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Why you should not buy IPOs As Sheng Siong is launching its IPO next month, I expected a few calls as whenever an IPO is launching. And if you are my client, you know my answer. I decide to write this article so everybody can benefit...

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Questions to ask your Financial Adviser Every Sunday morning when I read the newspapers, I always see articles or advertisements regarding "Financial Advisers". Nowadays, just like the once prestigious word "Banker", which is misused in the...

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Revision to Nomination of Insurance Nominees Regulation With the onset of the Mental Capacity Act ("MCA") coming into effect on 1st March 2010, the Insurance (Nomination of Beneficiaries) Regulations 2009 ("the Regulations") will be amended to effect 2 changes: The...

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The ABCs of the Financial Advisers Act The title, Financial Adviser, is always mis-used in the industry and misunderstood by the consumers. On 10 October 2002, the Financial Advisers Act came into effect and all financial institutions are...

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Moratorium Underwriting by Aviva It is a common that insurance companies do not cover pre-existing condition. Typically, pre-existing conditions will be excluded with little or no chance of them being covered, even after a number of treatment-free...

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No Eurobonds ‘As Long As I Live’

Category : Market Commentary

In my April post “Have You Forgotten European Credit Default Swap“, I have shown you the chart of CDS in euro zone when many were talking about “the worst is behind us”.  Now everybody has known how much the market crashed in May.

Let’s be “contrarian” again this time. In the past months, there are many talks about Eurobonds among the “investment professionals” which seems to be the only “magic pill” for this euro debt crisis. To me, if ever the situation can be mitigated, it cannot because of eurobonds, at least not in the currently proposed form.

What is Eurobond?

Imagine you have worked hard and saved a reasonable sum of money.  You have lent $50,000 to one of your neighbors but found he is in fact a gambler and lost all the money in Casino. Your son wanted to start a business but was cheated by his friend, all the $100,000 you gave to him was gone. One of your niece borrowed money from you for “emergency usage” but in fact squandered all into branded bags.

Now all of the three people come to you and say, “We want to pay you back but the banks do not want to lend us money. We all run out of cash. Why don’t we form a company together and take some loans using your name since you have very good credit record with the bank, and we will use the money to pay you back.”

How brilliant! Will you do it?

Do you think the lenders will be so stupid that they do not know one day, these three people will eventually dry up all your money? Haven’t you realized your creditworthiness has been dragged down by the other three?

The same episode is happening in the crucial European Union summit now, Merkel is coming under mounting pressure to soften up Germany’s resistance to the issuing of the so-called eurobonds that would share debt responsibility among the 17 eurozone nations. Italy, Spain, and France are in favor of eurobonds. 

Let’s just take a look at the 5 year bond CDS of these four countries: (CDBR1U5:IND Germany; CFRTR1U5:IND Francis; CITLY1U5:IND Italy; CSPA1U5:IND Spain)

 

A picture speaks a thousand words, no wonder Merkel says Europe would not share total debt liability “as long as I live”.

 

Have You Forgotten European Credit Default Swap?

Category : Market Commentary

It seems investors are not affected at all by the recent market correction and Sumatra earthquake. New IPO of palm oil firm Bumitama soared on debut, rising 32% from IPO price of $0.745 and closed at $0.98 for the first day.

If you recall, Just six months’ ago, the market was spooked by Euro debt crisis and the voices of collapse of the world were loud and clear.

The talks of rising Sovereign Credit Default Swap (CDS) of European PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) were all over the news. It was the hottest daily topic in the world even my Chinese speaking mother-in-law could talk about it and urged my father-in-law to sell all his investment holdings.

However, all seemed to vanish since beginning of this year when the stock market started to rally. Where was all the pessimism gone?

If you think the “worst is behind us” as commented by Germany’s Health Minister Daniel Bahr, I will show you a chart of Credit Default Swap (CDS) of Spain and Italy as today. Does it ring a bell to you?

Standard & Poor’s cut Greece’s Credit Ratings to Selective Default

Category : Market Commentary

When the market was still cheering for the rally last week, I wrote an article “Take a look at Greek debt problem from a Folli Follie point of view“. I reckoned that “Greece default” is no longer a myth but a fact.

Yesterday, according to Bloomberg, Greece had its long-term sovereign credit ratings cut to selective default from CC by Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services, which cited an action by Greece’s government regarding its sovereign debt that began a “distressed debt restructuring.”

Interestingly, US market still rallied last night. The market is like a tug of war now, will the bulls or the bears win? We will see. What am I going to do today? Maybe I will go for fishing.

Take a look at Greek debt problem from a Folli Follie point of view

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Category : Market Commentary

In Oct last year, I wrote a blog entry “Greece Default Almost Certain“. Now it is 2012 Feb, Greece “still hasn’t defaulted”, instead, the creditors took 50% haircut in Oct and another further 53.5% cut this month. So on the paper, a $100 Greek debt is worth only around $25 now, but it is NOT default?

Anyway, in the previous article, I asked “Who has made money in this crisis?” The answer has become clearer and clearer. The poor Greeks have no right to decide whether they can default this debt or when they can default. Like debacle of MF Global, they are just victims of this cold blood financial war.

If you have not known, this is just a repeat of the Greek loan history. In 1824, before Greece was even established as a state.  Two loans were taken:

The first loan was issued in 1824 for 800,000 British pounds sterling, but only 308,000 pounds and army supplies worth  11,900 were ever given to Greece.

The second loan, was issued for 2,000,000 sterling. Greece barely received 529,000 of that, as the rest was held for so called interest, expenses, brokerage fees, previous charges.

Since 2000s, the European Big Boys have taken advantage of Greek’s debt problem and taken control of Greek’s lucrative businesses through privatization.

It is not difficult to see that in the past 2 years, when Greek Debt crisis becomes looming, you hardly heard much from Greece herself. You only saw the big shots, German and France met every day to talk about “how to deal with it”. And Now China has stepped into it.

In May 2011, Fosun Group, China’s largest private conglomerate, has bought a 9.5 percent stake in Greek luxury retailer Folli Follie Group for 85 million euros ($121 million).  When asked the reason for the investment, Guo Guangchang, chairman of Fosun Group, joked, “My wife loves Folli Follie“. It is as if Greece is just a piece of meat on the chopping board.

“From 1800 until well after World War Two, Greece found itself virtually in continual default,” write Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff in “This Time Is Different”. By Reinhart and Rogoff’s calculations, Greece spent 50.6 percent of the time between around 1800 and 2008 in default or restructuring. (source)

So it Greece debt crisis really a big deal? Whether a default, or restructuring or whatever they call it happens, shouldn’t we just shrug our shoulders?

“We wish you well”, Euro

Category : Macro Economics

“We wish you well”, that is what British Prime Minister Cameron said during European Summit last week, when he is the only one refusing to agree the new EU treaty. He went even further saying “As long as I am the Prime Minister, this country will never join the euro!”

In my early blog of Four Potential Scenarios of Eurozone Debt Crisis, I said “the only solution to all crises has to be some form of unity. However, that is always the hardest thing to do in the mankind history.” The European summit clearly demonstrated the frictions between each parties and the difficulty to move forward with different agendas.

As Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of PIMCO, said in his CNBC interview,

Every week, if not every day, Europe influences stocks, overwhelms sector-specific news, and frustrates careful security selection. The result is wave after wave of manic risk on and risk off days, together with spiking correlations and unsettling volatility.

You must be wondering why these economists and government officials seem have no clue what is the right thing to do. The simple fact is, euro problem is unprecedented.

There was never euro before 1999 in the history. While western financial and political decisions are largely built on studies from past events, the euro problem becomes an experiment which is the study subject by only the future. Now, any prediction about where the crisis is going to is merely speculating or at best guessing.

Some central banks in Europe have started weighing contingency plans to prepare for the possibility that countries leave the euro zone or the currency union breaks apart entirely. The break of euro is no longer unthinkable.

I guess “we wish you well” is really probably the best we can say now.

 

The Collapse of MF Global and its impact

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Category : Market Commentary

Street Fighters

When I was reading “Street Fighters – The last 72 hours of Bear Stearns, The toughest firm on Wall Street” by Kate Kelly, the news broke out that MF Global, one of the world leading broker for futures and options has filled bankruptcy.

According to the news, the collapse of MF Global was due to excessive risk taking by the firm in a bid to turn a traditional brokerage firm to an investment bank.

Reading “Street Fighters” is like watching a movie of the last 3 days of Bear Stearns before it was sold to JP Morgan for $2 per share. I can vividly imagine the same dramatic situation happened in MF Global during the past week.

What is different is that, unfortunately, MF Global failed to secure a buyer. Interactive Brokers abandoned the deal late Sunday evening due to $935m ‘missing’ customers’ funds.

Singapore investors is not spared from this disaster. Investors with account with MF Global Singapore may have a tough time to get their money back during the bankruptcy protection period.

Some local brokerage firms’ exposure to MF Global may also shake the investors’ confidence. Informed investors have started to withdraw their deposits since last week.

A few months after the fallout of Bear Stearns, Merill and Lehman followed suit. Would this incident signal a start of financial institution failures caused by Euro Debt Crisis?

Just look at the maelstrom created by Greek’s referendum, is the world ruled by Greece now?

Spain Downgraded Again, Greece Default Almost Certain

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Category : Macro Economics

After Fitch Ratings downgraded Spain on Oct. 7, Standard & Poor’s cut Spain’s credit rating to AA- last week, for the third time in three years. It appears more and more certain to me that Greece Default is inevitable.

Although global stock markets have largely rallied last week and even Euro has rebounded sharply. The massive downgrades of sovereign debts and banks were fast and furious.

Even though I am never a fan of credit rating agencies, the agencies seem to have learned the lessons since Lehman’s collapse. The joke of rating a bank AAA just before it went under must not be repeated.

Since September, the market has priced in 90% probability on default of Greece’s debt. If you notice, the markets have recently stopped arguing whether Greece will default, but what will happen after the default.

There are many evidences which I won’t discuss in details here. But in my opinion, whatever the policymakers are doing are not to save Greece, but buying time to prepare the impact to the affected banks and the rest of the countries. After all, Greece has a long history of defaulting its sovereign debt.

However, as the same article pointed out: “while previous defaults were dislocating to the market, the global financial system did not suffer any long term damage because of these events.

Investors must note what is important is never whether Greece will default at all, but rather how do you handle that. Do you have a plan for that?

I was recommended by a friend to read “The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine” by Michael Lewis. When 2008 sub-prime crisis happened, there were a group of people had plans for that.

Now the million dollar question is: Who have made money in this crisis?

Hold on Tight!

Why Dexia Bank Collapsed Even After It Passed Stress Test

Category : Market Commentary

On 10 Oct 2011, Belgium, France and Luxembourg agreed to nationalise Dexia, Belgium’s biggest bank. Ironically, this happened just 3 months after it passed the stress test.

In the press release on July 15,  “2011 EU-wide Stress Test Results: No Need for Dexia to Raise Additional Capital”, it said

“The EU-wide stress test, carried out across 91 banks covering over 65% of the EU banking system total assets, seeks to assess the resilience of European banks to severe shocks and their specific solvency to hypothetical stress events under certain restrictive conditions.

“Dexia’s strong capital base would enable it to weather the set of assumptions of the EBA stress tests, while still maintaining strong capital ratios

“The acceleration of the transformation plan announced on 27 May 2011 has no significant impact on the Group’s solvency, as the Core Tier 1 ratio remains at 10.4% factoring in these measures under the adverse scenario.

Then why on earth Dexia still failed, just as it was a year earlier when Bank of Ireland Plc and Allied Irish Banks Plc passed their tests and collapsed soon after?

As pointed out by Jonathan Weil, bloomberg view columnist, “Dexia was able to show such high regulatory capital because it was allowed to exclude the bulk of its assets from the denominator in the equation, while also excluding billions of dollars of pent-up losses from the ratio’s numerator. Those included losses on such things as soured Greek government bonds.

It seems that all these stress tests were probably not effective or designed to be passed. The European problems were apparent but the policymakers choose to ignore it and just hope miracle could happen to solve all of them.

In my opinion, the nationalization of European banks could have just begun. However, nationalization of the banks may not be such a big thing.  I will talk about it in another time.

Four Potential Scenarios of Eurozone Debt Crisis

Category : Macro Economics

I came across this report from Mike Story, Economist at Western Asset Management discussing four potential scenarios of Eurozone debt crisis

Scenario 1: No Eurozone Restructuring

This is the most optimistic scenario. All 17 members remain within the eurozone.

Scenario 2: Orderly Eurozone Restructuring

In this scenario, policymakers (European Central Bank officials and European finance ministers) battle the market in an effort to ensure stability.

Scenario 3: Disorderly Eurozone Restructuring (unlikely, but possible)

Policymakers are reactive, not proactive. Greece and Portugal give up on austerity, and they default.

Scenario 4: Eurozone Implosion (extremely unlikely)

A Lehman-like scenario occurs in which things spiral out of control and emergency policy responses fail to materialise. Events occur so rapidly that policymakers are unable to respond quickly enough.

In my view, the biggest risk is the indecisiveness of the policy makers. As I commented on Sep 20 when S&P Cut Italy’s Credit Rating from A+ to A, Having been “missing in action” for so long, policymakers still do not seem to get the clue. It becomes increasingly challenging to regain control of this rapidly deteriorating global economy.

If you ever watched movie “2012“, you know the only solution to all crises has to be some form of unity. However, that is always the hardest thing to do in the mankind history.

You can Read the full report here.

S&P Cut Italy’s Credit Rating from A+ to A

Category : Macro Economics

According to Bloomberg, Italy’s credit rating was cut by Standard & Poor’s on concern that weakening economic growth and a “fragile” government mean the nation won’t be able to reduce the euro-region’s second-largest debt burden.

The rating was lowered to A from A+, with a negative outlook. S&P said Italy’s net general government debt is the highest among A-rated sovereigns, and the company now expects it to peak later and at a higher level than it previously anticipated.

The euro debt crisis just becomes worse and worse and many efforts in the past have seen go down to the drain.

In my opinion, probably the euro central bank has made the same mistake as most of the investors, Loss Aversion. The debt problem has lasted more than 2 years but no decisive action was taken.

It is just like an investor who bought a company share and has been watching the price dropping lower and lower. He was so afraid of cutting lost and just prayed every day that the price would come back. Sometimes, the investor would buy more shares hoping to average down the price but all the additional money just mounted the losses.

Surely cutting loss is painful, but first cut is always the best cut.