Author: CheckW

I guess there is a method to the madness. With the holiday season upon us, the disruptor in chief is looking to wreak havoc into the last 30 days of his hold on power. Within the last few days before Christmas, he had managed to unleash so much chaos before rushing back to his Margo Largo hideout for the long holiday weekend.

Firstly, he refused to sign the Defense Spending Act on some unrelated reasoning and because he thinks they will change the names of some military bases. Then he threw the whole COVID19 relief package under the bus by insisting that the amount be raised to 2K. The missing in action president who had been busy playing golf and ignoring the pandemic for months has not lifted a finger to participate in the by-partisan negotiations to finalize the latest bill to provide relief to Americans before the end of the year.

Yet he now holds the whole process hostage as he drops a bomb on everyone. It is human cruelty at its best, to inflict pain at the worst moment to the most vulnerable. It seems that the timing of these announcements are not a coincidence as the senate and house will have 2 weeks to try to change or veto his decision. This ties perfectly into the Georgia elections in early Jan which will determine the fate of the senate for the 2 contested positions, whether it will go to the GOP majority or if the Democrats will win it.

By holding GOP hostage to the above, he will be able to command absolute loyalty from the party for him to give it a last shot to overturn the “illegal” election results. A memo had already been issued to the White House staff to stay on and to retract an earlier one that asked them to vacate the premises by 05 Jan to prepare for the inauguration of the new administration on 20 Jan.

He wants GOP to know who is the boss and see how badly they want to keep the senate. With little time left in power, he is making the most of his last days in a final push to stay in power, let the legal systems be damned. The long shot to overturn the results of the elections is still important because he is fighting for his personal survival.

The lawsuits will come for him swiftly and furiously the moment he leaves office. There are so many pending cases on his financial dealings and questionable business actions that will be probed after 20 Jan. His family affairs and tax evasion practices are also up for review plus money links to the Russians via Deutsche Bank will be exposed. His financial survival is at stake even as he raised more than $200+ million from supporters to fight the supposedly rigged elections.

The next masterful stroke is to begin his presidential pardons and issue them like candy to his cronies in earnest. Within the 2 days before Christmas, over 40+ have been issued. More than 80% can be linked to him for a personal or political reason. Criminals and murderers are being pardoned. Most have not even shown remorse or attempted to atone for their previous actions yet. A commentator did mention though that if they accepted the presidential pardons, then there could be an admission of guilt which could result in new charges to be brought to them.

The pardons seem to be a prelude to many more in the pipeline for him to execute and stretch the grey line even further. He probably has hundreds more to issue in the upcoming remaining days in office. Family members could be next. But what is there to pardon if they did not commit any crimes at the moment? Can they be pardoned for future crimes??? A free get out of jail card to be used when needed after Jan 2020?

Some even speculated that he plans to pardon himself to get immunity for life when he leaves office. If that is not possible, then could he step down suddenly on 19 Jan and get Pence to pardon him instead? He had been dangling the pardon card for years to buy loyalty. Now, it is the execution plan in play.

The pandemic rages on and no one is at home to watch the fire burning down the house. Travel for Christmas and New Year has now reached all-time highs for the year as the UK just announced a new and more contagious strain of the virus. This is a perfect storm that is looking to explode in all our faces even as the vaccines are being rushed out. A real mother of all shit shows is developing nicely along.

On the personal front, we are glad that my older son is back home and completed his SHN in a S’pore hotel on Monday. He had been in the UK for almost 3 months for his first term at Oxford as the COVID19 situation continues to deteriorate further. A new Tier 4 rating has just been created to plan for the worst. Infection rates are moving higher as the new strain spreads. Being home in S’pore is perhaps the safest bet for him for now.

The new Wonder Woman 1984 movie had started and we caught it during mid-week at the cinema. It was nice to be able to have a small semblance of the normalcy of watching a show on the big screen, just like the old normal again. The movie was delayed by more than a year already. New movies like this one will be streaming on various platforms like Netflix into 2021 as there is a huge build-up of a backlog of shows to be released.

As we start to celebrate the end of a terrible year that happens once in 100 years and start to welcome an uncertain 2021, many unknowns are still up in the air. While I am more optimistic that there is light at the end of the tunnel, I am not sure if the finishing line is near or there are many more months ahead.

Herd immunity via the vaccines will take months to achieve, assuming that everyone is cooperative and wants to take them. Politics, however crazy they become, will take care of itself. America is on a decline while Asia and China will rise. Brexit will be terrible for the UK eventually. Liquidity will continue to flood the markets as fiat currencies lose their value as central banks print like there is no tomorrow.

Before I start, I like to wish everybody a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year ahead. May 2021 hold more joy and brightness than this year, which we all want to forget.

Businesses are all trying to wind down now in the face of a crazy and difficult year, where everything but the kitchen sink was thrown at you. A 1 in a 100 years event where there is no reaction template to consult with. A go as you learn situation that affects just about every single human being on earth.

Who would have thought that if someone had told me a year ago that the whole world would stop functioning for months because of an invisible enemy, I would have said that he was insane? The tables have been turned upside down as we fall into a new normal that evolves day by day.

Masks and toilet paper became valuable commodities overnight. The fear of death was very real for everyone in the world. SARS taught Asia to be better prepared but yet the scale of the pandemic astounded all of us. One could not have imagined that we needed to press the pause button on the whole world to fight COVID19. Lockdowns became common buzz words and getting used to being trapped at home for months was the norm.

It was a long spring, summer and autumn, fraught with uncertainties every week. I started ending my blog titles in terms of week counts to refer to the virus impact event, starting from where I had perceived to be the start. Today, we are in week 42. It is my personal diary of COVID19 which I wanted to have a record of events to look back to in the future, to reflect upon the difficult year where time stood still. It is also memorable that I experienced what prison was\ like as I was trapped in a hotel room for 14 nights, as part of a strict quarantine rule for returning to S’pore from the UK in mid-Oct.

There are many firsts in terms of experience for all. Not being able to see love ones for months, being stranded at home within the country and common activities like travelling overseas stopped completely.

Multiple businesses that thrived in 2019 died via a thousand paper cuts as oxygen was sucked away from under their feet. All central banks mounted huge relief packages aka money printing as if there is no tomorrow, to try to prevent their economies from collapsing. And yet the stock markets roared ahead to new highs after the disastrous meltdown in March that lasted all of one month. There was too much liquidity chasing too few assets. Those investors that are brave enough to catch trends like working from home technology made good money.

QR codes and cashless payment adoption accelerated. Contact tracing via apps (damn the privacy) became compulsory. The world had to be nimble and adapt fast to each challenge. Those countries that were slow or refuse to acknowledge them were punished hard by the virus. The weakness of each country’s infrastructure was exposed to all to see. Even the proactive ones were savaged by 2nd and 3rd waves as the year wore on. No one was spared.

Where do we go from here now? Winter is approaching and the western world seems ill-prepared to handle the new surge in cases to historical highs. It is like March all over again. With more people staying indoors and celebrating the year-end holidays, Jan 2021 does seem to look bleak. Telling everyone not to gather in big groups for the holidays look like an impossible task as more Americans are determined to travel home for the Christmas dinner after such a shitty year.

Draconian rules have been applied in Asia and the rest of the world is starting to slowly realize that it works to combat the virus. The UK had to open and shut so many times that I have lost count. I was there for a month and personally witnessed the yo-yo decision making which made things worse. Brexit discussions going nowhere also did not help.

The silver lining in all these depressing news is the vaccine progress. Now that Moderna is approved by FDA, we have 2 main contenders (Pfizer being the first) being slowly rolled out all over the world. It still takes time and S’pore only gets them by end Dec. With 2 injections required about 3 to 4 weeks apart, it is a logistical nightmare to aim to achieve herd immunity via vaccines. We will need 60 to 80% of the population to have the shots. There will be more vaccines coming onstream soon but with varying degrees of effectiveness.

This is now another level of uncertainty which the world has not prepared for it before. The gapping problem will mean that things will get worse before it gets better. Can we afford to have another 3 to 6 months of seeing new peaks in cases? Or can we accelerate the vaccine rollout and make it compulsory for all?

A lot of people are adopting a wait and see attitude for the vaccine. You can afford to if you are safe in a country like S’pore. But if you are in a high-risk environment, then it is a choice between life and death. A no-brainer decision. Of course, everyone agrees that the front line workers should all get it asap. I would if I am exposed to the virus every day on my job. In order to save lives, one should protect oneself first. If the front line troops are decimated like in some countries earlier this year, then the whole community suffers eventually.

I can only foresee that more urgent relief liquidity is going to be provided by the central banks. This will create the same situation as in Apr where too much liquidity is chasing assets. Market prices will rise as the value of money decreases. Look at Bitcoin rising to new highs of 23.5k. There is a loss of confidence of fiat currencies, a bottomless pit where you get zero to negative rates for your idle funds in a bank.

I am actively seeking new technology and names that will continue to benefit from the current situation of accelerated tech adoption in a brave new world. Work from home is becoming like a drug where you may not want to go back to the office. People are beginning to question the efficiency of business travel.

There will be more breakthroughs as we get 5G and AI innovations in the Big Data and Cloud world. The future looks rosy but many landmines lay ahead. We need to tread carefully to avoid big blowups and be on our toes all the time.

The first COVID19 vaccine had been administered to a 90-year-old lady this week in the UK. The global program to innoculate the whole world against the virus to achieve herd immunity to eventually wipe it out has begun.

With the UK being the first out of the door, other countries will also be providing final approvals soon. While billions of doses of various vaccines are in the manufacturing pipeline, it will take many months before enough people are immunized. We can then slowly return back to the old normal which was just a year ago, where travelling was not banned or there was no 2 weeks quarantine required after every overseas trip.

S’pore is in the sweet spot at the moment as it is able to keep cases under control by quickly detecting positive imported cases the moment they enter the country. It does not have to rush to approve the vaccine but can adopt a wait and see attitude to see and learn how the rest of the countries will roll out this vaccination program effectively.

The UK’s criteria on how the limited supply of vaccine is to be admired. It starts with the front line workers and the most elderly citizens, working its way down the various age groups from the 80s to the 70s, the 60s and below. It is a very practical approach to protecting the most vulnerable first while the rest will have to wait for their turn.

Those that have doubts about the vaccine will definitely want to wait for a few months to see how the first group reacts to it. Those that have a high probability of interacting with the virus (health workers) or might have a fatal reaction to it (the elderly) would prefer to have the vaccine as soon as possible to protect themselves. It is a win-win scenario and should be adopted by all countries to move towards herd immunity via the vaccine.

The race is now against time as winter approaches. As it gets colder in the western hemisphere, more people will gather indoors and the cases may rise if people ignore the advice not to have big Christmas get-togethers. America is seeing newer highs for deaths and cases every day while the lame-duck president is trying to fight to overturn the elections unsuccessfully. He is still having big unmasked gatherings because he already had Covid19. He is literally killing his loyal supporters. This is the height of irresponsibility on his part and stupidity of GOP to blindly pledge loyalty to an egomaniac who refuses to accept reality and facts.

I had a nice afternoon into dinner event this week with a group of university mates at our old school campus on Tues. We met for a walk around the university to relive the undergraduate days again. I cannot believe that we had already graduated 30 years ago. It seems like yesterday that we were still hanging around in the canteen trying to finish our tutorials. The campus has changed a lot, with a lot of new buildings up and we managed to squeeze in 2 beer stops as there was intermittent rain during our walk.

The final stop was at the NUSS Guild house for a quick shower before we head for dinner and more drinks, talking about the bygone days and interestingly, about various medical issues we are currently experiencing. Lots of uncle talking subjects I guess.

My older son and relatives were also back in S’pore on Monday from the UK. They had to quarantine themselves in a registered hotel for 2 weeks like what I did in Oct. Thankfully, they managed to adapt well and getting used to being locked up in a hotel room for the next 14 nights.

As we near the final days of 2020, I cannot help but reflect on what we had all experienced in this 1 in 100 years pandemic. Last Dec seems so far away as the old normal is like a distant memory. Everyone on planet earth had to adapt to a new and strange way of life. The whole world went into a lockdown mode. Each and every soul has been impacted by the virus in various ways.

The light at the end of the tunnel is near but yet we have not reached the worse peaks yet. The vaccines provide hope that we can return back to normal soon but there is more that we do not know yet. It would be months more before we can confidently say that we have beaten back this potent virus.

Current times are eerily like an Avengers movie now. Thanos and his horde (COVID19) are at the front gates of our house while the Avengers (Vaccines) are assembling to confront them in the final big showdown.

Winter is coming and the first vaccine will be launched next week. Cases are reaching new highs everywhere and vaccine production doses are being ramped up. Who will win in the end?

Mind the gap – there is a timing gap problem staring at us now.

As the northern hemisphere gets colder into winter, it is expected that cases will skyrocket. With last week’s Thanksgiving gatherings and more travelling expected into Christmas/New Year holidays, it is likely that hospitals will see at least another 2 new waves by mid-Jan 2021. America has already shown the way by hitting 4 new records within a day this week.

While vaccine production is moving at “Operation Warp Speed” momentum, it will still take months before we have enough for the world in order to achieve herd immunity to wipe out COVID19 completely. If history is to provide some guidance, smallpox and influenza vaccines took years of effort by WHO to eventually keep the viruses under control globally.

The correct approach for the first batch of vaccine next week should be to target the front line workers and the high-risk group of elderly people. Between the choices of having immunity or possible death, it is a no-brainer decision to choose to take the vaccine, right?

Then there are the anti-vaxxers. Like the groups that claim that the virus is a hoax, this fringe group are against vaccinations and are rising to the occasion now. A friend has already sent me a video on multiple conspiracy theories, one of which is that the vaccine will plant a chip into your body to track you. Lotsa of fake news on this topic will be heading to a cinema near you soon…

Bush, Obama, Clinton and now Biden have pledged to take the vaccine once Fauci gives the go-ahead. We need to have at least 60%+ to get sufficient herd immunity and let the virus die out eventually. Even on the topic of wearing masks, Biden has now asked its citizens to wear one for his first 100 days of his presidency. It is like asking a spoilt child to take his medicine. How difficult is that? In Asia, it is the community first before the individual. Individual rights do not triumph over community safety, period. Love thy neighbours and wear a frigging mask, people…

The world is heading towards a make or break moment soon. The timing of the implementation of vaccines could not have come at a better time. But yet mother Nature and winter will be accelerating the already worsening virus situation into the next 2 months. Governments of the world must come together to co-operate and co-ordinate this push to save humanity.

America should ignore Loser Trump and his whinnying tirades as he fades into obscurity. His game plan is so obvious for all to see. To protect himself and his family at all costs after he leaves the White House and to make as much money as he can on the way out. That is why Giuliani is also behaving like a raging lunatic now as Trump is dangling a presidential pardon in front of him.

Trump will of course try to see if he can even pardon himself for all future legal cases if he can too. If not, there is a story going around that he might just resign before 20 Jan for Pence to take over, so that Pence can pardon him. Still, refusing to concede and attend the inauguration on 20 Jan is part of the overall strategy to fire up support from his hardcore base and ensure his survival. Pledging to run again in 2024 is also key. That way, if the law comes after him, he can use it as a shield to claim that the Democrats are out to get him because they do not want him to run again.

He is now already threatening GOP on the 2 seats being contested in Georgia on 05 Jan. His supporters are now telling Republicans in that state to not vote again as the presidential vote was “stolen” from them. If the Democrats win the 2 seats, they will have a clean sweep of the House, Senate and the White House. It will mean that they can and will push through a long list of legislation which Mitch had been sitting on.

In such COVID19 times where travel and vacations are not possible, what can one do? We create fantasy worlds to immerse ourselves into for a few hours to forget about the craziness and pain of 2020.

My friends and I attended such an event on Thurs evening, travelling around the world in 80 days over 150 minutes in an old warehouse setting of make-believe rooms of different parts of the world. https://www.andsoforth.com.sg/

We went in with little expectations and the event literally blew us away with the elaborate props and setups. It was ingenious of the organizers to work around the many COVID restrictions to come up with a night of fun. Though we had to wear masks and keep our social distance of a meter at all times, they still managed to serve us some nice degustation dishes from different parts of the world as we go into each country-themed room.

We created our own gin tonic drink in the first room via instructions from a bartender. Had sake in the Japan-themed coal mining cave and tried nitrogen-infused popcorn for dessert. We saw trapeze dancers hanging around our hot air balloon platform, went into the Indian jungle to meet an elephant and his trainer, hopped onto the Orient Express train in Hong Kong. Alcohol and fantasy made it a lovely night out with friends.

There is light at the end of a horrible once in a 100 years pandemic tunnel now. Is the finishing line to reach normalcy near or still many months away. Can the world come together to fight this Gaia threatening apocalypse? Time will tell. Meanwhile, mind the gap…

What a week of contrast from the previous 7 days! From an impending “Winter is Coming” scenario to a “We now see light at the end of the tunnel”, a 180 degrees turnaround. From pessimism to optimism in a flash.

The virus vaccine is targeted to be rolled out by America in the next 2 weeks. The first group of people to get it will be the front line workers and the elderly. Billions of doses are in the pipeline and there are 60+ vaccine candidates getting ready.

Would everyone take it? The “Yes!” group – sure, why not? The “No” group: fear of the unknown, probably watched too many zombie movies (“I am Legend”). The anti-vaccination people too, with their stance against all vaccines. Herd immunity via the vaccines will not happen if the majority do not take it and the virus will continue to travel around the world for years. Look at the smallpox vaccine. It took years to eradicate.

Would you take it if it means a return to the world before 2020, to travel again and to reduce the possibility of dying? Or do you want to extend the annus horribilis year of 2020 into 2021? If you are a front line worker confronting the virus every day, wouldn’t you want to immune yourself to it now?

There are still a lot of unanswered questions as we head into a critical leg of this virus journey as winter approaches. We can see multiple waves happening over the last 6 months even as we thought that it was under control. It then returns with a vengeance. Just a tiny crack in the defences and it will exploit the gap to infect again. Thanksgiving this week resulted in mass travel not seen since March in the US. This could mean a new wave of cases in the next 2 weeks again.

The approaching Christmas and year-end holidays in a month’s time could be another opportunity for COVID19. Cases could jump again into Jan 2021 as winter begins in the Western hemisphere. While the launch of vaccines will start in mid-Dec, the ramp-up may not be in time to stop the new surge in cases by early next year. More lives may be unnecessarily lost by then as Humanity race against the clock to contain it.

As a forward leading indicator, the equities market have been roaring to new highs this week. The onslaught of good news from the new vaccines has excited investors. Cyclical and old economy shares that had been crushed by COVID19 staged a strong come back as fund managers rushed to rebalance their portfolio after having gone full-on into tech stocks. Biden’s win has increased the probability of more stimulus aid and economic relief to the citizens. We will see more liquidity chasing after assets in 2021.

The world is also going to be more focused on climate change and renewable energy now. A flurry of IPOs that was delayed this year will begin to push for rollout very soon. Interest rates will remain low everywhere. This will be conducive for higher stock market prices. More retail herd mentality trading will drive certain stocks to higher highs as the ease of trading, zero commissions and lockdowns encourage new converts.

What should an investor do now? I feel that the virus has accelerated the adoption of technology across all industries. What normally took a few years to pick up was cramped into months. Cashless payments, eWallets and QR codes are now mainstream overnight. The launching of 5G will make real-time cloud computing a reality and hence autonomous self-drive cars become viable.

I had missed the whole Tesla bull run, thinking that Elon was getting crazy last year. I have just completed reading the book about him recently. I now know the background on how Tesla and SpaceX were created and that Solar City was bought by Tesla for $2.6 billion in 2017. If I had read this book a few years earlier, I would have bought and held on to Tesla for the long run, like what I did for Apple shares. EV companies are the rage now, with China stocks like Nio rising 10x.

Seeking to discover the next big thing, I believe that the time is ripe for a new technology in batteries to bring us to the next stage. Lithium batteries are so old school. There must be a better way to store energy out there. Hydrogen cells look promising and I am getting interested in firms like FuelCell, PLUG and Bloom Energy which may be the next big thing.

Meanwhile, China is recovering much faster than the rest of the world as it looks inwards for domestic growth. Certain Chinese stocks that go deeper into technology like KE Holdings should do well. The time for cryptocurrencies may be ahead as they become a part of the solution to enable frictionless and instantaneous bank payments. Bitcoin is the only successful Blockchain product to date. This will change as central banks like China creates private ledgers to track CNY.

2021 looks to be very exciting with a boom in tech and pent up demand after COVID19 as central banks continue to flood the markets with liquidity. There is a lot of possibilities and trends to benefit from. The general themes are emerging and we should make all efforts to capture them for an interesting ride ahead.

Winter is indeed coming and the next few months do not look good, especially for the Western world. COVID19 cases are sky rocketing and the orange one still refuses to concede to Biden.

The obvious signs are everywhere for anyone to see. Cases are hitting new highs in most places as the weather gets colder. Thanksgiving in America is this Thursday and most still want to travel to meet up with family after a dreadful 2020 of being locked up, even after Fauci advises them not to travel. The UK is 3 weeks into its 1-month lockdown which looks likely to be extended. Christmas is a month away and everyone wants to go home for the winter holidays. Mass travelling is a recipe for a new virus wave.

Over in Asia, the community is always placed before the self/individual. Putting in tough measures to protect the whole village is seen as a given and a greater good. For the Western world, it is individual rights and self before the community. My rights as an individual come first, over and above everything else. A simple thing like wearing a mask becomes a hot political football. The virus is colourblind. It attacks all the weak points of the system. The cracks in each country are exposed for all to see as the weather is going to get colder while more people start to ignore the tougher measures that are required.

While I was in the UK in Sep/Oct, I could see the British crying murder when the pubs are forced to close earlier. People still want to travel overseas for holidays in the midst of a pandemic. Zero contact tracing and limited testings are available. Self-quarantine was unregulated and entrusted on the individual to comply. Even the senior ministers didn’t walk the talk and the population distrust all new measures put up to slow the virus spread. The spirit is willing but the body is weak.

As an example, my friend who worked in HK just returned back to S’pore. He has not seen his family since Jan. Unlike my 2 weeks quarantine in a designated hotel, he was only required to do a 7 days SHN (Stay Home Notice) period at his own home. Immediately upon his arrival to his home, contact tracers personally visited him to ensure that he is at the place he is supposed to be. On top of that, they installed a transponder in his room and made him wear a bracelet which cannot be removed.

If he ever moves too far away from the transponder, a warning alert will be sent to the contact tracers. Over this 7 days period, he will receive random calls to verify where he is and to record/report his temperature daily. A COVID19 swap test will be done for him near the end date to confirm that he is negative before he is released from SHN. Can you imagine the above being done in the EU or America? The citizens will be up in arms protesting about human rights immediately!!!

So you can now see my scepticism and pessimism for the next few months. All the warning signs are turning red and leadership to direct tough measures are nowhere to be found. Biden is unable to transition as President-elect while the orange moron is putting obstacles to make every step difficult, even as Georgia just officially announced that Biden had won there. Cases in the US is going to be more than 200k/day very soon and daily deaths had crossed 2k. Europe is no better as the cold winter starts to set in.

All hopes pinning on the positive vaccine news last week are too premature. There is still a lag time of a few weeks till they are available but there will be a limited supply initially. There are about 30+ vaccines in the pipeline in various phases and another 100+ in development stages. Like the Tamiflu treatment for H1N1, the cure might take a while to implement. Meanwhile, the world has to buckle down for the change in season as the weather becomes more conducive for the virus. More people will stay indoors and tempted to have bigger family gatherings.

Family get-togethers for Thanksgiving and Christmas will just make the virus spread further. I cannot foresee that the Western world would totally comply with masking up, social distancing and avoiding big gatherings in the next few months, after spending months in lockdown mode. They have busted their chances over the last 8 months to tame this beast and now draconian rules need to be in force asap.

The likelihood of the developed world getting their act together is slipping away day by day. We can literally see a shit show developing right before our eyes into early 2021. We are asking my older son to return from the UK for his Christmas holiday break after term 1 ends. S’pore seems to be a safer place than the countries who will be experiencing winter soon.

As Game Of Thrones tag line says : “Winter is coming”….

The week literally started with a bang this week, even as worsening news of the virus develops. One cannot make out where we will be heading next as winter arrives and Christmas could be cancelled for most of the western world.

Just before the US markets open on Monday, the new vaccine announcement hit the news wire – results show a better than 90% chance for 2 vaccines in development. The DJI index futures surged an unprecedented 1,700 points pre-opening as there was a mad scramble by everyone to load up. Buying the futures index was a good proxy to getting exposure to all stocks before the actual US markets open.

I was trying to make sense of the move and just became a bystander watching it as I could not figure out why a single piece of news could have such an explosive one-way effect on stocks. It seems like the machine algorithm black box machines have just decided to buy everything in sight. No one had a good handle in trying to explain this move.

The next day, while expected my portfolio to have a nice MTM (Mark To Market) positive number, I was in for a rude shock. My tech concentrated portfolio actually suffered a negative MTM! How could that happen when DJI showed a more than 1,000+ uptick? Reviewers were talking about this 6 to 25 SIGMA move as being incredulous and impossible in thousands of years, yet it has happened.

Searching for an answer over the whole of Tuesday, a reason finally seems to fit. The good news of the vaccine results was seen as a Hail Mary pass to a market that has seen multiple depressing data of COVID19 winning the war against humans. Cases were surging to new highs in Europe and America as Trump refused to concede defeat while winter approaches.

As I looked deeper into the gainers of the night, I saw that Carnival, the cruise ship operator was the top gainer and up 39%! My investment group chat also mentioned that there was a rebalancing of portfolios by investment managers. It started to make sense. The sure bet of tech stocks over the COVID19 months had become too crowded and the vaccine news created an abrupt change in group herd thinking that maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel now.

Brick and mortar businesses like airlines and malls could benefit if we could return back to the old normal. There was a rush back to these cyclical stocks which have been bashed for months. Many were underexposed to these sectors or had completely gotten out of the old economy, fearing a long and dark winter of COVID19. Tech stocks were sold off as there was a rapid switch out of them into traditional businesses on Monday.

I am still a pro-tech person as I believe that the virus has completely accelerated the push of technology into all aspects of our lives. Zoom, eWallets and cashless payments using contactless process, QR codes and the like will rule and be the norm now. This was just another opportunity for me to accumulate more new tech stocks like JFrog and Snowflake, cloud-based solution based companies.

As the week went on, the weight of new record cases slowed the momentum. Even Trump is now promising a longer Apr date instead of “2 weeks later” for the promised vaccine. He refuses to concede to Biden even as it becomes more obvious who won the elections as more states near their finishing lines. I find it incredulous that the GOP is still toeing the line that he needs more time to absorb the loss, like a kindergarten toddler throwing a tantrum and needing cooling off time. Big sigh…

It seems like the senate election races are still too close to call and it depends on the 2 runoffs in Georgia on 05 Jan. The Republicans still need Trump’s support to win these 2 seats and hence they have to still tolerate the whiny, little bitch (Bill Maher’s adoring term for Trump). Selling your soul seems to be on par for them, versus upholding democracy and a fair election. The lawsuits about voter fraud are being thrown out of court so fast that it is laughable, except that it is coming from the most powerful incumbent lame duck of the world.

How can Biden work effectively to address the critical virus pandemic which Trump had ignored if he still remains a sore loser? America is like a pendulum and always swings from left to right and back every 4 years. So painful to watch at times as they go to the brink of disaster in such a divided country now.

It was a week of catching up with family and friends for me. The business venture I have been talking to a few close friends is finally moving ahead. We decided to register our company and kick start the whole process of implementing the business plan now. This annus horribilis of a year called 2020 will finally end soon. Hopefully, we will get back to a recognizable normal soon.

So many things happening at once as we started the 2nd last month of an otherwise horrible year for everyone. It has been a blur for most as we grapple with factors out of our control, with an invisible enemy that ravaged the world and still continues to do so into the winter season.

I started my first week of freedom busy catching up with life in general after being away for 6 weeks – 4 in Oxford and 2 locked up in a hotel room for quarantine. The sweet smell of freedom coupled with being around love ones and friends again was priceless. We do take such things for granted until it gets yanked away from us. The enforces Spa Detox staycation at Shangri-La was a discovery journey of myself. I have never before in my life been locked in a room for 14 nights before this quarantine.

The US election is starting to feel like a shit show as predicted. The blue wave did not materialize as hidden Trump supporters emerged on polling day. Polls were initially thought to be very wrong again as voting counting began. Given that the polling stations counted the in-person votes first, Trump started with more votes because he had been encouraging his supporters to vote in person rather than doing it via mail. He claimed mail-in fraud without evidence while Biden did the opposite. Biden encouraged mail-in voting due to COVID19 safety worries.

As of now (Day 3 after polling closed), Biden votes have been rising to close the gaps as mail-in votes get counted last and the majority are votes from Democrats. Trump allies have started to file lawsuits left, right and centre without evidence of election fraud. 2 have already been thrown out of court. Hopefully, we should see Biden cross 270 electoral votes in the next few hours.

There are a number of factors against Trump in 2020 which is different from the 2016 elections. Firstly, their Cambridge Analytica secret weapon is no more. The market had adapted and even TikTok fans have managed to use this same force against Trump at a recent rally. The Russians are a known unknown force now and Americans are mindful of the threat. There were a number of swing states where Trump won by the slimmest of margins, from a 100k to a few thousand votes. People then were tired of the incumbent status quo and longed for a rebel to shake things up. This is unlikely to happen again now, after the chaos the have seen over the last 4 years, plus the total mishandling of the virus.

COVID19 has made it harder for him to rally his fan base and attract new troops. By denying facts and doing super spreader rallies, he is literally trying to eliminate his voters. The older generation support has diminished too. Trump, who is part of this group, has implied that they are dispensable. Even when he caught the virus, he had the best medical treatment the world can offer. His supporters do not have this luxury if they catch it.

Seeing the rallies of both presidential parties is like seeing day and night. Both sides say opposite things and only one can be true, right? COVID19 cases have also been hitting historical highs daily – it is wishful thinking that this will magically disappear after 03 Nov. Denial of facts against this virus is a fool’s errand. The rest of the world is still fighting it as Trump ignores the pandemic. We in Asia look in disbelief at how the Western world is really screwing this up big time.

With winter approaching, it may become worse before it is brought under control. Given that the US inauguration is only on 20 Jan 2021, even a Biden win could result in 2 months of limbo as nothing concrete may be done to stop the virus. SAD!

While serving my 2 weeks quarantine, I was supposed to read more. I borrowed a few books I wanted to read but somehow managed to squander away the time watching too much TV and other useless stuff. A book finally caught my full attention as it was a captivating true story. I should be finishing it soon and I have learnt so much in the process.

The book is about Elon Musk, written in 2015 by Ashlee Vance. It was a fascinating story of how he became the person he is and how he had accomplished the amazing projects. I had always had only a vague idea of how Tesla and SpaceX came about and not much about Solar City.

The book does not concentrate on him alone but also mentions about important characters who had helped him along his crazy journey to achieve what no one had done before. Rockets and space travel were his first love since childhood days. Most of what he did was towards this aim. The EV car venture was something he picked up along the way.

His laser focus and deep intellectual capacity made him an ideal candidate to oversee these audacious plans which require a superhuman to pull it off, betting the whole house on these projects all the time. He reminded me of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates put together. He could turn a weakness/disability into a strength by sheer mind power.

Since young, he could move into a Zen state of mindfulness to engage in deep thought. His mom would say that it ostracized him from others as he would freeze and go into a zombie-like state for hours. But he was actually retreating into his inner mind to conceptualize his thinking based on the huge amount of knowledge he had picked up while reading and talking to experts.

He was uniquely placed in this world to accomplished goals that would benefit mankind. Making money was just a secondary byproduct of his successes as he betted the house every time on a new venture. It was interesting to get into the mind of the genius via this book. I have a better appreciation of how he got to where he is now and being rewarded by a 500% jump in Tesla stock price in 2020.

At one time a few years back, I did buy Tesla at $158 (pre-stock split)and sold around $320, trading this range a few times. I finally chickened out as I thought that he was becoming unhinged. He was fighting everyone and blabbing about punishing the short sellers and trying to set a higher price of $420 as a target.

Last year, the stock went to the 800-1k range for a bit and never looked back after that. I had missed the whole ride to $2k before it did the stock split. I should have read this book earlier to understand the man behind the company. It would have been as inspiration to want to participate in his dreams and to buy the stock for the long term.

The book also concentrated on the SpaceX journey which was pretty interesting. It almost went broke a few times after early rockets blew up. The SpaceX innovators from Silicon Valley had no baggage from the old NASA world and just wanted to build an amazing dream for space travel. When you hire many smarter people than yourself and give them the tools to succeed, miracles can happen. Musk was the driving force to bring all of them together.

Finally, a bit of good news on the Skillsfuture front. I came across an opportunity from IBM to train mid-career PMETs who currently are not working to do a full time 6 months study course on AI or Cyber Security to help them pivot to another field of work. https://webibmcourse.mybluemix.net/SGUnitedProgramme

The interesting thing about this was that they will also provide an allowance of SGD 1.5k per month while you study. The whole course cost about 20k which is heavily subsidized and the remaining amount of $500 can be paid using your own Skillsfuture funds given by the government to all S’poreans. The only condition was that you cannot be working full or part time to be eligible. If you do find a job during the course, you have the option to drop out without any penalties.

I had my consultancy work so I figured after talking to the program coordinator that I may not be eligible. That did not stop me from promoting it to my friends. I am happy to say that 2 of them did apply and qualified for the courses eventually. It feels good that I could share a bit of positive news with both of them who have lost their jobs recently. At least there is a decent allowance and that they are given an opportunity to enter into a new career path.