Island, some 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of the Empire State Building. With most of the trading automated, there's little of the hurly-burly of a typical hedge fund firm.

Doubling Assets

Along with routine personnel and marketing tasks, Simons makes time for the researchers and programmers who stop by his office to discuss mathematical and statistical issues they've encountered as they work on new trading strategies.

More than 200 employees, of whom about a third have Ph.D.s, work in East Setauket. Another 100 are based in Manhattan, San Francisco, London and Milan. "He creates an environment where it's easy to be creative and works hard to keep the bullshit level to a minimum,'' says former managing director Robert Frey, who worked at Renaissance from 1992 to 2004.

Even without the new commodities fund, Renaissance's assets have more than doubled in a year from about $16 billion on Sept. 30, 2006. That growth has catapulted Renaissance past such titans as Daniel Och's Och-Ziff Capital Management Group LLC, Ray Dalio's Bridgewater Associates Inc. and David Shaw's D.E. Shaw & Co. to become the world's largest hedge fund manager, according to data compiled by Hedge Fund Research Inc. and Bloomberg.

Code Cracker

Medallion's 3.9 percent return during August, though that fund too was whipsawed by volatility, bolstered Simons's reputation as the silver-bearded wizard of quantitative investing.

In quant funds, mathematicians and computer scientists mine enormous amounts of data from financial markets looking for correlations among stocks, bonds, derivatives and other instruments. They search for predictive signals that will foretell whether, say, a palladium futures contract is likely to rise or fall.

'Role Model'

"There are just a few individuals who have truly changed how we view the markets,'' says Theodore Aronson, principal of Aronson + Johnson + Ortiz LP, a quantitative money management firm in Philadelphia with $29.3 billion in assets. "John Maynard Keynes is one of the few. Warren Buffett is one of the few. So is Jim Simons.''

Aronson credits Renaissance with validating the entire field of quantitative investing and proving that the freedom accorded to hedge fund managers to short stocks, borrow money and invest in myriad instruments can produce results that far outstrip typical market returns.

Simons, standing just under 5 feet 10 inches tall and weighing 185 pounds (84 kilograms), has trod an unlikely path. A former code cracker for the U.S. National Security Agency, in 1968 he became chairman of the mathematics department at Stony Brook University, part of the New York state university system. He built the department into what David Eisenbud, former director of the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley, California, calls one of the world's top centers for geometry.

Leaving Academia

In 1977, frustrated with a math problem and eager for change, he abandoned academia to start what would become Renaissance, hiring professors, code breakers and statistically minded scientists and engineers who'd worked in astrophysics, language recognition theory and computer programming.

"All the quants in the world are trying to follow in Jim's footsteps because what he's built at Renaissance is truly extraordinary,'' says Andrew Lo, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Laboratory for Financial Engineering and chief scientific officer of quant hedge fund firm AlphaSimplex Group LLC. "I and many others look up to him as a tremendous role model.''

The tendency for fund managers to try to emulate Simons may become more curse than blessing in the years ahead. As the selloffs in July and August showed, many quant funds are chasing the same investments. For example, as of June, Renaissance and rival AQR Capital Management LLC had four of the same top 10 stock holdings: Johnson & Johnson, Lockheed Martin Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Chevron Corp.

'Similar Models'

The overlap became problematic as the subprime contagion spread beyond housing-related stocks, bonds, collateralized debt obligations and commercial paper, forcing some funds to lighten their holdings precisely as demand was drying up.

"All these quant funds are using similar models, looking to buy something cheap and sell something dear,'' says Sol Waksman, founder of Barclay Hedge Ltd., a consulting firm based in Fairfield, Iowa. While expensive securities are by their nature easily traded --liquid, in industryspeak -- the cheap securities hunted by most quantitative managers aren't, Waksman says. After all, the reason they're cheap is that nobody wants them.

"Once you try and sell a low-liquidity stock, by definition there is no one to buy it,'' Waksman says. Overpriced stocks rose in August as hedge funds bought shares to cover their short positions, and cheap stocks plummeted as managers rushed to raise cash.

Wise-Cracking

Renaissance is under increasing pressure to stay ahead of the pack -- and to keep its secrets under wraps. Save current employees and a few former ones, nobody knows precisely how the firm makes its millions. Medallion stopped taking new money from outside investors in 1993 and returned pretty much the last of their capital 12 years later. Today, the fund is run almost exclusively for the benefit of Renaissance staff.

The wise-cracking Simons himself is mum on virtually all of its details.

What can he say about Medallion's trading strategy?

"Not much,'' Simons says with a chortle, and then takes a drag on one of the Merit cigarettes he often smokes.

What kind of instruments does it trade?

"Everything.''

How many different strategies does it use?

"A lot.''

Simons says his Ph.D.s laugh when they read the far-fetched theories about what their fund might be doing. One chat room participant speculated that Renaissance uses audio hookups to futures exchanges and analyzes the noise from the pits with voice-recognition software.

'Conjectures and Hypotheses'

"All of us in the quant business have conjectures and hypotheses but very little data,'' MIT's Lo says. "So we like to speculate about what Renaissance could possibly be doing. They are so far ahead of everybody else that it's both challenging as well as exciting to engage in that kind of idle speculation.''

For his part, Simons says he once explored whether sunspot activity affects the markets. He doesn't say what he found.

Interviews with former Medallion fund managers and with investors, rivals and quantitative scientists provide a glimpse into how the fund is run. So do annual reports, marketing materials and court documents: Ever secretive, Renaissance is suing in New York State Supreme Court two of its former Ph.D.- level researchers who were fired in 2003 after refusing to sign noncompete contracts.

Trade Secrets

The firm accuses Alexander Belopolsky and Pavel Volfbeyn of appropriating trade secrets. Belopolsky and Volfbeyn deny the charges. In a July decision, the two briefly described three strategies that Renaissance had explored. One involved swaps, which are contracts to exchange interest or other payments; another used an electronic order matching system that anonymously links buyers and sellers; and a third made use of Nasdaq and New York Stock Exchange limit order books, which are real-time records of unexecuted orders to buy or sell a stock at a particular price.

With his myriad positions in different markets, Simons likens his approach to the extensive farming he once practiced in Colorado, using center pivot irrigation to grow wheat on thousands of acres.

"Every little stalk of wheat was not doing so great, but most of them were, so you're working on statistics,'' Simons says.

By contrast, he says, the traditional focused investing practiced by Warren Buffett is akin to intensive farming, in which each individual plant really counts. "It's two completely different ends of the spectrum,'' Simons says.

Tidy Fortune

Medallion's farm stand sports quite a markup: The firm generally charges a 5 percent management fee and 36 percent of profits compared with the industry standards of 2 percent and 20 percent. With virtually no outside investors in Medallion, Simons and Renaissance employees are paying the tab -- and reaping the rewards. RIEF investors can select from four share classes with varying and far less expensive fee structures.

Though Simons dislikes talking about it, Renaissance has built him a tidy fortune. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission documents show he controls 25-50 percent of Renaissance, having spread the rest of the firm's ownership among employees. So Simons's share of the performance fees earned by RIEF and Medallion was roughly between $375 million and $750 million in 2006, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

With Medallion's 44.3 percent return in 2006, if Simons had invested $2 billion in the fund, he would have garnered an $885 million profit. He declines to comment on his investment.

According to Bloomberg calculations, Simons ranks No. 3 among the world's hedge fund managers with $1.01 billion in firm-wide performance fees during the first three quarters of 2007.

Mathematical Mind-Set

Chief Scientist Henry Laufer, who helped build the Medallion trading system, owns 10-25 percent of Renaissance, the SEC document says. Chief Financial Officer Mark Silber and Executive Vice Presidents Peter Brown and Robert Mercer each own 5-10 percent. Simons's son Nathaniel, 41, who manages the Meritage fund of funds out of San Francisco, owns less than 5 percent, as does Renaissance trading desk manager, Paul Broder.

At the core of Renaissance's success -- and the wealth Simons is creating -- is his own mathematical mind-set. Outside the financial markets, he's best known for the Chern-Simons theory, which he co-developed with Chinese-American mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern in 1974.

Chern-Simons Theory

In simple terms, the theory provides the tools, known as invariants, that mathematicians use to distinguish among certain curved spaces -- the kinds of distortions of ordinary space that exist according to Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Chern-Simons is viewed as important partly because it has proven useful in explaining aspects of another field: string theory. This describes the building blocks of all matter and the universe as vibrating one-dimensional extended filaments or loops called strings.

"It turns out these things we invented, Chern-Simons invariants, had their real applications to physics, about which I knew nothing,'' Simons told the International Association of Financial Engineers in May.

Simons says he's also proud of the work he did in differential geometry at the Institute for Defense Analyses' research and development center in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1968, he published a paper in the Annals of Mathematics called "Minimal Varieties in Riemannian Manifolds.'' The paper helped him win the American Mathematical Society's Oswald Veblen Prize in Geometry in 1976. The prize is named for the Princeton University geometrician who became the first professor of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Simons's Legacy

Simons's most enduring legacy may be as a philanthropist as he builds on the mathematics and science that have shaped his life. In his New York office, Simons gets up and walks across the room to grab a newspaper clipping. It's an article about the administration of President George W. Bush planning to add $50 billion to the defense budget.

"Just a little extra; give them an extra $50 billion,'' Simons says, his voice rising in anger. "Well, for $2 billion, we could revolutionize math education in the U.S.''

He's referring to what he considers paltry funding for a key provision of the America Competes Act, which was signed into law on Aug. 9. The act includes a federal program to bolster math and science education based on the pilot project Simons has bankrolled with more than $25 million of his money: MFA.

U.S. Competitiveness

Simons says America's economic competitiveness is at stake. A 2003 study of 15-year-olds by the Program for International Student Assessment found the U.S. trailing 23 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, including No. 1 Finland, in math literacy at that age level. The U.S. was ahead of just five countries, among them Greece, Turkey and Mexico.

Simons places the blame for poor high school math scores largely on unqualified teachers. Because of low pay, good math and science teachers tend to get sucked into the private sector -- and the rate is accelerating.

"Students, up and down the line from affluent to impoverished, are being cheated,'' Simons says.

MFA pays full scholarships for math teachers to earn their master's degrees in education at designated graduate schools. Then, it pays a stipend of $90,000 over five years of teaching as a subsidy. Fellows and other experienced teachers are eligible to apply for a master fellowship program, which provides a stipend of $50,000 over four years. MFA is rolling out the program in Los Angeles and San Diego in 2008.

$13 Million Donation

Simons has donated tens of millions of dollars to math and science endeavors worldwide, including Stony Brook University and MSRI. In 2005, he kicked in $13 million with other Renaissance employees to keep the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider operating at the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, after the U.S. Energy Department cut funding. The collider creates hot, dense matter similar to that which is believed to have existed in the first 10 microseconds, or millionths of a second, of the universe's existence after the big bang.

Simons's other major push: research into autism, a disorder marked by repetitive behavior and impairment in social communication and language. In 2005, he hired Gerald Fischbach, former dean of the faculties of health sciences at Columbia University in New York, to serve as scientific director for the Simons Foundation. The foundation funds a variety of math and science-related projects. Simons's wife, Marilyn, 57, is president. Their daughter Audrey, 21, displays some symptoms of Asperger's syndrome, a milder disorder that bears similarities to autism.

DNA Database

Under Fischbach, the foundation is building a database of DNA samples and clinical information from thousands of families across the U.S. with affected children. Scientists will use the data to identify genes that may contribute to autism.

The foundation is also attracting scientists from outside the field, such as geneticist Michael Wigler of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York. Fischbach says that, in the past, autism research has had trouble luring top talent because of its complexity.

Simons splits his week between two homes. His Manhattan apartment is in the same limestone building as another investor- turned-philanthropist, George Soros, 77. In Setauket, the white, gambrel-roofed house Simons has lived in for 31 years has broad picture windows overlooking the herons that populate the shimmering waters of Conscience Bay.

For all of his achievement and material success, Simons's life has been beset by the kind of tragedy that few parents can fathom -- the death of not one but two of his five children in separate accidents. In 1996, his son Paul, 34, was struck by a car and killed while riding a bicycle near Simons's Setauket home. In 2003, 24-year-old son Nick drowned while on a trip to Bali.

'Citigroup's Stock'

Simons grimaces when asked whether Nick's death played a role in his flurry of recent activity. He pauses before answering. "There was some connection between losing Nick and my desire to get as busy as I could,'' he says.

Scientific exploration underpins all of Simons's work. "What motivates me?'' he says. "I'm ambitious and I like to do things well. I love to create something that really works. We have lots and lots and lots of strategies, and each new one gives me a lot of pleasure, to see something new that works.''

The laws of the financial markets present a special challenge, Simons says. Unlike the laws governing physics or chemistry, they tend to change over time. "One can predict the course of a comet more easily than one can predict the course of Citigroup's stock,'' he says. "The attractiveness, of course, is that you can make more money successfully predicting a stock than you can a comet.''

Steeped in Math

Investments, philanthropy, academia -- it all traces to a life steeped in math. James Harris Simons was born in 1938, the only child of Marcia and Matthew Simons. He grew up in Brookline, Massachusetts, a Boston suburb designed partly by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted.

Early on, Simons asked complicated mathematical questions. At about age 3, he was shocked to learn that a car could run out of gasoline. Why? By Simons's reckoning, a car would go through half a tankful, then half of what remained and then half of that, and so on: There would always be a small amount left. He'd discovered one of Zeno's paradoxes, named for the ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, which would puzzle mathematicians for centuries.

"Those were sophisticated thoughts for a little guy,'' Simons says, laughing.

Soybean Bet

At high school in Newton, Massachusetts, Simons blew through the equivalent of advanced placement math and went on to MIT. In his freshman year, he was cocky enough to enroll in a graduate level class. "The course said no requirements,'' he says.

At MIT, Simons worked hard and played hard -- mostly late- night poker. By 1 a.m., he and friends would pile into his Volkswagen Beetle and head off to Jack & Marion's delicatessen in Brookline for $1.25 chicken in a basket. Simons recalls how two renowned MIT mathematicians, Isadore Singer and Warren Ambrose, would sit down, order food and work into the wee hours on math problems.

"I just thought it was kind of a great life,'' Simons says. "Here they were, grown-ups, eating in this deli, late, late at night, just working away. That seemed wonderful to me.'' Singer, still an MIT professor, would become a close personal friend.

In June 1958, after just three years, Simons collected his bachelor's degree in mathematics from MIT, returning that September for his first year of graduate school. He then headed west to the University of California, Berkeley, to complete his Ph.D. in math. There, Simons dabbled in commodities -- using his and his then wife Barbara's wedding gift money to make a $500 killing in soybeans.

'Original Guy'

Simons's thesis adviser -- Bertram Kostant, now professor emeritus at MIT -- was skeptical about him pursuing the proof that would form the basis of his dissertation, "On the Transitivity of Holonomy Systems.'' It dealt with the geometry of multi-dimensional curved spaces and related to work by Singer and Ambrose.

"He solved it in a remarkably short period of time, under two years,'' Kostant says. "Jim's an original guy. He likes to go off in his own direction.''

After UC Berkeley, Simons won a three-year teaching position at MIT. He left after a year to become an assistant math professor at nearby Harvard. He stayed in touch with two poker-playing MIT classmates, Colombian nationals Edmundo Esquenazi and Jimmy Mayer.

Road Trip

In 1958, Simons and Mayer had celebrated their graduation by buying Lambretta motor scooters and driving to Bogota from Boston. In 1964, the three cobbled together money with Simons's father to start a Colombian vinyl-floor-tile factory. It would eventually prove a lucky move, providing the younger Simons with a stake to build his empire.

Simons was growing restless at Harvard. He was eager to earn more money -- and frustrated by some of the math he was working on. The Institute for Defense Analyses offered a better- paying solution: Simons could spend half of his time on math at the nonprofit's Princeton center and half breaking codes for the NSA.

In 1967, the IDA's president, General Maxwell Taylor, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote an article for the New York Times Magazine in favor of the Vietnam War. Soon after, Simons penned a note to the editors. "Some of us at the institution have a different view,'' he wrote. "The only available course consistent with a rational defense policy is to withdraw with the greatest possible dispatch.''

Fired at 29

Taylor eventually fired Simons, who was then 29, married and a father of three. Stony Brook University President John Toll wanted a star to build the school's math department. In 1966, the university had made a splash by luring Nobel Prize- winning physicist Chen Ning Yang from the Institute for Advanced Study. Simons would hire stars for the math department.

Stung by his firing from the IDA, Simons threw himself into the task. "Having just sort of been knocked around a little bit, I liked the idea of being my own boss,'' he says.

Simons negotiated all of the elements of a math position to lure great geometers to a young school: salary, class load, leave policy and research support.

"He'd figure what you needed and get it for you,'' Toll, 84, says. "He did an outstanding job of building the department at Stony Brook.''

Future Stars

Among the future stars Simons lured were Detlef Gromoll from the University of Bonn; Jeff Cheeger from the University of Michigan; and Mikhael Gromov, who'd taught at Leningrad University. All had published in prestigious journals.

"It was viewed as one of the two or three best geometry groups in the world,'' says Irwin Kra, who succeeded Simons as math department chairman and is executive director at MFA.

One of Simons's other hires was a Bronx, New York-raised math professor from Cornell University: James Ax.

Simons dabbled again in commodities while at Stony Brook. The Colombian factory investment had made some profit. Simons and his partners invested about $600,000 of it with Charles Freifeld, a former math student of his from Harvard. During seven months in 1974, Freifeld increased the investment 10-fold, after fees, as sugar futures more than doubled. The $600,000 was now $6 million, Freifeld says.

Simons suddenly had money -- but he was at a crossroads. He had separated from his wife Barbara. As the '70s wore on, he grew frustrated with a math problem related to the Chern-Simons theory.

"It was driving me crazy,'' he says.

Simons met Marilyn Hawrys, a graduate student in economics at Stony Brook who helped take care of Simons's children and would become his second wife.

Birth of Medallion

Simons left Stony Brook in 1977 and started Monemetrics, a predecessor to Renaissance, in a strip mall across from the Setauket train station. He wanted someone to trade currencies and commodities and turned to an old friend, a fellow code cracker from the IDA: Leonard Baum.

Baum was co-author of the Baum-Welch algorithm, which is used to determine probabilities in, among other things, biology, automated speech recognition and statistical computing. Simons's idea was to harness the mathematical models that Baum was writing to trade currencies.

"Once I got Lenny involved, I could see the possibilities of building models,'' Simons says.

Baum never traded using the models. In the late '70s and early '80s, Baum was making too much money on fundamental trading. Such trading involves betting based on, say, whether British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher would let the pound rise. In an era of one-way markets, it was much easier than using models.

"The dollar was very weak; all you had to do was short the dollar and you'd make a lot of money,'' Simons says.

'Magic or Nonsense'

Simons brought in Ax to look over Baum's efforts. Ax declared that not only would the models work with the currencies Baum had written them for, they could be applied to any commodity future --wheat, crude oil, you name it, Simons says.

Simons set up Ax with his own trading account, Axcom Ltd., which eventually gave birth to Medallion. Ax died of colon cancer in 2006 at age 69.

In Axcom's early days, professionals were skeptical about the kind of systematic trading Ax was doing. Still, he was brilliant and a natural at understanding probability, having shared the American Mathematical Society's Frank Nelson Cole Prize in Number Theory in 1967.

"He had the ability to see patterns in trading data,'' says Brian Keating, 36, the younger of Ax's two sons. "People in the business thought it was magic, or nonsense.''

Talking to Lawyers

Ax was also sometimes difficult to work with. "Most of times things went well,'' says Kevin Keating, 38, Ax's older son, who talked with his father about his days at Axcom. "But when they didn't, they'd butt heads.''

During the 1980s, Ax and his researchers improved on Baum's models and used them to explore correlations from which they could profit. If a futures contract opened sharply higher versus its previous close, they would short it; if it opened sharply lower, they would buy it, says Sandor Straus, a former manager for Medallion who now runs his own investment firm, Merfin LLC, in Walnut Creek, California.

The stuff wasn't complicated, and it worked. In 1985, Ax persuaded Simons to let him move Axcom to Huntington Beach, California, to escape a painful divorce and enjoy year-round boating. By 1988, investors wanted to invest directly in Axcom. Simons and Ax started a hedge fund and christened it Medallion in honor of the math awards that they had won.

Short-Circuit

Ax's signals soon seemed to short-circuit. Peak-to-trough losses by April 1989 had mounted to about 30 percent.

Ax had accounted for such a drawdown in his models and pushed to keep trading. Simons wanted to stop to research what was going on.

"Both were talking to their lawyers,'' Straus says. Ax, in fact, threatened to sue. Simons pulled rank, and Ax left. He went on to write a screenplay and poems in addition to working on problems involving the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics with Princeton University professor Simon Kochen, with whom Ax shares the Cole prize.

Simons turned to Elwyn Berlekamp to run Medallion from Berkeley, California. A consultant for Axcom whom Simons had first met at the IDA, Berlekamp had bought out most of Ax's stake in Axcom. He worked with Straus, Simons and another consultant, Laufer, to overhaul Medallion's trading system during a six-month stretch.

'Dull Life'

In 1990, Berlekamp led Medallion to a 55.9 percent gain, net of fees -- and then returned to teaching math at UC Berkeley.

"I got a lot more pleasure talking to academics than financial types,'' says Berlekamp, who is now professor emeritus. "Most people in this business are pretty dollar- centric. It makes for a dull life.''

Ax was gone. Berlekamp was gone. Medallion's revamped trading system remained. Straus took the reins. Medallion returned 39.4 percent in 1991, 34 percent in 1992 and 39.1 percent in 1993, according to Medallion annual reports.

Back on Long Island, Simons was gathering an A-team of math brains. Laufer, a former Stony Brook professor, joined full time as research chief in late 1991. Frey, a trader from Morgan Stanley's Analytical Proprietary Trading group, the pioneering black-box quant desk, came in 1992. Nick Patterson, another cryptologist from the IDA, joined in 1993. That year, Simons also hired Brown and Mercer, two language technology experts from the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center.

Best Year

The nastier that stock or bond markets turned, the better Medallion seemed to perform. In 1994, as the Federal Reserve raised its federal funds target rate six times to 5.5 percent from 3 percent, Medallion returned 71 percent for the year. The Bloomberg/Effas long-term U.S. government bond index lost 6.7 percent that year.

In 1995, Simons moved most of Renaissance's California operations to Long Island. The firm needed computing power to model the data Renaissance was harnessing, and Simons bought it: From 1994 to 2000, Renaissance's total CPU power grew by a factor of 50. Data bandwidth in and out of Renaissance headquarters rose by a factor of 45, according to a Medallion annual report.

The year 2000, during which the Standard & Poor's 500 Index tumbled 10.1 percent, proved Medallion's best to date. It gained 98.5 percent, net of fees. By the end of that year, Renaissance had 148 employees -- and the fund had a 43.6 percent annualized return over 11 years, net of fees, according to an annual report. It hasn't had a down quarter since.

Insatiable Curiosity

Performance such as that feeds the hedge fund industry's insatiable curiosity. Rivals search for the signals underpinning Renaissance's returns. One set of clues came in the New York State Supreme Court decision in July, which the court heavily redacted. It cites three strategies tested at the firm, including one using limit order book data.

MIT's Lo says that a fund firm could look at such data and identify a large sell order for, say, $15 a share when a stock was trading at $15.05. The fund could short the stock at $15.01 and benefit if the stock hit the $15 trigger.

"There's going to be tremendous downward pressure on the stock,'' Lo says.

'Wolf at the Door'

Former employees say observers may gain as much insight into Renaissance's performance by scrutinizing a more obvious factor: Simons has succeeded in building a pretty good business model. First, it's a firm run by and for scientists.

"I've always said Renaissance's secret is that it didn't hire MBAs,'' says Berlekamp, who blames the herdlike mentality among business school graduates for poor investor returns.

Programming and modeling are treated as the heart of the firm's advantage -- not an expense. "If you needed a lot of computer power, the decision was based on whether you needed it, not the budget,'' says Peter Weinberger, former chief technology officer at Renaissance and now a software engineer at Google Inc.

Decisions are made quickly and feedback is constant. "One of the things about Renaissance is that there's a feeling of urgency,'' says Frey, who left to teach applied mathematics and statistics at Stony Brook in 2004.

"We always believed that there was a wolf at the door, that somebody would get there before we did.''

'Walk In'

From Simons on down, the company encourages openness, whether it's about market signals that show where a security might be headed or about technology or trading. Frey says he doesn't recall Simons ever raising his voice at an employee. Simons says new hires are encouraged to troll computer files detailing Renaissance's past strategies, successful or not. "If Simons's door was open, you could walk in,'' Weinberger says. That would go for everyone from secretaries on up.

For his part, Simons says he's proud of Renaissance's low personnel turnover. The firm is owned by 80-85 employees. From managing directors to cleaning staff, everyone receives a percentage of the profits, Simons says. It's compensation for what he expects them to contribute over the long term.

The notion of paying someone based on a single year's performance makes no sense in an environment where some projects take years to complete, Simons says. "We want everyone to want everyone else to do well,'' he says.

Issue of Succession

In his New York office, Simons pauses for a full eight seconds when asked who will run Renaissance after he retires -- a simple question given that the firm has just two executive vice presidents.

"Most likely someone inside the company,'' he finally says.

Does his likely successor have any idea he or she will be taking over?

"I suppose who would succeed me has a pretty good idea it would be he,'' he says.

Will it be a surprise?

"I don't think so -- but I can't guarantee it,'' Simons says.

Simons is busy as he rounds out his seventh decade: the new RIEF and RIFF hedge funds, Math for America and the Simons Foundation's support for autism research.

He's even returned to geometry, working with a friend, Stony Brook professor Dennis Sullivan, to solve a problem involving multidimensional spaces that's long bedeviled him. In January, they published a paper proving the theorem.

When pressed about retirement, Simons responds with a trademark mathematical paradox.

"I've always intended to retire in the next two years,'' he says, laughing. "I've been saying that for a long time. The two years is a constant.''

In the end, whether Simons is building charities, plotting strategies or contemplating his own legacy, it always comes back to the math.

(Article from http://www.bloomberg.com written by Richard Teitelbaum)

The Street's Slickest Number-Crunchers

2008-01-11T00:49:00.000+08:00

"Quants" use ever-more complex algorithms to execute arcane trading strategies, a good approach during times of market turmoil

Only a few years ago, using a computer program to pick stocks was the ultimate in investing sophistication. Any portfolio manager who used a stock screen to, say, identify large-cap companies with low price-earnings ratios could justifiably claim to be a "quant" -- shorthand for investors who use quantitative research and trading strategies.

Now that most professional investors use a stock screen to narrow their choices, being a true quant means a lot more. It requires using computer models based on complex algorithms to implement arcane trading strategies that typically require a PhD to understand.

And it may mean taking humans out of the stock-buying decision altogether, as John Montgomery, founder of Houston-based Bridgeway Funds, has done with his mutual-fund company. "There are a dozen different ways emotion gets in the way and systematically causes people to make the wrong decision at just the wrong time," says Montgomery, who calls his company "a pure quant shop."

"SOMETHING OF A FAD." Quantitative strategies have proliferated recently, thanks to the fact that they were about the only thing that worked during the three-year bear market that ended last March. "If you're on an uphill growth path, similar to the heyday of the dot-com era, fundamental analysis always wins out," says Sang Lee, manager of the securities and investments group at Celent Communications, a Boston-based financial services technology research firm. "Quant shops do better when markets are flat or unstable."

Today, more than 300 investment firms use quantitative research or trading techniques (up from fewer than 100 some 15 years ago), estimates Lee in a September report that reviews developments in quantitative research and trading. Those firms have more than $4 trillion in assets under management, or about 17% of the U.S. market. Lee expects quantitative research and trading activity to grow an additional 40% in the next three to four years, even though his report calls this trend "something of a fad."

The quant world breaks down roughly into two camps for which quantitative trading has both strengths and drawbacks. In one camp are the portfolio managers who use computer models to pick stocks and other investments to buy. These models are mostly used by mutual-fund families like Bridgeway, ICON, or Hennessy, and their models range widely in complexity and success.

FAST-CHANGE ARTISTS. The biggest problem with quant strategies in managing mutual funds is that the best ones don't last long: Models that work in one market environment tend to fail in the next. To run a quant fund "requires constant reconsideration of the model," says Jeffrey Ptak, an analyst at fund research firm Morningstar.

The most successful quant mutual funds today are those that have several models working in conjunction with each other, known as "multivariant" or "multifactor" funds. The idea is that they can switch quickly between sectors and investment styles to take advantage of a shifting market.

Montgomery uses five models in Bridgeway Aggressive Investor, which has a stunning 27% five-year average annual return. The different models (one finds stocks with strong momentum, another identifies stocks that are cheap) are designed to offset each other, which should reduce volatility in the fund. "If each model is doing its part," says Montgomery, "when there's one style in favor that model should be kicking in and something else lagging."

TINY INEFFICIENCIES. The other main quant camp is in the hedge-fund world, where selling stocks short (a way to bet that their price will fall), piling on complex derivatives, and borrowing lots of money (so you can put more cash behind each bet and therefore magnify returns) are permitted. (Federal regulations prohibit ordinary mutual funds from engaging in such risky strategies, but hedge funds, which only wealthy people have enough money to participate in, are almost entirely unregulated.)

"Quant methods is where a lot of the sophistication in investing is going," says Salomon Konig, president of GP Funds, which distributes hedge funds made up of other hedge funds (known as "funds of funds").

Quantitative hedge funds typically use esoteric trading strategies, often employing derivatives, options, and futures to achieve returns that are entirely divorced from stock market returns. Many of the strategies are designed to take advantage of tiny inefficiencies in the market. A hedge-fund manager might design an arbitrage play to take advantage of a slight, temporary difference in price between a stock index and the underlying securities that make up the index.

NEVER-ENDING SEARCH. Some of these hedge funds have been wildly successful, including those run by Jim Simons of Rennaissance Technologies, who manages the Medallion Fund, and Steve Cohen, of SAC Capital Advisors. But when the use of leverage to magnify returns goes wrong, as it did in the famed case of Long Term Capital Management in 1998, the losses can be disastrous.

Another foible of quantitative hedge funds is that once traders discover an inefficiency in the market to exploit, their own trading activity eventually eliminates the opportunity. "Many of the market imperfections can only be revealed by computers and quantitative methods," explains Konig. "Once some of those imperfections are taken out of the market, you need more quantitative methods and more automated tools to get at arbitrage opportunities."

Despite their complexity and apparent sophistication, most quantitative strategies probably don't add much value for investors. Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an experienced options trader, hedge-fund manager, math professor -- and author of the book Fooled by Randomness. He believes that all successful investors, including Warren Buffett, are mainly just lucky.

Nonetheless, a case can be made that taking emotion out of the investing process can help boost returns and reduce risk. "I can't tell you how big a deal I think that is," says Montgomery. Of course, if you produced returns like his, you might feel the same way.

(Article from http://www.businessweek.com written by Amey Stone)

Cai Rang Floating Market in Cantho

2008-01-10T22:27:00.000+08:00

I was on a tour to Mekong Delta on my third day in Vietnam. The whole package was only USD18 for a 2 days 1 night trip to the Mekong Delta region. The bus journey started in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) and arrived in Cai Be some three hours later. You will see a smaller version of floating market here. Then, we took a boat ride through the maze of shady small canals visiting the An Binh islands in Vinh Long. We saw how people cultivate their orchards, making coconut candy and rice paper. We took a bicycle ride around the area after taken our lunch.

A short boat stop landed on Vinh Long market later that day for us to explore the area. Then, from Cai Von our wonderful boat trip reached Cantho, where we stayed the night.

The next morning, we cruised along the small and picturesque tributaries by rowing boat and experienced the hustle and bustle of Cai Rang floating market first hand. The Cai Rang floating market is by far the largest floating market in the whole Mekong Delta region. Business is the busiest during the early morning. Each boat displays what they are selling by tying the samples onto a stick and displaying it upright.

Later, we visited a rice husking mill and made a stop at Cantho market. We headed back to HCMC later that afternoon where the madness of the traffic awaits us.

A church in Vinh Long

Small shady canal in Vinh Long

This guy showing his skill with kids looking on at Vinh Long market

Boats at Cai Rang floating market

Deals are made on the boats

Different boats selling different goods

A woman rowing a boat and get ready to do business

You know what this boat is offering. Pineapples of course!

Magnificent & Stunning Halong Bay

2008-01-09T22:23:00.000+08:00

One can book a 2 days 1 night trip to Halong Bay from Hanoi for as little as USD29 per person. Bus journey from Hanoi to Halong City (Hon Gai) takes 3 1/2 hours, passing Haiphong along the way. Once we reached the port at about 12pm, we were taken on board the boat and start cruising along Halong Bay. Lunch was taken on board the boat.

At 3pm, we were guided to visit one of the caves in Halong Bay. In this case, the Amazing Cave. Halong Bay is famous not only for its magnificent view and scenery, but also for its geological value of the numerous caves around the area.

After visiting the cave, one could opt to kayak around the blue and tranquil water of Halong Bay.

We stayed the night off the shore near the southern tip of Cat Ba Island after dinner and head back to Halong City the next morning.

Boats anchored outside the Amazing Cave

Typical boat at Halong Bay

View of Halong Bay in the evening

Mysterious & beautiful Halong Bay

Such a heavenly picture of Halong Bay!

Halong Bay at 5.37pm in the evening

Best Stuffed Baguette (Banh Mi) in Vietnam

2008-01-09T01:26:00.000+08:00

Of many baguettes i sampled in Vietnam, the best one was undoubtedly be found in the city of Dalat, a cool hill-station retreat in the central highlands region of Vietnam.

This is due to the many bakery outlets that opened around the downtown area of Dalat. They sell impressive looking breads and cakes. In fact, Dalat is famous for its coffee and cakes.

I've compiled a list of bakeries that sell mouth-watering stuffed baguette (Banh Mi) that taste so good and not expensive at all. It costs only 5,000 VND (0.32 USD) each. They all located at the 3/2 Street (D 3 Thang 2) of Dalat.

My personal favorite is at Tiem Banh Lien Hoa (literally translate Lotus Bakery). Address : 19, 3/2 Street, Dalat. Telephone numbers 063-837303. Their baguettes are the best. Even local people queue up for them.

Banh Mi stall inside Lien Hoa

Tiem Banh Lien Hoa (Lotus Bakery)

Alternatively, one may try Hieu Banh Hoan Hy 2's. Address : 14, 3/2 Street, Dalat. Telephone numbers 063-830457.

Banh Mi stall inside Hoan Hy 2

Bami Kim Anh is the franchise looking Banh Mi outlet located the the corner (or junction) of 3/2 Street. They have variety of fillings that you could choose for your baguettes, i.e. eggs, chicken, beef, kebabs, etc.

Kim Anh's baguette

Bami Kim Anh

Hope you all have a pleasant stays in Dalat. With a cup of coffee and a baguette in hands, take a stroll around the Xuan Huong Lake. What a relaxing moment!

Xuan Huong Lake

Strolling path around Xuan Huong Lake

The "Eiffel Tower" in Dalat

Like A Surgeon (Parody of Madonna's Like A Virgin)

2008-01-07T21:23:00.000+08:00

While i was on board a bus traveling from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) to Dalat, the bus driver shown us this video during the journey that i found really funny and interesting. This is the parody of Madonna's Like A Virgin music video. It was produced and performed way back in year 1985 by Weird Al Yankovic.

For all doctor wannabes out there: this song is for your amusement only. Don't take it seriously.

Like A Surgeon Lyrics

I finally made it through med school
Somehow I made it through
I'm just an intern
I still make a mistake or two

I was last in my class
Barely passed at the institute
Now I'm trying to avoid, yah I'm trying to avoid
A malpractice suit

Hey, like a surgeon
Cuttin' for the very first time
Like a surgeon
Organ transplants are my line

Better give me all your gauze nurse
This patient's fading fast
Complications have set in
Don't know how long he'll last

Let me see, that I.V.
Here we go - time to operate
I'll pull his insides out, pull his insides out
And see what he ate

Like a surgeon, hey
Cuttin' for the very first time
Like a surgeon
Here's a waiver for you to sign

Woe, woe, woe

It's a fact - I'm a quack
The disgrace of the A.M.A.
'Cause my patients die, yah my patients die
Before they can pay

Like a surgeon, hey
Cuttin' for the very first time
Like a surgeon
Got your kidneys on my mind

Like a surgeon, ooh like a surgeon
When I reach inside
With my scalpel, and my forceps, and retractors
Oh oh, oh oh, woe, oh

Ooh baby, yah
I can hear your heartbeat
For the very last time

And this is Madonna's Like A Virgin music video. Just for your comparison...

Like A Virgin Lyrics

I made it through the wilderness
Somehow I made it through
Didn't know how lost I was
Until I found you

I was beat
Incomplete
I'd been had
I was sad and blue
But you made me feel
Yeah you made me feel
Shiny and new

Like a virgin
Touched for the very first time
Like a virgin
When your heart beats
Next to mine

Gonna give you all my love boy
My fear is fading fast
Been saving it all for you
'Cause only love can last

You're so fine
And you're mine
Make me strong
Yeah you make me bold
Oh your love thawed out
Yeah your love thawed out
What was scared and cold

Like a virgin
Touched for the very first time
Like a virgin
With your heartbeat
Next to mine

Woah, woah, oh, woah
You're so fine
And you're mine
I'll be yours
'Til the end of time
'Cause you made me feel
Yeah you made me feel
I've nothing to hide

Like a virgin, hey
Touched for the very first time
Like a virgin
With your heartbeat
Next to mine

Like a virgin, oooh
Like a virgin
Feels so good inside
When you hold me
And your heart beats
And you love me

Oooh baby
Can't you hear my heart beat
For the very first time

APPLE-C1 Call Warrant (CW)

2007-12-13T13:52:00.000+08:00

OSK Investment Bank really knows how to pick the stock especially when comes to list call warrants (CW) of American stocks. After listed Google Inc.’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) CW (GOOGLE-C1) recently, on 11th December, it listed Apple Inc.’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) CW as APPLE-C1 (stock-code 0528C1) on the Bursa Malaysia.

Apple-C1 has the following characteristics which you should know:

Conversion / Exercise Price = USD171.50
Conversion / Exercise Ratio = 1200
Expiry Date = 3rd July 2008
IPO Price = RM0.11

You should notice the variable or the unknown fluctuation from the above items namely the exercise price that is denominated in US dollars. The US dollars had weaken since the last interest rate cut and if Ben Bernanke continues to cut the interest rate in the foreseeable future, you can expect the Malaysia Ringgit to strengthen further.

The exchange rate for USD to Ringgit was 1 USD to RM3.3120 as of Dec 13. This means the following:

Conversion / Exercise Price: USD171.50 x 3.3120 = RM568.01
Apple-C1 trading price as of 13th Dec 2007 (midday closing) = RM 0.115
Let’s exercise the CW: RM0.115 x 1200 = RM138
Add it to the Exercise Price: RM568.01 + RM138 = RM706.01

Now, let’s see the last stock price of Apple Inc. traded at Nasdaq on Dec 12. The share closed at USD190.86 per share which will translate into RM632.13 ($190.86 x 3.312). So you’re paying a premium of 11.69 percent or RM73.88 for the time value until 3rd July 2008. Now, let’s assume the premium of 11.69 percent and currency exchange rate will stay the same until the expiry date, although it’s very unlikely. It’s for computation sake.

If Apple Inc. climbs to USD200.86 (USD10 gain) you’ll have the following:

In Ringgit: USD200.86 x 3.312 = RM665.25
The total exercise price and ratio= RM743.02 (11.69% premium)
The un-exercise 1200 CWs: RM743.02 – RM568.01 = RM175.01
Each CW: RM175.01 / 1200 = RM0.146 (round to RM0.145 since you can only trade at 0.005 spread)

So, when the Apple Inc. stock jumps US$10 a share, your gain in CW is RM0.03 (around 26% gain). The underlying mother share of Apple Inc. only gain at around 5.24% (From USD190.86 to USD200.86). Of course the above illustration is based on the assumption that the premium and currency exchange rate remains static at the above figures.

Surely, one could probably make more money trading Call or Put Options directly from the U.S. stock markets mainly due to the volatility and one-to-one relationship between the stock and the options, i.e. no huge conversion ratio and exchange rate risk.

Also worth mentioning here, U.S. call and put options are automatically priced using Black-Scholes-Merton model, whereas the price of local structured CW like Apple-C1 are based on demand and supply of the CW.

*Adapted from Stocktube with some minor updates.

More Books...

2007-12-05T12:52:00.001+08:00

Finally, the exam is over. At the mean time, i wish to at least finish reading some of the books that have been long overdue. Some of them are:

1) The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
2) The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan
3) Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
4) The World Is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
5) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

amongst others.

Brian Tracy - 21 Ways to Double Your Productivity

2007-12-04T14:52:00.000+08:00

1. Make a decision today and get started -- To do something or stop doing something. Self-discipline is the ability to make yourself do what you should do when you should do it whether you feel like it or not.

2. Develop CLEAR goals and objectives -- You can get everything you want but you must pay the price in full and in advance. Write down your goals and set a deadline. Make a list of everything you can think of to achieve your goals. Organize the list into a plan and take action towards your plan. Do something every single day that move you in the direction of your goals.

3. Plan everyday in advance -- 6P(Prior proper planning prevent poor performance). Make a list. From master list to monthly list to daily list. Always work from your list.

4. Use the ABCDE method to set priority -- Never do a B item when there is A item left undone. D(Delegate to others) E(Eliminate).

5. Separate the urgent from the important -- Urgent and important, important but not urgent (like seeking knowledge), urgent but not important, not urgent not important (useless activity).

6. Use The Law of Force Efficiency -- What is the most valuable use of my time right now?

7. Apply the 80/20 Rule -- Identify the top 20% of your tasks.

8. Work at your energy peak -- Proper eating, proper exercise and proper rest.

9. Practice single-handling of key task.

10. Eat live frog -- First thing to do in the morning.

11. Organize your workplace -- Keep your desk clean. T.R.A.F. (Toss/Refer/Action/File).

12. Use travel time productively -- During car journey and flight.

13. Get better at your key task -- Determine the one skill that will help you the most in your life and your income.

14. Work in real time -- Bias for action. Need for speed.

15. Re-engineer your work -- Reduce 30% of the steps needed in your work initially. Use your creativity. Streamlining.

16. Reinvent yourself each year.

17. Practice zero-base thinking continuously -- What you won't do knowing what you now know you won't get into again if you have to do it over.

18. Set clear posteriority - Discontinue something that you are now doing that are no longer as valuable as they were when you first started on them.

19. Keep your life in balance -- Happy relationship with people.

20. Plan every project carefully.

21. Be intensely action-oriented -- Constant motion.

Ricky Martin - Maria

2007-11-21T14:17:00.001+08:00

(Yeppa! Sexy sexy Maria!)

Un, dos, tres
Un pasito pa'delante, Maria
Un, dos, tres
Un pasito pa'atras
Un, dos, tres
Un, dos, tres

Search Unplugged - Rozana

2007-11-21T01:00:00.000+08:00

Rozana...
Kau Gadis idamanku
Dua hati menjadi satu
Bila kita bertemu
Oh Rozana...

Search Unplugged - Isabella

2007-11-21T00:48:00.000+08:00

Dia Isabella
Lambang cinta yang lara
Terpisah kerana
Adat yang berbeza
Cinta gugur bersama
Daun daun kekeringan...

Haluan hidupku
Terpisah dengan Isabella
Tapi aku terpaksa
Demi cintaku Isabella
Moga dibukakan
Pintu hatimu untukku
Akan terbentang jalan
Andainya kau setia
Oh! Isabella....

Minimum Brokerage Fees

2007-11-11T11:27:00.001+08:00

I hope I'm wrong about this. Even though the 2008 Budget has been announced long ago, i came to notice the changes of the brokerage fee structure that government wanted to implement only today. With effect from 1 Jan 2008, all stock transaction will have a minimum brokerage fee of Rm40 instead of current fee of Rm12 -- this will definitely put small investors like me into a very difficult situation. This means that almost all stock transaction will be at least Rm8000 each to be at least breakeven at the brokerage level. If not, you will need to pay the minimum charge of Rm40. Compare to previous level, i only need to breakeven at Rm2449 (using 0.49% rate) per transaction.

From economics perspective, i think it's better for the government to leave this brokerage fees to the market force. The demand and supply as well as the competition among brokerage houses will determine the right level to charge. This will bring the effective use of resource as we all who have studied economics will know that floor and ceiling prices will lead to ineffective use of resource. This is called DEADWEIGHT LOSS, dudes! I think our government have much better things to do than this.

Sometimes, the government always said one thing and did another thing in my opinion. They said they want to encourage retail participation in our equity market but then they came out with this stupid idea of minimum brokerage fee of Rm40.

Let the market force decide. Mind your own business. Take care of our country ever rising inflation level -- everything has risen in price level these days. This still have not counted in the expected petrol price increase yet. If the crude oil price still hovering around USD100 per barrel, i envisage our petrol price will be around Rm3 per litre starting next year.

BN = BARANG NAIK!

Metallica - The Unforgiven

2007-11-07T15:12:00.000+08:00

周杰伦 - 牛仔很忙

2007-11-04T23:34:00.000+08:00

Jay Chou's new song. A bit of country touch here.

Jolin 蔡依林 - 爱无赦

2007-11-04T22:49:00.000+08:00

Great MV! Great song! Great dance choreography!

黑暗中牵着手
我在搜索谁还躲的偷偷摸摸
你的爱要自由
只要换容能被感受便已足够
老掉牙的枷锁
幸福不是循规蹈矩就能拥有
今晚的爱无赦
就别在罗里罗嗦
唯唯诺诺畏畏缩缩

Go Go Sister
Go Go Brother
爱情打动天下围攻
Go Go Lover
Bravo Lover
酸甜苦辣这爱无赦
You Are My Lover

太阳下亲吻我
我要把我旧里势头都会感动
不必对谁负责
你的执着要比他们都还承受
世界飞速转动
是对是错不过只是一个念头
赶上我的节奏
在我的王国你的感觉
可以大声嘶吼

Opening Level	140.50p
Closing Level	145.00p
Difference	4.50p
Profit on trade, (4.5p x 10,000)	£ 450.00

Opening Level	555.00p
Closing Level	546.00p
Difference	9.00p
Profit on trade, (9p x 2,000)	£ 180.00