The myth of contra trading

Contra trading is the field where small retail players play and try to make money in a quickie. The truth is far from it. With a daily trading volume of 2b to 5b shares traded, how many of these could be attributed to small retail traders? Given the absence of phone calls and the pittance that remisiers are getting as commission, (some are earning less than a cleaner), contra trading by small retail traders cannot be more than 5% of the daily volume.
 
This leaves 95% of the trades to be accounted for. House traders and day traders could at most contribute to 10 or 20% of the total trade. I would like to clarify that the numbers are ballpark figures, guesstimates. Only the SGX would know the truth. Who contributed to the 65-70% of daily trades? And are these trades contra or long term? My bet is that they are contra trades by the algo traders trading with their computers. And they are trading in and out daily, yes they are big contra traders.
 
The small retail traders hardly contribute much to the daily trading volumes. Killing contra trading would kill the small retail traders for sure, but most of all will also kill those big contra players trading with their machines. High Frequency trading is also contra trading. Without contra trading and a daily value of around $1b in trades, who would have the money to pick up these trades daily if not contra? Maybe the big players have the cash to do so, buying and paying several hundred millions daily for their trades.
 
The most important point raised by Goh Eng Yeow in his article today in the ST is this. ‘It is time the SGX planned for better system rather than spend money on purchasing faster engines. In the information technology trade, there is a saying: if the system is bad, a faster machine will only accentuate this fault.’ Goh Eng Yeow did not elaborate on what is bad in the system and how the system has to be changed to be better. Does he know something but politely refuse to say it out loud?

A Third World Singapore emerging

A Third World Singapore is emerging after so many years of hard work. We worked so hard, day and night, to achieve this dreadful state of being. From the top to the bottom, we fear foreigners, not only of the colonial master type but also from the Third World. And we are begging for more to come and so afraid that they will leave.

They threatened our govt that they would pull out their businesses to other better places. And you could see their faces turning green and the legs went limp. Please don’t go, we need you to help us, we need your businesses.

And the foreigners knew that the Third World native citizens are good for nothing. So they brought in their talents, fathers, mothers, grandfathers and grandmothers to show the daft citizens how good they are. They brought in their friends, fixed up jobs for their friends, the whole villages, from New York to Manila, to replace the daft here.

And when they are unhappy with the daft citizens, you know what they will do. No prize for guessing. And we are so afraid to punish them, fearing that they will go back home, desert us and leave us in the lurch. We will bend our rules and backs to accommodate them.

And when they discriminate against the daft citizens, everyone turn the other way or the other cheek. Dunno leh, no one told me. Our ministers have to beg them to be nice to the daft citizens. Can you beat that? And what happened? They put up more advertisements to recruit more foreigners. What can you do about it, daftees? You need us, the foreign talents, the best from the whole Third World. You are at the bottom of the Third World league when your graduates are only good to be taxi drivers.

These foreign talents are so good that they could anyhow pick a piece of paper, print their names on it, and that would be good enough to be employed in this neo Third World City of no talents. And no one is good enough here to figure out if the certificates are real or forged.

Did this Third World City boast of world class universities? Yes, the universities are world class by virtue of the presence of world class Foreign Talent lecturers and world class foreign students. The locals are the daft admitted to rub off some goodness from the foreign lecturers and foreign students. The world class universities would soon be staffed by foreign talents as the daft local talents would not be good enough and not enough to fill the places. And who is paying for their exorbitant salaries and perks? The daft of course.

As each day passes, the locals get less confident of themselves, more fearful, dare not talk back or fight back, and resigned to third class status, or waiting to emigrate to be second class citizens elsewhere, which is a big improvement than be third class citizens in a Third World City. The presence of ‘talented’ foreigners may also make the locals feel inept, inadequate and useless, can’t find employment and can only hope to be self employed as taxi drivers and hawkers. These must be their life aspirations, and to buy a 3 or 4 rm BTO flats and feel like a millionaire, and take public transport everywhere.

 

Record questions to be asked in Parliament

117 questions will be asked in Parliament on Monday. 31 of these will be asked by opposition MPs and NCMPs. This is 26% of all questions asked by 10% of the MPs. Look at it from another perspective, 90% of the ruling MPs will ask 74% of the questions. Is this material?

Should the people be saying, wow, so many questions asked in Parliament, the MPs are working very hard and making the ministers to work very hard as well? The same kind of question can be asked, we have so many ministers, second ministers, ministers of states, senior and junior, Parliamentary Secretaries and mayors! Whew, how many mayors did we have? Best govt in numbers. Would it be better to have best govt in quality and fewer in numbers?

In number terms, we must be very well run with so many pairs of hands working and so many talents worth their pay in charge. So why have so many questions asked? Either we have too many things that need questioning because things are not right and proper, or there is a competition and a prize for the most questions asked.

We also have so many foreigners here, so they must be contributing a great deal to the economy, or they are taking a great deal from the economy or causing a lot of problems to the country and people.

Is it a case of the more the merrier, more means good, or there is something called quality. A ton of shit would not worth more than a kg of gold surely. Don’t get me wrong, I did not know what they are asking and whether these are serious or very important questions or issues to be raised. I am just saying that numbers do not necessary mean quality stuff, but can be quality stuff. 10 good quality questions can make a lot of difference. I will make an effort to watch the news and read the papers to note the 117 questions to be asked on Monday. I hope every concerned citizen too will be watching too. We know that there are many big issues and some very serious that are affecting the people. Would these be raised in the 117 questions? It would be a big disappointment if none is raised in the barrage of questions tabled.

In case those questions you think are important are not asked, do not be annoyed. Please remember that what is important to you may not be important to them and vice versa. No need to pull your hair or stomp your feet. This is the reality of politics.

Merkel called Obama

 What could the conversation be like when Merkel was so furious over the tapping of her phone by the Americans?

‘My little nigger darling…(giggle)’

‘I like that. I always have this strange sensation and good feeling when you called me that.’

‘Sure you like that? Or you like me to call you something more passionate?’

‘My darling fraulein, I always enjoy our conversation, just between the two of us. Muaark.’

‘Muaark to you too. Now I am supposed to be angry, to yell at you.’

‘Ya I know that, and I like it.’

‘Ok nigger, is your phone tap as well?’

‘Hahahaha, dare the white boys do something like that to me.’

‘Isn’t it the same… that they are tapping mine, and whatever sweet nothing we said would be heard?’

‘Not to worry dear. They will show it to me later and I will tell them, delete, especially the nigger part. Muaark.’

‘You don’t be too sure. That Snowden boy could have a copy.’

‘That is another thing you need not worry about. He is with us. We are planting him in Russia.’

‘Now that’s very cunning of you. No wonder Oliver Stone called you a snake, a black one, very dangerous too.’

‘Oh oh, someone is listening, not one of our boys.’

‘Then must be pommie boys.’

‘Ok let’s cut it off for now. We will arrange for a rendevous again. Or shall I invite you to my ranch?

‘You decide dear. I am yours. Bye nigger boy. Muaark.’

Singapore should say thank you to The Messiah

Yes, he has threatened the govt. But look at it from another angle, his threat so far was just being naughty. The good thing is that it has exposed the vulnerability of our IT network in the whole island. We are so wired, and so helpless to an attack. The success of The Messiah and his anonymous hackers is proof that we have a lot of holes that need patching. A dangerous hackers out to create mischief and to bring down our system could have done so quite easily. We could have had it.

There is also a big danger of playing with numbers especially those in the CPF and the banks’ accounts. The permutation as to what havoc can be caused by entering a system is unimaginable. Names changed or jumbled up, addresses changed, the time needed to debug and to correct all the errors is horrendous.

The other big hole that is being exposed is the high reliance on foreigners to run a large part of our IT systems, both private and public. This is like hiring mercenaries to be our soldiers to guard our country’s national security. With such a pervasive presence of foreigners in charge, in control of our IT systems, all it needs is a small percentage of the foreign legion IT technicians to say yes to a potential trouble maker, and we had it. Unless we are willing to pay them like our politicians, to keep them from corruption or free from bribery and other temptations.

And money is not the only thing that could bend a small group of people to turn against the companies or organisations or our country. In the uniformed services, the key personnel are all security vetted and cleared. Are these IT technicians likewise vetted and cleared? This is not a new development and the dangers have been there for too long. We are lucky that nothing serious happened, or already happened without our knowledge. How many or our sensitive data have been downloaded and carted away while we were sleeping? Do we still dare to fill our uniformed personnel with foreigners like PRs and new citizens?

The threat posed by The Messiah is a rude awakening. We cannot behave like business as usual and a major shake up and upgrading of the industry, hardware and software, and the armies of foreign technicians need to be reviewed. The Trojan Horse is peanut compared to what we have invited into our country and system.

The Messiah came with a wake up call to test our system and cause some red faces at most. Time to move the butts and wipe that silly smile off the face. It is not a laughing matter. The Messiah has shown how naked we are.