Who Moved My Singapore Cheese

Check out this dude, Sylvain Raynes, attacking crazy-money Cramer on CNBC. Erin Burnett did her best to defend her colleague...and ex-Goldman Sachs colleague..well actually, all three of them, Erin Burnett, Sylvain Raynes and Jim I-didn't-take-money-from-Goldman Cramer are all alumni of Goldman Sachs.



Both Erin Burnett and Jim Cramer are Goldman Sachs alumni. According to her wikipedia entry Burnett began her career in 1998 as a financial analyst for Goldman Sachs in their investment banking division, where she worked on mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance. Cramer obtain employment in 1984 as a stock broker in Goldman Sachs’ Private Wealth Management division, according to his wikipedia page.

Sylvain Raynes is a founding principal of R&R Consulting, a structured credit metrics consultancy founded in 2000. He co-authored “The Analysis of Structured Securities: Precise Risk Measurement and Capital Allocation” with Ann Rutledge, the other R in R&R Consulting. Their second book“Elements of Structured Finance” is scheduled for release in May 2010. He is also a Goldman Sachs alumni.

Exchange: SGX
Counter: Capitaland
Current Bid/Ask: 3.69/3.70

As discussed in the last entry, Capitaland is still undergoing the retracement swing...looking at the chart above, you can see the strong resemblance in the technicals in the current period and the 15April - 29April period (marked by vertical lines).

The Declining Price on Declining Volume tells the biggest tale here. Until we see a pick up in volume, which means more and more people are willing to pick up the counter at the lower market price, we should not be seeing this counter make any significant daily gains. The RSI and the MACD are, as we know, slightly lagging indicators. They serve to guide us as confirmations and it is perfectly fine to enter 1 day into the upswing, as we aim to ride on the "body" of the upswing, not time the entry by looking for the bottom.

Today's volume as of now (not shown in daily chart above), 35 minutes into market opening, suggests a high volume (at least double) trading day. So the upswing should not be too far away.

Exchange: SGX
Counter: Capitaland
Current Bid Ask: 3.78 / 3.79

The recent stock market recovery has most counters moving in an upward channel as shown in the daily chart above for Capitaland, one of the more liquid and volatile member of the Straits Times Index...I have been eyeing this counter for a while and this entry will mark the first of a (hopefully useful) technical analysis series...

One important note: for most of us retail players, we do not have the facility to go into naked short selling, forcing us to cover our shorts within the day, which is no good for strategies of any kind (unless you are into CFDs - but I do not have direct experience with it at the moment to validate some of the criticisms I have heard about them). Hence, we will be only looking to maximize our probability of a profitable buy-in opportunity and look out for exits or selling signals.

Since March the upward trend has been established. Preceding the 2 upward swings as indicated by the blue upwards arrows, we have had rising volume on declining prices, RSI heading north, MACD undercutting the signal.

Today, we are at the exact opposite of that, the MACD is looking to cross the signal from above, the RSI is heading south from the 70% mark, which are exact replicas of the last 2 down swings. The steady volume suggests that this retracement has legs.
As such, I will wait for the signs to turn before looking to buy into the next swing.

http://business.smh.com.au/business/lumbered-with-the-bosss-wife-20090729-e1oc.html?page=-1

People are speculating in online forums if they will get sued for publishing this already... interestingly the writer is based in Singapore

Note the Value-at-Risk portion...I really hope she will come out and address how come their VAR model is using a 16% tail and not 1% - 5% as per usual practice.


http://ftalphaville.ft.com/blog/2009/07/29/64376/when-is-an-swf-not-an-swf/

Joke No. 1

Ho Ching has done it again! Read this article from Straits Times. It's just one shocking revelation after another.

Ho Ching's ability to lead Temasek is proving to be rather questionable. She does not have even the basic knowledge of risk management to lead Temasek. And she totally exposed this today by saying :

In our Temasek Review last year, we reported an annual value-at-risk of almost $40 billion last March. This meant a 16 per cent probability for our portfolio value to drop more than $40 billion by March this year. Indeed, it has turned out to be so, and more,' said Ms Ho in her speech.

Not a risk person myself, I still sensed something was wrong. So I checked with a professional risk manager friend of mine, and he rubbished her statement. He said she probably got fed the info from her kakia that they operate with a 16%, 40billion VAR, which is traditionally a 99% Confidence Interval, or thereabouts, meaning in the tail event of 1% chance, which did happen this time, they would lose 40 billion, unless Temasek operates on a 84% Confidence Interval VAR, which is actually scarier than the prospect that Ho Ching does not know her risk management ABCs. Anyway, keep a lookout for my friend's professional analysis of her statement on his blog sgpirategame.

Joke No.2

To top off a good publicity day for Temasek, they also announced today that they "may allow" retail investors to co-invest. Read article here. Hahahaha. Another friend of mine, a hedge fund trader, told me he would "farkin liquidate everything if he could", and that "this must be the joke of the century".

But if we think about it, well the joke is on us, because we the citizens are in effect the unwilling investors by having our CPF funds invested in Temasek's bonds at 2.5%, which is kinda ridiculously low for a corporate bond that is obviously nowhere near low risk, one with an undiversified porfolio like theirs does not get to pay only 2.5% for their bonds in the free market.

This video interview with Bernard Madoff in 2007 is really interesting because in hindsight, we can fully realize that a man who...

1) is dressed in a suit
2) is recognizably rich, hence successful (?)
3) gives talks on TV in an authoritative manner

...can be wrong, can be a cheat, and can be lying for his own benefit.

'It's impossible for fraud to be committed in the current regulatory environment....... at least for any length of time'. Bernie, 2007