meek-investor

We have such a wonderful batch of guests this week we are just beside ourselves.   Come be beside us too! David Gborie comes to party. He’s been telling jokes all over the country for a couple of years now and he is, in his words, “Pretty legit at it”. He currently lives in San Francisco where he is a member of Sylvan Productions and can be seen around town lurking at one of their many shows or at Crissy fields with his trusty crab pot. As a perfomer he’s appeared at The Bridgetown Comedy Festival, SF Indie Fest, and Denver’s Too Much Funstival, as well as the SF Punchline, The Denver Comedy Works, and other impressive venues. Also, up from LA we have Amber Kenny, a founding member of the sketch teams Little Kevin Buttersmith and Dumb Babies and Grant Pardee,   a literally perfect boy. And watch out for Aaron Weaver!   All the way out from Chicago, he “sneaks up on you with an unorthodox style, then snaps your neck with a comedic Kung Fu chop to the spine. “ Plus all your regulars wil

What is man's greatest weakness. No, its not sex. No, its not even gambling.  It is his uncanny ability to fall for every "get rich quick" scheme. Take the case of the collapse of the Saradha   (and probably numerous other such schemes) in West Bengal. This was a classic Ponzi scheme. Investors were attracted by fantastic returns (15-50% !!!). The early investors were paid off with money collected from subsequent idiots. Bingo. An avalanche started. Two years on, it has collapsed leading to much hand wringing and vociferous shouts of indignation. What attracted my attention was not the scheme per se. They are dime a dozen. Remember the Emu farm scheme a little while ago in Tamil Nadu. Emu farming I believe - never mind that not one soul who put money into it had seen an emu in his life. But what has really got my attention is the response to the affair after it broke news. There has been much clamour for regulation of such funds and criticism of governments for not regula

My friend avoids egg yolk like poison.  He said yolk has high cholesterol and deliberately digs out the yolks from foods, be it high boiled eggs or from moon cakes.   However, after having done that, he still smokes one pack of cigarettes per day. This friend of mine is also vested in the stock market and looking for other passive income streams.  While I have nothing against smokers, I feel that smoking is like burning money.  I have worked out the mathematics (cost of smoking) for him. 1. Cost of cigarettes Like the high housing cost, Singapore is also one of the most expensive place for smokers.  One pack of cigarettes costs between $8 to $15, depending on brands.  For simplicity's sake, I use $10 for calculation: $10 a day becomes a massive $3,650 a year! If $3,650 is the dividend payouts from stock investment, how much is the investment amount required? Taking Starhub as an example because the company pays the same dividend ($200 per lot) every year, $3,650 dividend requires 1

The European television industry is one of the most balanced in the world, with public service broadcasters, advertising-supported broadcasters, and pay television operators reasonably dividing television revenues among themselves. For the 27 countries of the EU, pay TV accounts for about 38% of total revenue, public funded broadcasters for about 34%, and advertiser supported television for about 28%.   Unlike the US where private television dominates, most Europe private television began after liberalization broke the monopolies held by public service and state television in most countries. It has taken decades for private television to establish a mature place in the market.   When looking specific countries, however, total spending on TV (advertising, subscriptions, public funding) is not evenly spread. Adjusted for population, it ranges between €5 and €30 per person among nations, with an average of €15. There a notable differences between southern, central, and eastern European na

TOPICS THIS WEEK: Shipping imperfection; Being unique and marketing that; Working from Sheds Perfection is key to success in business, right? Your product needs to be perfect to survive in the marketplace. If it isn't, your clients won't like it. Your competitors will steamroller over you. Really? Maybe not. Just how perfect should perfection be? There is a point at which perfection is a killer. You keep delaying shipping. Remember that a project that is 95% done, but hasn't shipped, is as good as 0% complete from the perspective of the marketplace. And a 0% product or services isn't attractive at all. This week we look at perfection in business and how you don't always need to deliver perfection. In fact, have a listen to this episode of Chris Brogan's podcast in which he interviews Paul: The Human Business Way, Episode 10. The conversation about perfection or imperfection turns to office space. Jane has moved into a shed. Sounds odd? Turns out working from she

Which is the biggest ecommerce company in the world ? Take a guess. Amazon ? E Bay ? You would be wrong if you guessed either of them. The biggest e commerce company in the world is Alibaba. Its portals handled a sales volume of some $ 170 bn. That is more than the volumes handled by Amazon and E Bay combined. No, this is not some elaborate hoax dreamed up from 1001 Nights. Alibaba is indeed the largest e commerce company in the world. The reason you may have never heard about it is that it operates almost exclusively in China. It started life as simply Alibaba.com , a business to business portal. It then added Taobao - a consumer to consumer portal, whose similarity to E Bay is, of course, entirely coincidental. Now it has started Tmall , a business to consumer portal, which again, bears a completely coincidental similarity to Amazon. All this in just fourteen years. The last two, if you click on the link, you will see are entirely in Chinese. And therein lies the issue. Can Alibaba

For most Singaporeans, the biggest investment is our home - the house that we live in.  And for most people, it is the biggest purchase in our lives. As Singapore has small land area but with big population, the property market is sizzling hot and our "house" is the fastest growing investment in our investment portfolio. Recently in February, an executive maisonette (EM) at Bishan changed hands for S$1.01 million, beating the previous S$1 million paid for a similar unit in Mei Ling Street last September. This record sale also creates a vicious cycle and boosting the housing prices even higher.  It is people's nature that seeing your neighbour sold his flat at such high price, you would also raise your own expectation. As I am currently staying at an EM too, so I expect my flat also worth close to 1 million.  Potentially I am a millionaire, just that I do not feel like a millionaire myself and I do not think we should count our house when evaluating our wealth. Previously

So says Huawei. Really ?? No, not really. They are very interested in the US. Its just that they have realised that the doors to the US are simply shut for them. There has been a spat going on between the US politicians and Huawei for some time. It looks like the politicians have won.  And it begs the bigger question - can any company in the world be exclusively in one country or region (however big that might be) and hope to be a major player in the world. Huawei is a telecoms company. They sell networking equipment significantly cheaper than say Cisco. They used to be crappy ( Cisco would snigger at the mention of their name). Not any longer. Same quality, half the price. In an uncomplicated world, companies  should be falling over themselves to buy from them.  But then, the world is not an uncomplicated place. Huawei is a Chinese company. So what, you might ask ? Huawei's founder and leader was formerly in the Chinese army. Still so what ? Well, the ties with the Chinese governm

Singapore has a sound banking system.  Banks and finance companies licensed in Singapore are supervised by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and MAS requires these banks and finance companies to have sound risk management systems, adequate internal controls, well capitalization and sufficient liquidity to meet any unforeseen needs. However, MAS does not guarantee the soundness of individual banks and finance companies.  As there is no 100% safe business in the world, therefore, a Deposit Insurance Scheme (DIS) has been set up to protect the core savings of small depositors in Singapore in the event that a full bank or finance company collapses.  This is a safety net provided to the depositors that their Singapore dollar denominated deposits, including those in CPF Investment Scheme and Supplementary Retirement Scheme placed with a DIS member bank or finance company, are insured up to a maximum of S$50,000.   Foreign currency deposits, dual currency investments, structured dep

Suntec REIT held their AGM this year on April 18 at Pan Pacific Hotel. As I have some free time on Apr 18, I decide to attend the Suntec REIT AGM.  This is my second AGM and I found that it is a different experience compared with the Starhub AGM on April 15.  First of all, registration for Suntec REIT AGM is not so high tech.  You arrive at the venue and let them scan your IC to verify your unitholder status.  Then, they copied your name and the number of units you hold onto a paper form and let you sign in.   So, at the point of signing in, I saw that the 2 ordinary-looking person queued in front of me hold 25,000 and 50,000 units respectively.  This really prove the point that we can't judge people by appearance. After signing in, I was issued a polling paper to use for AGM resolutions polling and a refreshment voucher.  I entered the hotel ball room, found a seat and wait for the AGM to convene.  I estimated the crowd about 400-500, perhaps double the attendees compared to Starh

Many good stories share a common storytelling device: an epic challenge that the protagonist must overcome. The story of your business is also about overcoming challenges. You are on a quest – a quest to grow your business, launch your product, reach your targets. The higher you intend to reach, the more epic the quest, the more we are drawn to it. You are the underdog we are cheering on. We've set some epic challenges for this podcast, and we'd like you to be part of the quest. Join us on the journey and help us build the bright, giving, supportive, valuable community we have in mind. What are the challenges we've set? You'll have to listen to this week's episode for that. You'll hear how many weekly downloads we'd like to hit by 31st December of this year. You'll also hear of an epic geographic goal as well. New rallying point You are a big part of the story of this podcast. We'd like you to be an even bigger part of it. To help with that, and to h

Ravi, who wrote this piece on  various forms of gramophone records is a certifiable music nut. He can wax lyrical (pun intended) on most matters musical. But when he does so about women 100 years old , well ........ you form your own conclusions. T he bloke writes beautifully, writes with passion and his words have magic.  If, at the end, you too fall for big black women who are 100 years old, don't blame me ! Read on. There is something wonderful about the black American songstress of the days gone by.   They were usually big, with voices to match.   I can always tell a black singer from her voice, because of a certain something, a je ne sais quoi in their voices, in particular, in the voices of the great jazz singers of the 50s and later.    I venture an extreme opinion here when I say that singers of that era invariably were less schooled and less adept in the use of technology than their soul sisters of later decades.   For one – they had to graduate to the recording studio

I have not attended AGM before.  Partly because my busy work schedules did not allow me to attend the AGMs on week days.   Also, I have heard bad things from friends about AGMs.  Most particularly the ugly scenes at AGM buffets; people are said to be scrambling, rushing, pushing and taking excessive food than what they could eat.  Heard some even brought containers (most likely exaggerated) to package food home. From this year onwards, as I have less travelling, I decide to attend an AGM to have such an experience.  I always wonder how the voting/polling is done at the AGMs?  I want to attend one AGM myself so I would not be the "mountain tortoise" any more.  Perhaps this can be a pastime after my retirement. Starhub held their AGM this year on April 15 at the company's headquarters at Starhub Green, Ubi Ave 1. As Starhub is my current top holding and I have some free time on that day, I decide to start my first AGM with Starhub. Registration for Starhub AGM is a breeze.