Chinese stock market, down more than 6% !

The Chinese stock market fell by more than 6% today, presumably due to the increase in stamp duty (by the Chinese government) to 0.3% from 0.1%.

Are investors over reacting to this additional cost? Does this signify a correction in the market (using the increase in stamp duty as an excuse)? Will this spread around to other markets?

There seems to be a lot of talk about excess liquidity which is pushing bond yields’ down, and share & asset prices up. However, no one seems to be able to say exactly what the bonds’ should yield, and exactly at what valuation shares should trade at – not be to be over priced. This will be an interesting week for the financial sector.

Hypothetical question – unmarried and pregnant

A hypothetical situ:

A friend calls. Just says hi.. what are you doing? can we meet up for coffee she asks. So she and you meet up. You know she is being seeing some guy  for the past four or five months or so. After the both of you order coffee, you sit down and start talking stuff.

After a good five minutes, she looks straight at you (she is sitting across you) and says without displaying any emotion (of happiness or sadness) “I am sort of pregnant”… how would you react? what would you say?

Hey, minister! pls leave us Tesco alone!

Tesco is a large retailer, and a supermarket juggernaut in the UK. It is highly successful compared to other supermarkets in the UK in terms of profits*. And it is big (in terms of revenue generated within he UK, compared to other supermarkets, and employee numbers*). Success, always seem to bring in a fair share of opponents; most notably by politicians who try to score brownie points…

Anyways, there are always two sides to the story. Is it fair that a farmer has to constantly reduce the price they ask from Tesco, which is ultimately passed to the consumer as lower prices? Depends on a number of factors… where do we draw the line? also, depends on who you are – are you a  farmer who sells products to Tesco or do you buy groceries from Tesco?

In LK, do supermarkets compete with each other on price? Do middle income earners actually compare and visit a cheaper place to buy groceries and other house hold items?

* You can check the number of employees and profit margins of Tesco, Sainsbury and Morrisons.

Road closure for VIP travel

To state the obvious, it is a nuisances. But do not blame our armed forces, or our police for closing the roads. Blame the politicians who may be using the roads unnecessarily. I did not vote for MR; but quite a lot did. Anyways, I believe that we mush protect him and his jumbo cabinet, for the terrorists(LTTE) have murdered our political leaders.

Anyways, i wanted to post about the efficiency and competency, of our armed forces in doing a job that most people fail to thank (they should be thanked, those who put us and them in this situ, should be….. you know what….)

I have had to stop and wait on more than 10 occasions due to such road closure. On the most recent few such occasions, i had the opportunity of being there from the beginning to the end. I timed it. The road closure lasted no more than 5 minute, on the last four such closures!

* The soldiers run blowing their whistles, yelling at people to back off in to by roads, shops etc (obviously, if them smiled and asked it would take a bit more time for people to move….

* After the road is cleared, a couple of defenders, and a few motorcycles roam the road, to check on the security detail.

* Soldiers facing us tell people not to talk on mobiles, and not to come out of the shop. This, they do by either saying in Sinhala “Sir, put away the phone” or “where are you going… go into the shop/by lane”; or by raising the hand. A more effective, and less cumbersome way would be to just point the gun – this, they do not do. Basic courtesy and patience in doing the job.

*The VIP roams freely, with a fleet paid and fuelled by the tax payers.

*The soldiers smilingly tell us we are allowed to proceed.

*The bus the soldiers placed to block a certain by lane is promptly removed. Incidentally, the driver could have turned the engine off and waited. But he leaves the engine gunning as he can remove the road block asap…

Kudos to our soldiers who are generally doing a good job, under trying circumstances. But we must not let the few bad smelly eggs bring a bad name. And we must punish the bad eggs to the maximum.

Why an American as the head of WB?

It was wonderful to see the US back Paul Wolfowitz. At the end, he did have to leave rather unceremoniously… But to be fair, Paul Wolfowitz was should not be the only one to be blamed of the pay fiasco regarding his girl friend. There are others.

The brainy American president, Mr Bush appears to want an American to be the next head of the WB.

Now if America really wanted to export its version of democracy, it would be doing a find job. Its version of democracy seems to be some sort of bully eveyone else to follow its way of thinking. If i am not mistaken, there are a number of countries who are members of the world bank – shouldn’t each one have exactly one vote? so why should an American lead the way say if a Martian was better qualified?  Is it because America is rich (choose what ever yardstick you prefer), that it should head the bank?

IMO, if the people of the developing countries are to accept World Bank suggestions to be in their best interest, then, the WB needs to be, and the very least look apolitical…

Goodbye to a great manager..

A long standing boss, cum friend left for another company. It was a pleasure working for him. He genuinely cared about those who reported to him. Its difficult to explain how i came up with the conclusion that he is a person who genuinely cared about us, and not acted the role – a gut feel. We do have mangers who are good pretenders – rather who think they are good pretenders. This dude was different.

Anyways, this manager dude was strict – but always fair. Stood by us when he believed in us, and taught us many a thing.

Managers out there… you will be loved only if you are a genuine human being, and sufficiently skilled. Most of you will have the skills… but will you know what it is to genuinely be human? Will you know your team mates family back ground and know what your team mate’s brother is up to? Do you care? Do you know your department’s ‘lower’ rank members by name? If you booze, can you booze in such away that they still respect you, even those who do not enjoy a drink?

I remember one day, he wanted my help on something. I waited a bit late and did it. Then he went on holiday, and another manager had called him and asked him to add some other data for the report. He called me and asked me to work on that report only if i have time to work on it, and said its not urgent and continue to work on what i had at hand… anyways, didn’t want his name to be dragged around…so..i did add the new info, though i had to wait late… didn’t tell him i had to wait a tiny bit late…

He said “thanks dude”… and he meant it… anyone who gets to work for him; nope work with him is surely lucky… And unless needed, you will not be working long hours with him as your manager!

CSE website – we are behind…

I wanted to get some financial statements of a listed company in LK. So, i thought the CSE website would be the best place to get the info.  Unfortunately, the CSE site does not have financial statements / press releases of listed companies for the investors. The London Stock Exchange (LSE) came to my mind (a colonial overhang perhaps?), thus did a search.

It was easy to find the LSE website; but took a while to find the info that i was looking for… but was available… I just keyed in Tesco, and i have a number of options to filter, so that i could have easily found the full year results etc. We need a similar system! after all, investors at the basic level need the financial results to make a decision…

Another thing, i use firefox and wanted to open certain links in the CSE on different tabs… alas, i am not able to do so…  They really must ramp up their website, and honestly, they simply must have financial statements on-line…

Goldquest – robber barrons

Nice to see stories about the ‘entrepreneur’ (Vijayeswaran Vijayaratnam)  getting arrested – but not too sure whether he is being charged for stealing by running this fraud – he simply must be held to account. Also, nice to see people pushing for the continuation of the investigation of the sri lankan operations. We need to find those who profited from this massive fraud, and those who orchestrated it, and see that they do not benefit from this.

I guess a few will opine that people should have checked and ‘invested’ in this pyramid scheme (euphemism – Multi Level Marketing), and thus need not be looked after… well, even if we cannot return money to the poor suckers (who would have learnt a hard, painful, expensive lesson), we still must not let the top liners get away with this…

Wristwatch – a time keeper?

Is it simply a device that we use to measure time? Nope – it is no longer a device meant to keep time. Most of us have mobile phones. Mobile phones have the time. So why wear a watch?

A watch is now a piece of jewellery. Why else would people go for Rolex, Omega, Tissot etc which costs in excess of USD1,000 when a USD20 digital watch would do just as fine? Well, it is a status symbol…a lot people know a good branded watch….if and when i do make enough money, i too would buy a fancy watch – not so much to give me the time, but to have some expensive piece of metal on my wrist…unil then, my mobile phone would do….

High inflation – lets borrow and spend?

I spoke to a friend the other day, and said that i have decided to prepay my mobile bill, as i was charged penal rates sometime ago. He says he waits until the phone is barred, and then he pays the bill. Anyways, he went on to say that financial theory says that one should borrow and spend during high inflation, and negative returns (i.e. our interest rate, is below the inflation rate); thus his desire to not settle the bill when due.

I think what financial theory says is borrow and invest, and not borrow and spend… You borrow and spend, you reduce you own disposalable income (unnecessarily) due to added interest cost. But if you borrow and spend (invest?) it on some money making venture, you would probably generate real returns. You may not probably want to save (excess amounts), but you will not be better off by borrowing and spending (unless needed).

With certain credit cards offering zero interest instalments, it would make sense to use them – you could actually make a tiny bit of money (after deducting the stamp duty on credit card purchases of course…)