Money

H1N1 – Fortune for Certain People

It was a sad news yesterday which 8 person died due to H1N1 outbreak, and today, 7 more. It does indicate that most likely the influenza had start to spread fast. However, this could be good news for certain people running certain business. This is about economy, please bear with it. It is real that the no matter what situation it is, there are people who is at the winning edge.

Do not believe? Look at this news:

From corridor chat, we also know that there are people who making a good fortune selling surgical masks. A colleague of mine who have children in one of the school having suspected H1N1 case and therefore the school administration encourage the kids to wear mask in the school. He told us that he bought the mask for RM 7.50 per piece, which normal price is only 1 – 2 Ringgits. What a good profit.

Jokingly, or some what seriously if we have a good supply of mask, we could just get a wind fall during this very period. May I know who can supply to me? (Haha…)

In a nutshell, we do not have to always look things from the negative side. No matter how bad the situation is, there is a way out of it. Wish that everybody is in good health and we see the future with a better view.

Phishing (Pretend to-be) Maybank2U – What You Should Do..

I always receive phishing emails pretending it is from banks and want me to go in reset password or unlock account. Some were phishing banks that I do not even have an account with. Anyway, I start to feel worry that it is getting more and more emails phishing Maybank2U which is, I guess the most popular online banking portal in Malaysia.

I have this 2 emails came into my mailbox this 2 days.

Therefore, I just thinking to write this short article to remind you:

NEVER EVER CLICK ON THE LINK ON THE EMAIL!!!

What you can do is, at least, just ignore the email and delete it. You may want to block the email address which the email is sent from so that you don’t get disturbed next time same email come in from the same address. Anyway, the sender may just use another email address to send again. You just can’t avoid totally. So again, the minder is:

NEVER EVER CLICK ON THE LINK ON THE EMAIL!!!

For more advance users, you could go to http://www.maybank2u.com.my/ and there is a facility for you to report this kind of phishing emails.

On the first page of maybank2u.com, there is a link here:

Do you see the ‘Report suspicious email’? Click on the link and you will reach the next page as follow:

So just fill in the information and let the bank know your case. May the bank able to protect the user better when they have more information in hand.

And what you could do to protect yourself is:

NEVER EVER CLICK ON ANY LINKS SAYING THEY ARE FROM YOUR ONLINE BANKING ACCOUNT. THE BANKS DON’T DO SUCH REQUEST!!!

What Have You Learn from The Economy Crisis? – Prepare for the Next

Are we in the economy crisis? Is our global economy in the stage of recovering? What about Malaysian market in particular?

This is not a market analysis report in anyway. I meant to just briefly describe how the market looked like for the pass 5 years and my personal opinion from the INVESTMENT point of view. What we have learn from the market for a better investment strategy for the future.

I am not old enough to go through multiple market crisis. From 1987, I was still in primary school. 1997, it was time when I studied high school. Indeed, the first time I feel suffer of market collapse was during year 2003 when dot com bubble burst – I graduated with a Computer Science Degree but it was very tough for me to get a job at that moment.

However, what I try to express here is, without knowing much the detail the market index (KLCI) actually goes slowly from year prior to 2005 at sub-800 points all the way up to more than 1500 points in year 2008. Based on the long term chart movement, I suspect that the behavior of fellow investor was like this:

1. At the beginning, most investors was felling fear about putting money into the stock market. That why during the early stage of market boom, it was not much improvement in terms of stock index for a period. It was time for big players slowly accumulate their stocks and cultivate positive market sentiment to encourage market followers.

2. After while, fellow investors start to feel comfortable with the observation and become impatient to invest. They see the market has bee moving up trend for quite much a margin, and they don’t want to miss the opportunity. Therefore they willing to keep buying the stocks even at higher and higher price. Therefore the stocks index climb up at a very fast rate. Without knowing, what this group of people buying was stocks that some other person bought at the low price.

3. Due to the global market crisis where sub-prime credit market collapse, people lost confident on the stocks that they bought. A lot of them just want to sell of the stocks no matter what is the price, therefore the market index dropped as fast as how it climbed up. The whole process happen in just a very short period of nearly 2 years.

The above is brief about sub-prime crisis cycle. Without knowing, the stock market actually touch the bottom at 800 points and re-bounced at a good speed since early of 2009. I don’t know whether the growth is organic or man-made at this point of time. It is no way to be told for small and ordinary investor like me. However, if we had ever ACCUMULATE slowly during the period when the market drop around 30-40%, we should start to have real profit now.

This is just assumption that you have done it. But how to do it correctly, I mean with the minimal risk?

1. Market research – during the turbulence time, companies became relatively instable. We might not able to see it from out side. But it just like turbulence under the sea surface. What we could do is to gather as much as possible the information related to a company, or the industry and try to build some assumption to judge if the stock worth buying.

2. Diversification – again, the companies are instable, which means operated at higher risk levels. Therefore we just could not rely on 1 single company to wish that it will not hit a great challenge and collapse just like that. Diversification is the method that applies here, where we proportion our investment into different companies from various sectors. The basic rules applies, make sure the research is done as thorough as possible.

3. Dollar cost averaging – we could see the trend from the long term chart. But if you zoom into a shorter period, are you still able to realize whether it is uptrend or downtrend? We may try to spot a range when it is good opportunity for earning, but we just can figure out when is the exact timing we should pump in all our capital. Therefore, why not minimize the risk by splitting the capital to few batches and buy at different time, so that we have higher chance to grab stocks at lower price? Again, the basic still applies, make sure the research is done as thorough as possible even though you are buying at average cost over multiple transactions.

Above is my opinion on doing INVESTMENT when you are not in the position of being a professional trader. The fundamental still is, knowing what you are doing. Be greedy when people are fear, be fear while people are greedy – but make sure you are doing it the smart way.

Wish to receive your comments and we could have an organic discussion here to grow each other. I can be reach at erchongyee@hotmail.com, and I am on MSN as well.

Another Financial Planning Article..

Just read from the website and grab some statistics:

Did you know that by the time we hit 65:

• 1% Are Seriously Wealthy.
• 4% Are well off.
• 5% Are STILL working because they HAVE to.
• 54% Must DEPEND on family or government support to make ends meet.
• 36% Are dead.

*Statistics from U.S. Department of Health, Education & Welfare in tracking people from age 20 to 65.

I am quoting the information from a website some what promoting MLM programs. As courtesy to them for enlighten me on this, you could click here.

Well, I am not sure whether the statistics is good for Malaysia as well. We could be better, or might be worse, most likely. The jive of the matter is, what category you want to be? I have another blog discussion about how to keep you improving your financial status from time to time (the bucket carrier and the pipeline builder), starting as young as possible. Hopefully by then you can be your best position when you get old.

In short, the paradigm is to well plan your financial matters, including the way you earn and spend your income, savings and investments and also risk management along your life journey, starting as early as possible.

Why Financial Planning? – the Professional Way

The basic of this is what is financial planning? A lot of time, we are about to achieve something in our life, be it short term or long term, we need to plan and act for it. The same theory applies when you are dealing with your personal or family financial objectives. The common financial goals could be collect enough wealth to pay the down payment for a house or a car, getting married, education funds for the kids, or for retirement expenses. Some how most people will have some PLAN in mind. But many times, the plan is not professionally validated and do not have a serious strategy to be implemented. That’s why, professional financial planning is extremely important as part of everybody’s life in order to secure the PLAN and ensure it is EXECUTED with care, or else, it may never be materialized.

The best practice financial planning will be able to help you in many ways.

1. You could have better understanding about your financial affairs like your cash flow, debts and assets from time to time. Hence you could adjust your spending habits to avoid excessive spending, unmanaged debts or even bankruptcy.

2. With good standing on financial respects helps you to be free from financial worries because you could always anticipate your future and when things goes wrong, you have backup plans to address the issues so that you could still achieve your goals in life.

3. Secure better relationships with people around you, such as your family, friends and colleagues. With a good financial plan on the run, you could always be a happy person and avoid cases where you need to borrow money to make ends meet or expecting handouts from others. This is merely a truth of life that if you are self sufficient, it is less reason for you and people around you to be disturbed.

In a nutshell, a comprehensive and professionally designed financial plan, if not 100% bullet proof, it do tremendously reduce the chances of you hitting any financial turmoil, eventually helps you to achieve your different milestones along the way.