Paying $36m for bungalow in Sentosa Cove

This is touted as the most expensive purchase of a private property here. It is still not in the region of $500m like the Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley estates. But theirs are not 15,000 or 20,000 sq ft but measured in acres. This Sentosa Cove property is still very expensive as it is on a 99 year lease and not freehold. A Chinese national bought this. And it was reported that 4 members of a Chinese family bought a unit each at prices of $15.9m to $26m. The expression of 'What is $10m?' becomes very real. There are several thousand billionaires in China and many tens of thousands of millionaires with net worth in the hundreds of millions. And if a sizeable number of them think of parking some of their wealth here, they could have bought up everything in Sentosa Cove. And we are not counting the rich Indians, Indonesians, Malaysians and all over the world who just have too much money and need to park them somewhere. How many more luxury properties can we built to sell to the super rich before we run out of space? The question is why are we selling our precious land and space so happily? Who is benefitting from the transactions and where are the money going to? We have great and meticulous planning in public housing. We will house our people in better and better public housing at affordable prices. One thing for sure, public housing will remain public housing and the quality will be as good as the public can afford them. In the private sector, the quality will also be as good as the buyers who can afford them. And with an abundance of super rich where money is not an issue, whatever the developers built there will be takers. Eventually we could be developing foreign enclaves of super rich in some select corners akin to the foreign concessions in China during the colonial days. The difference is that we did it voluntarily while the Chinese were coerced into parting with their prime estates. Is this what we want? Is this the future demography of Singapore? Or would we want to plan for the Singaporeans to occupy the prime estates at an affordable price by tweaking some planning policies? We have restrictions in landed properties, but this ruling is bypass very often with exceptions. And the landed properties in Sentosa is also an exception. When the British were here, the prime lands were mostly in their hands. They were the colonial masters and looking after their own interests. Today we are charting the course of our own future and the places for our future generations. Where are we going in terms of housing and estate planning? Johore or Batam or Bintang for our own citizens?

Step aside Warren Buffett

The game of stock investment is no longer the same game Buffett knew in the past. Then it was just picking stocks on fundamentals, buy and sit on them and in the long run, well managed companies with growth stories will run up the ladder, paying dividends and higher stock prices. The formula was simple and logical. Buy only good companies. Today stock investment is a new ball game. Calling it investment is a misnomer. It is no investment but pure speculation or gambling. The nature of the game has changed completely. Stocks are being substituted with derivatives, options, covered warrants, ETFs etc that interests in the actual stocks have diminished. Money is placed on all the other instruments rather than the stocks. Companies hardly offered the conventional warrants which have died a natural death. And if the trend goes, stocks too will die a natural death when trading is on derivative instruments. Then there are the big money that are used to ramp stocks up and down at the slightest news or excuses. Either way, the big money will make more money. The conventional investors sitting on their golden stocks will see them battered down one day or up the next, sometimes with little correlations to the worthiness of the stocks and their businesses. With high powered and high speed machines and marginal commission to pay, the big money would take full advantage of their unfair advantages to push the market and stocks anyway they want and cleaning the investors of their long term investments. Investing for the long term, being paid dividends, bonus shares, waiting for prices to grow steadily are bad premises that no longer hold water in stock investment. It is hit and run, going with the tide, or the market makers, provided the investors guess it right and hitch a ride. Investing stocks for the long haul is likely to be a big roller coaster ride with many shocking moments, and may not see the stocks appreciating in price over time. It is all about selling and buying papers ie derivatives with some having zero intrinsic values.

We are dead serious for Olympic Gold

A training base for our Olympians will be set up in England, two years before the Olympic Games in 2012. We will be able to train and acclimatise our sportsmen and women to make sure that they stand a good chance to win a medal for our country. I must say that with the effort, resources and seriousness we put into acquiring sporting golds, we are getting nearer to our pot of gold. To be more serious, we need to really scout around the world for gold potentials, bring them home quickly and turn them into citizens to qualify for the Olympics.

China must accept the verdict

US Admiral Mike Mullen rapped China for not falling in line with the US to take tough actions against North Korea for the sinking of Cheonan. The US is fuming mad that the Chinese refused to tow the line after a 'multinational' probe into the sinking which conveniently left out the Chinese, the Russians and the North Koreans. And many already believed in the truth from this 'multinational' investigation team of birds of the same feathers. The impartiality of the team, without the Chinese and the Russians and also the North Koreans, was never in doubt among the international gangsters. And they are demanding that China must accept their cooked verdict. Why should China be made to believe in something which is shrouded with slime and fakery? If the Americans sincerely wanted the Chinese and Russians to play ball with them, they should, from the start, involved the Chinese and Russians in the investigation. A simple question, 'Why were the Chinese and Russians left out of the investigation team?' Bloody gangsters!

$760 million evaporating into thin air

A report by Gabriel Chen today in the ST says that GIC may stand to lose $760m in the gushing oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. GIC was noted to have 200.4m shares of BP worth around US$1.68 billion. With the fast crashing price of BP shares, and if the shares have yet been sold down, GIC could lose up to $760 m, and all, if BP go bust under a series of expensive lawsuits coming from the US. We cannot blame GIC for the loss of this investment. Neither can we blame them for many of the losses as the causes were not due to lack of due diligence. They were proper investment decisions made after thorough research before plonking down the money. The exceptions were those decisions made over a few days when white gods descended from heaven to ask for tithes. Act of god or fate, or just plain unlucky can happen to many investors. Sometimes the bad luck comes in a string. Everything touched turns into waste paper. The contrary can also happen when everything touched turns to gold, giving the monkey a chance to claim credits. We can only hope that this is not the beginning of a string of bad luck and bad investments. If it is, nothing can help and no experts and super talents can do anything about it. At times one must believe in fatalism. The worst case can mean a wipe out of the bulk of our foreign investments, if god willing. Better go and pray for more blessing and abundance.