What is Power?

Power is acknowledging our weaknesses and accepting our limitations as loving reminders to enter into Christ's strength.

"... For the joy of the Lord is your strength."
(Nehemiah 8:10)

"...[God's] strength is made perfect in weakness..."
(2 Cor 12:9)

太美丽 by David 陶喆

To the only woman that I ever know, love and die for...here's my heart :)

歌曲：太美丽
歌手：陶喆
专辑：太美丽

每一滴眼泪
每一次心碎
什么爱能无疚无悔
不灰心等待
痛苦也忍耐
你坚持爱了就不后退
我知道我不是一个轻易就会说爱的人
没有想到这样的你却改变我

太美丽
太美丽
你的爱是多么的甜蜜
太美丽
爱让我也美丽
现在我不再怀疑
不怀疑有多爱你

每一个脚印
每一朵乌云
说着我的飘忽不定
伤你伤好深
别人早就要放弃
为何你还是会给我宽容
我知道我不是一个轻易就会说爱的人
可是你坚强的付出却改变我

太美丽
太美丽
你的爱是多么的甜蜜
太美丽
爱让我也美丽
现在你也不必再去怀疑

当你在风雨的未知里走过
当我在迷失的自我的漩涡
交汇在黑暗中你我发出了新的光芒
现在我已全明白
什么是爱的真义

太美丽
太美丽
你的爱让生命太甜蜜
太美丽
只有对你感激
越过表面我看见你
美丽的心

你最美丽
你太美丽

Character vs Reputation

Character is like a tree and reputation like its shadow.
The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.

Unknown Author

JP Morgan Buy Bear Sterns Cheap!!!

JP Morgan Chase & Co announced they are buying The Bear Sterns Companies. Guess what? They got it cheap, just over US$240 million!!!

The price per share? US$2! From a high of US$171!!!

The end result? The majority of BSC employees will not only be out of a job, their investments in BSC are nearly worthless, a severe blow to their net worth. In fact, any Bear Sterns investors will take a substantial loss. One major BSC shareholders reportedly had a paper loss of about US$800 million!

JPM takes on some seriously risky debt, but the reward could be substantial. Why did I say so? According to sources from my late night CNBC, BSC is currently worth US$7.7 billion, if you break up its individual department and sell it piecemeal to the market.

Did JPM get a good deal, or are they digging themselves into a deeper hole? One thing I am certain, there will be lawsuits and protests from market players and investors. BSC stock activists are already taking a stand against this buyout.

To some, this is purely a company bailout; to the US government and the Fed, it is a system bailout. They need to show that a strong bank is willing to back up a failing branch, and in turn the Government is willing to back up that strong bank.

More later. Tread safely.

Market Overreaction

What is overreaction? Simply, it is a market hypothesis stating that investors and traders react disproportionately to new information about a given security. This will cause the security's price to change dramatically, so that the price will not fully reflect the security's true value immediately following the event.

Now, typically, the price swing from overreaction is not long lasting, as the stock price will tend to return back to its true value over time. The overreaction hypothesis is not consistent with the efficient market hypothesis.

For example, suppose that company XYZ releases its annual operating results, which beat analyst expectations by a mere penny per share, which is generally not a big deal. However,
given the news, traders and investors subsequently bid the stock up to unprecedented highs. After a couple of days of trading, the stock then falls down to a price just above its price before the earnings release, which represents the stock's current intrinsic value.

Hence, don't overreact.

House "Poor": Asset Rich, Cash Poor

What actually is house "poor"? In singapore, I call these people asset rich, cash poor people. Let me explain. House poor is a situation that describes a person who spends a large proportion of his or her total income on home ownership, including mortgage payments, property taxes, maintenance and utilities. House poor individuals are short of cash for discretionary items and tend to have trouble meeting other financial obligations like vehicle payments.

People typically become house poor because they buy more house than they can afford, but there are other ways that people can become house poor as well. For example, some people will become house poor after the birth of a child, when one spouse decides to stay at home with the new addition, rather than going back to work.

I have coined another term called Car "poor". These individuals own expensive and branded cars but stay in a small, public housing unit. Why these people choose to be car poor? The reason is simple: People usually do not follow you home to see where you stay. But they do get to see you on and off the road daily. So, rather than putting your wealth in hard solid ground, they prefer to show off their wealth through...right, their rides.

There is simply a high correlation between the car you drive and the type of house you live in. Hence, if you drive a BMW, you must be rich and possibly staying in a big private house. This assumption is faulty but, well, that's what shallow people think. At the end of the day, you are the best person to access who are the real wealthy ones and who are the fakes.

How To Use ETFs In Your Portfolio

To recap: ETFs are an investing innovation that combines the best features of index mutual funds with the trading flexibility of individual securities. ETFs offer diversification, low expense ratios and tax efficiency in a flexible investment that can be adapted to suit a multitude of objectives. To reap the true benefit of investing in ETFs you need to use them strategically.

At the most basic level, ETFs can be used as part of both long-term and short-term investment strategies. Their low expense ratios and high trading flexibility make them attractive alternatives to traditional mutual funds.

Index Investing
From a strategic standpoint, the first and most obvious use of ETFs is as a tool to invest in broad-market indexes. On the equity side, there are ETFs that mirror the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100, the Dow Industrials and just about every other major market index. On the fixed-income front, there are ETFs that track a variety of long-term and short-term bond indexes including the Lehman 1-to-3 Year Treasury, the Lehman 20-Year Treasury and the Lehman Aggregate Bond Index.

Using ETFs to cover the major market sectors, you can quickly and easily assemble a low-cost, broadly diversified index portfolio. With just two or three ETFs, you can create a portfolio that covers nearly the entire equity market and a large portion of the fixed-income market. Once the trades are complete, you can simply stick to a buy-and-hold strategy as you would with any other index product, and your portfolio will move in tandem with its benchmark.

Actively Managing a Longer-Term Portfolio
In a similar fashion, you can create a broadly diversified portfolio but choose a more active-management strategy instead of simply buying and holding to track the major indexes (which is passive management). While the ETFs themselves are index funds (meaning there is no active management on the part of the money manager overseeing the portfolio), this doesn't stop investors from actively managing their holdings. For example, say you believe that short-term bonds are set for a meteoric rise; you could sell your position(s) in the broader bond market and instead buy an ETF that specializes in short-term issues. (You could do the same for your expectations for equities.)

Of course, the major market indexes represent only a portion of the many investment opportunities that ETFs provide. If your core portfolio is already in place, you can augment your core holdings with more specialized ETFs, which provide entry into a wide array of small-cap, sector, commodity, international, emerging-market and other investing opportunities. There are ETFs that track indexes in just about every area, including biotechnology, healthcare, REITs, gold, Japan, Spain and more. By adding small positions in these niche holdings to your asset allocation, you add a more aggressive supplement to your portfolio. Once again, you can buy and hold to create a long-term portfolio, but you can use more active trading techniques too. For example, if you think REITS are poised to take a tumble and gold is set to rise, you can trade out of your REIT position and into gold in a matter of moments at any time during the trading day.

Active Trading
If actively managing a long-term portfolio isn't spicy enough for your tastes, ETFs may still be the right flavor for your palette. While long-term investors might eschew active- and day-trading strategies, ETFs are the perfect vehicle if you are looking for a way to move frequently into and out of an entire market or a particular market niche. Since ETFs trade intraday, like stocks or bonds, they can be bought and sold rapidly in response to market movements, and unlike many mutual funds, ETFs impose no penalties when you sell them without holding them for a set period of time.

While it is true that you must pay a commission each time you trade ETFs, if you are aware of this cost and the dollar value of your trade is high enough, the commission cost is nominal. Consider, for example, a $10 commission on a $10,000 trade. At .1%, the cost is hardly worth mentioning. Also, since they trade intraday, ETFs can be bought long or sold short, used in hedge strategies and bought on margin. If you can think of a strategy that can be implemented with a stock or bond, that strategy can be applied with an ETF - but instead of trading the stock or bond issued by a single company, you are trading an entire market or market segment.

Wrap Investing
For investors who prefer fee-based investments as opposed to commission-based trading, ETFs are also part of various wrap programs. While ETF wrap products are still in their infancy in Singapore, it's a safe bet that more are coming soon.

Conclusion
Overall, ETFs are convenient, cost efficient, tax efficient and flexible. They are easy to understand and easy to use, and they are gaining in popularity at such a rapid pace that some experts anticipate that they will one day surpass the popularity of mutual funds. If ETFs haven't found a place in your portfolio yet, there is a pretty good chance that they will in the future.