Friday, October 22, 2010

My first IPO - After Action Report

Despite being in the market for like 4-5 years, I've never played any IPO before. I used the word 'play' because since all IPOs are described in the prospectus as the best company ever listed, and there are no history of any price to do any TA, the only way to make a buck is to punt and to speculate. I applied for the Global Logistic Prop Limited (known as GLP) and got myself 1 lot. Actually it's half a lot because I shared with my father, who don't...

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Quit whining and start going

The wedding is seriously stressing me up. There's so many things to be done and suddenly I felt that I was the only one handling things. I wasn't the one who wanted to have it and now it feels that I'm being pushed to do the bulk of the adminstration and left to pay the bills too. It's a show that I am forced to do and nobody seems to enjoy it. Still, I must step up to the challenge and soon it'll be just another notch in my belt. In view of...

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

3 steps to success

As my work load lessens, I suddenly have the time to think about the crazy busy period that had just passed. 'Suddenly' because all the non-milestone exams (those not in A'lvls, not in O'lvls) finish on the same week, so I ended up having a lot of free time which I need to get used to. It was very liberating to end my workday with still so much daylight left. I started to think about the differences between the better students and the not so...

Friday, October 15, 2010

Lending of scrips deposited in CDP

I'm once again interested in lending my scrips deposited in CDP (central depository) to earn some interest. I checked the borrowing rates, it's 6%. The lending rate is however lower at 4%. I suppose CDP will take the cut for being the middleman. I'm interested partly because I read that there are new rulings by the new chief at SGX regarding borrowing/lending of scrips, but I didn't read too closely. Something like making it easier for retailers...

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Warning bells are ringing?

With STI coming to 3200, I can almost hear the silent (and maybe not so silent) cheering for the market by people in the forums or in this cbox. With the number of unique users in the blog climbing up steadily, it meant only one thing - that we're back in the bullish period again. Have people started selling their mothers and mothers-in-law to get a bigger stake to play the game? I think not, but perhaps we'll see it coming soon. One of the most...

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Up and coming IPOs

As market marches upwards, we'll see IPO in fashion again. What's scary is that my parents asked me about it too, as they mentioned that their money in the bank is idling, so they might as well make some use of it. If my non-investing parents are saying this, there must be others who are eager to do it too. Ignoring my tingling spidey sense for now, let's see if it's worth a shot at it. I'm not interested in the fundamentals of it, but as the IPO...

Monday, October 04, 2010

How to kick start your savings plan?

Quite a number of people asked me how I managed to save in such disciplined manner. The equation of saving never changes: Savings = Income - Expenses. You can either increase your income, decrease your expenses or do both at the same time. I prefer the first method of increasing your income, because seriously how much can you cut from your expenses? There will be a limit to the numbers of needs that you can convince yourself to change to a want,...

Sunday, October 03, 2010

The little things

In my job, I can get to see really wonderful scenes of nature unfolding as I walk along the streets. The world is my office and the flowers, the trees and the living things are my colleagues. Recently, I've been taking out my mp3 player in my bag and started listening to it while walking alone to work. Being alone and being lonely are really two different things. You can be alone but never feel lonely, or you can be surrounded by people yet lonely....

Friday, October 01, 2010

SIA bonds oversubscribed

Sfry, a regular at the cbox, put up a link on the enthusiastic subscription of the recently launched SIA bonds. The bond carries a coupon of 2.15% pa and matures over 5 yrs. To subscribe for it, you need to have a minimum of $10,000 though you can buy off the market (it starts trading on 1st Oct 2010) at around $1k, depending on the price. I'm just wondering why there are so many subscribers to this. I think one of the main reason is that people...