A new look for a new year!
The old template looked a tad dated, the alignment was off and too much junk in there. The new minimalistic look hopefully will inject new life to this 6 year old blog.
I started this thing to let people who are interested in my life to stay abreast of the latest happening around me. Thank you for always coming back to share a piece of my mind.
2008 has been a roller coaster, especially in the financial market. I'm the sort of person who believes in doing some forms of research before doing or buying something. Good thing I was not involved in the share market because the so called experts, well... are not as good as they thought they are.
1 Jan 2008
PREDICTION: ACCORDING to the Chief Executive magazine's annual poll, US CEOs expect the Dow Jones Industrial Average to sit at around 13,359, oil prices to be at US$96 a barrel and US Federal Reserve funds rate to remain at 4.25% by the end of 2008.
REALITY: Fast forward to Wednesday, and the Dow is still largely directionless at 8,824, oil prices are at a four-year low of around US$40 a barrel and Fed rates are now at near 0%.
Oil, which peaked in July at about US$147 in July, could even decline to US$25 next year ' despite the OPEC production cuts.
2 Mar 2008
PREDICTION: Jim Cramer, the volatile host of CNBC's Mad Money programme, when responding to a viewer's e-mail, arrogantly asserted:
'Peter writes: "Should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there?"
"No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine! Do not take your money out! Bear Stearns is not in trouble."
"I mean, if anything they're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from Bear! That's just being silly! Don't be silly!"
REALITY: Hopefully, Peter (the viewer put down by loud-mouthed Cramer) had the cow-sense to seek a second opinion. Six days after the show's broadcast, Bear Stearns was sold for a pittance to JPMorgan Chase - after widespread speculation about the investment bank's massive exposure to subprime mortgage.
4 Sep 2008
PREDICTION: Donald Luskin, in his article 'Quit Doling Out That Bad-Economy Line' (appearing in The Washington Post), boldly proclaimed:
"Anyone who says we're in a recession, or heading into one - especially the worst one since the Great Depression - is making up his own private definition of 'recession'."
REALITY: The day after Luskin's self-delusional forecast, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. And the rest is history.
5 Nov 2008
PREDICTION: Outgoing US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, on National Public Radio, prematurely bragged about the improved health of US banks:
"I believe the banking system has been stabilised. No one is asking themselves anymore, is there some major institution that might fail and that we would able to do anything about it."
REALITY: Paulson, who emerged in October with a US$700 billion 'bazooka' to blast away toxic assets in troubled US banks, ended up acquiring direct equity stakes instead (a move he himself had rejected earlier).
Unfortunately for Paulson, shortly later, Citigroup's stock price plunged 75 per cent in one week - closing below US$5 for the first time in 14 years.
June 2007
PREDICTION: Dennis Blair and Kenneth Lieberthal, in their Foreign Policy essay 'Smooth Sailing: The World's Shipping Lanes Are Safe', declared:
'In reality the risks to maritime flows of oil are far smaller than is commonly assumed. Tankers are much less vulnerable than conventional wisdom holds.
Limited regional conflicts would be unlikely to seriously upset traffic, and terrorist attacks against shipping would have even less of an economic effect.'
REALITY: On Wednesday, the United Nations said Somali pirates in inflatable rafts have made US$120 million ($175 million) in pirate attacks this year. In two months, they had hijacked 30 ships.
The UN on Wednesday approved air and sea attacks on Somali pirate bases.
Who can you trust, really?
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