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In the future, history lessons will refer to the old and new normals as pre-Covid and post-Covid eras. They will be reference point benchmarks as to where we were previously and what happens after the great reset. It is hard to forecast where we will be post-Covid.

Things that happened and functioned normally before 2020 ceased to exist. After 2+ years, we are slowly returning to a brave new world in 2022. History will record events as before or after Covid, pretty much like BC and AD in the biblical calendar years.

This great reset that plunged the world into the deep end probably has no historical equivalence. The world was forced to shut down completely to stop the pandemic from crossing borders even as the virus continues to mutant. Looking back now, it seems like the past 2+ years had passed by so quickly. Yet when we were in the middle of it, there was fear and foreboding about what would happen tomorrow as the lockdown nightmare dragged from days into months.

Human nature is such that we are adaptable creatures of habit. It takes time but after a sudden change in the environment, we will slowly adapt to the new situation as we settle into a repetitive schedule. I remember during lockdown I had to start the day with the same short outdoor run within an allowed area of my home, then settled into my study room for the rest of the day. I needed a schedule to remain sane. All my family members went into a routine, locking themselves into their rooms for work/study and gathering together during meals. We have sort of gotten used to this way of life eventually without any idea of how long this bizarre upside-down world will last.

And now as we face the endemic phase after almost a year into Omicron. Life is starting to feel like the good old days again. But how much will we be returning back to the pre-2020 days? 50 or 100%? The world has evolved so dramatically since then. WFH (Work From Home) was the only option that was forced down our throats then. Everyone hated it at the start as we did not have enough broadband bandwidth at home. Using Zoom video calls was a new scary tech app we had to adapt. But now, thanks to the great resignation, hybrid work is necessary to keep workers from leaving…

Our perception of life has also changed with brushes of death all around us during the pandemic. Life’s too short to bitch about little things. Staying happy and healthy is now more important than having a steady paycheck in an unhappy work environment.

No one event in recorded human history has ever affected every human being in such a big way and at the same time all over the world. Covid has made us mindful of our mortality and vulnerability. Life is so fragile if one is unable to control our destiny as an invisible enemy virus floats around us.

From now on, all timeline references will be benchmarked to pre or post-Covid as the defining measurement of whether the current observation is comparable to the old normal. I think we are about 50 to 70% of pre-Covid levels now. Supply chains are still trying to get back to full production pre-pandemic. The market speculation excesses are still being worked out this year of pain.

Meanwhile, the FTX saga continues… I am getting sick to the stomach reading about CEO SBF but the new revelations continue to amaze me. How can power be held in so few hands as multiple professionals throw money at them without simple fiduciary checks? With its rapid growth, FTX did not even have an independent board of directors to curb the over-enthusiasm of a misguided CEO. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

When Binance was banned in S’pore, it pushed many more sophisticated crypto investors into the hands of FTX, one of the top 5 exchanges in the world then. FTX has over a million users and it is rumoured that more than 5% are from S’pore ie. greater than 50k. Japan and South Korea are also one of the highest numbers of users in Asia.

This week, we are treated to the mystery of the immediate hack into FTX’s assets the moment it declared bankruptcy. First, the digital ledger indicated that most of the stolen goods were wired to Kraken and it looks like an inside job. There were mistakes indicating that an inexperienced person was responsible, probably doing it in haste. Then the latest bombshell revelation points to SBF being the hacker accused of stealing it as he was pressured into it at the behest of the Bahamas authorities since he was aware of all the backdoors to commit the fraud.

The new CEO that took over SBF this week also dropped another bombshell by stating that this was the worst that he has ever seen. And this says a lot, coming from the same guy that took over as CEO of the Enron clean-up after that blew up. The modus operandi is the same, a house of cards with weak Ponzi foundations pretending and CEOs pretending to be financial superstars. An emperor with no clothes and naked underneath the water as the tide recedes.

Just 6 more weeks left to end the annus horribilis year we call 2022. Nothing but pain for all as the financial bubbles continue to pop non-stop, one after another. Investors are running out of cover to avoid the blood baths. This is surely a year which we all would like to forget.

What a week of excitement! The weak-hearted probably would have had a heart attack by now as the financial world went haywire and into all unexpected directions.

The media buildup to Tuesday’s US mid-term elections was another confirmation that poll results cannot be trusted anymore. The expected Republican red wave did not happen and the final results on who controls the house and senate are still being decided. It’s the economy, stupid! It’s abortion rights and the fight for democracy, you idiot! Do I really care as an outsider?

Knives are now being sharpened for the scapegoating execution process. And it seems like we have a winner! The orange one claims all winnings are because of him and denies responsibility for any GOP losses. He successfully lost the house and senate in the last mid-terms, then the Presidential re-election. The current mid-terms will be his 3rd striaght turkey shoot failure as he grapples with his economic survival on the back of multiple pending lawsuits. A reasonable man would conclude that he has managed to turn himself into a political pariah. Hopefully, it is good riddance this time.

We can expect the 2 party system to go into a deadlock again and continue to fight to cripple each other at the expense of the majority. Screw the citizens! Let the 30% control the 70%. So much for democracy at its best. The only thing that they can agree upon is to continue to bash China. The long-term decline of America is painful to watch. We would see more posturing into the year end debt ceiling wayang show next month.

Then we had the spectacular downfall of FTX in internet warp speed. Who would have thought that the king had no clothes on? It took just a weekend to see that CEO SBF was naked when the tide receded (Warren Buffet inside joke here).

The masters of the crypto universe are crumbling faster than we can recover from the last scandal. This triggering of the dominoes is a further confirmation that perhaps everything is a Ponzi scheme which I talked about in my previous blogs. Are there any more black holes out there that are screaming to be revealed?

When one gets too powerful, it sometimes gets into your head to make you think that you are invincible. Look at Elon and his Twitter mess now as another example. The crypto exchanges originally wanted to create their own exchange token as a way to reduce transaction gas fees. But in a rising price situation where the exchange controls the supply of the token, they will be tempted to monetize the token value that they can create out of thin air (eg. like central banks printing money) to fund their excesses and agressive bets like yield farming into more shit coins. The pyramid works only in a rising market. If a weak link is uncovered, the house of cards will collapse.

Binance has its BNB token and FTX had FTT. Both worked well as prices rise, until they didn’t. FTX lent funds to its sister company Alameda, which used its huge hoard of FTT tokens as collateral to pledge back to FTX. When Coindesk mentioned this big hidden risk, Binance CEO CZ tweeted a “sell all” FTT call which tipped the iceberg into an avalanche of client withdrawals from FTX.

It forced FTX to immediately approach Binance for help. CZ issued a non-commital takeover proposal but subsequently pulled out after a day, citing grave concerns. What a brilliant way for Binance to kill its main competitor in one masterful stroke! FTX has now applied for bankruptcy and the authorities are circling in. It does not help that the FTX legal and compliance department had also suddenly resigned.

With FTX happening so soon after the LUNA stablecoin fiasco, sentiment has turned very bearish for cryptos. There could be nowhere to hide as no one is safe. There is now a rush to move cryptos to cold storage, to put all your asset private keys into a thumb drive and hide it under your bed. BTC and ETH were also sold down as there is a rush back to fiat currencies for withdrawal.

The final thing that happened that caught every by surprise this week was the explosive rise of the Dow by 1,200 points on Thurs. The Oct CPI was much better than expected and an improvement over Sep. This is the first concrete data to have come out which suggests that inflation may have peaked. It means that the Fed need not have to continue with its aggressive rate hikes to tame the inflation monster.

Investors who shorted equities panicked and rushed to cover their positions. Retail demand that had been sidelined jumped in, wanting to participate in the bottoming of the stock markets. This amazing almost 5% rise in one trading session caught everyone by surprise. The strong USD also did a dramatic retreat and weakened substantially against all major currencies within 24 hours.

There is too much volatility this week alone. While I was expecting higher volatility with lower liquidity going into year-end, the concentration of these 3 events in one week has led to wild swings all over the place. It is hard to position one’s portfolio in such sudden market turnarounds. What looked good for the past few weeks can easily evaporate within hours.

There is still 7 more weeks to 2022 and I expect more surprises and knee jerk reactions head. Banks are also starting to close their books for the year and liquidity will thin out. It seems that the beginning of 2023 will signal a bullish trend for stocks as the global economy finally put Covid behind us and ramp up to pre-2019 levels again, baring any new conflicts developing.

Is a new world paradigm shift coming again? After Covid hit us in 2020 and caused the world to turn upside down, is 2022 the year of reckoning that things are afoot where the world we knew previously is in for a dramatic change again?Or are we just reverting back to the long-term norm that was missing for the last 14 years due to years of excesses. Is pandemic shock a slap in the face and a wake-up call?

In hindsight, the current runaway inflation was bound to happen in 2022 anyway, as we revert back to normal. It is logical to assume that after the significant drop in demand (-90%, Lockdowns) when Covid hit us in Mar 2020, we would be looking at a much lower starting base before things start to turn around in late 2021 (vaccine rollout, milder and less deadly strains of Covid).

If the 2022 recovery even goes up to 50% of the 2019 level, it would have been multiples of the low base established in Mar 2020. This inevitably leads to huge inflationary pressure upwards as demand surges this year back to pre-Covid levels. The Ukraine war that started in Feb was the tipping point that choked supply chains and made the situation worse.

The Fed has been blamed for being behind the curve on interest rates and hence the current aggressive hikes. But it is easy to point fingers at Powell. Economies were just slowly recovering from the pandemic in late 2021 after huge amounts of money were printed by most governments to ensure that their jobless citizens could pay their bills and have food on the table while being locked at home throughout 2020.

If they had pulled the trigger to raise rates too soon, it would have sent the economy back into a downward spiral. Given that Fed meetings do not occur frequently (only 8 in 2022), they only had few windows of opportunity to fire the silver bullets. The signalling message to manage the expectations of the markets is also tricky and not easy. But once the hikes started, there is no turning back as the inflation monster had already raced ahead and broken down the barn door.

If we look back into history, the long-term trend of interest rates should be hovering around the 3 to 5% range. No thanks to the 2008 GFC, central banks have been artificially suppressing the rates to all-time lows (ZIRP – Zero Interest Rate Policy) and even to negative regions, something never heard of before.

This started a 14 years binge on cheap borrowing costs that created many asset bubbles. The era of cheap money encouraged leveraging and borrowing to the max. Money makes money and using OPM (Other People’s Money) was the rallying call to become rich fast. Look at properties. Put a small downpayment, borrow the rest at 1% and try to get a rental yield of 2% or more. With leverage built in, that 1+% positive carry can easily result in 10x returns. Then use the property as collateral to borrow again for another new property purchase and repeat ad nauseam.

The Gamestop saga, cryptos and NFTs in 2021 were the final straw that broke the camel’s back. There was so much quick and fast money to make that everything looked like a Ponzi scheme but the new “financial” experts touted it as the “new normal” investment strategy. Get in as fast as possible and try to get out asap for the next new Bored Apes NFT game in town. Greed played a big part to discourage logic to fuel the addiction to remain in the game.

I seriously think that this era of excesses is coming to an end now. The aggressive rate hikes are rapidly bringing us back to the long-term interest rates norm. All stock prices including the darling tech companies of Covid have dropped 70-90% from their all-time highs. Crypto market cap valuation has erased 2/3 of their value from $3 Trillion to less than 1 now.

Where do we go from here? The world is heading to an inflexion point by early 2023. Do we bite the bullet and put on a brave front to fight the possible recession to cure ourselves of the years of excesses? Or do we bend the knee and go back to the happy days again of more money-printing addiction? It is a political hot potato that can swing either way.

I see the world returning to the old normal pre-2008. It swings in an opposite way in 2022 to deflat the 14 years old bubble. The abrupt adjustment meant that most asset bubbles have deflated rapidly, mainly stocks and cryptos. The pandemic was the trigger point to bring the era of cheap money to an end. Thanks to technology and social media, market swings are more sudden and violent. They can happen very fast (eg. Mar 2020 upswing). What took many years to form may be reversed in a matter of months.

Inflation was hiding all along in various asset classes. While technology might have dampened it with advances that improved productivity, there was a spill over into many other areas. The Fed has to now tame the raging inflation bull by the horns. The aggressive rate hikes should taper off soon as there are signs that prices may have peaked and plateauing.

The final 60 days of 2022 will see reduced liquidity that will mean more wild swings in all markets. It is a day trader’s dream market but a nightmare for value investors. If intraday trading is not your thing, then one should have a top down approach and try to crystalize the macro big picture to trade on the higher probability trends. USD to remain strong due to higher rates, park some cash in short term instruments like T-bills to prepare to buy selectively into 2023.

For the brave, it could be time to slowly accumulate shares of companies that has a sound business model which is much cheaper now. We will continue to see great volatility till the end of the year. Time to study the preferred stocks and nibble at them into 2023. There will be more negative news coming but we should take it as an opportunity to accumulate more.

Within the last few weeks, we have seen many conflicting signals moving in opposite directions of the earlier views quite quickly. It was negative, then positive, or previously looking down, then up. Investors are confused about the medium-term trend as we head into a highly likely volatile year-end.

First, let’s look at the microchip sector. With the ongoing tech war America had inflicted on China to restrict sales plus post-Covid supply chain issues, demand was expected to be high globally. News of chip shortages had resulted in car manufacturers having to reduce production as they could not procure enough chips, some of which cost less than $1 each.

Then recently, we saw a 180 degrees turnaround, as reports of a drop in PC demand emerged. There was a big surge in buying during Covid due to WFH policies. But the return to normal meant that the sales performance of the past 2 years cannot be repeated. Now we hear that there is a glut of microchips flooding the market and prices have dropped.

The next switcheroo pertains to the coming winter weather. Based on the colder-than-expected winter we had in 2021, the upcoming one was predicted to also be colder. Coupled with the climate change events we saw this year (bigger hurricanes and storms), the forecast was for a bitter winter ahead. Some parts of America even had early snow.

Then we saw some warming weather and everyone changed their minds, predicting a mild winter. Even then, with the ongoing Ukraine war with Russia, Europe is trying to prepare for a cold winter into Dec to be on the safe side.

Next, we have gas prices. It was expected to go higher as we head into winter due to Russia’s closing of the pipelines to European countries as a response to the sanctions. Futures were climbing higher as Europe scramble to secure supplies to boost their reserves and to expect the worst as winter approaches.

Then 2 weeks back, American gas prices suddenly dropped. The reason was that there was an oversupply situation as US producers ramped up production too quickly to take advantage of higher European gas prices. The situation is still being played out as the arbitrage price opportunity between countries on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean continues to exist.

The final flip-flop of where the economy is heading is the most confusing. The aggressive interest rate hikes by the Fed to counter raging inflation had economists talking about tipping the world into a recession. Covid had caused a huge collapse in world demand in 2020. Naturally, when we moved into an endemic post-Covid stage in 2022, a move back to normal from such a low base in 2021 would have caused an inflationary environment. In 20/20 hindsight, this was easily predictable, right?

The stock markets had been on a downward trend for most of 2022 but have recently had a volatile seesaw action. We even saw an 800 points Dow rally last night as tech staged a comeback. The Fed is targeting to announce another 75 bps hike early Nov. So are they going to succeed to fight the inflation monster or tip all of us into recession?

While a majority of pessimists see a recession ahead, there is a growing minority that thinks otherwise. They believe that even if that happens, the Fed Put might happen. It can easily pump start the economy with more money printing again like in 2021.

I wrote about many event risks into the end of 2022 previously. One had just passed and that was the election of Xi. He has firmly grasped control and shows that party stability and control is the ultimate objective, regardless of how badly the stock market behaves.

The next event risk will be the American mid-term elections on 08 Nov. Poll results are all over the place trying to predict the outcome. Frankly, one cannot trust the polling data anymore as they are inaccurate in the last few elections. Their sample size do not usually represent the overall population well.

The last risk will be how the upcoming winter will turn out. Will it be colder than last year? Climate change seemed to have made weather swings even more unpredictable this year. The probability is leaning towards a likely colder one though. Let’s also hope that the Russia-Ukraine war does not escalate higher. All bets are off if a dirty nuclear device is used.

Meanwhile, I am staying long USD against JPY, GBP, CNH and EUR on the widening interest rate differentials. I have also bought gas futures for Nov and Dec expiry dates as I see higher prices into a colder winter.

I continue to remain nimble on the equity stocks. I look for dead cat bounce opportunities to trim away the deadbeats in my portfolio in order to increase my cash reserve. China looks interesting again after Xi’s re-election. Averaging in with small bites into blue chip Chinese tech stocks after the big drop last week as a bet on the promise of more “common prosperity” for the people going forward. Tech will lead the way without the previous cut-throat kill or be killed practises.

We are heading into more bumpy days ahead as we face the last 60 days of 2022 into an uncertain 2023. Caveat Emptor!

ETH, BTC

Dad in hospital

We look back to the latest UK political tragedy this week as Prime Minister Truss was forced to resign after just 44 days in office.

The humiliation was even greater when the British Daily Star tabloid launched a live stream of an unrefrigerated head of lettuce with a blunt question for the title: “Can Liz Truss outlast a lettuce?”. The vegetable obviously won this week. So should the lettuce be the new PM? After all, the UK already went through 4 PMs in 6 years…

Well, her consolation prize for all the stress and humiliation seems to be the GBP100+k annual pension she gained from 44 days of work, the fastest deal to reach retirement ever LOL.

Did she try to do too much in such a short time or were the planning and execution doomed to fail from day 1? All the grand ideas to jump start the economy with generous tax cuts and 2 years energy hike caps were essentially dead on arrival as there was no corresponding increase in government revenue to absorb these new expenses.

Someone forgot to tell her that the UK is no more the superpower it once was. Unlike the US, UK cannot just print more money to plug any deficit gaps anymore. With the recent Covid epidemic, all governments around the world have already flushed their systems with newly created liquidity to keep the economy afloat – America added 30% more new money in 2021 alone.

Truss thought that the shock therapy to kick start the British economy by going into deep deficit is a gamble worth taking. The market responded badly to these harebrained approaches by punishing the GBP currency and causing the Gilts (UK bonds) to crash dramatically.

This had a chain effect on the whole UK economy as British pensions are the main buyers of the government Gilts. Not only are they buying, they are also using the ones they own as collateral to buy more. The sudden 20-30% collapse in Gilt prices resulted in major banks issuing margin calls to the pension funds.

As the funds only own Gilts, the banks’ recourse is to force sell the pledged Gilts. This resulted in a tsunami of sell orders which made the situation worse. The central bank had to step in to start buying the Gilts for days afterwards to stabilize the markets and to restore calm.

All these could have been avoided if they had gotten a consensus of how the market could react before announcing the grand moves. Ironically, the person that lost the PM contest to Truss had correctly predicted and pointed out what would exactly happen during their PM debates months ago.

There is also a running joke that a new person by the name of Joris Bohnson might put his hand up for the newly vacant PM position LOL. Sunak probably has the highest chance of getting the job IMHO.

In politics nowadays, trying to rock the boat with big moves to change a broken system in a short time can be disastrous for the initiator. It would require a long process of small incremental moves to get to the final destination. This has resulted in inertia and political gridlocks which are the norm.

Look at America’s GOP and Democrat parties. Both just zone in on the anger and dissatisfaction to try to bring down the other side to make the opposition look bad. They should aim for the the good of the people and follow what the majority wants, instead of being held hostage by the minority. Social media amplifies the little voices that do not represent the majority, making it difficult to have constructive compromises.

There has to be a better way of governance and the UK had certainly shown the world that it’s system is clearly not working. It created chaos and uncertainty with the constant direction changes which are not carefully thought out and executed clumsily.

There is so much crazy volatility in the equity markets this week that we see 2+% moves up and down every other day while the general trend seems to still be trending down.

The erratic moves are making it hard for traders to decide what to do as we head into the year-end period where liquidity will get worse as banks close their books before Nov/Dec. Coupled with the number of event risks we talk about in the last few weeks, this can only mean that there is more craziness ahead of us in the next 60+ days.

China is having its big meeting this week as Xi looks set to win a new 3rd term. Everyone is so negative about China now as its leadership self inflicts its economy with the bashing and crackdown of its big companies, totally destroying their old models of taking no prisoners attitude on business to win at any cost.

The zero Covid policy also does not help as the constant fear of new lockdowns is real. A thousand new positive cases could easily lock down a city of millions whereas, outside China, no one will give a shit overseas. Will this change after the meeting this week? Looking at how HK is easing up on quarantine restrictions, this could hint that the mothership may follow suit soon too.

Unless China knows something about the virus that we all don’t know, this easing up seems logical and practical. The earlier reason that a million people might die if they open up, sounds dated. This argument is moot with such a large population and the common flu already having similar annual mortality statistics. In America with a population of 300+ million, they already have a flu mortality rate of about 250,000 people per annum.

China opening up and reverting back to normal may be the silver bullet to stop the runaway inflation train which the world is facing now. As their factories restart again, they could unblock supply chain issues and take advantage of current higher prices to lock in and profit from their cheap production capabilities.

One of the other highlights of the week was the Jan 06 US hearing on Thur which is supposed to be the last session. It is timed just before the mid-term elections happening in early Nov. All fingers point to the orange one as the menace who orchestrated the whole event. It’s either that or that his ego got in the way to prevent him from ever wanting to lift a finger to use his presidential powers to stop it that day.

At the end of this latest hearing, the committee voted unanimously to subpoena the former president, to invite him to testify under oath about his role in the riot. With so many from the GOP directly incriminating him, even Houdini cannot help him escape from the multiple accusations aimed at him.

With the pending top secret documents stolen documents at Mar-A-Lago and the business tax fraud in New york plus a few other cases lined up, he is like a dead man walking. But yet his supporters continue to back him up regardless of the undeniable facts of each case against him. The amazing thing is that quite a number of GOP candidates running for the mid-term elections are still openly welcoming his backing and stating that the 2020 elections were rigged in Biden’s favour.

On the personal front, there were 3 events which occupied my time this week. The first was an online property talk I signed up for on Tues night to understand co-living investing. Pretty interesting concept for people who are very hardworking and willing to put up only a small amount into this property strategy which is scalable.

In a nutshell, one rents a private condo property for 3 years and then sublets the apartment on an individual-room basis. The living room and kitchen will become a common community space for all the room tenants to share and enjoy together. With regular cleaning services thrown in, it is an attractive and affordable option for students or working singles to just occupy a room while benefiting from a communal environment with condo facilities.

The co-living investor hopes to make a net passive income of at least SGD$1,200 or more per month after netting off the rental fee to the owner and other expenses. For example, he rents a 4-bedroom apartment for $5k/mth and in turn, seeks out individuals for long-term (> 3 mths) leases of $2k/mth. With expenses like weekly cleaning, maintenance fees and apartment rental cost, the $8k income he gets could give him a net profit.

The trainer claims that he currently has 170+ co-living units as this strategy is scalable while using OPM (Other People’s Money) to derive a positive passive income. They were also trying to sell a training package for $3k. The numbers look feasible and promising but there is a lot of hard work involved. The community they have created was an advantage they highlighted which could also provide economies of scale for services like renovation and cleaning services plus property agent referrals and standard legal document template sharing.

With a group targeting approach, the success could be higher and they normally concentrate on non-prime areas where demand is always high for such private single-room residential rentals. With Covid, WFH only requires a room to stay and work in, as we have all found out in the last 2 years.

I also attended the annual NUSS mentorship program opening dinner on Thurs. This was the first face-to-face event after 2 years of online mentor/mentee matching. This will be the 5th year for me and it was a pleasant surprise that I got to meet some old friends that evening. The potential mentees are not as hungry as they should be to seek out mentors even as we are offering our mentorship services on a pro bono basis. The Covid lockdowns probably lowered their EQ skills LOL.

Ended the week with a Friday dinner bash for Sep/Oct birthday babies. We are a group of university mates and spouses who have regularly caught up with each other over the last 30+ years. We have seen each other’s children grow to be adults now. We experienced the days of innocence fresh out of uni into the working world again.

The venue was a glammed-up living room within an old building serving Peranakan cooking (www.littlesocial.sg). We had decided to dress up in 1920s fashion and had a blast pretending to be young and carefree again. The guys posed for a new photo in the exact positions of the snapshot we took in 1988 when we were part of the NUSS Union Ball Dinner & Dance committee.

Overall a pleasant week, if not for the market turmoil that is unwinding before us into year-end…

It looks like the 2+ years of Covid is finally over. S’pore is open for business as usual and ramping up aggressively.

The annual F1 night race happened last weekend with the largest crowd ever. There were about 302,000 who attended, making it the biggest turnout ever in its history. 49% were overseas visitors. Just before the weekend, 30+ MICE (Meetings, Incentives, Conferences, Exhibitions) events were held to take advantage of the F1 races.

There was so much pent-up demand for travelling to S’pore that hotel prices shot up to pre-Covid levels. One visitor even provided the cost breakdown of his one-week stay here. It was USD$30k and consisted of hotel accommodation, F1 tickets and Michelin-star restaurant meals.

It was inevitable that a Covid surge would happen after the event but that was a calculated risk the authorities took as being acceptable. It shows to the world that S’pore is open for business and we are back to normal now. A relaxation of restrictions was also announced today with a vaccine booster strategic plan going forward.

We see the same actions happening everywhere around the world except for China. Even HK is targeting to stop quarantines for overseas travellers soon. Japan is on target to welcome tourists for its winter season. Covid is totally behind us now.

The virus has mutated from a deadly version like all other viruses into a less severe version in order to stay alive and not kill the host. Just like the common flu, there will be constant mutations which will require optional flu shots periodically. Even the newer Omicron mutations are getting milder and probably 60-70% of the population had already contracted the virus at least once to gain antibodies against future strains.

We are back to concentrating on other events that are of concern to us again. There are a lot of event risks happening into the year-end which is still causing high volatility in the markets. I will highlight the top 3 below and the likely scenarios to be played out.

The elephant in the room is the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. It has resulted in multiple secondary effects on the world economy with its many moving variables. The outcome is mostly uncertain but we can clearly still see ahead that Europe is heading into a miserable winter with possible gas shortages if winter proves to be colder than expected, thanks to climate change.

While European countries are trying to stock up supplies ahead of the winter, they are also looking to other sources of energy like coal and nuclear power plants which they have been trying to limit and reduce in recent years. The new UK government is also proposing a household cap on energy costs for 2 years while Germany had taken over some Russian assets within its borders.

The recent mysterious explosions at the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea in late Sep also add to the problem. All fingers point to Russia for the sabotage but some conspiracy theories blame it on US covert ops. They think the US wanted to ensure that the European countries do not have the option to blink under pressure to negotiate with Russia later.

Oil and gas prices should remain firm to higher, no thanks to OPEC’s announced cut in production at these critical times. Europe will be in for a rough ride into Dec/Jan. It will only subside if the Russian/Ukraine war ends. But things are getting worse for Putin and he threatened the nuclear option. This limited nuclear response has further heightened the tension for everyone.

The next event risk is the US mid-term elections which are about a month away. Initially, the Republicans seemed to have the upper hand. But they managed to shoot themselves in the foot with the overturning of Roe vs Wade plus a lineup of incompetent candidates that lie like the orange one.

It will be a close call here according to the polls. But I think the Democrats should maintain their majority given the anger of the majority with the actions of the GOP recently. With a 06 Jan hearing this Thurs, we will see more of the Trump shenanigans than happened on that fateful day.

Finally, the last event risk is from China. Come 16 Oct, the meeting will begin where Xi is likely to be re-elected for his 3rd term. Hopefully, once that is over, China will return to its pragmatic ways to review the economy and allow tough Covid restrictions to ease.

This could spur its domestic economy to rev up again and that will be good for global supply chains to function effectively again. Chinese stocks have been beaten up for a while thanks to Covid, the US/China conflict and Xi’s actions to regain control of its economy again. China’s blue-chip stocks have all collapsed as a result.

The US dollar will continue to strengthen as the Fed resume its rate hike of another 75 bps into the next FOMC meeting in Nov. Economic numbers show strength in job numbers and inflation remains elevated.

We are all looking into an interesting and explosive 4Q. The subsequent weeks might spring more surprises. One should stay nimble and only trade in the high-probability trends instead. Long gas futures and buy USD against other currencies that lack the resolve to hike rates.

On the personal front, my new consultancy project started in Oct. With regards to the 10-week full-time course I was supposed to start on 17 Oct, it was abruptly cancelled by RISE 2.0 as they could not form a class. Seems like the demand for part-time is more popular as the economy improves and there are more job vacancies. I was given the opportunity to join the part-time course or wait till early 2023. As the schedule for part-time does not suit me, I have decided to wait it out till next year. But chances look low that they can get the numbers to start a full-time one in Jan though.

I now have a lot of time on my hands till year end and am looking at my 2022 to-do list to fill it up. One of them will be to improve my video editing skills and try new software like Adobe Premier Pro. I might even try to get certifications for Microsoft Power BI to learn more about cloud computing and data analytics tools.

The family is meeting up in France for the last 2 weeks of Dec for a Christmas break. I will have the time to start planning the agenda now 😉

Looking back at my school days, I always had a beef to pick with my history lessons years later. I question its relevance to my education and how it could have been much more enriching if it concentrated on topics closer to home.

Why would I want to learn about ancient history? Mesopotamian and Egyptian stories of King Hammurabi that happened thousands of years ago? For a 13-year-old, this was so alien that I could not relate to it. Why do we have to learn about something that seemed useless to me? It was just memory work and hardly engaging at all.

Only years later when I was older, I begin to appreciate history and the lessons from the past we can learn to hopefully prevent from doing the same mistakes again. To know why it happened and about the twists and turns which eventually resulted in specific outcomes became fascinating to me. Spartacus, Vikings, European and even China history had many stories to be retold. Yet, I know very little about our own Singapore history.

But as a young kid, history was boring and it was the last thing I wanted to learn. The syllabus should have been about our young nation’s history which talks about our roots and culture. That is more relevant and relatable to us. We were still a young country in the 1970s, having only gained independence in 1965. Maybe that was why we did not have much to share. Hence I guess learning about other people’s ancient history was a necessity.

Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) was the man that turned this tiny red dot around, from a 3rd world country into a 1st world one within a generation through sheer foresight and determination to forge our destiny no matter what the cards we were dealt with. And we have much to thank him for.

I had an opportunity this week to better understand our founding father’s many trials and struggles in the LKY musical I saw on Tues evening. This original musical was first staged in 2015 and it was relaunched again this year. It was a celebration of us returning back to normal after 2 years of Covid.

As I had not seen it in 2015, I did not want to miss it again this time. So I bought a ticket to watch it alone since my family members couldn’t make it and it was going to end soon on 02 Oct. It was made up of an all-Singaporean cast fronted by Adrian Pang and Kit Chan. The musical writeup below from SISTIC:

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“One of the most successful Singaporean shows of all time, The LKY Musical, returns this September. Presented by Aiwei and Singapore Repertory Theatre, this will be the first large-scale musical to take place here in over two years!

Watched by over 50,000 people during its first run in 2015, this home-grown musical tells Lee Kuan Yew’s story – from his student days in 1941 to Singapore’s independence in 1965. Starring Adrian Pang and Kit Chan, with music by Dick Lee.

This is more than just one man’s story. This is a tale of idealism, war, intrigue, betrayal, loyalty, determination, passion and love. This is the story of Singapore. 

The LKY Musical is an inspiring tale of facing hardship head-on, overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges and rising from the ashes. With new musical arrangements and new songs, this is an ideal show to bring Singaporeans together after the challenging past couple of years.”

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The show was an eye-opener for me as it focused on the period before S’pore gained its independence. It detailed the incidences that happened that shaped LKY’s determination as Singapore was kicked out of the Malaysia union after 2 years of group independence. It also resulted in tough decisions that LKY had to take and explains why he took them.

He was trying his utmost best to ensure that the Tunku continue to allow Singapore to remain in the union. He was the original person that planted the idea to Malaysia to propose that the Asian countries form a pack in order to seek independence from the British colonial masters.

But the subsequent 2 years of internal conflicts resulted in many disagreements and infighting. It made the union painful for all and impossible for the team leader to continue with the status quo. There were multiple ideological differences that included the view on how to manage the communist threat within each country plus the right to recognize all citizens as equals which became sore points. These eventually became breaking points.

Singapore was like the kid brother that refused to toe the line and was becoming more than an irritant to the big brother. LKY wanted equality for all races but Malaysia preferred to see that differently. Communism and Socialism were also grey areas that the leaders disagree with.

The musical is a tale of resilience, political intrigue, betrayal, loyalty, uncertainty, self-determination and hope. There is an overwhelming sense of triumph against the odds, and unimaginable pride at realising all it took to finally call Singapore our own. 

The LKY Musical ends up being more than the story of a single man – it is the story of a nation, rising from the ruins of war and the struggle of decolonisation, to emerge as one united people, one Singapore.