Joseph Yam: Worried About 3rd Financial Crisis Brewing

Former HKMA Chief Executive Joseph Yam, in an interview, expressed his concern that the third financial crisis may already be in the womb of time, as woes brought by previous financial crises remain unresolved. However, the US Fed and central banks worldwide continue to adopt quantitative easing and inject more funds into the economies.

Seeing huge debt, high deficit and no deposits in the United States, Yam is worried over a sharp USD downturn, rather than depreciation pressure on HKD.

Source: http://www.aastocks.com/en/stocks/news/aafn-con/NOW.1030558/popular-news

Another item to take note is the rise in Corona virus in Hong Kong which the city state has been swift in its action to close many activities but noting the potential impact to the economy again... 

Barclays to launch £5bn-plus rights issue

Getty Images

Barclays will on Tuesday launch a rights issue to raise more than £5 billion as the UK bank moves fast to come into line with British regulatory requirements on leverage, according to two people briefed on the transaction.

Antony Jenkins, who took over as Barclays' chief executive a year ago, will also unveil details to shrink the bank's balance sheet.

(Read more: Barclays to fight $453 million power fine in US court)

The moves, which echo initiatives at Deutsche Bank in recent months, will leave Barclays with a core tier one capital ratio of around 9.5 per cent under "fully-loaded" incoming Basel III rules, according to one person briefed on the plan. That ratio – which measures equity as a proportion of risk-weighted assets – brings Barclays back into line with global rivals, after a period of underperformance.

Barclays was spurred into the capital and balance sheet measures when the UK's Prudential Regulation Authority last month said it had a leverage ratio of only 2.5 per cent, after factoring in expected losses and other costs, compared with a requirement of 3 per cent.

Full Article here: CNBC

When The US Thrives, The World Prospers!

Global equity markets have sold off over the past month, on the back of fears that the Fed will begin to tighten monetary policy. What is good for the US is usually good for the rest of the world; we think investors should consider some of the attractively-valued equity markets today.

Author : Fundsupermart EQUITY MARKETS SOLD OFF ON FED TAPERING CONCERNS Global equity markets have been sold off heavily over the past month as investors worry about a potential tapering of bond purchases by the US Federal Reserve. As detailed in Top Markets 2Q 13: Taper Temper, Asia and the Global Emerging Markets have been some of the worst-hit segments as global investors withdrew capital from the region, leaving valuations of many of these markets at rather attractive levels. Curiously, investors who have been fleeing equities on fears of potential Fed tapering seem to be missing the crux of the matter – that the impending cutback in bond purchases is based on economic strength, a vote of confidence for the once beleaguered US economy. WHEN THE US THRIVES, THE WORLD PROSPERS! What is good for the economy tends to be good for stock markets (see Rising Yields: Implications for Investors), as improving economic growth boosts corporate earnings, which isthe key driver of stock market performance. Also, the sheer size and economic importance of the US economy means that any positive developments there usually results in a positive spill-over effect for the rest of the world (compare this to the often-quoted “when the US sneezes, the world catches a cold”). Continued improvement in both the housing and job market has seen US consumer confidence improve tremendously, aided also by the recovery in household net worth to a new record high on the back of rising stock and home prices. These factors have helped US consumption to remain resilient, with personal consumption expenditures (the largest component of GDP) posting 13 consecutive quarters of gains since the 2008-2009 recession. Improving US consumption is thus likely to spur various export-driven Asian and Emerging Market economies, owing to the significant proportion of exports from these countries which eventually end up in the US (the large trade deficit between the US and China is a case in point). Many economists also point to the sustained US demand for Asian exports in the aftermath of the 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis which allowed many of the troubled economies to post strong recoveries following the deep recession, highlighting the importance of US demand on the global trade environment. BUILDING TOWARDS THE NEXT PHASE OF PROSPERITY The recent stock market weakness suggests that investors appear to be ignoring the positive implications of an improving US economy, and have been overly-focused on the “risk” of a cutback in Federal Reserve quantitative easing, akin to a healthier patient worrying that the doctor has now prescribed a lower dose of medication. As a result of these unfounded concerns, the more cyclical markets of Asia and the Global Emerging Markets have been unfairly penalised in 2013, leaving valuations lower and making these markets more attractive for investors with a long term view. Improving economic momentum in the US has sown the seeds for the next phase of economic prosperity, and it is clear to us that as investor confidence improves, it will only be a matter of time before many of the undervalued equity markets see a swift valuation multiple re-pricing, which should translate to strong returns for investors.   SEE ALSO: Funds Promo: When US Thrives, The World Prospers! Source: Fundsupermart

Rising Yields: Implications For Investors

With an on-going debate on how quickly the Federal Reserve will taper its bond purchases, investors have finally begun to worry about rising bond yields. We look at some of the implications for investors.

Author : iFAST Research Team KEY POINTS: Longer-dated bond yields have spiked in recent weeks, possibly in anticipation of lowered levels of asset purchases The Fed may soon “taper” its bond buying programme for several reasons; the US economy appears to be healing, while a lower projected federal budget deficit should mean lower Treasury issuance, leaving the Fed with fewer bonds to buy Historically, rising longer-dated bond yields have had a differentiated impact on the various asset classes; stocks and high yield bonds have tended to fare better, while safer bonds and yield-sensitive assets have tended to underperform A key fundamental reason why stocks have been sold off in anticipation of higher interest rates is the rising “discount” rate; with a higher risk-free rate, investors require a better return on equity investments to compensate for the higher risk Still, investors have been fairly indiscriminate in their selling of stocks, with stock markets seeing a fairly high level of correlation; both expensive and cheap markets have been sold off Our valuation-driven approach sees us favouring markets with more-attractive valuations, which we feel should allow these markets to deliver outsized returns going forward; in theory, this “margin of safety” should minimise the effect of a rise in the risk-free rate Continue to underweight fixed income; we maintain our preference for shorter-duration lower-risk bonds while avoiding longer duration debt which carries more interest rate risk Despite the poor recent market performance, some positives can be identified; the Fed’s intention to “taper” asset purchases comes on the strength of the US economy, which should continue to be a positive for risk assets Also, the indiscriminate nature of the sell-off should allow value-focused investors to better position their portfolios in more attractively-valued markets; a normalisation of valuations in some of the more expensive markets could make them more compelling investments again Source: Fundsupermart

Is interest rates rising soon?

What will be the impact when interest rates rise? 

SINGAPORE: If you are looking to take a loan to buy some real estate or a new car, you may want to do it sooner rather than later.

That's because some analysts expect interest rates to start rising as soon as September.


Singapore's interest rates are closely tied to those in the United States.

And the Federal Reserve has made it clear that if the US economy continues its upward trend, quantitative easing will start tapering as soon as September, and the Fed could raise interest rates in 2015.

When this happens, interest rates will rise globally and Singapore is no exception, say analysts.

BNP Paribas' Wong Yii Hui said: "This will have an impact, firstly, on new home buyers and, secondly, people who are refinancing their loans...most loans in Singapore are on a 3-year fixed basis, after that people usually refinance at the three-year mark.

"At that point in time when they refinance, they will find that all of a sudden (they are) paying more in monthly instalments. And if you're highly leveraged, then that will be the point where you find that you may be under water." 

Source: Channelnewsasia

Interested in unit trusts or mutual funds?

Currently I have invested in Schroder Singapore Trust Cl A, an unit trust that invests mainly in Singapore Equities. You will probably be wondering, why buy during this period where the markets are so volatile due to so many factors like Portugal, weak China PMI, Fed easing of tapering etc.

STI has fallen from its high of close to 3,421 points to the current state of around 3,100 - 3,133 and holding pretty well against the 3,100 mark. I think that this correction of around 8% is pretty much a healthy re-adjustment and we may see a slight consolidation during this period. There are quite a number of reports that actually indicated that STI may break down and reach all the way to 2,800 but my take is the support at 3,100 is pretty strong as it bounced off a couple of times from there.

Looking at the US markets as well, it has been rebounding off the 15,000 mark, trading within range and there are signs that US as a whole is truely recovering since 2007/2008.

While I have avoided HK markets for this period of time, it seems that HK is heavily tagged to the China market which suffered a heavy beating for the past few months.

Things that are happening in the last week of March

Here's the activities for next week, courtesy of Wells Fargo.

3 Reasons Not To Ignore Global Emerging Markets

Full article here: FSM

KEY POINTS

• With the growing importance of the region, EM economies will make up nearly half the global economy over the next five years, making the region too large to ignore by investors
• EM equities also continue to have little representation in global investor portfolios and equity benchmarks
• The growth disparity between EM and developed economies is even more stark in the current environment, which should see EMs find favour amongst global investors
• Stronger economic growth should translate to superior rates of earnings growth, driving stock market returns
• While the growth prospects of EMs are invariably stronger, investors are currently not paying a premium for these positives; EMs actually trade at a discount to their developed market peers at present
• We forecast strong potential upside for EM equities, and reiterate our 5.0 star “very attractive” rating on the market

Even as the IMF and World Bank recently downgraded their forecasts for global growth in 2012 and 2013, emerging markets (EMs) remain a bright spot, with long-term structural themes of increasing urbanisation, favourable demographics and a growing middle-class expected to propel their economies forward. In this update, we look at three reasons not to ignore EM equities which are currently our favourite regional equity market with a 5.0 star “very attractive” rating.

REASON 1: TOO LARGE TO IGNORE

Even as many investors still view EM equities as a peripheral “satellite” investment, the representation of EM countries in the global economy has grown by leaps and bounds. Based on the latest forecasts of the IMF, EM economies will increase their representation in the global economy to 43% by 2017, up from 38% presently (in 2012), and significantly more than the 23.5% in 1980 (see Chart 1), a function of their quicker pace of economic expansion. Simply put,over the course of the next five years, EM economies will make up nearly half the global economy, which will make the region too large to ignore by investors.

CHART 1: INCREASING REPRESENTATION IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY

Investment Implications:

Despite their rising importance to the global economy, EM equities remain under-represented as a percentage of global equity market capitalisation, as well as within investor portfolios. As mentioned earlier, EM economies (based on the IMF classification) will make up 38% of the global economy (in nominal USD terms) in 2012. In contrast, their respective stock markets had a market capitalisation of USD10.6 trillion (as of 12 October 2012), making up just 21.1% of global stock market capitalisation.  

Are These Equity Funds The Most Actively-Managed?

While gains or losses of the broader equity markets ultimately drive returns of equity funds, the component of active management can also make a difference to an investor’s returns. The majority of funds on our platform are actively-managed funds, where the fund manager makes specific investment decisions with the aim of outperforming a benchmark (like Singapore equity funds trying to outperform the FTSE STI).

The extent to which a fund’s performance deviates from its benchmark is often referred to by the investment community as “active risk” or “tracking error”, terms which seem to carry negative connotations - this is simply a result of modern portfolio theory’s definition of the market (ie. the benchmark) having only “market risk”, so by deviating from the market, an investor is thus being exposed to additional investment risk.

While there are those who prefer to have less “active risk” in their investments, it is also logical that managers who deviate more from the benchmark can offer investors a better chance at obtaining stronger investment returns, which may appeal to some investors. In this article, we run a simplified quantitative “tracking error” screening of several popular categories of funds on the platform, highlighting some which appear to be more actively-managed, and others which have less tracking error.

METHODOLOGY

Our screening process utilised monthly returns (in SGD) for the funds compared against that of the benchmark, and calculated over 3-year and 5-year periods which ended in August 2012. The formula used was the “root mean square” of active returns (defined in our case as the difference in monthly returns, whether positive or negative), while we also used the same benchmark across each category – while this approach disregards the subtle “style” differences in benchmarks for different funds, it allows for a fairer peer-to-peer comparison. In addition, we also omitted funds which are principally invested in specific sectors, or small/mid-cap stocks.

RESULTS

Table 1: Average Tracking Error by Category
Category 5-Year Tracking Error 3-Year Tracking Error Benchmark Used US 8.5% 6.0% S&P 500 Asia Pacific ex-Japan 7.2% 4.6% MSCI AC Asia Pacific ex-Japan China 7.2% 6.0% MSCI China Asia ex-Japan 6.5% 5.8% MSCI AC Asia ex-Japan Europe 6.0% 4.7% Stoxx 600 Global 5.8% 4.6% MSCI AC World Global Emerging Markets 5.8% 5.0% MSCI Emerging Markets Japan 5.1% 4.0% Topix Singapore 4.3% 3.1% FTSE STI
Source: iFAST compilations, as of end-August 2012

Among the 9 categories of equity funds we examined, funds invested in the US, Asia, and China had some of the highest tracking error figures over a 5-year period, while Japan and Singapore equity funds had the lowest. With the exception of Asia Pacific ex-Japan equity funds, the trend was fairly consistent over 3 years as well. That US equity funds posted the highest tracking error amongst the various equity fund categories is somewhat surprising, since the US equity market is often viewed as one of the most efficient in the world, which would be an argument for US managers to take a more passive approach; our data appears to suggest otherwise. We now take a closer look at some of the categories to highlight funds which have demonstrated larger or smaller deviations vis-à-vis the benchmark, an indication of how actively managed the strategy is.

Full article here: FSM

Asia Recovery Delayed Until 2013 as Manufacturing Sags

An economic recovery in Asia will likely be delayed until 2013, the latest batch of manufacturing surveys around the region suggest, with economists warning that any rebound remains dependent on Asia’s growth engine, China, picking up momentum.

Adek Berry | AFP | Getty Images

Data on Monday showed factory activity in China remained in contractionary territory for a second consecutive month in September, while manufacturing activity in regional peers, including export-focused Taiwan, and Indonesia pointed to a slowdown.

The HSBC Taiwan purchasing managers index (PMI) fell to its lowest level in ten months in September at 45.6, while Indonesia’s PMI weakened to 50.5 last month from 51.6 in August. A PMI reading above 50 indicates expansion, while a number below 50 implies a contraction.

Separately, exports out of Indonesia fell by a higher-than-expected 24.3 percent in August from a year earlier – reflecting weakening demand out of mainland China and the West.

“There are few signs yet that stabilization has set in, with fourth quarter data likely to show a further slide in activity,” Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian economic research at HSBC told CNBC.

“This is the most challenging stretch for Asia's manufacturers since the slump caused by the Global Financial Crisis,” he added.

China - a major source of external demand for other countries in Asia - was widely forecast by economists to stage a turnaround in the second or third quarter of this year; however this has failed to materialize.

Full article here: CNBC

Just When Investors Thought Europe Was Fixed...

Investors spent most of the summer believing that central bankers would protect them from the looming European debt threat, only to find in recent days that they may be wrong.

Getty Images

Volatility has returned both on Wall Street and in the streets of Europe, where Spaniards have been protesting austerity measures, and, in doing so, sparked the realization that the sovereign debt crisis is far from over.

Stock markets around the world have been trading lower, generating some worries that Europe could put a halt to what has been an otherwise powerful 2012 rally.

"When everybody is all-in and all-long, the market is priced for perfection," says Walter Zimmerman, senior technical analyst at United-ICAP in Jersey City, N.J. "The market will only be able to tolerate good things happening. Anything that starts unfolding in the other direction, the market is going to be extremely vulnerable."

The increased nervousness has come even though European Central Bank President Mario Draghi has assured the markets that he stands at the ready to provide help to euro zone countries struggling with debt issues.

At the same time, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke recently announced a third round of quantitative easing with the goal of driving down the U.S. unemployment rate.

 

Full article here: CNBC

Take Your Portfolio To The Next Frontier

KEY POINTS

• Frontier markets offer great investment potential with their strong economic growth, low volatility, low correlation with major indices as well as a more "pure play" approach to gaining emerging market exposure
• Risks include political and regulatory risks and illiquidity risks
• Investors may gain exposure to frontier markets throught the Templeton Frontier Markets Fund

FRONTIER MARKETS: “THE NEW EMERGING EMERGING MARKETS”

Frontier markets are considered a subset of emerging markets. Compared to the majority of economies classified as “emerging markets” however, frontier markets consist of less developed, less liquid economies with companies of smaller market capitalisation. Examples of countries that are considered frontier markets include Argentina, Croatia, Romania, Kenya, Nigeria, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Sri Lanka and Vietnam.

Frontier markets are a relatively new class of investment; of the three major frontier market index providers, the earliest was only launched in May 2009 by MSCI Barra – the MSCI Frontier Markets Index. The FTSE Frontier 50 Index and the S&P Frontier BMI were launched in September 2010 and April 2011 correspondingly.

For the purpose of this article, we will compare the investment merits of frontier markets by comparing the MSCI Frontier Markets Index against its US, developed markets, and emerging markets counterparts. The indices used are the MSCI US Index, MSCI World ex-US Index and the MSCI Emerging Markets Index respectively.

Full article here: FSM 

Idea Of The Week: Gaining Access To Frontier Markets

As described in Take Your Portfolio To The Next Frontier, frontier markets offer investors the potential to reap healthy investment gains, helped by their strong projected economic growth, while also providing some portfolio diversification benefit from lower correlations with other financial markets. Nevertheless, their small market capitalisations, lower liquidity and less-developed stock markets mean that there are precious few options for investors who want exposure to this fast-growing segment within the broader global emerging markets. In this week’s “Idea of the Week” segment, we highlight several funds which offer investors exposure to the frontier markets.

TEMPLETON FRONTIER MARKETS FUND

Among the various funds on the platform, the Templeton Frontier Markets Fund offers investors the most direct exposure to the segment. The fund was launched only in October 2008, but has since impressed with its strong outperformance of its benchmark, the MSCI FM Frontier Markets index. As of 31 July 2012, the fund’s largest holdings (by country) were in Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Qatar and Vietnam, deviating significantly from the benchmark (which had almost a third in stocks from Kuwait), and coupled with the strong outperformance since inception, suggests that the manager employs a highly active (benchmark-agnostic) approach to managing the portfolio.

MENA FUNDS

The three MENA (Middle East and North Africa) funds on the platform may also be interesting for investors seeking exposure to the various frontier markets located within the region (which includes markets like Jordan, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE and Oman). Nevertheless, these three funds have had rather different fortunes in 2012 so far, owing to the disparity in their investment approaches. The Schroder ISF Middle East SGD A Acc  has delivered a rather strong 19.6% year-to-date return (as of 12 September 2012), helped by its fairly large allocation to Turkish equities – the fund held 35.1% of the portfolio in Turkey, as of 31 July 2012; the Turkish equity market has delivered a 34% return over the same period. The fund’s benchmark is 80% MSCI Arab Markets and Turkey + 20% Saudi Arabia Large/Mid Cap.

In contrast, the Amundi Oasis MENA Fund SGD and ING Inv MENA USD have delivered returns of 5.7% and 4.3% year-to-date, a function of not owning strong-performing Turkish equities (as compared to the Schroder ISF Middle East SGD A Acc). Both have allocation to Qatar and Kuwait, while the ING Inv MENA USD’s fairly large allocation to each of its top-10 holdings suggests a more high-conviction approach vis-à-vis the Amundi Oasis MENA Fund SGD.

EMERGING EUROPE, MIDDLE EAST & AFRICA EQUITY FUNDS

With Nigeria being one of the larger investable frontier markets at present, it is worth mentioning the “Emerging Europe, Middle East and Africa” equity funds on our platform. We have previously highlighted the Fidelity EmEur MidEast & Africa A USD in “Idea of the Week: 3 Recommended Funds You Haven’t Heard Of Yet [13 July 2012]”, highlighting the use of the fund alongside a Latin America equity fund for allocation to global emerging markets, to avoid over-concentration in Asia ex-Japan. As of 31 July 2012, we note that the fund held 7.3% of its assets in Nigeria (along with 1.7% in another frontier market, Kenya). Its peer, the JPM EmEu MEast & Africa SGD A Acc, held 3.6% of its assets in Nigeria, with a further 2.2% and 2.1% in Kazakhstan and Qatar respectively.

LIONGLOBAL VIETNAM FUND

Within Asia, Vietnam is one frontier market which is gradually opening up its doors to overseas investors. On the platform, the LionGlobal Vietnam SGD provides exposure to Vietnam stocks, and is benchmarked against the FTSE Vietnam Index. While the fund has generally not fared well since its inception in February 2007, the fund has still delivered outperformance against its benchmark, highlighting the positive impact of an actively-managed strategy (the fund manager has the option to invest in companies listed outside of Vietnam, but which derive part of their revenue from Vietnam and the Indo-China region). 

While the fund has the dubious honour of being one of the worst-performing funds on the platform (over a 5-year period), this may be attributed to the excessive valuations of the Vietnam equity market previously (see Chart 1). Valuations have since receded, and the market currently trades at 9.9X 2012 earnings (as of 14 September 2012), a far cry from the 30 – 40x PEs seen in 2007, suggesting that the market is a far more interesting investment proposition currently.  

CHART 1: VIETNAM EQUITY VALUATIONS

Full article here: FSM

How Many iPhones Must Apple Sell to Keep the Street Happy?

That's alot of iPhones if you ask me... 

Full article here: CNBC

David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images Apple's iPhone 5

Apple needs to sell about six million iPhone 5 units by the end of this weekend to ease investors' concern about supply constraints, said Peter Misek, Jefferies managing director and senior technology analyst, Tuesday.

"If they do anything greater than six million, it will be a huge positive," Misek said on CNBC's Squawk on the Street.

Wall Street has been concerned that there are still "significant supply constraints," that would limit Apple [AAPL  701.91    2.129  (+0.3%)   ] to only being able to produce about five to six million of the new phones before the end of the month, he added.

"So if we get a six million unit number, that will really lay a lot of those concerns," Misek said. He expects the tech giant to sell about eight million iPhone 5 units, including pre-orders, by the end of the first weekend.

Tavis McCourt, an analyst for Raymond James, also said he expects Apple to sell about 8 million iPhones during the time period leading up to the last day of Apple's fourth quarter, which is Sept. 29.

The iPhone maker announced Monday that it already had two million pre-orders for the iPhone 5 during the first 24 hours it was available online.

Apple's stock reached $700 a share for the first time in after-hours trading Monday and the stock closed at a record high of $701.91 Tuesday. But the stock could still go higher, analysts said.

Idea Of The Week: Why “Buy Low Sell High” Is So Difficult

This is a very good article talking about buy low, sell high. Many times we are driven more by our emotions than our judgement and how can we control that? 

Full article here: Fundsupermart

Emotions can hinder good decision making, especially when financial markets are turbulent

Having talked about some common investment pitfalls last week (see Idea of the Week: 3 Investment Pitfalls to Avoid [31 August 2012]), we further describe how emotions can hinder good decision making for investors, especially during periods of market turbulence.

BUY LOW, SELL HIGH

CHART 1: MUTUAL FUND FLOWS AND STOCK MARKET PERFORMANCE

Investors who follow the simple mantra of “buy low, sell high” are unlikely to fare too poorly in their investments. Nevertheless, many investors fail to adhere to this simple piece of advice, and often end up doing the opposite – selling low and buying high. As shown in Chart 1, investors have tended to do more buying when markets are high (with strong net inflows observed), while they do a lot more selling when markets tank (note the strong outflows from equity funds in 2002 and 2008). A key reason for this is that most investors tend to succumb to their emotions instead of making rational investment decisions. While investments are made on a forward-looking basis (eg. How much profits will this company earn next year, and the year after?), emotions depend very much on the status quo as investors become influenced by what they read and hear about in the news, which runs counter to logical investment decisions.

SENTIMENT AND MARKETS

CHART 2: INVESTOR SENTIMENT AND STOCK MARKET PERFORMANCE

Highlighting this high correlation between investor sentiment and stock market performance is Chart 2, which shows the “bulls minus bears” percentage of the AAII (American Association of Individual Investors) weekly survey compared against the S&P 500, a gauge of US equity market performance. A positive reading on the gauge is indicative of more bullish respondents, while a negative reading indicates that there were more bearish respondents in the survey. Historically, even as investors have generally been more bullish than bearish, they have tended to demonstrate high levels of negativity when markets were particularly weak, like in 2002 and 2008, which correlates with higher net outflows from equity funds over the same period.

AVOID THE HERD, FOCUS ON RATIONAL INVESTING

More often than not, being successful at “buy-low, sell-high” investing will require you to deviate from the crowd, and make “contrarian” investment decisions. While this can certainly be unsettling (especially when everything you read runs counter to your own investment decision), it can be an extremely rewarding experience. Articles like “Equity Markets at a Bargain, 13 Upgrades to Our Star Ratings! [29 Oct 2008]”, “The Singapore Market Is Nearing A Bottom [20 Oct 2008]” and “Panic Selling, Panic Buying? [15 Oct 2008]” which we wrote in the depths of the 2008-2009 global financial crisis to highlight the attractive nature of equity markets were received poorly by investors who were undoubtedly feeling rather bearish at the time. However, investors who took a more rational approach and considered the bombed-out valuations of global stock markets were well-rewarded in due course. By recognising that listening to your emotions when investing can be an innate weakness, you are taking an important step towards a more successful investment experience.

What's Most Impressive About the New Apple iPhone

It's finally coming ... and are we going to expect Apple to hit the $1000 mark soon? 

Full article here: CNBC

It's not the new and improved features of the iPhone 5 that got the most attention from Wall Street analysts Wednesday, but rather the mass global rollout of the new device and the speed of that availability around the world.

Source: Apple iPhone 5

By the end of the year, the phone will be available in 100 countries through 240 carriers, according to analysts. And there’s hope for an official China launch soon as well. (Read more:iPhone 5 Reactions: The Buzz on Twitter)

“In particular, the velocity at which Apple[AAPL  669.79    9.20  (+1.39%)   ] will distribute the product globally was a positive surprise to us,” said ISI Group’s Brian Marshall, in a note to clients he wrote shortly after leaving the much-anticipated introduction of the product in San Francisco.

Shares of Apple closed on their highs of the day as analyst commentary highlighting the global nature of the phone hit investors’ desks.

“Overall the iPhone 5 announcement was in-line with previews, though we think the phone is launching at more carriers and sooner than many investors expected,” wrote Peter Misek, an analyst with Jefferies. “We believe the launch schedule implies that supply constraints are not as bad as some feared.”

Apple Inc (AAPL) 669.79     9.20  (+1.39%%) NASDAQ

Customers can pre-order the phone, which is thinner and longer than its predecessors, as early as this Friday in the U.S., as well as many other countries, the company said in a release. It will be available in stores on Sept. 21. More availability in more countries will follow in coming months.

The iPhone 5 is “the largest consumer product launch in history,” said Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray. “We are raising our September iPhone estimates from 22 million to 27.2 million units given the confirmation of the iPhone 5 launch on September 21.”

Apple Cuts Chip Order to Samsung for New iPhone

Apple has reduced its orders for memory chips for its new iPhone from its main supplier and competitor Samsung Electronics, a source with direct knowledge of the matter said on Friday.

Getty Images

South Korea's Samsung is a core Apple [AAPL 680.44    4.17  (+0.62%)   ]supplier, producing micro processors, flat screens and memory chips — both dynamic random access memory (DRAM) chips and NAND memory chips — for the iPhone, iPad and iPod.

Apple has been cutting back its orders from Samsung as it seeks to diversify its memory chip supply lines, although the South Korean firm remains on the list of initial suppliers for the new iPhone, the source told Reuters. The person declined to be named because the negotiations are confidential.

The Korea Economic Daily, citing an unnamed industry source, reported on Friday that Apple had dropped Samsung from the list of memory chip suppliers for the first batch of the new iPhone, the iPhone 5, which is widely expected to be unveiled next Wednesday. The report said Apple instead picked Japan'sToshiba, Elpida Memory and Korea's SK Hynix to supply DRAM and NAND chips.

Full article here: Apple Cuts Chip Order to Samsung for New iPhone

When we were young..

One of the most popular board games that we have played during our childhood is Monopoly, where it teaches you that building hotels will give you the best returns when someone goes in. Just that we didn't really appreciate it much until later stages in our lives.. 

Full article here: As Singapore Reinvents Itself, Hoteliers Reap Windfall

Even as Singapore’s trade-dependent economy faces risks in the wake of a global slowdown, one sector in this Southeast Asian island state stays upbeat.

Roslan Rahman | AFP | Getty Images Marina Bay Sands

In this year’s Forbes rich list for Singapore released in July, 10 of the 40 wealthiest individuals were either hoteliers or property tycoons with a growing stake in the hospitality business – an indicator of the robustness of the industry.

The owner of budget chain, Hotel 81, Choo Chong Ngen made his debut on the list at No. 25 with a net worth of $690 million. Snapping at his heels at spot 26 was another newcomer Michael Kum with a net worth of $670 million. His M&L Hospitality Trust has many hotels in its portfolio.

The largest listing in the city state’s otherwise lackluster market for new issuances was also from the hospitality sector, with Ascendas Hospitality Trust raising $600 million in July.

The hotel industry has had a great year so far with total room revenues over the first half hitting $1.1 billion, according to the Singapore Tourism Board, a jump of 6.6 percent year on year.