I Thinketh! - Christmas Spring Cleaning Reflection

Christmas is not a date. It's a state of mind.

~ Mary Ellen Chase

He who has not Christmas in his heart will never find it under a tree.

~ Roy L. Smith

It's one week to Christmas and my back's killing me. I'm stiff all over. I've spent the last week cleaning and cleaning and cleaning, mainly because my family's invited for lunch on the 26th. About 5 hrs a day throwing unwanted junk out, performing the most amazing wipedown of my life and using superhuman strength to do a one-person shifting of my room - cupboards, bookcases and all. The record being working for 8 hrs straight. I'm gifted I tell ya. Not bad for a skinny fella.

As my girlfriend puts it, they should call Christmas, Cleanmas or Cookmas, as that's what we all seem to spend the majority of our days leading up to Christmas doing. It is our day of celebration after all. Of course someone else commented that we could even call Christmas, Drunkmas or Eatmas because that's what we end up doing on the day itself.

On the occassional break from my superheroic cleaning duties however, it's on to more exciting stuff called Christmas shopping. Now as you can imagine, shopping with aching knees from constant kneeling on the floor to wipe down the books and statues in my library is no easy feat. Heck! Being a guy and going Christmas shopping is no easy feat, so you can imagine the amount of superheroic strength and determination this calls for. And I still have yet to buy the presents. My strength faileth me.

As with all people with great destinies, difficulty and strife must be overcome - in order for the hero to get the girl, for Jack to get the hen that lays the golden eggs from the giant up the beanstalk, for the world to keep on turning, for Obama to get his tax cuts passed, yadayadayada. So now looking at it, my room is looking tons better. Oh it's not perfect yet and there's still a mess on my table but I've yet to figure out what I want to do with them. See how difficult life can be for us people with great destinies? We encounter one problem after another.

However as all superhero stories go, there's always an epiphanic triumphant moment and the hero become a better person because of it. I found mine this season. Whether I become a better person however, remains to be seen. But the thought that came to mind and stuck with me as I scrubbed, wiped, lifted and grunted was if we spent so much effort making our exterior look better for Christmas, why don't the majority of us spend at least a fraction of that making our interior look better too?

As someone once said to me, "in order for good things to enter, you must first throw out the bad." Or as paraphrased from a popular story, "how can anything enter when a cup is filled to the brim?"

And with that realization, I think this Christmas is going to be more meaningful this year for me. My superhero triumph and feat.

So said Charles Dickens, "I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."

With that I leave you with that popular story I read ages ago entitled "The Cup".

Wishing you and your family a meaningful Christmas and festive season,

~K

The Cup

Once there was a university professor who decided that he wanted to study zen. He travelled to a local monastery. He was shown in to the abbot’s study. The abbot was about to pour himself some tea. The professor stood before the abbot who looked up. The professor explained that he had been studying and teaching in the univeristy for many years and that now he wished to add to his knowledge and learning by studying zen.

The abbot nodded and began to our himself some tea. The professor watched as the teacup filled to the brim and, apparently failing to notice the full cup, the abbot continued to pour. The cup overflowed and still the abbot poured. The professor was reluctant to embarrass the abbot but finally said, "Master, your cup is full and overflowing. It can hold no more tea."

"Yes," said the abbot. "And how do you who come here with your cup so full expect to fill it with the teachings of zen?"

The professor nodded and smiled and bowed before the abbot.

Ascott REIT Making A Weak Leap

In my previous post entitled Two Extremes: Starhub - Falling Star, Singpost - Blasting Off!, I noted the giant movement in prices in both Starhub and Singpost.

Today, Ascott Residence Trust, a subsidiary owned by Temasek Holdings (48.1% stake), is also another stock which made a nice leap upwards, trashing its resistance at $1.23 and headed to its next resistance of $1.28 where it closed. However a closer look at the chart below shows some uncertainty to this move.

Unlike Starhub and Singpost in the previous post, Ascott's leap today did so on a rather small volume. Futhermore, you can notice the volume making lower highs. Such divergence in volume and price movement must be viewed with caution. Don't be an "ass caught" (pun intended) as prices may be sent downwards hereafter.

Does this mean that prices won't head higher? No it does not. Prices may still breech resistance. However as the volume supporting this rise is low, the rise in price may only be temporary which may result in another pull back in the short term. 

On the other hand, support seems to be strong from the collision of the 14day moving average with the 50dma at $1.22. Furthermore with prices making higher lows, prices may rise higher thereafter. But once again, volume shrinking doesn't support this. So caution.

That said, personally with uncertainty lurking, yield at 5.8% and Price to Book at a premium of 1.04, I wouldn't invest at the moment as Ascott REIT is rather unattractive at current prices. 

Not vested.

~K

Two Extremes: Starhub - Falling Star, Singpost - Blasting Off!

Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery.
~ Bertrand Russell

Despite no official announcement or news release, at least not that I could find, today saw extreme opposing movements for two stocks I'm vested in. Starhub, our second largest mobile service provider, fell drastically, while Singpost rocketed upwards.

It seems that the bulls have decided to finally turn up at Singpost leaving Starhub at the mercy of the bears.

For days now, it seemed that both Starhub and Singpost were downtrending and that there were expectations for them to go even lower (Refer to Singpost Rebounding Strong, Singpost - Downtrend to Continue?, and ASSI's Starhub, CapitaMalls Asia and CitySpring for previous discussions).

To get a more recent picture, lets turn to our charts.

Starhub

We can see clearly that Starhub is downtrending. Its two previous support of $2.60 and $2.53 which I was hoping for them to hold have been smashed through. Today's long black candle as well as the negative sentiments of all the indicators doesn't bode well for Starhub. Worse yet, ADX looks like the trend is starting to strengthen. To top this off, it has even broke through it's downtrend channel to form what looks like the beginning of an even steeper fall. Not good. Not good at all. I expect to see more selling come Monday. Next support is at $2.48 and then at $2.41 which happens to also be the 200 day moving average. It is possible that prices will hit the 200dma seeing that the correction has sent a couple of other stocks down to its 200dma, Singpost included.

Personally, I'm not selling my stake as I bought into Starhub to add to my income portfolio (not for capital gains). Also, I entered at the last correction of a price of $2.23. Plus I've collected two dividends which brings my price down to $2.13 so I think I'm pretty safe for now at least. Will be keeping an eye out for any new negative developments that may cause me to rethink holding on to this. 

However those looking to buy into Starhub for dividends, can use this selloff as a chance to get vested into a stock with a relatively high yield. Not just yet though. A word of caution, please wait for evidence of a rebound or stabilization in price before doing so. Catching a falling knife is no fun, no fun at all.

Singpost

Anyone who had followed the charts on the previous days following the start of the correction would have noticed that the prices bounced off the 200dma twice, one at $1.12 and at $1.13, forming a double bottom indicating that there was demand for the stock and likely to push prices back up. Today was that day. 

Singpost broke out of its downtrend today with an amazing leap upwards, crashing through two resistance at $1.19 and $1.20, heading straight to test the next resistance at $1.23 where it closed today. With today's high buying volume and all indicators favouring price heading higher, it most likely will break above this to test the last major resistance at $1.24. 

To anyone who bought the stock at the support prices or for the last couple of days before today's blast off, well done!

Cheers,

~K

The Happiness Index

Being happy doesn't mean everything is perfect. It means you've decided to look beyond the imperfections.

~ Unknown

In the November issue of Pioneer magazine an interesting article entitled “The Happiness Index” caught my attention. This index, specifically known as the Happy Planet Index or HPI, is used to measure, in the words direct from their official website, “the well-being of people in the nations of the world while taking into account their environmental impact”. In layman terms, the index measures the life expectancy, life satisfaction and carbon footprint of each country.

Singapore was ranked 49 out of 143 countries. So we’re slightly more than halfway to happiness it seems. However, what I found surprising was that the top 10 ranked countries were not the major developed countries. Other than Vietnam which was ranked 5^th, the rest were situated around the rather obscure Latin America region.

In order of happiness:

1. Costa Rica

2. Dominican Republic

3. Jamaica

4. Guatemala

5. Vietnam

6. Columbia

7. Cuba

8. El Savador

9. Brazil

10. Honduras

Searching around for the major cities, we find Germany and Switzerland at 51 and 52 respectively, the first two major European countries in the list. Next comes Italy at 69, followed by France at 71, UK at 74 and Japan at 75. Australia lags behind at 102. But the biggest surprise is America, ranked at 114 and last of the major countries. (You can check out the report for the complete list here.)

Now while it should be a reason to celebrate that we’re a lot happier as a nation than these other major cities, what’s obvious from the list is that our neighbours are doing much much better than we are. Check this out.

Rank             Country            HPI Score

5                   Vietnam            66.5

14                 Philippines        59

16                 Indonesia          58.9

19                 Laos                  57.3

20                China                 57.1

33                Malaysia            54

39                Burma               51.2

41                Thailand            50.9

80                Cambodia          42.3

And what did Singapore score? 48.2! 6 points short of Cambodia.

So this list is quite an eye opener to me. For starters, it does not mean the more developed your country is, the happier the citizens are going to be and therefore have a longer life. These other higher ranked countries must be doing something right to achieve this much sought after happiness. But the question is what? Perhaps it’s that they aren’t so GDP-centric. While GDP may stimulate the economy, this shouldn’t be used as the measure of the quality of life in Singapore. As the age old saying goes “money can’t buy happiness”.

Furthermore, after looking deeper into the ranking, it shocked me to realize that for a small country we live in, our carbon footprint scoring a 4.2 is tied with Germany while a country as big as India is only scoring 0.9! Obviously more needs to be done to improve this area. Conservation anyone?

Anyway, in conclusion, perhaps it’s time we aim to be happier people, to start being grateful for what we have, complain less and also more importantly, to conserve more.

Food for thought everyone. Have a good night.

Cheers,

~K