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Perhaps 100 years ago, living up to 50 was considered a huge blessing as disease, accidents and hardship are everyday risks. In my home country, the average life expectancy in 2007 was about 77/78. 16 years later, it is now 83/84 today, an increase of 6 more years. I believe that when I hit 77 in 20 years, the average mortality rate could reach 90/100 as medical advancement accelerates.

Having good DNA helps too and my parents are currently 89/94 respectively. So barring any unfortunate circumstances, I would have a high probability of living longer. I am therefore just at my halftime mark and looking at the 2nd phase of my life now. There could be a long way ahead.

Financially, I would have to ensure that we will have enough to last that long. Hopefully, the kids can pitch in if they need to. But we have calculated that it should be alright and we will be the last sandwich generation to have to take care of both parents and kids.

Old age is inevitable. We have to make the best of a deteriorating situation where the body and mind weaken. Medical advancement is picking up and we should see some perennial diseases like cancer and dementia being resolved in the next 5-10 years.

My parents have always been my role models to age well. Mum was a housewife all her life and the pillar of the family, making tough decisions given the limited resources she had. Dad was the main breadwinner for our 5 siblings and grandmother. He was the stern no-nonsense one who had to put food on the table. He retired in the early 1990s right after I completed my uni, being the last in the family to finish my studies.

Over the last few years during Covid till now. I have seen changes in both of them which worries us. Mum is getting more forgetful and does not remember names as her short-term memory deteriorates. She is less sure of herself and not the confident person she once was. Her legs are getting weaker and she now needs a metal rod support to walk slowly.

Dad has always been a perfectionist and does everything meticulously. Yet he looks frail now and needs constant rest and stops frequently to power up during a regular walk to buy groceries. I sense his stress on having not only to take care of himself but also to keep an eye out for mum.

We are trying to get Mum to see a specialist to slow down her dementia and provide guidance for us to care for her daily needs. They have been living alone for a while and plans are now in place to try to hire a full-time helper to watch over them.

We are moving to another phase of life and will have to make some necessary choices on their behalf to ensure that they have a comfortable and safe environment with fewer worries. It will be our duty as their children to give back the love they have showered on us for all these years. My dinner with them this week was a reminder to me again that we need to do what is best for them now.

Just to date this blog, there were 2 events to highlight this week. The first relates to Elon Musk. He started the week by stirring up a shit storm with his supposedly anti-semitic comments on X. He also told the advertisers who withdrew from his X platform to go screw themselves LOL.

Then to walk back on his comments, he visited Israel to witness the atrocities of the 07 Oct massacre and condemned Hamas. He tried to explain that his tweet was aimed at Jews who supported Hamas and that made no sense to him. But the damage was already done.

He topped off the week by introducing his new Cybertruck which generally had great reviews even as the price was much higher than he previously promised. Such is the workings of the complicated mind of the richest man on earth. Reading Walter Isaacson’s book on Elon should give me a better psychoanalysis of the man. What a busy week for him!

Finally, we had the evolving Gaza situation. About 100+ hostages were returned to Israel in exchange for Palestinian prisoners over 1 week of ceasefire. Then talks broke down and it went back to the Israel mission to eradicate Hamas.

I find it ironic that an enemy can come to your village to rape and kill your family members and take hostages. Then when you try to save your people and exact revenge on them, they use the hostages as bargaining chips to survive while using their people as human shields.

Hamas had crossed the line to become the ultimate ISIS terrorist which does not leave room for more negotiation even as they hold the remaining hostages close to them. It is lunacy to think that Israel will let them go after they pretended to lean towards peace talks for 2 years before launching the horrific attacks on 07 Oct.

The last month of the year has started. December is traditionally a festive period to chill and go for holidays. I will try to enjoy it even as I have so many work-related things on my mind to prepare for the new year. Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year ahead!

What a week of non-stop action! It started with the OpenAI saga with a sudden announcement of the CEO being fired on Friday afternoon. It rolled over the whole weekend with so many twists and turns that it should be made into a TV drama like 24 with Sam as Jack Bauer/Kiefer Sutherland in the future.

Then CZ dropped the bomb mid-week by announcing a huge fine which Binance and himself personally will pay to the US authorities and step down as CEO. Before we could take a breath, Hamas agreed to a prisoner/hostage swap with negotiators that started with a first batch exchanged late Friday.

Of late, everything seems to be intertwined together. AI and crypto somehow seem to be connected at the waist and the term Effective Altruism (EA) pops up ever so often. Let me explain. I had just finished reading 2 books that talk about the excesses of crypto and its mad ride over the last few years before the whole Ponzi scheme collapsed, taking with it the biggest victim to date, FTX.

Michael Lewis came out with his new book on FTX’s CEO SBF and admitted that even he was conned by his EA arguments. His book “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon” captures the insane way that they were expanding rapidly with no guard rails in place. There was simply no adult supervision in the room while seasoned professionals were throwing money at him.

Then there was the other book by Zeke Faux called “Number Go Up: Inside Crypto’s Wild Rise and Staggering Fall”. He was always a sceptic of crypto and wrote about the craziness and multiple scams that were happening all around. As long as the price is going up, everyone is deliriously happy and partying away until the music stops and the rug pull happens. Too many crypto scandals to choose from, and too little time to read them all…

The next book I am starting to read will be the longest. It is Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson. Surprisingly, it is one of the most interesting ones so far as the author psychoanalyzes the richest man in the world. It goes deep into how the man became who he has become and I look forward to finishing the 600+ pages soon.

Coming back to today’s topic again, I will attempt to summarize them based on what I have read so far and where we will be going soon. OpenAI started as a non-profit and one of its co-founders was Elon who quit after a few years over disagreements on where AI was heading. The current board had a non-profit mandate to follow and that can be lofty aims like saving and protecting humanity from AI. They don’t necessarily need to be involved in the day-to-day and being profitable was the least of their goals.

There was a reported run-in between Sam and a board member (Toner) recently that may have also added to the fire. She had written an article that was critical of OpenAI and Sam was furious and confronted her. He argued that if there was an issue, she could, as a board member, raise it internally instead of doing it outside, harming the reputation of OpenAI.

After the huge success of the launch of ChatGPT last Nov, CEO Sam Altman decided to create a subsidiary of OpenAI that was a for-profit organization. It seems that his all-in push for AI commercialization goes against the board’s mandate at the Holdco level. There was also a strong rumour that the latest “invention” of OpenAI called Q* (Q-star) could really up the game by making AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) possible much earlier than we thought.

The board probably felt that there are not enough guard rails to slow OpenAI down if it is fully profit-motivated. Hence they had to chop off the serpent’s head and fire the CEO. That started the mad ding-dong of negotiations where Microsoft had to step in to protect its $10 Billion investment. Employee revolt added to the toxic mix and Sam was reinstated again after a few days, with certain measures to be made plus a change of the board.

Every father, mother and son AI company is now charging ahead to beat their competitors to be at the forefront of the brave new world. OpenAI is openly telling everyone that it wants to hold on to its crown with even newer and more powerful tools in the pipeline. They just launched GPTs a week ago LOL… The mad race to be the best in AI will intensify further. There is no stopping it. As I like to quote Thanos, it is “inevitable”…

For Binance, the only positive I saw was that a S’porean was named as the new CEO. It’s like TikTok again. Get a squeaky clean and upright, no-nonsense citizen of the little red dot to steer the mother ship back to compliance again. There seem to have been many months of negotiations and lawyer letters going around. CZ had probably caved in now as the whole might of the American authority was after his ass big time.

America had to prove to the world that it could clean up the crypto beast and show who is the boss, no matter what it takes. This was the bigger prize after the takedown of FTX where the regulators were caught asleep at the wheel. CZ figured out that he did not have the muscle and resources to fight a long battle with them. It is better to cut losses and move on to save his company in the longer term. Time will tell if this was a smart and strategic move for Binance.

And finally, the hostage situation in Gaza saw some positive results with the release of a small number of them for a prisoner swap. Note that there are currently about 200+ hostages still being held in Gaza after the 07 Oct raid by Hamas. It is just the beginning of trying to bring them home safely.

Israel has stated that the battle is not over even as they received and welcomed home the released hostages. They have very long memories and will certainly avenge the 1,200 killed on 07 Oct as history has shown. The terrorist Munich massacre during the 1972 Summer Olympics is one example. Eventually, Mossad managed to assassinate those who were responsible.

Yahya Sinwar, head of the militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip had deceived Israel for months. He was showing signals of wanting peace talks while planning the attack. As far as Mossad is concerned, he is a dead man walking. He is one of the most hunted individuals in Gaza now.

We will likely see the Gaza conflict becoming a long drawn-out affair as Hamas release the hostages in drips. It wants to survive and sway the world to support Palestine and its causes. It knows that once they do not have any hostages left to trade, Israel will exercise its full force to eradicate them once and for all. A Catch-22 situation.

Notice that no Muslim countries are willing to allow Palestine refugees into their countries, especially Egypt which shares their border with Gaza. Why is that so? Countries like Lebanon and Jordan had done so in the past but the radical groups within them had literally destroyed Lebanon’s economy and assassinated Jordan’s top minister. The argument that if they leave Gaza, they will not be allowed back is just a cover for “No thanks, we don’t want you causing trouble in our country!”.

Can Iran, Hamas’ main supporter, remain on the sidelines? Will the Middle East erupt into a hot political potato? Note that no one is talking much about the Ukraine/Russia war now, which is going into its 2nd year soon. It is old news and not as exciting for the news agencies to maintain viewership anymore.

And we are just a month away from Christmas and starting the new year soon. 2024 looks like it is going to start with a bang. Let’s hang on tight for the wild ride ahead of us.

The heinous Hamas 07 Oct massacre just crossed its 1st month anniversary and we see the unfolding of the Israel response happening in real time every day. I had written about the horrible incident a few weeks ago as I felt sick to my stomach and needed to do more research on the reason behind the attack before I could pen down my thoughts.

Since then, the world has seen the meticulous steps undertaken to seek out Hamas and to try to rescue the 200+ hostages still trapped in Gaza City. More than 2 million Palestinian citizens were told to relocate to the south of Gaza for the Israeli military to move in.

There have been many stories of civilians being killed as collateral damage in the precision strikes on supposedly Hamas hideouts. To date, a figure of 11,000+ were estimated to be innocent victims of the crossfire. It is especially disheartening to hear of casualties at or near the hospitals which are treating the sick and injured.

Israel claims that Hamas is using the hospitals as cover to hide and prevent its citizens from getting out of the city as an effective human shield for them. They tried to show some evidence of weapons hidden within the hospitals, the underground tunnels running below and mobile communications of the terrorists using ambulances as a means of transport between locations.

There is so much misinformation on both sides that it is tough for us outsiders to know what is real and what is not. Meanwhile, there have been mass protests all over the world in support of the people of Gaza to force Israel to stop their military operations there.

But the Israeli refused to stop until Hamas is rooted out and the hostages are all accounted for. They insist that it is a defensive move to prevent another 07 Oct from ever happening again, now termed the 2nd Holocast event.

One of the retired generals had mentioned that Hamas, via the extensive underground tunnels, had already evacuated themselves to the south of Gaza. Israel’s current sweeping of north Gaza therefore may not be enough to eradicate Hamas. They might force another mass exodus of Gaza citizens now stationed in the South to once again move to the North when they have neutralized that area.

Mass global condemnation of the Israeli ambush in Gaza will not deter them from completing their mission and they are likely to continue operations for a few more months. Hopefully, there would be a concurrent plan to discuss a future 2 state solution for the Palestinians to eventually reset and start all over again, to have fresh elections. To have a government that cares for the welfare of its people first, rather than just calling for the death and destruction of Israel, which will be a non-starter for peace talks.

On the personal front, I had a wonderful meetup with ex-colleagues on Sat. It was also a new housewarming occasion for one of our team members. He took the opportunity to invite the old team together. We were working together during the 2005-2012 period in the American bank.

I cannot believe that it has been more than 15 years ago already. We were much younger then. Working hard and playing hard was our motto during that period. We were reminiscing the good old times we shared in common and the various offsites we had taken as a group every year.

It was so good to catch up with each other and be updated on what has happened to each of us since then. Some have become parents and others have moved on to another relationship and career. We laughed about the silly things we had done while being amazed that we had the stamina to work like crazy to achieve the sometimes impossible budget targets.

We have all aged and grown older since then. One of them is now doing well in her career, which I was happy to see. It feels so rewarding to have seen her grow up from fresh grad days till now and also a new parent too.

The hours passed away quickly as we had so many topics to chat about. The 12 of us remembered the times when we worked as a united team to organize client events and even performed in the Dinner & Dance competition, coming in as champions twice!!

I was looking forward to this gathering and I was not disappointed. As we grow older, old colleagues can turn to become treasured friends through the passage of time with so many precious memories to cherish.

Yes, the month of Nov has started. It signals the ending of the year when the festive period of Christmas and a new year is upon us soon. Many will aggressively plan for revenge holiday travelling and gift purchases as we finally get back to normal and leave COVID behind us.

Financial Institutions are also winding down their activities as liquidity dries up and they close their books for the yearend. Banks that are behind their revenue targets by now will aim to cut expenses immediately as a strategy. Citibank just announced Project Bora Bora to cut 10% of headcount. It has been standard practice over the last 2 years for all industries to adopt this move to slash costs by Q4 as a last resort.

On the weather front, we are unsure if the coming winter will be mid or colder than usual as there have been mixed signals globally. Some places have experienced warmer autumns while other cities are cooling down fast. The back-to-back years of the highest summer temperatures in 2022 and 2023 have made experts project that Earth’s warming will permanently increase temperatures by 2 degrees Celsius instead of the previously projected 1.5 degrees. Climate change is genuine and visible now. Surprisingly, the years of COVID lockdowns did not help Mother Earth to repair itself but accelerated the warming trend instead.

The feared prediction of a stock market Oct crash did not happen. It went the opposite way and we saw a strong rally instead. It started with expectations of an earlier rate cut possibility as inflation numbers eased. Oversold conditions, solid earnings and a sharp pullback in interest rate expectations have been the primary drivers.

With a likely stalemate of a US government shutdown in the pipeline and a recent Moody’s US credit ratings downgrade to negative, we may see volatility into this new month as liquidity tightens when banks start to close their books for the year.

Crypto prices are rising again in anticipation of BTC and ETH going mainstream. We have seen BTC jumping from 26k to 37k, a 42% increase within a month. I am still holding on to my crypto portfolio. I will try not to be too greedy like the last time and aim to take some profits off the table while playing within the new higher ranges as volatility spikes.

Hopefully, FTX will also be settled soon for clients (me included) to recover their claims as the judicial manager had managed to have some success crawling back some assets. SBF’s Alameda/FTX investment into the Anthropic AI startup looks promising now as valuation has surged since 2022.

This week at work was mainly to settle human resource issues and finalize the 2024 budget. I managed one exit and negotiated to bring in 2 new members. The exit finally ended 2 weeks of to-and-fro discussions and compromises to craft an amicable and professional breakup solution that was equitable to both sides. The new members were also needed as part of the overall stop-gap solution. This included an internal transfer of a junior staff.

The 2 rounds of budget presentation, proposal and discussion will provide us with at least 12 months of runway for our fund management startup. We will try our best to launch our funds by 3Q’2024. There is a lot of hard work and moving variables we need to get right in order to succeed.

I also had a video call with an undergraduate on Thurs who had reached out to me for career advice. I have been a mentor in the university mentorship program for the past 5 years. I wanted to pay it forward back to my alma mater. The participation also enabled me to interact with students that are around my sons’ age. I wanted to understand their challenges better and try to help them shorten their career learning curves. Since I started full-time work recently, I have decided not to continue in this program. As this undergrad continued to reach out to me, I was more than happy to agree to the call.

A long weekend holiday ahead and I plan to do a few 1+ hour-long runs which I missed doing since I started work 2 months back. I am also excited that my older son will finally start his work career in HK this week after finishing his 10-week orientation program in New York. Everyone is looking forward to the yearend holidays!

Cryptos rising

Budget 2024 week – presentations and round 2

HR matters – managing one exit and bringing another one in, plus a junior internal transfer

NUS undergrad video call

I have been around the block quite a fair bit in my 57 years of existence. I can say that I have met all sorts of people, good and bad, who have helped me sharpen my EQ skills over time. But once in a while, someone comes along and surprises me again.

I usually leverage on my past experiences to try to dissect the situation and identify the key aspects of behaviour I have to address. After all, I have been on the sales and marketing side for more than 30+ years and have managed team members before. Because of my career, I usually say I am a bullshit marketer when asked to introduce myself LOL.

But this week, I encountered new lessons in the complexities of human behaviour. My interaction with 2 such persons required me to call up all my past experiences to try to determine how I have to deal with them.

The first person was someone I started to know much better only in the last 2 months as I started work. He was a bit of a character whom I was warned that could be hard to manage. Things started on a strong note as we bonded over the past 8 weeks. We were driven by the same career goals and it seems we could work well as a team.

Then something happened a few weeks ago over a confrontational meeting where strong words were exchanged. The decision of a change in corporate strategy was a point he found hard to accept. He pondered and vexed over it for the last few weeks and decided that it was not what he wanted. Things boiled over this week and he suddenly decided to abandon ship, packed up his stuff and left.

While I was trying to get over the shock decision from him, I had to scramble to update management and plan for the next steps. In hindsight, his behaviour had changed in the past week, from showing enthusiasm to being less responsive and even silent at times. I had a gut feeling the weekend before that there could be such a reaction from him and actually discussed it with someone about it a few weeks.

Anyway, I had to go into damage control and try to end things amicably while being professional about it all. Hopefully, the negotiation can be finalized next week and we can move on. I just don’t understand why an incident can eat into him to make him cut losses and run so dramatically. It had shined a bad light on him and showed a level of immaturity. Talking to others who know him, it seems that he has had a pattern of such career behaviour for the past 10+ years to quit and run.

I had been trying to get to know him better over the last 2 months and all this is going down the drain now. I thought that I had figured out what motivates him and what buttons to press but I was wrong. We now have to look for a replacement and I have to start all over again.

The other person I met this week who intrigued me was someone who assumed a lot about me from the get-go even though we had hardly known each other. He tried to get me to do something I was not comfortable with and I refused. His rapid-fire style of communication was at times off-putting and he was not a very good listener too.

He tried to explain to me who he was and the many flaws he had plus a number of failed marriages. But that should not justify his continued obnoxious behaviour. He kept on saying “I understand” when he did not. The 2 words were just like a punctuation pause for him to distract and move on to another topic. His attention span is too short for a meaningful conversation even though he is smart and very sharp.

I simply refused to do what he wanted me to do the next day after only a 30-minute introduction session the previous day. He then backtracked to do damage control by offering to explain his actions, saying he perfectly understood why I stood my ground. He insists that this is who he is and how his mentors trained him to explain away his aggressive behaviour to succeed at all costs. That was really a red flag for me. He can be a loose cannon that can get out of control.

I must be out of touch after not having worked full-time for 6 years. My part-time consultancy work during this period also did not require me to have to maintain a long-term strategy of getting to know people better at work. This week woke me up again to the complexities and intricacies of human behaviour which I will have to sharpen my saw again to deal with the dog-eat-dog commercial world.

Time really flies when you work full-time. I have just crossed the 8th week of going to work every morning…

It was really meaningful to start working again while having the weekly strategy meetings with my new colleagues on how we can achieve our timelines and the milestones we set for ourselves. I am going to give it my best shot and aim to succeed, even though there are so many uncertainties and moving variables ahead. It will require careful planning and tracking to reach the many goals we set for our company systematically.

As I told my COO during my first day of work, I am also scared but by hook or by crook, I am going to give it my best shot. It will likely be my last career push before permanent retirement as I reach 60 in 3 years’ time. The mission is a grand and audacious journey to try to be a game changer in the Green/Clean Tech space, to be the first to bring together different parts of the fragmented aspects of the industry to create a win-win end game for all.

To be given an opportunity to utilize my past experience and lifelong learning skills I had acquired in the last 6 years to pivot to a growth area is indeed a golden opportunity. Having spent numerous hours learning new Skillsfuture knowledge to reinvent myself, I hope to see an eventual payoff from this new job. Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Blockchain and many other new skills that I had picked up which had caught my interest will assist me in this new venture.

During this week at the office, we had a number of meetings with external outsourcing agents to help us size up the ones we would like to engage with eventually. There were also 3 investment leads we wanted to follow up on from the connections made at last week’s Biochar event. I had to also send my car for urgent repair work on Monday as it had overheated a few times during the weekend. It turned out that the main engine fan coil was not functioning well after 13 years of use.

The best news of the week came on Friday late morning when the authorities informed us via email that they had finally agreed to issue the CMS/LFMC regulatory license to us. It has been a long journey for everyone in the company, starting from Jun 2022 when the overall company business plan was being conceptualized. This was followed by months of working with our lawyers to prepare for the submission of the license application in early Dec.

That was followed by at least 5 rounds of to-and-fro questions and clarifications with the regulators till they finally issued us an In-Principal Approval in late Aug 2023. By then, I had to start my employment contract in early Sep. We spent the last 2 months preparing the required items in the to-do checklist to submit to MAS on 16 Oct. They finally came back with a positive reply on 27 Oct (yesterday) to confirm that they have agreed to issue the license to us. It was 330+ days from the license application start date till this glorious day.

The next stage of the company will begin as we prepare our 2024 budget, complete our marketing deck and begin a soft sell campaign to gauge investors’ appetite for Green Tech. We can then fine-tune our final marketing push to launch the funds around mid-2024.

I also had an interesting experience attending a tree planting ceremony on Fri morning. It was organized by an old friend from my uni days as a way for her to celebrate her 55th birthday. She is a person to be admired, with a fantastic journey over the last 15 years since her life hit rock bottom and she managed to reinvent herself and 10x her experiences to to do more and give back to the world. An amazing inspiration for all of us in how she turned her life around and became a much bigger person who continues to give and mentor others. I also shared this with my son as he has a like-minded goal and wants to pay it forward. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthea_Ong?wprov=sfti1 http://www.antheaong.com/

We just had a wonderful dinner last night with old friends and spouses to celebrate the birthdays of the Oct babies in our group. We have known each other since our university days and it will be 36 years (from 1987), a lifetime ago. We have seen each other grow over the years. From studying together, starting our careers, getting married, having many vacations as a group and seeing our kids become young adults.

It has been a life journey of unforgettable shared memories that we will still be talking about for years to come. Some are actively planning for retirement soon and targeting a halftime pivot to the next stage of their lives. I treasure these friendships dearly and it means so much more for me into my second halftime.

Historically, October is seen as a worrying month for financial markets where bad things can happen. The “October effect” scares everyone and Black Monday of 1987 is usually highlighted as a prime example.

Many would tell you to be wary of Oct, to sell in Sep and then try not to blow yourself up the following month. There are a number of reasons for this. The main one would likely be that everyone in the financial world is trying to have their last shot at hitting their budget before the year starts to wind down from Nov onwards.

Management usually advises traders to reduce their positions and cut limits into year-end as liquidity dries up ahead of the holiday period. Bid/Offer spreads traditionally widen by mid-Nov as everyone will be going for their yearend break. Volatility begins to make the stock market swing up and down violently as many are quick to make small gains while trying to avoid a possible freight train move heading their way.

Somehow or other, major economic events seem to want to happen around this time to spook the world. We just saw Israel’s worst moment in its history with the Hamas invasion on 07 Oct. It totally blew the minds of everyone and forced us to take sides immediately. The more one reads into this matter, the deeper one realises that it is more complicated than what it seems on the surface. That like an onion, there are many layers to the issue once you begin to peel off the layers.

The Ukraine war is experiencing its 2nd winter soon as another offensive is in the cards with more sophisticated weapons being deployed, courtesy of America. Additionally, the upcoming development of the Gaza assault by Israel will keep us on our toes as we head towards the end of Oct. More volatility is to be expected ahead.

Bond prices have been having wild gyrations in recent times as Powell talks about keeping rates on hold for now for possible future hikes. Gaza and Ukraine tensions are causing concerns that rising oil prices might be stroking the inflation monster again.

Since the aggressive rate hikes of 2022, all bondholders that had them in their portfolio before Jan 2022 have suffered big unrealised mark-to-market losses. Take my 10-year AAA S’pore bond holdings as an example. It was paying a coupon of 2+ % when I bought them a few years back. The MTM was 108 pre-Fed hikes and when I last checked, they were at 96, a 12-point drop in value.

Can you imagine what it looks like for all the banks in the world that had to keep bonds in their portfolio as part of reserves liquidity management? They would be sitting on a big unrealized loss which some economists estimate a hole to be as large as $650 billion! They would have no choice but to sit them out to maturity in order to avoid the losses. These bond tenors could be as long as 30 years!

Separately, I had been setting a reminder to myself to hedge my stock portfolio ahead of the Oct effect. I wanted to just buy an S&P Put that expires beyond Oct, in case the stock market bottom fell off. I was unsuccessful as I could not find an appropriate index option to buy over the last few weeks in my Saxo account. And the month is already coming to an end.

Is this a period of opportunity to take advantage of the swings for investors to bottom fish for bargain hunting of stocks? I had been looking to buy back some of the Nvidia and Tesla stocks I had sold a few weeks ago when I found the markets too frothy for my liking. I had placed some bids for about a month and some of them were triggered last night. I have also been looking at ARM since its IPO a while ago. I did not want to chase it up as I felt the value was overpriced and should soften from those levels. It hit a new low last night and also triggered my buy order.

Halloween is also around the corner and that makes people behave a little more weirder than usual too. We are entering into the year-end holiday mood as the final quarter of the year plays out. 2023 started with a bang and may end with a bang too.

So much has happened since the horrific Hamas invasion of Israel a week ago. We have seen an overwhelming deluge of news and discussions as we wanted to know more. But there also has been a lot of misinformation being spread on social media.

Everyone, including myself, is seeking to digest the outflow of information to try to understand the reasons for this inhuman act. Was it out of desperation and who were the ultimate victims of this human tragedy? There are so many sides to this and the long history behind the build-up to this moment.

I felt sick to my stomach last weekend as I read about the massacre of innocent victims being slaughtered indiscriminately. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. The videos of the kidnaps and abuse of the bodies made me want to puke. The horrors of pure evil were too much to bear and I was highly disturbed by the images. I resolved to seek to gather more information in order to comprehend why it happened.

When Israel started to fight back and retaliate, there were widespread protests in many cities worldwide in support of Palestine, especially for its helpless citizens stuck in Gaza. Everyone was forced to take sides in this ensuing conflict. This could easily escalate into a regional Middle East shitshow if more players want to come into the conflict. The Americans immediately sent their aircraft carriers rushing to the seas near Gaza to ensure that other players like Hezbollah and pro-Hamas Iran do not jump into the fray and make matters worse by expanding the conflict zone.

There were many analyses of the historical background of Gaza that could be found online and they were helpful to me as I try to read more. There are 2 sides to every story and things are more complex than one can imagine.

I do not claim to be an expert in this whole situation but what is clear to me at this point in time is the following. The common people in Gaza are at the short end of the stick and have been suffering for a long time. It will be getting worse for them as we speak. Israel has the right to defend itself and to try to rescue its kidnapped citizens. Hamas is pure evil for launching their attack last Sat. How can their religion excuse their behaviour to execute innocent unarmed victims in such a horrific way, beheading many in the name of their cause?

Since the 1940s, there have been multiple attempts to resolve this conflict. There were at least 5 serious initiatives to allow Palestine to form a new country. But for various reasons, Palestine’s leadership had turned down Israel’s offer each time.

The failure of each subsequent Palestine leadership to accept a compromise solution has led to the formation of a more radical political party subsequently. This has resulted in greater hardship and suffering for its citizens. Hamas came to power in 2006 when they won the last elections against the corrupt Fatah ruling party by gaining 57% of the votes. Multiple infighting and assassination attempts over the next few years caused the Gaza economy to collapse.

Since then, there have been no new elections for the last 17 years and Hamas ruled with an iron fist, smuggling in thousands of rockets instead of helping its citizens improve their lives. The periodic firing of rockets into Israel naturally made them want to counterattack to stop Hamas. It does not help that they also want the destruction of Israel as a goal which they would not denounce as a condition for peace talks. Meanwhile, Netanyahu is getting less popular in Israel as his leading political party is getting more far-right and moving away from democracy, favouring absolute power. This is a deadly combination that has exploded into full view now.

What led to Hamas condoning this invasion last week? Were they pushed to a corner to react? Didn’t they know that this could result in a total annihilation of Gaza by Israel as a response? What were they thinking? It looks like a death wish that was not properly thought through at all.

There is a possible theory to justify their reasoning. It started in March this year when China wanted to up its game on the world stage for the first time. It stood up to broker a peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which was a strong supporter of Hamas. Not to be left out, America then decided to initiate another one between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

Hamas must have realised that its worst-case scenario will happen before its eyes if the above goes through. The support for Hamas in the Middle East will diminish considerably and it will become irrelevant to the big boys. No one will pay attention to its causes anymore.

The attack on Israel might have been a desperate attempt to preserve its relevance as a last-ditched hope to rally the world to the Palestine cause. But this has now given Netanyahu a perfect opportunity to obliterate Hamas once and for all. Was the Israeli intelligence’s missed oversight of the attack actually an internal plan to unite the country against a common enemy instead?

As this situation continues to evolve, we should be standing up for common basic human beliefs that terrorism and inhuman acts cannot be tolerated for whatever the excuse may be. That it was wrong for Hamas to execute brutal attacks on innocent civilians, killing 200+ unarmed concert participants and multiple families, and kidnapping hundreds of people as hostages in Gaza City.

The citizens of Gaza should not be made to endure the leadership of Hamas anymore. They have suffered enough since 2006 with empty promises to get rid of the corruption of the previous Fatah party and now replaced with evil terrorism. Could Israel finally help them escape from the clutches of Hamas once and for all? Only time will tell.