Why Gold will Rally

This article is extracted from BullionStar, a Singapore gold and silver bullion company where you can buy gold and silver at competitive prices.

The collapse in gold price from a high of USD$ 1,900 per ounce in August 2011 down to USD$ 1,340 has led many investors to wonder whether gold will continue its downward spiral.

One of the most powerful price indicators is the net positions by professionals who hedge gold. These hedgers are not those speculators or traders in the commodity market, but rather, most of them are legitimate hedgers who are owners of mining companies. They use options and futures contracts to hedge their position, to ensure a positive fiat-margin on the mining.

Bullion
If they don’t hedge, it is usually an indication that the market will turn bullish because these hedgers hope to profit from a rise in the price of the commodity. Conversely, if there is an increase in the net short position, it would be an indicator of a bear market looming.

Currently, the hedgers are the least net short in a dozen of years. This means that they have not been so bullish on gold since it was priced at USD$ 300 per troy ounce. 
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Build a New Investing Brain

Since young, I always thought that there must be a scientific approach towards investing. I don’t believe that intelligence play a part when it comes to investing because I have seen many smart professionals lost their hard earned money in the stock markets. I have also seen not-so-educated friends making huge piles of money from their investments. So the perennial question: is investing a form of art or science?
While we cannot change the external environment, we can certainly control our own thoughts and actions. Many people mistakenly thought that the market is our greatest enemy. Actually they are wrong. The greatest enemy is yourself. Your decisions, thought processes, actions and personal experiences shape your investment destiny. To truly succeed in investing, we must know our own self and do self-assessments. Otherwise, it will be very hard to change the way you think in order to change the way you invest.
 Wealth

As an investment advisor to high net worth individuals, Wai-Yee Chen has spent years watching her clients make investment decisions—some good decisions and some not-so-good decisions. Though confronted by the same market variables, those clients often make very different choices with very different results. Here, Chen argues that it’s usually not the data that affects investor decision-making as much as the way investors themselves think.

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BullionStar Singapore: Strong Buy Signal on Gold

This article is extracted from BullionStar, a Singapore online bullion company where you can buy gold and silver at competitive prices.

Crisis? What crisis? One could be forgiven for thinking that the plunge in gold price during the second quarter of 2013 could spell the end of one of the longest bull-run for the world’s gold markets. But apparently this was not the really the case, at least not for physical gold. According to the May 2013 press release from The World Gold Council (WGC), demand for bullions and jewellery, which makes up of 72% of global demand, has seen a surge following the mid-April price fall. This has left many retailers in China and India running out of stocks and refineries having to introduce waiting lists for buyers. On the other hand, gold-backed ETFs have seen outflows of 350 tonnes out of a total of 2700 tonnes held, from January to end of April.

The divergence in behaviours reflects the dichotomous nature of investment in gold, with consumers who prefer bullions and jewellery behaving very differently from investors of paper gold. This phenomenon indicates that even if there is an outflow of investments from the paper gold market, there will be always be a ready market among Indian and Chinese consumers.

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Biosensors reported poor Q1 FY2014 results

Biosensors total product revenue for the quarter ended 30 June 2013 decreased by 6% to US$65.0 million from US$69.0 million recorded in the previous year’s corresponding quarter.
Total interventional cardiology revenues decreased by 7% to US$60.9 million in the quarter ended 30 June 2013 from the US$65.7 million reported in the previous year’s corresponding quarter due to a drop in the Group’s drug-eluting stents (“DES”) sales mainly as a result of the Group’s efforts in reducing distributor channel inventories in China in anticipation of China new tenders pricing taking effect.

Biosensors continues to see strong, double~djgit sales growth in EMEA and Asia Pacific regions. Sales of critical care products remained constant at US$3.4 million in the quarter ended 30 June 2013, compared to US$3,3 million in the previous year’s corresponding quarter.

Total revenue, including licensing and royalty revenue, for the quarter decreased 11% to US$76.6 million from US$86.3 million in the previous year’s corresponding quarter. The table below shows the Group’s revenue and the principal components of the revenue, as a percentage of total revenue, for the periods indicated:

stock market

Cost of sales and gross profit:
Overall gross margin for products was 75% for the quarter ended 30 June 2013, compared to 81% for the previous year’s corresponding quarter.

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K1 Ventures Declared Dividends of $0.02

K1 Ventures shareholders’ funds increased from $338.7 million at 30 June 2012 to $349.9 million at 30 June 2013. The increase was attributable to profit for the year of $54.6 million offset in part by dividends paid to shareholders of $32.5 million and other comprehensive expense of $10.9 million.
The profit for the year ended 30 June 2013 was primarily attributable to a net profit of $19.3 million from the sale of the Group’s investment in McMoRan Exploration Co. (“MMR”) and $27.7 million of investment income from Knowledge Universe Holdings LLC (“KUH”). The other comprehensive expense for current year was mainly attributable to the sale of MMR as the value was realized and transferred to profit & loss.
Stock investing
K1 Ventures total assets of $638.1 million at 30 June 2013 increased by $10.6 million compared to the previous year end driven by cash distributions received from investments including the sale of MMR, partially offset by dividends paid to shareholders. The increase in fixed assets resulted from the purchase of rail
equipment and locomotive upgrades at Helm. The decrease in investments mainly arose from the sale of MMR. The decrease in stocks was mainly due to the disposal of held for sale six-axle locomotives.Group
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Billionaire Kwek claimed that home prices may slip 5%

Over the last two weekends, my wife and myself visited private condominium showrooms of D’Nest, Urban Vista and Q Bay. We were not planning to purchase our second property at the moment but is visiting the showrooms just to have actual sensing of the market. Even though there has been much media coverage on the state of private home in Singapore in recent years, we feel that “seeing is believing”. It is more important to have actual sensing of the market because that will provide better picture of the market dynamics.
Well, according to an article in PropertyGuru, Executive Chairman of City Developments Limited (CDL), Mr Kwek Leng Beng forecasted that private home prices in Singapore are expected to drop by up to five percent due to an oversupply of residential properties from 2014 onwards. He went on to state that private home prices would likely drop by five percent from now until 2014 if all the cooling measures implemented by the government remain in place. He urged the government to lift some of its cooling measures, such as the two year “qualifying certificate”for developers. With these qualifying certificates, it will be suicidal to keep buying land at high prices just because we want a land bank,” Kwek said.
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Record Bankruptcy for US City, Detroit

This article is extracted from BullionStar, a Singapore online bullion company where you can buy gold and silver at competitive prices. 

On 19th July 2013, Detroit became the largest city in United States history to file for bankruptcy protection after piling up debt of more than USD$18 billion. For more than a decade, the city has been borrowing money to pay for its expenses and fund its expensive pension system. Apparently, the breaking point came about after Detroit failed to reach agreements with the bondholders and creditors to restructure the city’s debt out of court.

People who are familiar with The Federal Reserve’s money creation process would not be surprised by Detroit’s bankruptcy. Since President Nixon decoupled the link between gold and the U.S dollar in 1971, it effectively ended any form of gold peg internationally. Without any convertibility to gold by any currency, governments all over the world are free to create as much fiat money as they wish without any restriction. As a result, debt levels began to climb. At this point of writing, U.S debt alone amounts to more than USD100 trillion.

The dire consequence of our current debt-based system is that it could get out of control, resulting in hyperinflation and social security problems.

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The Myths about Gold Bullion

This article is extracted from BullionStar, a Singapore online bullion company where you can buy gold and silver at competitive prices.

Despite the surge in financial risks during the Great Recession, gold bullion continues to be absent in most institutional and individual investment portfolios. Global pension funds and insurance companies with trillions of dollars’ worth of assets continue to overlook gold as a form of sustainable wealth protection insurance. Many individuals have also misunderstood gold and ignored the substantial benefits of owning gold. All these misconceptions are due to the prevailing myths about gold bullion ownership.

Bullion
One of the top myths is that gold is a bad investment compared to equities. This myth seems to have its roots in the 1979-1980 rally when gold reached $850 per ounce. Those who had bought gold during this peak cycle would have to wait for about twenty-eight long years in order to break even. However, those who bought gold on 15 August 1971, when President Nixon cut the link between gold and the dollar, would have a different story to tell. Gold was priced at $38.90 per ounce and those who purchased at that time would have enjoyed a gain of about 5000 percent, surpassing Dow Jones gain of about 1500 for the same period.
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Shape your child’s financial destiny

As a wealth builder, I considered it my duty to help shaping my child’s financial destiny. A few days ago, I bought an endowment plan after much financial planning with my wife. The policy was purchased under my name but eventually when it matures twenty years down the road, we plan to use the money for our daughter’s university fees.
We thought that since I am the sole breadwinner, the policy should insure me, so that in case if anything happened to me, the policy can still sustain and provides for my daughter’s education fees.
Beyond this saving plan, I hope that my daughter will grow up cultivating a good saving habit and develop prudent personal finance skills. This is important, especially so in an expensive city like Singapore. To this end, my wife and myself think that parents have a critical role in shaping their child’s financial destiny.
Insurance

Lead by example
Contrary to what many parents thought, toddlers by as early as 14 months, are masters at reading social cues. This means that children often observe and take the cues from parents’ life habits. If your financial situation is consistently in a bad shape, you are not going to convince your child when you try to educate him/her on financial prudence.

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