Shameful. Irresponsible.

President Barack Obama hit the nail in the coffin by calling it "shameful" and "height of irresponsibility" for bank executives to be paid more than US18 billion in bonuses last year while their crumbling financial sector received bailout from American taxpayers. Vice-President Joe Biden said the level of Wall Street bonuses "offends the sensibilities"

Nothing is fair in this world. For the bonuses that these shameless executives paid themselves, probably more than 90% of the population in this world need to work a few life time!

I think one of the reason for the present financial tsunami is that CEOs and senior executives of the major corporations are overpaying themselves even for mediocre performance, resulting in high labour cost top down, inflation and excesses at the expense of the poor.

Something ought to be done to curb the ever increasing bonuses to these executives, such as bonuses should not be more than the President of United States, the most powerful man on earth and more equitable distribution of wealth to their workers. Just a silly idea.

Updates

Wish all a Happy and Prosperous Chinese New Year of the OX.

A friend told me that Oxen are often adult castrated male beast of labour. Oxen are hardworking animal, so for this year, we need to work hard in order to harvest what we sow.

Our trading profit to date is S$13,566.00 after 2 months of trading. I am happy with our progress and hope we can perform better.

Holy Shit

A report by CNBC that even as Merrill Lynch was suffering massive losses and laying off staff, its CEO Mr John A Thain spent US$1.2 million to decorate his office. He paid his driver US$230,000 for one year's work which is twice what drivers of top executives are usually paid. He paid US$1,400 for a waste-paper basket, US$87,784 for a pair of guest chairs and a list of other big ticket items. I wonder how much kick back he got in return.

Despite the flood of red ink, Merrill rushed to pay - a month early - US$3 billion to US$4 billion in annual bonuses to its employees just three days before merger with Bank of America closed on January 1. It's done before BoA could do anything to prevent it and just before about US$15 billion in losses materialised from Merill's portfolio.

The money pumped in by the FED has not helped the economy by encouraging loans, but has kept the bankers in champagne and caviar. How foolish are the shareholders among them the Singapore government who invested our reserves in the various banks for the super long term? I do not know how much our government have lost so far investing in the various banks, but I definitely feel the pain of our government being con big time into giving them a helping hand.

Trading Courses

There are 2 courses for traders who would like to improve themselves on the Exchange website, www.sgxacademy.com .

Technical Analysis for Professional Traders (S$800.00) on the 14 and 15 February 2009 by a fellow trader Tom Yuen (YCK) and Advance Technical Analysis with Interactive Trading & Professional Mentoring (S$3,000.00) on 21,22 and 23 February 2009 by LED.

I have known both YCK and LED for a close to 20 years during my floor trading days. They are both very good and successful traders with proven creditable track records.

LED is one of the best trader in the Exchange making S$20 million in 3 short years since becoming a Local in 1989. There is no doubt about his achievement especially when most traders like us started with a small capital base to trade initially. That's many thousand percent returns on capital! Wow! I don't know any other trader who can match his record, though there are many who made that amount over a longer period of time.

LED is a extremely helpful and generous person with many traders seeking his help when they were caught with unwanted positions. I heard he even help a big trader with some long Nikkei position during the 911 terrorist attack. On the following Monday when the Tokyo market opens, the Nikkei crashes to hit 2 limit down! Nobody else would have help in such a situation. I have the highest regard and respect for LED.

I understand LED has been called upon by the Exchange to help train traders and develop the futures trading community. It's really generous of him to share his trading system and techniques.

I highly recommend the 2 course to those traders on the line and those who would like to learn from the best traders in town.

Updates

It's a tough week! With the inauguration of President Obama and the Singapore budget presentation in the same week, I have not been objective in my views. I am fearful in shorting as any good news might push up the market and despite the bad economic numbers especially coming out from UK, I am bias into buying and picking the bottom.



TRADE WHAT YOU SEE AND NOT WHAT YOU THINK



Being a very short term trader, I need to constantly remind myself to trade objectively. I can only be half right most of the time in trying to predict where the market is heading. Many of my friends asked me where the market is going, whether the market has bottom out and can they start buying stocks now. Who can predict correctly? It's better to wait and see how bad the situation can get before deciding, CASH IS KING.

A lot of hard work is needed into doing research and analysis of the world economic situation. Making money involves risk and money management as none of us will be able to predict accurately where the market is going.

For the week, we are only up slightly, our profit now is S$9,595.00.

Updates

Robert and I are extremely happy that we are slowly getting back into the game for this special account. We have been trading very cautiously, in fact taking such small positions that we don't even need so much margin for trading. We still have to remind each other to consciously put in trades and encourage each other. We derive great satisfaction from making money for this account.

To date we are up about S$8,190.

We hope to improve further and grow with this account. One of the major challenges is to put in bigger trade to justify the margin and that would definitely increase the risk. The reward would be a much higher return from our targeted 12% return per annum.

Capital preservation is one of the most important concern in my over 20 years of trading, not losing money in a single month during the open-outcry days. After getting back into the trading arcade for electronic trading, I am still preserving that record for the past one year. The reason is simply that I traded small in comparison to my available margin. There is less stress, thus I am able to have a clear mind.

Many of my trader friends have done even better, with some not even losing a single day for months. With that many good professional traders in a negative sum game, it's no wonder more than 80% of the amateur losses their pants.

For this special account, I would be slightly more aggressive once I build up foreign capital.

Irony

MM Lee said in April 2007:-

"........you have to pay market rate or the man will up stakes and join Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs and you would have an incompetent man and you would lose money by the BILLIONS....!!!!!"

So what happen to Morgan, Lehman and Goldman? Sold, bankrupt or merged, all mismanaged by very well paid, highly intelligent greedy CEO and senior executives who gambled on risky investments to generate profits to justify their indecent bonuses. They should be made to cough up their ill gotten gains to help the economy back on its feet instead of squeezing blood out from the taxpayer!

So, pay market rate to get monkeys? There is a vast difference in renumeration between the senior executives and the ordinary workers in corporate America and this disease of greed spread to the rest of the world. These executives are paid in the millions to lose billions!

Progress

I am glad we are getting back into the black for our Special Account as we start making adjustment and make conscious effort to put in trades. It's definitely not as easy as I would have expected, managing 2 accounts on 2 different trading platform, strategies, risk/reward ratio and expectation.

Due to the hectic trading, I will update our performance on a weekly basis showing the end day balances from the statements received from our brokers. It will be transparent to show the up and down of our trading performance. We are ready to face the firing squad if we under perform, no excuses, it will keep us on our toes.

I am very happy with my own trading performance for last year especially the last 3 months due to the extreme volatility when the market came crashing down. Tired, plenty of hard work and stressful but I simply enjoy it very much, especially in beating the market.