Author: CheckW

To some people, it seems like the zombie apocalypse which lots of TV shows and movies were based on, is starting to happen. An unseen enemy is lurking amongst us and spreading its tentacles into every corner of the world. Countries are declaring war footing on an unknown foe and scrambling to shore up defences and lockdowns.

This is like a horror movie unwinding. China seems to be nearing the end of the show, Europe is stuck in the middle and USA only at the beginning. Yet there may be a replay of the movie as Asia is beginning to experience a second wave via an increase in imported cases.

Precious time has been lost as the virus travelled West over a period of 3+ months. You can see the storm coming but most choose to ignore it until the facts become undeniable and staring you in the face. I thought I have seen it all, the various crises over my 30 years of financial career. But this one is swiftly becoming the mother of all disaster scenarios. A health crisis is leading to a severe financial crisis.

Unlike previous financial events that may not have affected the common man in the street, this one strikes at the heart of every individual. The sense of fear and panic for each person had heightened the stress level for everyone. The worry about the unknown had increased every day as we see the inevitable country/city lockdowns being declared. We worry for our parents who may have underlying pre-conditions and are the most vulnerable.

Starting from last Sunday, the central banks began to fire off their last rounds of monetary ammunition. The Fed shot a big bazooka on Sunday afternoon but it could not save the Dow from dropping like a brick from the get-go on Monday, shaving almost 3,000 points off, one of the worst black Monday sessions ever. One central bank after another stood up to follow suit over the week by shooting their last bullets in an even bigger scale.

Panic gripped the markets as rumours of large hedge funds and investment houses being in trouble did not help. Mass funds redemptions and margin calls, coupled with algorithmic/black-box trading systems triggering more sell orders compounded the situation. The financial institutions managing the huge ETF bubble, where all outstanding volume is bigger than the underlying, scramble to rebalance their basis risk hedge created an avalanche of red in the equity markets.

Global corporations, clearly understanding that their business is tanking fast, have moved to battle stations to maintain liquidity. It is vital for their survival and they began to draw down all their existing facilities. Most have begun to seek new facilities from their banks and are even willing to pay up to get them at higher rates. Winter is coming and the big boys are planning their worst-case scenarios now, grabbing liquidity at any cost. The big oil battle continues between Saudi and Russia, with American frackers as the casualty as it heads towards $20, halving in value in less than 2 weeks.

It is indeed unusual to see all asset prices dropping at the same time. It feels like asset balloon bubbles from cheap money since the 2008 GFC had all popped at the same time. This lead to the theory that all investors are liquidating at the same time. In order to cash out, they had to sell as much as they can, regardless of the quality of their holdings. If they are stuck with an illiquid portfolio, they will have to sell the more liquid ones that have bid prices. We see wild gyration of US Treasury prices every other day. The 30 and 10 year US Treasuries normally move by only a few basis points per day. Now the daily intraday moves are in excess of 50 bps!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-20/diary-of-a-crisis-inside-wall-street-s-most-volatile-ever-week?sref=TCJIUe33

The coronavirus situation continues to impact the world as we have never seen before. Europe is now the epicentre of the spread. Italy numbers surpassed China and it is still accelerating. My Italian friend in Yangon told me that his parents living in a small town in central Italy have started to see deaths around the village from the virus. China had sent a team to North Italy to assist. Spain, France, Germany and finally the UK succumbed to the lockdown option.

America has seen an almost 10 fold surge in cases to 18k now. Yet it’s testing capabilities remain patchy. The more you test, the higher the number will become. Experts need this information in order to quantify the extent of the problem. Hospitals and first responders are talking about running out of supplies like masks and protective gear. ICU wards are filling up fast. Trump continues to overpromise and under deliver while throwing in a liberal dose of falsehoods into the toxic cocktail.

Next week is likely to be more of the same, except that governments and central banks seemed to have run out of options to use, other than to shut down the world economy. First thing first is to flatten the curve, to prevent a big surge in cases that would overwhelm the hospitals so that lives lost can be minimized. But this strategy means that the whole saga will be prolonged (18 months?) and the impact on the global economy will be disastrous.

Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place…

 

 

 

I thought we have seen it all last week and that it couldn’t get worse, but boy was I wrong. The world went crazier this week.

It was a week of unintended consequences that caused the financial markets to flip flop like mad every other day. I could see my Bloomberg stock portfolio MTM (Mark to Market) dollar values changing in value by the day, ending about 20% lower at the end of the week.

The week started on Monday after a huge blow up in the oil market on Sat. The Saudis declared open war on non-OPEC countries, Russia and American shale oil and promptly cut prices. The virus situation in Italy also did not help as they suddenly put North Italy/Lombardi on quarantine ala China/Wuhan. Panic exploded on Mon as the markets opened and there was a bloodbath in the financial markets.

Trump vaguely promised by Mon evening to announce actions to help the economy affected by the virus soon and the markets reverse course on Tue for a bit. By Wed, the markets continue to slide as no announcements were made while more coronavirus cases continue to pop up in America. Testing was slow and not 1 million by last week as promised. Even CDC went offline as people realized that many could not get enough testing kits at all. S&P 500 whipped like a spun girlfriend that was betrayed. New one day lows were recorded and it went limit down even before the opening bell. Meanwhile, Italy decided to close the whole country instead.

Then Trump on Thurs did the “masterful” stroke of unilaterally banning all of Europe from entering the USA without informing its closest European allies. That really did it for the markets. It was too little too late. Chaos was created with that announcement as everyone scrambled to comprehend how it will affect them. American citizens were worried that they could not return home before the ban takes effect at midnight on Friday.

We laughed when toilet paper ran out in HK a few weeks ago. Then it happened in S’pore and we thought that was mad. Now the whole world panics and toilet paper is flying off the shelves…  LOL Why toilet paper?

Bill Maher’s Real Time episode today had a guest who is an expert on the subject of Risk and how it affects human psychology. He believes that humans will become more emotional, rather than logical, in times of uncertainty and fear. Hence, in the current times where there is no trust with the leadership and too many unknowns, people will tend to want to cling on to more quantifiable items like toilet paper and even religion. They become mental anchors to the individual and it is a reaction to maintain the sanity of the mind. That sounds logical to me…

If this mismanagement fiasco of Trump still doesn’t bring him down, nothing will. You can lie (16k and counting) and create alternate facts on just about everything. But when lives are at stake, you cannot run away from your responsibilities anymore. It is indeed sad and pathetic that the most powerful man in the world is throwing everyone under the bus except himself. Self-preservation to the extreme is not OK when you are entrusted with the protection of the nation and the free world. It is so disgusting to see him denying responsibility on TV today for the mishandling of the coronavirus process in America and to continue to lie through his teeth.

The virus saga is playing out all over the world like a slow-moving movie. China is (hopefully) near the tail end of the movie while Europe is in the middle. America seems to be only in part 1. We can see the likely unravelling of the plot in America into the next 2 weeks. Test kits will finally be fully available but the horses have already run out of the barn. Positive cases headcount will skyrocket exponentially before a peak can be reached. Draconian actions to have lockdowns may happen but the effectiveness of these moves would be questionable by then.

On the financial front, US Treasury yields have whipsawed the whole week. The whole curve dipped below 1% on Monday. All asset classes/commodities were dropping in prices. How can everything drop at the same time? Even Bitcoin was crashing…

I suspect that the AI trading systems were partially responsible for the selling onslaught. When these black boxes smell a panic, auto sell orders are generated in nanoseconds. Too many machine orders exiting from a single door will create a tsunami.

The other theory is that there are margin calls being triggered by multiple leveraged speculative transactions that were built up over time in a low yield environment. Big hedge funds and well-known investment houses may be in deep shit now. The need to liquidate existing positions to maintain cash for margin calls or for funds redemptions may result in the cashing out of positions that have liquidity while they are stuck with illiquid assets. It is a self-fulfilling vicious circle.

In the next few weeks, more big names in trouble may reveal themselves. H2O management fund from the UK had already pre-empted investors that they had a very wrong bet that had gone horribly bad – long Italian bonds and short US Treasuries.

Just this afternoon, a friend forwarded an article to me that indicates that the coronavirus may not have originated from China! Conspiracy theory? They exhumed some cases of patients who died presumably from flu a few months ago to retest for coronavirus again and the results were positive. Japan had a person that visited Hawaii a few months ago, who tested positive later. When the dust settles down on the bigger panic situation we are in now across the world, this topic may be revisited again by the media.

We live in interesting times indeed…  I cannot imagine if next week can become even crazier than this week… ;-(

The perfect storm may have arrived. Financial markets went crazy this week again, gyrating like crazy every day as panic grip investors. One day the American index was down 1,200 points and then it was up 800 the next day, then down again and up the next day.

Central banks all over the world used the only drug they have known for the past 12 years after GFC and cut rates again. The Fed cut 50 bps and the financial markets rallied. Then more bad news of the creeping wave of coronavirus sweeping the developed world spooked everyone.

Professional fund managers are also at a loss as to the future direction of stock prices as we are now dealing with a big unknown. Production lines have already been slowed down to a stop almost everywhere. Tourism and F&B activities have dropped to all-time lows.

It is funny to see supermarkets in Europe and America experiencing the same situation as we had a few weeks ago as panic buying sets in. Who knew that toilet paper was ever going to be a scarce commodity in times of panic? Things are getting surreal as all eyes are glued to the TV screens on the hour by hour tracking of the global spread of the virus.

Like the annual common flu, experts are hoping that things would get better when the weather warms up and the temperate countries start a warmer spring season in a few weeks time. The daily tension is worrying everyone as countries that do aggressive testing of citizens will naturally see a spike up of new cases, hoping that these will peak soon. The others who are ill-prepared to do extensive testing are getting accusations of hiding information.

On a personal front, we count ourselves lucky that our immediate family is safe. We have advised our aged parents to stay indoors as much as possible and to wear masks whenever they go out. It looks like older people are the age group that is most at risk. Those with pre-existing conditions are also prone to succumb to the virus.

We were relatively lucky with our travels so far. Wife and I went for a vacation to China last Apr. We were at a place in Central China call Yichang to embark on a river cruise up the Yangtze River. It was less than an hour’s drive to Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus in Hubei. Then I attended a Blockchain course in Seoul last Oct which my son and wife accompanied me. Now South Korea is also off-limits as more new cases pop up every day.  Late Nov, we headed to Japan with a group of friends before our boys join us. We spent almost 3 weeks there. Again, the situation there has gotten worse.

We decided to go to New Zealand in mid-Feb as S’pore experienced a code orange alert a few days before we were scheduled to leave. In the end, we had a 9 hours delay for the departure but the trip turned out pleasantly well. Upon returning, we just heard that NZ had a first case of the virus this week. Apparently, it was from a passenger that was travelling on the same flight as us! But luck has it that we were in the opposite direction and boarded the same plane just a day earlier…

I did my monthly business trip to Yangon 2 days after returning from NZ and it was uneventful. They had not declared any cases yet but mask pricing there had already shot up 10 fold. The wife did a 1 week Bhutan trip and came back last week before she heard about a case there, after returning home. The near misses are getting scary, even though the probability of contracting it may be quite low.

As long as a country has adequate medical facilities and not become overwhelmed by new cases, the chances of recovery should be high. But this unease of an unseen enemy amongst us is stroking fear and panic worldwide now. People look to their governments and world health organization experts for guidance but they may not have the full picture yet.

Its time to buckle down and be extra careful, wash our hands more often and avoid unnecessary actions that may expose one to a higher risk of infection. These are strange and uneasy times indeed…

 

 

 

In the midst of the coronavirus scare that has spread globally to date, we had planned our first trip to NZ in Jan. As the panic situation was developing by mid-Feb, we were not sure if the vacation will materialize. The situation had worsened in S’pore (Alert from Yellow to Orange) just a few days before departure. Flights were been cancelled and our Auckland flight eventually was delayed by 9 hours due to crew scheduling issues.

We finally left on Sunday morning at 3 am and decided to wear a mask throughout the 10 hours journey, just to be on the safe side. Once we landed at 6 pm, we picked up our Hertz rental car (Toyota Corolla) and drove directly south to Rotorua. It took just under 3 hours and I was driving in the pitch-black roads for the later part. Sunset in NZ during this time was just after 8 pm. Finally settled in the hotel at 10 and had to order room service for a late dinner.

Started the next day early with a hearty NZ breakfast before we had a nice nature walk around the lake area. Then it was off to Tauranga, a one hour drive away. After a simple Turkish lunch, we went for a walk at the nice along the sunny beachfront. The evening was spent on a kayak for a glow-worm tour with a group of tourists till late. Again, we needed to do another night drive back to the hotel at 10+.

The next day (Tue) was jam-packed with activities, starting with a visit to the famous Polynesian Spa that was within walking distance from our hotel. A bit underwhelming, compared to the spas we were used to in Asia. Then we had a movie tour and lunch at Hobbiton in the afternoon. It was the place where the Hobbit village scenes were shot for the LOTR (2001/2/3) and Hobbit (2012/13/14) movies. We signed up for the Tamaki Maori dinner and tour in the evening. That was also a pleasant surprise as it was quite an entertaining and informative immersion into Maori culture.

Said goodbye to Rotorua the next morning as we headed south towards Taupo. On the way, we visited Waio-Tapu Thermal park and did another nature walk around the various hot springs and to experience the Lady Knox Geyser at 1015 am. Bought some good value Manuka honey along the drive to Taupo and stopover at a top-rated Thai Lotus restaurant for lunch (s0-so). Signed up for the Haku Falls river cruise that was a nice journey upriver to see the Aratiatia Rapids.

Taupo is a lovely and laid back vacation place. The lake itself is already the size of the whole of S’pore! Checked into our hotel which had a swimming pool and jacuzzi before having a formal dinner at the Edgewater restaurant that night. We were committed to drinking the good NZ wines for the whole vacation, especially the sauvignon blanc and pinot noir grape varieties.

I woke up early Thurs morning for a nice run along Lake Taupo before we went to the Taupo town riverfront to check out the town for a nice brunch venue and we settled for Dixie. They had a lamb fry (lamb liver) dish which I had to try. We had a pickup at 1 pm for river rapids rafting near Turangi which lasted till late afternoon. They were very professional and had lots of safety gear for everyone. Over 2 hours on the river, we moved passed 51 rapids locations. A quiet late dinner back in Taupo and we chose Italian at Osteria.

The next morning, we set off for an early morning start for the 5 hours drive south to Wellington. The drive was surprisingly pleasant and straight forward. Managed to arrive in time for a late seafood lunch at Crab Shack, which was very near our hotel. We explored the city during the late afternoon, checking out the shopping and wharf area. For dinner, we had a simple Vietnamese Pho noodle meal. Back to city life again.

On Sat morning, we had a nice NZ breakfast before being picked up for a 4 hours Wellington highlights tour. First off to Victoria Peak to get a great view of the city and check out the forest where some of the LOTR scenes were shot. Thanks to the virus issue, we could see that the Wellington harbour had come to a standstill as the ships and warehouses were already full of pine trees stock and they were unable to deliver them to China. All the world’s supply chains have been disrupted by the coronavirus as the world’s biggest factory (China) had stopped working.

Next stop was the Weta movie studio at Miramar to see the history of how NZ developed as a CGI location of choice after Peter Jackson decided to use his hometown of Wellington as a base for LOTR trilogy in 1999. Dinner was along the happening area of Cuban street at the Olive restaurant.

We returned the car at the airport in the early morning the next day for a 9 am flight back to Auckland. Reached our Four Points @ Sheraton hotel by noontime. A nice walk along Queen street shopping district towards the harbourfront led to a nice alfresco restaurant by the waters. We had a bottle of champagne and a long lunch which observing an LGBT “Love all” festival which also featured a drag queen visiting our table!

Mid-afternoon, we decided to visit the Sky Tower as it is a prominent feature of the city. For our last dinner of the trip, it was back to the wharf again to watch the sunset at a fusion Chinese restaurant called White & Wong.

The flight back to S’pore was uneventful as I binged on the LOTR trilogy to remind me of the places in NZ we had visited in Hobbiton and Wellington. NZ was a much more cosmopolitan country than I expected. More than 25% of the population is now of Asian heritage. It is a resource-rich country that is very laid back for chilling and the good life.

Being at the end of the world and away from everyone has made it an attractive location for billionaires to have a home there in case the world goes into a serious crisis. What a timely coincidence now with the current virus epidemic sweeping all countries! Jeff Bezos happened to be in Wellington when we were there too…

 

 

The feared virus finally has an official name from WHO: Covid-19.

It has been a week since we had a panic last Friday evening as the Dorscon alert was changed from yellow to orange after a day of rumours that it will be raised. Common sense was thrown out the door as we had a mad scramble for basic necessities like rice and toilet paper. It went out of hand as supermarkets ran out of supplies and we see photos of empty shelves.

Social media went into full swing as people forwarded images and videos of widespread panic buying. The authorities had to come out in force to assure everyone that there are no food shortages. It was a funny but yet eerie situation as mass hysteria took hold of a nation. We had a dinner gathering the following night on Saturday at my sister-in-law’s place, did a whisky tasting session and had a good laugh over it after many drinks to drown our worries…

The whole of this week was a period of unease as we see daily reports of more citizens being hit with the virus as new clusters were discovered. Contact tracing uncovered more leads as this invisible and unseen enemy extends its tentacles. Some say that it is more deadly than terrorism as the limits are unknown up to now.

Fear and worry is a bad combination to wish upon someone. When a nation suffers that at the same time, the effect is surreal and uncomfortable to watch. Everyone is gripped with the fear of the unknown and trying to live life as normal. Yet there is a nagging feeling of “will I be next?” syndrome at the back of everyone’s mind.

To be honest, I have not been sleeping well for the past week. I tried to use logic and cold hard facts to argue against fear and panic. The mortality rate of 2% is lower than SARS (10%) or MERS (37%) and even much lower outside of China (0.2%). S’pore has much better medical facilities and better prepared as a nation to face the silent enemy. Even if one gets infected, chances of recovery are high. Coupled with the higher temperature here versus China, it was reasoned that the spread would be more restrictive.

But then the little voice inside cast doubts as we see more cases being discovered every day (67 to date) and now there are 7 in the intensive care units. The elderly population seems to be hit the hardest, according to the statistics from China. Then midweek, we hear of spikes in cases from China, blaming a reclassification of suspect cases as officials are replaced. I was concerned for my parents and asked them to stay home as much as possible and to wear masks if they are going out.

It does not seem that we have reached a peak yet. The weather will warm up when spring starts by mid-March, the best guess date for the virus to slow down. In the age of social media and real-time connectivity, news spread fast and the situation last Friday has shown how quick a panic can build up.

I thought I was better prepared, after having lived through SARS in 2003. That was pre-Facebook times, ancient by Millenials standards. We were in the dark about what was happening then. I had zero clues as to why we were at the contingency business plan site which stretched from a day to almost a month. We did not even know how the virus was spreading then. People were dying and eventually, we had 33 fatalities in S’pore.

We are now in the midst of a highly stressful period of time in history for each individual. While this will not last, it will probably take a pound of flesh from everyone, figuratively. Each of us has our own coping mechanism to tide over tough times. More drinks, more exercises? I wish everyone well. Stay healthy and happy always.

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s just first establish the timeline. The saga started in early Dec as cases began to appear in the Wuhan seafood market. By end Dec, the Chinese authorities had flagged the virus as an issue. Before the CNY holiday period on 25 Jan, most were well aware of it and China had already started to ring-fence Wuhan as the situation worsens. So on a global scale, we are now into our 5th week of the new viral strain which supposedly came from bats.

This reminds me of the SARS episode in 2003 where we went through 17 years ago. It was the blind leading the blind then. We had no clue as to what was happening and the fear was very real as people started dying. No one knew then about how the virus was transmitted, other than it was highly contagious and no one was spared. Even healthy people succumbed to it and brave doctors who volunteered to be at the front lines were affected. A shout out to Dr Alex Chao, an ex-schoolmate who made the ultimate sacrifice to S’pore. He was one of the 33 fatalities in S’pore. SARS total global cases were 8,096 that resulted in 774 deaths worldwide.

I was working in an American bank then when cases began to occur in S’pore. The COB (Continuity Of Business) plan was activated. I was one of the small group of people who were told to report to work at a remote location on the west side of the country. The plan then was to have 2 separate teams in case one got infected and had to be quarantined and shut down. Eventually, a 3rd group working from home was also initiated.

We were told that this process was temporary, that it will last a few days at best. It stretched to a week and then became a month. We were totally unprepared as the computer servers at the site could not support all of us. An email took 5 minutes to read… All that time, we were wondering how bad the situation really was, being clueless of the unseen enemy that could be floating anywhere within the air we breathe. Well, we survived that and since then, we had MERS and H1N1 until the new Coronavirus arrived today.

This time, the governments reacted decisively, though some may also argue that actions were too late. China started slow but once the machinery was activated, they conducted one of the world’s biggest quarantine exercise by ring-fencing an entire city in order to slow down the spread. When medical resources were tight in Wuhan, they built a new 1,000-bed hospital within 10 days. The overwhelmed medical staff there suffered the biggest blow to date as they were inundated with patients they could not handle and were exposed to the full effect of the virus. A city was sacrificed to save the country and the world.

To date, more than 32,000 individuals were infected and the death toll now stands at over 700, nearing the SARS total. The fatality rate is only at 2% (outside China, it is 0.02%), versus SARS at 10% and MERS 34%. So far, all the deaths occurred mainly in the Wuhan region. It is likely because the overworked hospitals could not handle the sudden overload and infection became very high as patients were kept together in the same wards. At their current weather temperature of 6 degrees Celsius and with low humidity, the virus is able to survive for up to 100 hours and become very contagious.

In S’pore, we have had 33 cases so far and no fatalities yet. 2 are currently in the intensive unit. Our high average temperature of 26-32 degrees and high humidity makes the environment very hostile to the virus. It probably can survive no more than 1 hour outside the body. The government had just raised the Disease Outbreak Response System Condition (DORSCON) level alert level from Yellow to Orange yesterday and caused a panic rush to stock up on food.

Globally, the infection rate outside China still seems very low with hardly any fatalities at all. Even in regions in China but outside Hubei, the virus has not really seemed to be as deadly as we thought. Yes, it is contagious, but yet many have recovered from it too. The facts and figures presented so far do suggest that while it is like the common flu, it may not be as deadly as SARS or MERS. It has been 5 weeks since the alarm was raised and may take a few more weeks to run its course.

Like the annual flu season, when winter ends and spring begins with the warming of the seasons, the flu cases tend to decrease and end. It looks likely that the coronavirus will behave the same way too. How fast it spreads remains to be seen, but the exponential rise seems to have tapered off.

In the age of social media, rumours are easy to circulate and panics are easily whipped up. The governments are trying their best to be proactive but that might also result in unnecessary worry and unreasonable actions. There is a fine line of balance where the masses can tip over anytime. Being level headed when well wishing friends flood you with Whatsapp messages of dubious nature is extremely difficult to be.

We just need to stay extra vigilant and be careful. Wash hands often and to maintain a high level of hygiene during this period of time. Like in the previous situations, all this will pass soon too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A nice weekend of CNY feasting from last Friday evening into Monday, the 3rd day of the holidays. At the back of our minds, 3 situations were developing rapidly and unravelling this week.

The Corona Virus has started to sweep over the world and the infection rate just shot through the roof. It was first detected in Wuhan China on 01 Dec and by the end of that month, the Chinese authorities had started to sound the alarm bells. It looks like a virus from bats and the epicentre was the wildlife/seafood market that was based in Wuhan. While scientists are now able the replicate the virus in labs based on the DNA information that China had shared, the development of a vaccine is at least 3 to 6 months away.

It reminded me of SARS more than 17 years ago. We had no clue then on what had hit us, except that it was highly contagious and people were dying. Even healthy persons were affected. A very courageous doctor (Dr Alex Chao – RIP) whom I know from school had volunteered to help and succumbed to it. He had 2 young daughters then, whom I recently understand have grown to be successful graduates now.

The bank I was working in at that time in 2003 decided to send a group of us to the contingency office on the other side of the island in case the main office was quarantined. They said it was just for a day, then it became a week. Eventually, we were there for almost a month. It was months before we knew what had happened and how to deal with it.

Many years later, after similar incidents like MERS and Swine flu, the medical community is better prepared for a new virus to strike. However, the unease is still there as the infection and mortality statistics begin to rise rapidly in the last week. With this CNY period, it was difficult to stem the mass exodus of people travelling within China, let alone the rest of the world.

While it is too soon to forecast, the known information sounds more optimistic then I thought. Most of the known cases overseas are from Chinese tourists. Local infections seem to be very low at the moment. It could also be the cold weather in China that makes it more contagious, like the annual flu viruses that kill more than 250,000 people every year. Most vulnerable are those with pre-existing conditions and older people.

The next few days will be closely watched for signs and speed of non-Chinese infection outside China. The Chinese government has been more transparent this time, compared to the SARS period where they were trying to under-report the situation then.

People are starting to panic and medical masks are sold out nationally now. The government is providing regular updates to prevent rumour-mongering. I honestly believe that S’pore is doing a relatively good job so far. The government’s stockpile of masks has now been distributed to its citizens. Tighter travel restrictions on Chinese tourists have also kicked in. People have been told to avoid crowded areas and some events have been cancelled.

Brexit has finally happened on 31 Jan. The UK officially leaves the EU and has the next 11 months to negotiate and finalize the terms for the various sectors. I am negative on this as I believe that there will be a big impact on the UK, especially its top financial centre status. Scotland still wants to stay within EU and Ireland has a problematic border issue to resolve after this divorce. The United Kingdom countries of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland may not continue into the future. Boris will have a tough job keeping things in control. My older son will be going to Oxford to study in Oct, so a weak GBP currency is good for him 🙂

The impeachment trial of Trump by congress has been a farce so far. No witnesses allowed, are you kidding me? In general, Americans have double standards applied to others. What they can do to other countries previously, they cry murder now when another country does it to them. Russians rigged the 2016 elections? Hasn’t America done it to countless countries before? Globally, countries are laughing in glee, now that the US is suffering the same fate that it has done to others.

It looks likely that GOP is going to acquit Trump next Wed. The decline of democracy is happening and social media is hastening this journey. Just look at the US airports and roads – China already has high-speed rail and impressive airports plus a great AI strategy for technology while America has none. The decline of America is happening before our eyes and we have to thank Trump for it.

 

 

 

It has been a very busy week for me as I had to do my monthly business trip to Yangon and then travel to Bangkok for the annual microfinance conference till early Friday, before heading home to prepare the Chinese New Year (CNY) eve reunion dinner.

The week started with an early morning Monday flight to Yangon followed by a packed day of meetings that lasted till after 6 pm. We wind down the day with a nice bottle of vino and Italian food. The day had been an interesting one which was highlighted by a potentially errant intern situation which was still developing.

Another meeting in the office on Tuesday morning before we headed to the airport for our flight to Bangkok. There were 4 of us who were attending the annual AFIF (Asian Financial Institution Forum  https://www.afiforum.com/ ). This was the 2nd year which the conference was held in Asia for microfinance related companies. We attended the 1st one last year and had 19 back to back meetings which resulted in a very fruitful year for our company as we were able to close quite a number of financial deals due to the contacts we met there.

Like the year before, we booked a nice meeting room for our one on one meetings that had been arranged prior to the start of the forum. In total, we had 23 meetings over the next 2 days. Our Treasury Manager has a number of follow up leads to continue discussions after this. The last few meetings also had very interesting developments which could result in exciting developments for our company in 2020.

The shopping area where we were staying in Bangkok was vibrant with tourists and shoppers as many from China as they were there for their long CNY holidays. The current coronavirus scare is a worry as more cases are identified and the death toll continues to rise. Memories of the SARS epidemic more than 17 years ago remain fresh in our minds.

My colleague and I had an early morning Friday flight home as it was the eve of CNY. I managed to reach home just after noon time to start the preparation of our annual steamboat reunion dinner with our immediate family members. It was a long and tiring day and week as well as I crashed out that night after a few drinks and a lovely dinner with our loved ones to cherish the significance of the reunion meal.