14th Dec 2007

The market seems to be hit quite badly these few days, especially in HSI and nikkei. In STI, most of the stocks are suffering the after-effects of the fed rate cut and heavy selling for the past 2 days. My holdings for Celestial has eroded and now in a negative paper loss, but I won't be clearing it out, since I missed the chance to clear out at the 10% mark. The 2nd reason is that I have much more confidence in this counter than the rest of my holdings in terms of the company, business etc. My next move is to wait for another chance to enter Celestial once it starts consolidating again. The resistance level at this point is at $1.06, which concides with the previous low during the August fall, and the next one is at $1.01. Also, I found out that there is one call warrant for Celestial which is due in March 2008, with the strike price of $1.80. I will post my thoughts on this later.

In fact, most of my watchlists are way below its trading value and I have cleared both my IPO positions of KTL and Soon Lian. As I mentioned earlier, the interest in Soon Lian wasn't that great, thus when it was opened yesterday, trading was only between $0.215 - $0.230. I cleared my position at $0.220 and today, there was no volume to speak of for it.

As for KTL, the company deals with offshore marine and drilling industries, and provide them with the equipments generally. This counter was more interesting than Soon Lian, and when it opened today, it went to a high of $0.360 and trading between $0.320 - $0.340. I cleared my position at $0.335 and probably see how the general market sentiment goes to determine whether it is worthwhile to enter this company again.

YEN/USD currently at 112.38-112.40 + 0.86, which is still below par, but better than last month. Oil prices has retracted back slightly to $92.25, but it is still quite overpriced, as it rosed due to the fed cut news a few days ago and trading at this price, we might see oil prices hitting $100 again.

Next, this is one quite useful information I got from the forums, which talks about the LIBOR rate with some direct impact from the fed rate cuts. This is the explaination of what is the LIBOR rate from bankrate.com:

LIBOR stands for London Interbank Offered Rate. It's the rate of interest at which banks offer to lend money to one another in the wholesale money markets in London. It is a standard financial index used in U.S. capital markets and can be found in the Wall Street Journal. In general, its changes have been smaller than changes in the prime rate.
How it's used: It's an index that is used to set the cost of various variable-rate loans. Lenders use such an index, which varies, to adjust interest rates as economic conditions change. They then add a certain number of percentage points called a margin, which doesn't vary, to the index to establish the interest rate you must pay. When this index goes up, interest rates on any loans tied to it also go up. Although it is increasingly used for consumer loans, it has traditionally been a reference figure for corporate financial transactions.

I will find out more on this, and this can be another indicator of the general market too.

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