Category: Uncategorized

The country was hit with bombshell news mid-week when it was revealed that 400 officers had conducted a massive islandwide raid to arrest 10 foreigners over suspected money laundering and forgery charges.

What shocked us, even more, was the amount of assets seized doing the raid – they included properties, cash and hard assets like luxury cars, designer watches and bags. The total value was worth almost SGD 1 billion!! Here in law-abiding S’pore? Whoa!!!

Whatsapp chat groups were buzzing on Wed as everyone was shocked that these activities were happening under our noses all along. Our neighbourhood chat group recounted about the Tuesday morning raid by officers dressed in black in 20 cars and vans circling a GCB (Good Class Bungalow) within our area. It was later discovered that the accused had jumped from the 2nd floor and hid in a drain outside to try to escape arrest. A photo of an injured man being captured by men dressed in black was shared by a neighbour who was just staying across the road.

Daily news updates of the evolving case continue to provide more information on the 10 that were arrested. They were all originally from Fujian, China and some are related by blood. A number had foreign passports in obscure countries where there can be easily obtained after providing minimal cash applications.

As of today, a total of 105 properties were hit with the prohibition of disposal orders as investigations are ongoing. They include 7 detached bungalows in Sentosa, 79 condominium units (19 under construction) and 19 commercial/industrial spaces with an estimated worth of SGD 831 million.

As part of the seized assets, we are learning about the names of watches that can cost $7 million and ladies’ handbags worth more than $250k which we ordinary folks have never heard about. Collectables like plastic designer bears called Bearbricks? It is mind-blowing to know what too much money can buy nowadays…

Two main questions remain and will probably be answered over the weeks to come. Firstly, where were the funds from, the source of all their wealth? There are currently talks of money laundering operations and online investment scams as possible sources. The second question would be: What caused the authorities to kickstart this massive operation? Was it data from the banks or a major tipoff?

The various seized assets point the finger at money laundering activities. Typically, this process involves 3 main steps: Placement, Layering and Integration. During the placement stage, illicit funds will be introduced into the financial system. This could be via cash deposits or high-value assets. In the layering stage, the funds will be moved through a series of transactions and financial instruments to “wash and clean” them. This could be in the form of transfers between accounts and the use of offshore companies. Finally, in the integration phase, this laundered money is reintegrated into the legitimate economy via investments or purchases.

The suspects had been spending money living the high life, renting GCBs for SGD 100 to 150k per month and keeping a cellar of expensive wines, buying top-end watches, handbags and collectables. They seemed to have endless amounts of funds to spend quickly in order to legitimize the ill-gotten monies from various sources. All these actions look and smell like typical money laundering moves we have seen many times in Mafia movies LOL.

This is a huge enterprise of resourceful and connected individuals who are helping shadowy participants clear large sums of money from their illegal activities by buying into hard assets. They can probably sell them at a later stage to recycle the newly cleaned funds into the financial system. The haircut or loss incurred by flipping the assets is an acceptable cost of money laundering. If the assets actually appreciate in value, then it is an additional bonus for them.

Thanks to Covid, we have seen hard assets like property and collectables rise in price over the last 3 years. Now we know that the money launderers were also involved in the rush to buy them up. S’pore saw record monthly GCB rentals shoot up to 150k as property sales also reached new highs in the luxury market. New reports point to transaction data of this gang buying up property since 2017.

Given that the 10 arrested were all originally from Fujian, one could safely conclude that the criminal activities started from there. It could then have begun to branch off globally as evidenced by their secondary passports from lesser-known countries where citizenship can easily be bought.

China had always had an issue with its citizens trying to bring money out of the country as the nation prospers. Many had been spending money buying property and insurance policies in HK. Cryptocurrencies were another avenue where funds could be converted and wired out immediately. The authorities shut down onshore cryptos a few years ago and tightened funds export restrictions. Each individual cannot take out more than USD50k per year. The Chinese mafia has also moved to China-friendly countries like Cambodia to set up scam investment bucket shops using USDT to cheat victims online.

This recent case this week seems to be linked to all the above illegal funds inbound to S’pore. Authorities will now heavily investigate the banks that had allowed these funds to come into the country, checking on KYC (Know Your Client) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) policies within the financial institutions. STR (Suspicious Transaction Reports) as required by MAS will also be scrutinized carefully.

And why did the authorities do the raid this week? Were they preparing this for a while as they built up the data of this criminal gang for months or was it based on a tipoff? There are a number of theories floating around which we may never know the true reason. I would like to postulate one though.

China had been trying for years to halt or slow down the leakage of money from its citizens from onshore to overseas as the country prospers. Its RMB is a controlled currency that makes it harder to remit overseas. A few years ago, they have to clamp down on the crypto market to stop the outflow. Presently, there is an annual restriction of USD50k per person per year.

I suspect that it knows of shadow criminal gangs like the one arrested this week that continue to do money laundering on a large scale via various means. Previously, China send teams overseas to grab such people back to the motherland and bring them to justice in the Chinese courts. This has resulted in bad global publicity as the illegal abduction of its citizens globally attracted negative press coverage.

Maybe they have analysed their actions and have decided to change their strategy. What if they approach the countries with hard evidence of wrongdoing instead? The governments would have no choice but to react to protect their security and sovereignty. This one-stone kill 2 birds strategy sounds logical as it is a win-win outcome.

China gets to shut down the gangs without lifting a finger and countries like S’pore show that they are intolerant of criminal activities on our shores. This looks like the future modus operandi. There was another report this week of the same actions in Sydney of the arrest of a Chinese gang doing the same thing. Sounds familiar? What do you think?

July 2023 has just been confirmed to be the hottest month on record ever. All around the world, cities hit record hit temperatures we have never seen before. Authorities have to warn people working under the sun to take precautions to avoid heatstroke and hydrate regularly.

I had personally felt the intense heat during my recent trip to Japan where it reached 36 degrees Celsius just after noon time every day. Seville in Spain was 45 degrees and some parts of China tested above 53. Wild forest fires happened in Canada and destroyed a city in Hawaii just a few days ago.

Is Climate Change real now? Are we like a frog in a well that is being slowly boiled alive as the earth heats up? Climate deniers are pointing to the fact that scientists have been screaming about the doomsday scenario for so many years since the 1960s but it has not happened, that perhaps the earth is like a pendulum that can swing back and correct itself eventually.

But it is scary to see what has been happening over a short span of time, as record high temperatures are being recorded in back-to-back years. There was severe rain and flooding in some countries while other places experience sizzling hot summers at the same time. In July, there was a huge surge in electricity demand as more people rush to cool themselves (via air conditioning and fans) to escape the scorching heat outdoors. Commodities prices like oil and gas had been rising as a result.

Theoretically, it should be great news for renewable energy like Solar panels but a hotter sun does not equate to more energy produced. This renewable energy peaks at around 40 degrees Celsius and does not generate more after that. The current drought situation has also crippled hydroelectric production as there are lower water levels. As a result, there was news that the many hydroelectric dams in Vietnam could not sustain electricity production.

This brings us to this week’s topic of the world’s goal to achieve net zero carbon emissions in the future. Net zero carbon refers to achieving an overall balance between the amount of carbon emissions produced and the amount of carbon removed or offset from the atmosphere. It aims to reduce the net greenhouse gas emissions to zero, usually by reducing emissions through various measures and compensating any remaining ones through carbon offsetting or carbon capture technologies.

The current sources of renewable energy like solar, wind and hydro are now being seriously challenged by Climate Change conditions. They may not be able to help the world achieve its zero carbon goal in the near future. How can we close the gap?

There are increasing global discussions that more renewable sources of energy should be explored. And that is pointing to an option that is becoming more obvious. The answer is to have greater use of the Nuclear option to help close the net zero gap.

Nuclear is considered one of the cleanest energies available. Its power plants also operate at a much higher capacity factor than other renewable energy sources or fossil fuels. Capacity factor is a measure of what percentage of the time a power plant actually produces energy. It’s a problem for all intermittent energy sources. The sun doesn’t always shine, nor the wind always blows, nor does water always fall through the turbines of a dam.

In the United States in 2016, nuclear power plants, which generated almost 20% of U.S. electricity, had an average capacity factor of 92.3%, meaning they operated at full power on 336 out of 365 days per year (the other 29 days they were taken off the grid for maintenance.) In contrast, U.S. hydroelectric systems delivered power 38.2% of the time (138 days per year), wind turbines 34.5% of the time (127 days per year) and solar electricity arrays only 25.1% of the time (92 days per year). Even plants powered with coal or natural gas only generate electricity about half the time. Nuclear is a clear winner on reliability.

Nuclear power also releases less radiation into the environment than any other major energy source. This statement will seem paradoxical since it’s not commonly known that non-nuclear energy sources release any radiation into the environment. The worst offender is coal, a mineral of the earth’s crust that contains a substantial volume of the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. Burning coal gasifies its organic materials, concentrating its mineral components into the remaining waste. So much coal is burned in the world and so much fly ash is produced that coal is actually the major source of radioactive releases into the environment. 

Traditionally, Nuclear has been given a bad name because of the big headlined events of failures which spooked everyone for years. There was the partial meltdown of the Three-Mile Island reactor in 1979, and the Chernobyl incident in 1986. And in recent times, the 2011 Fukushima accident because of a tsunami. While these accidents are few and far between, the public perception has been burned into our minds that Nuclear is dangerous and bad for the world. This misconception remains even though there are better and safety nuclear developments, which are less known and publicized to the public.

https://changeoracle.com/2022/07/20/nuclear-power-versus-renewable-energy/

There is also the worry that the nuclear plant’s byproducts can be used as weapons of mass destruction. Enriched Uranium can be used to make bombs. There is an ongoing debate that perhaps this concern can be eased with the use of Thorium instead of Uranium. It is supposedly to be as effective for electricity production but yet very hard to be made into a usable bomb.

The traditional high cost of building nuclear reactors was also a turn-off as it takes many years to come to production. But a new generation of plants, called Small Modular Reactors (SMRs), is now being touted as a way to break out of the high economic cycle cost that has plagued the industry for years.

SMRs are advanced nuclear reactors that have a power capacity of up to 300 MW per unit, which is about one-third of the generative capacity of traditional ones. They also can produce a larger amount of low-carbon electricity. With reduced fuel requirements, they may require less frequent refuelling of between 3 to 7 years. Some are even designed to operate for up to 30 years without refuelling.

Singapore is starting to realize that nuclear power plants could be needed to achieve its net zero carbon goal by 2050. There have been recent nuclear option articles being released to test the public reaction as well as to measure any adverse reactions from neighbouring countries. It may be inevitable that the tiny red dot incorporates Nuclear into its arsenal of renewable energy sources to achieve its zero carbon goals.

I have a personal interest in renewable energy. My recent consultancy work involves the application of a Funds Management Company (FMC) linked to solar energy to attract investors who want to participate in the ESG space. The funds will be utilized to invest in PPA (Power Purchase Agreements) by providing CAPEX to commercial building owners to build solar panels.

The carbon credits (REU – Renewable Energy Units) will be harvested and owned by the fund to be monetised. A trading platform using Blockchain is also being developed to track these credits and provide deeper market liquidity to this developing sector. Transparent tracking will also help to solve greenwashing problems that currently plague this market.

My interest in nuclear has also made me focus on potential stocks to invest in this sector that may have capital gains in the years to come. Energy Fuels Inc (UUUU) looks interesting as it is a firm that is often mentioned by analysts in the nuclear industry. It is a mining development that specializes in this field. It will be my medium-term punt into this space.

My wife and I just had a wonderful family vacation to Kyoto and Osaka, spending quality bonding time with our older son. He had just completed his uni education in Jun and was back home for 2 months until he starts his career working in HK.

We had planned this short getaway with him as he previously could not make it to the last South Korean vacation with our younger son in late May till early Jun because of his final exams. Hence we figured that we should do a separate trip with him when he is back home. Our younger son had just started his new uni term in Jul and so he had to skip this Japan trip.

We aim to spend 4 nights in Kyoto and then another 4 in Osaka. That would help us soak in the vibes of these 2 unique Japanese cities. Scoot was the preferred choice of transport this time as they had timings that suited us – an early flight in (6 am) and a late flight out (5 pm).

The trip was mostly free and easy with minimal activities booked in advance as we wanted it to be as spontaneous as possible. I was always a sticker for holiday planning to the last-minute details when the kids were younger. But as we all grew older, my Nazi-style of holiday organization had toned down given that the family prefers some flexibility in the schedule. My wife would take care of accommodation bookings as she is very particular about the room conditions. I will fire up an Excel/Google spreadsheet months before the trip to begin planning and slotting the details of each day into the master agenda.

Free walking tours are something that I found in our Europe vacations that I became hooked on. The tour guides worked on the concept of a tip-based reward at the end of the walk, rather than the upfront fee type we are so used to. I felt that these free-walking tour guides work much harder to earn their tips rather than going through the motion every time. This concept has spread to America and Asia and I book them whenever I can find them in the cities we visit.

Day 1 – 21 Jul: We had to leave for the airport at 0345 for our early morning 0615 flight to Osaka which took about 6.5 hours. The Scoot budget airline plane was really basic in amenities. No entertainment at all, no screens nor USB ports provided on the seat even for the Scoot Plus we paid extra for. Just a bigger seat:-( And no access to the airport lounge too. Luckily we had Priority Pass from a bank which we could use to grab some breakfast before the flight. Reminder to self: avoid using them again, especially for long-haul flights.

We reached KIX Kansai airport and had to figure out how we could get to Kyoto as the Japanese transit system is very foreigner-unfriendly and complicated. Cabs are expensive and cost a few hundred dollars just to get to the city. Managed to reach our Kyoto hotel (Nohga Kiyomizu Kyoto) after about 2.5 hours and also walked about 1 km with our luggage as the last train did not stop at our station LOL… They have Rapid, Non-Rapid and Normal trains that stop at selected or all stations.

Day 2 – 22 Jul: We started the morning with a free walking tour in Kyoto. It was a 2.5 hours city introduction to the areas around the central parts. Thereafter, we had to cool down to get used to the mid-day sun and temperature of 35 degrees Celsius heat.

In the evening, we booked a dinner at one of the 6 three Michelin stars restaurants that served Kyoto Kaiseki food – Isshisouden Nakamura. They used only the freshest of ingredients of the day and it was mainly conger eel dishes that evening. The chef personally thanked us when we were leaving. He is a 6th generation chef and his family had operated this restaurant for over 180 years.

Day 3 – 23 Jul: A free and easy day using the Sagano Romantic Train to visit the areas around the Arashiyama mountains to check out the temples and the bamboo garden forest. We visited the Nishiki markets and had a nice evening dinner in our hotel room watching the latest K-pop series A2K.

Day 4 – 24 Jul, Mon: It was the start of our adventure to experience a one-night stay in a glamping location called Grax. The journey there was via taxi and then a train to the free shuttle pick-up point and it took about 2 hours. We had our tentage with a balcony with a hammock to chill. We had ordered a premium BBQ dinner which we could cook and watch the sun setting.

It was an eventful evening of cooking our dinner before heading to the onsen to wash up. Breakfast was also a self-cooked bacon and eggs meal in the cooling morning breeze.

Day 5 – 25 Jul, Tue: We had to check out at 10 am and made our way towards Osaka via the free shuttle bus to the train station. It was easier this time around as we got better at understanding the complicated train system and schedule. Reached our Courtyard Honmachi Osaka hotel and managed to do an early afternoon check-in. We immediately headed to the popular Dotonbori shopping district to spend our afternoon. Lunch at the Ikinari steak house which we always like and managed to book a luxurious crab dinner at the iconic restaurant.

Day 6 – 26 Jul, Wed: Went to the hotel gym and had an early Japanese curry lunch before visiting the huge multi-storied gaming building called Round1 Stadium. In the evening, we attended a Hanshin Tigers baseball game versus the Yomiuri Giants at the Hanshin Koshien stadium. We had KFC takeaway for dinner at our seats in the full-capacity event of 45,000 attendees. The Tigers won and scored decisively into the 7th innings right after we left early to beat the crowd LOL…

Day 7 – 27 Jul, Thurs: Another free and easy day as we journeyed to the Nakanoshima-Koen Park and then to shop at Tenjimbashi-suji Street. Early lunch at our fav self-BBQ seafood chain Isomaru. The weather was too hot and we had a coffee break at a new Instagramable cafe before heading back to the hotel for a rest. In the evening we took a leisurely walk to the Dotonburi area as we had booked a shabu shabu buffet dinner.

Day 8 – 28 Jul, Fri: This was the most strenuous day as we attacked the Universal Studio Osaka park early in the morning. Running around in the hot 36 degrees sunny weather like mad men, we managed to conquer and complete about 9 rides and shows by late afternoon.

Heading back to the hotel after a long exhaustive day, we found a nice basement Izakaya dinner place that was next to our hotel. Since it was our last night in Japan, we ordered lots of drinks and Japanese finger food to end the vacation with a bang.

Day 9 – 29 Jul, Sat: Time to head home. We had a lazy morning in our hotel room. I managed to go to the gym and then had a meal at a popular breakfast place. We took the train to KIX for our 1645 flight home, reaching Changi airport just before 2200.

A great family bonding short holiday with our older son where we had the opportunity to have in-depth discussions about his career aspirations as he embark on the next phase of his life working in HK. Wonderful quality time indeed.

I came across a podcast that my son had recently introduced to me and was blown away by the new investment perspective that the 2 guests were talking about. I had to listen to it a few times to grasp the themes and thought processes they were applying so that I can mimic them for my own investment portfolio. It was an eye-opening experience for me to understand another perspective of investment which was new to me.

Before I go deeper into this podcast, a back story. Earlier this year, I decided to reread The Big Short book by Michael Lewis again. I felt that I needed to understand the details of the winning trade positions during the 2008 GFC (Global Financial Crisis) and why the heroes of the book did the things that they did. I even watched the 2015 movie again to understand the trades initiated which I may have missed the first time around.

The names of the characters in the book were changed but they were based on real companies and persons working in them. One of the investment firms called FrontPoint Partners had a very outspoken leader that was always in your face to aggressively question CEOs and banks whenever he sees non-logical behaviour or moves motivated by personal greed manifesting their actions to screw the retail investor.

Two of the persons working for this leader Mark Baum (based on Steve Eisman) were Porter Collins and Vincent “Vinnie” Daniel. They have since moved on and started their own family office/hedge fund called Seawolf Capital right before Covid happened. Their fund’s return to date is amazing and you can see for yourself in the summary write-up of the podcast below:

“Porter Collins and Vincent Daniel are the founders of Seawolf Capital, their family office managed as an old-school hedge fund. Previously, they were two of the three members of Steve Eisman’s team at Frontpoint Capital and found themselves in print and on the silver screen as protagonists in Michael Lewis’ The Big Short. Regulations prevent us from disclosing investment returns almost all the time on the show, but Porter and Vinnie manage only their own money today and are an exception to that rule. In the three full years since they started managing their own capital, the pair is up an extraordinary 9x, coming off a 169% return in 2022.

Our conversation covers Porter and Vinnie’s background, the Big Short trade, the launch of Seawolf 1.0, a short stint at Citadel, and lessons learned along the way and put to work at Seawolf 2.0, their family office. We discuss their contrarian value investment approach, the transition from financial sector specialists to generalists, investment themes, and the banking system. We close with their perspective on the hedge fund industry and the future of Seawolf.”

I will attempt to distil the essence of this podcast today to try to summarise the main points and my thoughts on how it could help change my investment outlook and strategy as I look at current themes to fine-tune my portfolio.

Both Porter and Vinnie stated that they had a PhD in what had happened, having prepared and waited patiently for almost 2+ years for the 2008 GFC to finally start. With a prior experience in the late nineties on a similar meltdown of excesses, they were well positioned by then. But it was coupled with a lot of pain watching their positions in the red for a long time while the banks screwed with their mark-to-market calculations.

The concept of Vols (Volatility) targeting was discussed. It dictates capital flows which they watch constantly. Strangely, low Vols attract more capital, especially from funds that position for an explosion of volatility eventually.

Funds naturally gravitate to long short-term momentum via leverage in order to maintain high returns as taking contrarian positions takes too much time. Hedge funds make money when the VIX (Volatility Index) spikes. So when the Vix falls, they add more leveraged money. This move creates an opportunity for Seawolf to initiate short positions when the one-sided explosive move happens and Vix surges. During their stint in Citadel, they also did not understand why hedge funds had the concept of Aging in portfolio management, to force them to sell stocks held for too long even though they still like to hold them.

Seawolf prefers to be a value-oriented investor. They start with a small investment in a stock they initially like. They will accumulate and build up the position if their views are reinforced over time through more internal debate and discussions.

For example, their play on Exxon when Salesforce replaced it as a component stock in the DJI (Dow Jones Index) on Aug 2020. They found that major fund management names have very low exposures to energy names right before Covid. It should have been a critical asset to hold. That worked out well for them as they continue to accumulate more into 2021.

Seawolf’s preference is to hold stocks that have a low PE (Price Earning ratio) of 5 or less. The downside is low and when the stock is finally rediscovered, the upside move could be explosive. This allows them to sleep well at night, looking for great investments and just wait. They agree that Seawolf cannot beat the funds with their sophisticated machines and hence have to specialize in this niche.

They also like Uranium and Nuclear now, calling them the Elemental powers. They are now safer than imagined, as the general public view is clouded by historical nuclear accidents that happened a long time ago.

They also like to long Gold, likening it to a short position against the global financial markets, a hedge against the growing US deficit. Generally, they are also negative on the banking system because of long-term cyclical issues. Savers (CASA) are less sticky to the banks now and have the ability to quickly park their idle funds into T-bills and money market funds.

When deposits leave the banks, they will have funding issues. Seawolf had successfully shorted the stocks of the recently failed US banks as this had happened. Banks’ last resort is always the Fed to try to stay afloat. They are more risk-averse to bank lending and are less likely to make loans to corporate names nowadays. Private equity names are now taking over this space as they do a better job of assessing the risk than banks. Commercial real estate is a concern and would be challenging down the road.

On the topic of inflation, developed countries like the UK and Australia are still seeing elevated levels with little growth. Brazil stands out as its inflation is going down. It is also a self-sustaining country with plenty of natural resources. Brazil stocks remain cheap and they are fiscally neutral. They historically also do not start wars. The political risk from last year has subsided as Lula is declared the winner. They like Petrobras and are accumulating as the PE is only 2 and the yield is 20 to 25%.

The Fed’s 500 bps aggressive rate hikes to date are a big worry for them. Vinnie cannot understand that the Risk-Free rate of return which all investments are measured against is actually derived from these hikes while the US deficit is ballooning and more than doubled in less than 10 years. It blows his mind as it could snowball into a bigger risk as more money printing is required to support the interest payments of the sovereign debts. Who wants to buy more US debt and is the crowding out factor coming?

Seawolf wants to remain small and nimble while remaining patient with its positions to pay less for value stocks. They buy when there is mispricing to extreme levels which lasts much longer nowadays. They also avoid stocks that have bad management that cannot execute. Finally, Potter talks about the life lesson he learnt from his grandfather – that life is about the journey and one must cherish its ups and downs.

After listening to this particular podcast 3 times to distil the essence of Seawolf’s message, I have decided to do the following steps. I studied the financials of Petrobras with the help of my son and an analyst friend and decided to buy the ADR (PBR). I might accumulate more in the near future.

Separately, I will also look into buying Brazil mutual funds or ETFs and nuclear-related stocks once I do more research on them. I have a small long gold against USD position which I am encouraged to hold on to because of their views.

On my personal investment portfolio front, I have been taking some money off the table from my long-term positions in the last few weeks (Apple 8x and Nvidia 12x to date). It is tech-heavy and the PEs look too high and frothy now.

My other bold contrarian move is to buy China. I believe that the negativity is overdone. As Buffet said, when everyone is fearful, it is time to get greedy. There are encouraging signs that the supertanker is slowly turning around as the Chinese authorities make plans to energize the economy post-Covid. Alibaba is finally off the hook after paying its final fine. The government is also beginning to court China’s tech names to generate ideas to jump-start the economy.

I bought more Alibaba shares to average my previous longs with the expectation that it is best positioned to ride this China wave when it turns. The recent announcement of breaking itself up into 6 IPOs could also be a bonus. I believe that the sum of its parts will be greater than the market value of the current mothership. A small short USDCNH was also initiated recently. I also used my SRS funds via Endowus to average down on my China-focused mutual fund portfolio a few weeks ago.

Let’s see how it goes into the second half of 2023. The Fed may still hike another time but a rate cut will only happen in 2024 at its earliest into their presidential elections. This week’s blog will serve as a reference point for me to review again in a few months’ time. Wish me luck!

The week’s highlight has been the crazy and mad scramble for the Taylor Swift concerts to be held in this tiny, red-dot country in Mar 2024. It was over 2 days of anxious online battles to secure tickets for this coveted event.

Every father, mother, uncle, aunty and kid was enlisted to register for the pre-sale ticket lottery 2 weeks ago. This was after the phenomenal sold out successes of the Coldplay (6 concerts) and Jacky Cheung (11 dates). The rumour was that there was a massive turnout of 22 million registrations. That made the organizers confident enough to immediately decide to announce the addition of another 3 concert dates to the original 3.

Why this sudden success of S’pore, becoming the go-to venue for big concerts in ASEAN? A few reasons. Firstly, it has 2 big and relatively modern venues to accommodate large concerts – S’pore Indoor Stadium (15k persons capacity) and S’pore National Stadium (55k).

Secondly, the ongoing China/USA tension made international acts wary of holding concerts in HK, the traditional venue for Asia. The HK authority’s clampdown on the 2019 riots didn’t help. China’s tit-for-tat imprisonment of political pawns for exchange wasn’t encouraging too. An artist could be arrested in HK for singing a wrong song or promoting American democracy LOL. Hence S’pore became the go-to central destination by default. Acts can now hold multiple concerts centrally for all its fan bases in Asia.

Thirdly, the S’pore government had decided to take back control of the National Stadium recently. With deeper pockets and little need to reach profitability in the short term, they had greater negotiation powers to bid for acts that the private sector probably cannot stomach. It was a fantastic achievement for them since late last year as global acts started to be convinced to hold their concerts here. Like the annual F1 night race, this will drive tourist dollars here as it is within a short flight time that is easily accessible to ASEAN’s 660 million population. Kudos to the strategic planning of the new management and wishing them many more successes to come!

After an unsuccessful 1st day of trying to get pre-sale tickets via a local bank’s credit card on Wed, my wife and son managed to acquire some tickets on Fri during the actual sales day. There were a total of 270k (55k x 6 concerts) tickets on offer which were snapped up within 2+ hours. I narrowly missed buying some due to a stupid personal mistake and the booking platform hung on me subsequently 🙁

Recently I have been evaluating the insurance portfolio that I had built up over the life of my 30+ years of career. There was not much planning while signing up for each policy in a half-hazard way throughout my work life. I had always trusted the insurance agent to review my outstanding needs and recommend new ones that might fill the gaps along the way.

There is just too much technical jargon in insurance policies and I tend to glaze over as the agent tries to explain the terms to me. The evolution of personal insurance was also slow. When I started working in 1990, whole-life policies were about the only game in town.

Having little and limited financial means as I started my career, I tend to purchase small insurance packages that would not be a big drag on my monthly cashflows. Some friends were also starting out in this line of work and I gladly became the guinea pig for their sales pitches. I even bought a 15k whole-life policy from one.

33 years later, I decided to seriously evaluate all my outstanding insurance policies a few months ago. As I am semi-retired, the insurance premiums are a sore drain of funds for me every year. I had to decide if it was worth my while to continue them or if the surrender values were sufficiently attractive for me to encash them to make these new funds work better for me as new investment money.

While I don’t claim to have many outstanding policies to review, I saw a pattern of me moving away from life to term insurance over the years. The insurance industry had also developed along the way and those that I signed up for many years ago didn’t look like wise decisions any more.

The first to go was the one I bought as I started to work for an insured amount of 15k. The annual premium is almost 3% and the surrender value was only about 12k. It has not even grown above the amount of premium I put in for the last 33 years. Given its small amount, I decided to terminate it and take the cash to use for my investment portfolio since the policy resulted in a negative investment with little future upside.

The next policy I surrendered was also quite pathetic. I signed up for a policy linked to mutual funds investment in 1997. It required a regular annual premium contribution of $2.5k from my CPF (Central Provident Fund) Ordinary account. That could have been the main attraction for me then as I did not have to come out with cash. Instead, I could tap on my government-sanctioned CPF retirement funds.

That was a big mistake looking back. Before that, my bank had sent me on a 2 weeks attachment to the bank’s HK Treasury to learn from a product structuring desk. Guess what was one of the products they were trying to promote then? Yup, an investment-linked insurance product. Product structure teams like them don’t get out of bed to work if there is no fat profit margin upfront for them.

There is usually an in-built upfront margin of 5% of the principal for this product to reward the sales effort of the staff to unsuspecting clients. If you do a mark-to-market valuation of the product on Day 2 after you bought it, Ceteris Paribus (“all other things being unchanged or constant”), it will show a drop to 95% immediately because of the 5% spread.

After that 2 weeks HK trip, I concluded that linking an insurance policy to an investment product was a bad idea. Both objectives should be kept separate. Subsequently, I became a product structure salesperson for several years, becoming the dark side evil banker trying to make upfront spreads from unsuspecting customers… But yet I was conned to buy this investment-linked policy probably at a time of personal weakness in 1997 amid the Asian Financial Crisis. Karma’s a bitch. And I kept it for 27 years LOL…

After I checked the surrender value of this policy, I powered up my Excel spreadsheet. With my rustic knowledge, I calculated the IRR (Internal Rate of Return). Cash inflow was 2.5k per year for 27 years versus the termination value now. Unsurprisingly, this might be one of my most worthless long-term investments ever. The IRR was a measly 1.03% per annum &^%$#%&*! Over that same period, the DJI index had grown by 300%.

The termination value was now higher than the insured amount so it was a no-brainer to cash out now and use the proceeds for better purposes. I am still waiting for the funds to be credited back to my CPF account after more than a month now.

I still have a few other outstanding life policies which I will continue to pay premiums for. But the rest are mainly term policies that have no surrender values while providing a bigger payout amount upon death or injury. The premiums are also lower and more manageable for a semi-retired uncle’s wallet.

At my age now (57), it’s too late to try to restructure my insurance portfolio too drastically or add new ones as the premiums are much higher than if I were to start in my twenties. It is the classic dilemma where it’s cheapest when you don’t think you need it, when you are young and healthy, versus when you are older and “wiser” to know you need to plan for your future medical needs…

The insurance industry has developed a lot over the last 30 years and we now have the term InsurTech, a subset of the FinTech push. There are more choices to cater to each individual’s needs and lifestyle requirements. An AI (Artificial Intelligence) bot can probably do a better assessment of your insurance portfolio and provide good recommendations to fill the insurance gaps accordingly. Gen Y and Z will be able to plan and incorporate their insurance portfolio in a much more efficient manner.

Coming off from a wonderful 7 days last week, I had another delightful week of events. It was filled with family and friends meet-ups while getting to know new people. I am indeed blessed with opportunities to gain happiness all the time, especially now, around my birthday period.

This week started on 25 Jun, Sunday when my older son finally returned home after completing his 3 years of uni in the UK. I prepared a big feast of KBBQ and Korean army stew at home as we waited for him to arrive home from the evening. It was good to have the whole family together again and this was the longest time he has been away from home (9 months).

On Mon, I had a JB day trip planned with 2 friends. The one with the most JB experience offered to drive us here. We met early at 7 am to avoid the causeway jam. It was a full day of activities with a local breakfast (Hoe Kee @ Bukit Indah) before heading to the driving range at Forrest City to hit a few golf balls. Then it was a Zhichar lunch at Chua Kee before having an amazingly thorough 30-minute car wash for MYR 20.

Finally, we went to check out the newest mall in JB called Southkey which was located in Mid Valley. We did some shopping and had a relaxing foot reflexology session before making our way back home by 5 pm. The strength of the SGD against MYR (1 to 3.42) made everything look much more affordable and even cheap at times. A highly productive 10 hours, half-day offsite day trip!

The highlight on Tue was a dinner with a newfound friend I met at the gym. I had been exchanging small talk with this gentleman for months whenever I see him during my workout. Salvatore is the owner of a well-known chain of Italian restaurants that made history in S’pore. He introduced the concept of freshly made pasta as a highly accessible form of Italian cooking when it was only offered in high-end hotels in the late 1980s.

My wife and I had a pleasant dinner with him as we got to know him better over lots of food and great Italian reds at his restaurant. He was the ever-gracious host and greeted all customers like old friends. His story is very inspiring, from being a Navy diver to working at oil rigs in Brunei before settling down in S’pore with his new wife to pivot to a successful F&B business. He even expanded to China at one time. Always cheerful and hitting 70 soon, he is an inspiration all of us should follow, to work hard at what we believe in.

Wed was a family day as we finally had an opportunity to have a formal dinner to celebrate our belated birthdays (younger son and me – the same day on 20 Jun) together. We had decided to postpone this in order to wait for our older son to return from the UK. It was at a nice fusion Japanese Izakaya place called GOHO which my wife had booked.

The next day was a public holiday (Hari Raya). It was a perfect day for the 4 of us to work out together as a family at the gym in the late morning before tucking into a sumptuous Tian Tian chicken rice lunch. Dinner was a seafood meal at Sunset Way with the extended family of my parents/sister-in-law. We headed back home for more drinks and a birthday cake for dessert.

01 Jul, Sat: Time flies by fast and July has arrived. We participated in a neighbourhood get-together street food party on Sat under lovely evening weather. The organizers had also invited our local MP to give a speech. He provided an interesting update on the future plans of our estate.

It has been a lovely week of bonding and gatherings that warm the cockles of my heart. There is so much to be thankful for. The enriching memories that will forever be remembered. Many small feelings of happiness are always better than one infrequent big happiness. They last longer and the warm afterglow stays. I count my blessings every day 🙂

Human nature is such that we usually take things for granted. We see negativity in everything but often miss out on the little blessings in life. We compare ourselves with others but forget how fortunate we are with what we have.

Sometimes, it is good to remind myself once in a while, ideally on a daily basis, that what I have is so wonderful and should be appreciated fully. Counting one’s blessings keeps me grounded and happy. As Marie Kondo says, it sparks joy in me.

This week is one of joy for me. I want to remember it and celebrate it again in my mind via this week’s blog. I have much to be thankful for and my week of celebration is definitely a highlight. As I turned 57 this week, so did my younger son as he celebrated his 22nd birthday. We share the same birth date, thanks to my better half 🙂

The week started on Sunday on a high note as we had a baby shower to welcome the first 100 days of a close relative’s baby girl. The long lunch stretched to almost dinner time as we moved from the function room to my sister-in-law’s condo apartment for part 2 with drinks. Lots of wine and finger food later, we watched Coldplay on Youtube to prepare for the battle ahead to acquire concert tickets for their visit to our tiny, red dot the next day.

Monday was purely Coldplay day. A Whatsapp chat group of 13 was set up for the battle plan to go online to purchase as many tickets as we can for the 4 concert dates in Jan 2024. It seems that literally a million souls had the same idea as we had queue numbers that went into 6 digits. Luck was with the younger ones and we managed to eventually buy 12 tickets.

The next day, it was made known in the news that almost 200,000+ tickets were sold within hours, making it the most highly anticipated event in S’pore history. Subsequently, the organizers announced 2 additional dates to satisfy the huge demand. A few days later, everyone cheered again as Taylor Swift revealed her new 2024 S’pore concert dates. Thanks to the Monday training, we were prepared to do battle once again LOL.

International acts are apparently avoiding HK as a venue, to the advantage of S’pore to have more dates. The China/USA tensions are probably the cause and I suspect that the recent HK authority’s clampdowns on the 2019 riots are discomforting for the Western artists.

20 Jun, Tues is the official birth date for my younger son and myself. We started the day with a Mala fish lunch which was a joint fav of ours. This was followed by a movie, utilizing our privileged status as students and senior citizens for a discounted price of $7.50 and $4.50 respectively. The latest Transformer movie was so-so.

The highlight of the day was our gathering of friends at a private dining venue that evening. 12 of us had many bottles of vino, good food and great company. We were uni mates that have known each other since 1987. We had studied together, started our careers and watched our kids grow to be young adults. The 36 years seem to have just flown by so quickly…

There was a further celebration for me the next day on Wed with another group of friends. We had known each other since our banking days and have been through thick and thin, battling one financial crisis after another. Ironically, great minds think alike and it was at the same restaurant as the night before. With great friends and wines, it doesn’t matter to me that we eat at the same place a few times in a row.

Thurs was mainly an errand day, trying to buy stuff for house repairs as well as preparing for the big KBBQ dinner on Sun when my older son finally returns home after completing his final paper in the UK. Evening time was spent attending the wake of a close friend’s mother.

Finally, on Fri, I ended the week with another 2 gatherings. The first was a morning breakfast get-together of another group of uni mates. This was our regular early morning meet-up to catch up on news and discuss uncle matters.

In the late afternoon, I attended a town hall meeting organised by the founder of the consultancy firm that I was a member of. It was a catch-up of like-minded people around my age group that had many years of work experience in the financial sector. Some important people in the fintech space were also there and we had a good chat about life in general. One of the ex-CIO did a wine presentation in which I learnt a number of new pointers on how to better appreciate our wines: older vines = great vino, to try the Pinot Nori from Musigny in Burgundy.

Taylor Swift’s concert dates for S’pore were announced a few days after the sold-out response from Coldplay on Mon. Like before, we had to register interest on Fri to get a special link to buy tickets in early Jul. The feedback was overwhelming and they had 8 Million (!!!) registration. Every father, mother, son, uncle and aunty was roped in to try to secure a maximum of 4 tickets if successful. 3 more dates were added, making it a total of 6 concerts like Coldplay.

I suspect that the huge response was due to a few reasons. (1) The rise of the acknowledgement of Asean spending power post-Covid, (2) The China/USA tension has resulted in all international acts skipping HK as a venue. It means more overseas visitors to our shores as a destination for concerts in the future.

It was indeed a wonderful week of celebrations and one worthy of writing it down to remind myself that we are blessed with great friends and family around us all the time. I treasure these moments and they make me happy. My older son is also flying back from the UK today as he completes his uni. A double blessing and celebration ahead!!

It is amazing to see the explosion of AI development happening before our eyes in a matter of months since ChatGPT was launched last Nov. The impact is so rapid that it has even taken the financial world by storm. The recent rally in the stock market has been single-handedly turbocharged by tech stocks with links to AI.

I had been observing its progress with interest via a series of blogs on this topic since Feb (see below for the links to Parts 1 to 3) and today’s blog will be Part 4 of my AI tracking journey. Every month sees new uses being developed and introduced as the AI arms war heats up between the big players as well as the internet community. So much has changed and developed since ChatGPT was introduced a mere 7 months ago.

Every big tech name is getting into the game in a big way, integrating into their current systems using a freemium model to gain user traction. We are now into a free for all AI buffet and the eat-all-you-can environment will result in new innovations that will be beyond our wildest imaginations.

To get the elephant in the room question on AI out of the way first. It is NOT sentinel yet. Ironman Jarvis is many years into the future. As I explained in an earlier blog last month, we are not there yet. Based on how ChatGPT and Generative AI work now, the AI we see is only ANI (Artificial Narrow Intelligence) which is good at “TALKing” to generate written and image output responses to human prompting. It uses a method of Tokenization to analyze the user prompt and then look into its database for high-probability results to form an end-product output. NLP (Natural Language Processing) is then utilized to provide the response. What most fear is AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) which is when the machine can THINK for itself. We are far from there and the Terminator is not coming any time soon.

Some say that this is a big bang moment that is as big as the introduction of the internet in the early 1990s. Unlike the dot.com era of 2000 where any crazy idea with a tech association (remember Pets.com?) was bought up and funded, the current AI frenzy is different. We constantly see new ideas every week being employed that are more amazing than the previous month using the tools of AI building blocks. Even laymen like myself can easily use the new no-code apps. The UX (User Experience) is getting simpler to try and they produce high-quality outputs via fine-tuned prompting.

To date, there have been several innovative ways to use AI that have been discovered every day. Take for example the use of generative AI to create new images from the merging of the photos of 2 or more real people. Ever wondered what the kids will look like if Harry Styles and Taylor Swift started a family? Now you can! See what you had missed with ex-girlfriends LOL…

The number of AI possibilities is endless and limitless as more creative uses are discovered. Productivity will skyrocket as turnaround times are reduced, freeing up more time for greater creative activities. Even uncles like me can pick up AI skills without any need for simple coding skills, using the free tools we can discover on the web.

To show how easy it is for a non-IT layman like me to do so, I used stable diffusion to create the following image below by typing a simple sentence: “Merge Joe Biden and Putin into one person, talking in Congress”. I can then prompt ChatGPT to do the following: “Imagine you are the presidents of the USA and Russia. Write a 300 words political speech on the following topic: To offer my sincere apologies to Ukraine and China for what we have done.”

I then use another freely available AI application to combine the face photo with the ChatGPT script to create a talking video. The finished product will be of the imaginary person reading the whole speech like a normal human video with various facial expressions. The end-to-end process can be completed within 15 minutes. https://youtu.be/ZBSQZm7WrUs 

The above experiment I did was completed 2 months ago as I had described in an earlier blog. As of now, even better quality ones and short feature videos can easily be created using newer AI tools. Anything is possible and it will be getting harder to distinguish real or artificial AI-created images.

The recent US stock market rally had been mainly powered by AI tech-related companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia and Tesla. I am glad to say that I have all of them in my tech-heavy equity portfolio as I am a firm believer in AI. This emerging renaissance, like the start of the World Wide Web, means that we will have a quantum leap of humankind and move to a new and highly productive evolution very soon.

My recent blogs on AI this year:

The Advent of AI, ChatGPT and Others — Exploring the Next Frontier – Part 1 (12 Feb 2023)

The Advent of AI – Part Deux (16 Apr 2023)

Can the Advent of AI be Stopped or Slowed Down? The Short Answer is “NO” (14 May 2023)