Group travel tour or free and easy travel

I, for one, cannot survive on a group travel tour, especially for a group travel tour to China.


I cannot imagine waking up at 6 in the morning, and rush here and there until nearly midnight.

I cannot withstand this kind of torture.

For me, a vacation means a time to unwind and relax, and to experience life and culture in wherever I choose to go.

It is not a matter of rushing to a place to see the famous building or mountain, then up the coach and travel to the next place.

Group travel tour tends to pack too many activities and places of interest in a day.  As a result, tourists just have the time to use the toilet, snap a few photos, and then it is time to board the coach again.

When the weather is bad, the group travel tour still goes on.

The tourists do not have the luxury of staying in bed an hour longer, and to visit the natural scenery another day.

The worst type of group travel tour is to stay just one night in one city.  A group travel tour of 8 days means staying in 7 cities.

That is why I prefer the free and easy travel.


I prefer to make decision based on the weather condition.

If the weather is bad, such as snowing or raining outside.  The best is to stay in the cozy hotel room, make a cup of tea, and just enjoy the snowfall.

What is the point of going out in this kind of weather?

The mountain route is hard to access, and the cable car service probably shuts down due to bad weather.

The best way to experience a country is to have a combination of group travel tour and free and easy travel.

That means to join a day tour or short 2 to 3 days tour starting from the hotel, and spend the rest of the holiday with free and easy travel.

While the cost of a free and easy travel seems more expensive than a group travel tour, in actual fact, it is cheaper.

Many group travel tours bring tourists to shops that sell very expensive items that locals do not patronize.

That is how they operate to improve the profitability of the tour group.

For those who join group travel tours due to lower cost, they have to bear in mind all their expenses due to shopping at those shops.  Even if they can stop themselves from buying a single item, the time lost is irreplaceable.

Overspending is a problem during a vacation

It is strange how our habits change when we are on a vacation.

When we are working in our normal day-to-day life, we sleep at the same time every night, get up on time, and count our pennies during the workday.

However, all these good habits change when we go on a vacation.

We hardly sleep at all.  We want to spend all the 24 hours doing things, and watching the scenery.

We do not count our pennies too.

Overspending is a problem when we are taking a vacation in a foreign land.

Everything seems cheap.  We keep on buying the unnecessary things, afraid that we never get to see those cute items again.

The best thing is that we are not spending the money in our currency.  We are spending money in another currency.

Somehow the money in other currencies does not feel as real as the cash in our own currencies.

We do not buy so much snacks and sugared beverages when we are at home.  We think of saving money by cutting down on non-essential goods.

The bad habit of overspending starts after we board the plane.  We seem to have the idea that we have saved up a lifetime, and only one chance to spend the money.

No wonder nearly every country loves the tourists.

They rely on the tourists to create jobs in the country, since tourists tend to overspend when they are happy.

It used to be foreigners entering China, and spend a lot of money.

Now the situation is reversed.

Many countries are hoping to see more and more Chinese tourists.

The hospitality industry in many countries cannot survive if the mainland Chinese stop coming.

The Chinese seems to have all the money in the world to buy branded goods.  They seem to have the money to splurge on all sorts of luxuries.

They like to buy genuine branded goods, and they can get the genuine items overseas.

On the other hand, many tourists travel to China to buy counterfeit branded goods.  Funny how the world operates!

Got a shock over cell phone bill

I got a rude shock over cell phone bill.


The amount is triple the usual monthly cell phone bill.

When I read the bill line by line to find out what is wrong, I discover that the amount comes from my mother’s cell phone.

I subscribe to two lines under the corporate individual plan, so that the monthly subscription is at least 25% cheaper.

I use one line, and give the other line to my mother.

Since my mother does not know how to read and write, and does not know how to use practically all the functions in the cell phone, I never have had the problem with hefty bill.

I discover that the item, Total Data Usage, is the culprit.  Since my mother does not even know what is Internet, and downloading music, I guess someone uses her phone to download something.

It turns out to be a faulty assumption.

The truth is that my mother gotten bored at her workplace one day, so she played around with her cell phone.

She managed to watch video clip on a football match, and downloaded something about dog.

Since she did not know what she was doing, she kept on pressing here and there, and made things worse.

She did not know that she had accidentally triggered the data download from mobile network.  She honestly thought that all these shows were hidden in her cell phone.

That few minutes of browsing cost her a week income.

Combined with the monthly subscription, caller ID function, a call to charity, and the two calls she made from a holiday, the charges for her cell phone ate up more than a third of her monthly income.

This shows how dangerous it is to let an ignorant person holds such a great cell phone with all sorts of functions.

Hopefully, this is the only shock over cell phone bill.  Anyway, she does not pay for the cell phone bill, since I am the one paying for it.

I guess this gives me the right to lecture her about not playing the fool with cell phone.

High price for comfort eating

Comfort eating has landed a friend into trouble.

She feels stress in her work, and resorts to comfort eating to relieve stress.

The problem is that most comfort food are bad for health.  The top comfort food is chocolate, followed by all the sugary items, and deep fried items.

My friend had the habit of keeping all the junk food on her desk.

Whenever she feels the work stress, she binges on junk food.  She just eats and eats.

The worst is that she is already overweight without the comfort eating.  When she uses comfort eating to take her mind off the stress, she becomes obese.

She pays a high price for it.

She lands in the hospital, and the doctors keep her warded for nearly a week.  Even after four days in the hospital, the doctors still do not know what is the problem.

The actual problem is her inability to deal with stress.

She is just a contingent worker.  She is not paid to cope with such stress.  She is definitely not paid well enough to wake up in the middle of the night, and worries about work.

The fact is that she finds the worst possible way to deal with stress.

Instead of exercising after work, she indulges in eating junk food.  She eats chocolate, and potato chips for breakfast, instead of healthy oatmeal.

Well, the body revolts.

She has to face the wrath of her body.

The eternal law of action and reaction works negatively in this case.  Instead of enjoying life with a healthy mind and body, she has to endure numerous tests and probing in the hospital.

After the hospitalization, she would have to worry about the hospital bill.

The price of comfort eating is very high.  The pain from the ailment is bad enough. The pain from all the blood tests, and surgical procedure is worse.  The pain of facing bankruptcy compounds the physical pain.

Her salary is not high.  Even if she managed to save during the contractual period, her savings would be wiped out by the bill.

I think that our physical body is the best example of perfect justice.

Once we start to treat it badly, we will have to pay for it in our lifetime.

In this case, my friend made a bad decision.  She should quit the stressful job, and look for other work.  After all, she is hired on a temporary basis with bare minimum benefits.

She should eat well, exercise rigorously and sleep well.

Money is important. However, it is not as important as our health.

Once health is gone, money is gone as well.  There is no way to avoid paying for the medical bills and medication if we are sick, and want to get well.

Never ever resort to comfort eating.

Once the work stress is too much, quitting the job is the best choice.  There is simply no substitute for good health.  Comfort eating hurts us, and our family too.

Sick of working

Most of us have this feeling of getting sick of working at one time or the other.

Most of us have the common sense to see that we cannot really get on without a job.

While we dream of getting rich overnight, that remains a dream of a lifetime.

It is a perfectly meaningless existence to do something we hate day after day, with retirement many years away.

Yet when we are laid off from work, we feel more miserable.

That is the time when we appreciate our dreadful work, since it brings home the bacon.  At least we have the feeling of job security and income security.

How many of us can honestly do without a job?

Even if we are sick of working, we cannot survive without it.

The only time when we feel privilege is when we read disasters in other countries, where people lose everything.

We go home with a feeling that we are blessed.  We have a job, a home, and family.  We can sleep in our own beds at night, in our own rooms, instead of some shelters with a few hundred others.

We have a job to go to in the morning, instead of waking up to find more people dying.

That is the time when sick of working syndrome does not appear.

Once we reach retirement age, and we have enough for retirement, the boring job seems interesting.

Some of us dread retirement more than working.

We fear the long days of waking up in the morning with nothing better to do.

Most of us are not really sick of the daily tasks.  We are sick of our bosses, and the colleagues who backstab us.

These are the ones who do not understand that work and personal life are two completely different matter.

We can have major disagreements at work, but we can be friends after work.

The ironical thing about the sick of working syndrome is that money does not cure.

It does not matter how high our salary is, we are still sick of working.

The CEOs in many companies are also employees.  They are also sick of working, sick of meeting targets set by unreasonable directors.

The factory operators are also employees.   They, too, are sick of working, sick of supervisors who know how to yell, and do not know what they want.

Well, life goes on.  Even if you are sick of working, you still have to work.  So do I!  So do all your colleagues, and all the employees rushing to work early in the morning.

When employment termination is not a bad thing

My friend called me to inform that she had been terminated from her employment.

Before I could say something to comfort her, she went on to say that her colleagues envied her, and nearly everyone wished that they could get employment termination letter too.

Well, I was very shocked to hear this.

It is not always that employment termination produces such happiness.

One of her colleagues is pregnant.  She hopes to get the employment termination letter after the end of her maternity leave.

It seems that the company has a really hostile working environment.  If she resigns on her own accord, she has to work another month, and still get the same pay.

My friend worked in this company for less than a month.  Since the company initiated the termination, it had to pay her notice in lieu.

Due to the fact that her luck was good when she played slot machines, she had a total win of a few thousand dollars.

Add that to her income and income from notice in lieu, her cash flow for this month exceeds ten thousand dollars.

I ended up congratulating her instead of offering consolation

I dearly wish I have her good luck.  If I were as lucky in stock market investment as she was in playing slot machines, I really could look forward to early retirement.

However, I do not wish for employment termination.  My friend just does not have the luck to get high paying job in good working environment.

It is too insulting, even if my colleagues were to congratulate me.

I do not have the courage to look for another job, and tell the future employers that I have been terminated from service.

I think each of us is lucky in different ways.

Some of us are lucky to get a good job, and stay on for the rest of our lifetime.

Some of us are lucky in side income, earning more from our hobbies than full time employment.

Some of us are lucky enough to have rich parents, and inheritance not to work for money.

Some of us are lucky in speculating in the stock market, and in playing card games or slot games.

Some of us are born for business, with good business acumen.

However, it is rare to find someone who is lucky in all accounts.  Those who are lucky to hold the same job over 40 years, are not that fortunate in investment.

I think for my friend, employment termination is not such a bad thing.

If everyone wants to leave a company, and yet cannot find other job, that is more tortuous.

Lending money to friends is risky

Many old people did mention that lending money to friends is risky.

They said that money can destroy friendship.

While they are right in a sense, they do not explain why it is so.

Lending money to friends is risky not because of the money itself.

The fact is that when friends are unable to make payment, they refuse to take our calls.  They are effectively ending the friendship just for the sake of a few hundred dollars.

A few hundred dollars to us is nothing in comparison to the friendship of ten years or more.

If our friends can honestly say that they have no money to pay us, and they need the money to pay the mortgage and other bills, our friendship is still intact.

We will probably write off the amount, and treat it as a charity.  We rather have the friendship than forcing our friends to worry about money.  The worst is when our friends commit suicide due to money woe.

We know that what goes round comes round.

It will be our turn to borrow money next time.  We never know when that will happen.

A crippling disease that strikes our loved one can drain all our savings.  We need cash urgently at that time.

We may borrow money from friends, with no hope of returning in the near future.

We definitely draw a line at lending money to friends for them to gamble away.  We do not want our friends to fall into this bad habit, and destroy their careers, family and their future.

It is very sad when friends fall into this bad habit.  They see money as more important than family relationship and friendship.

They do not see us as friends anymore.  They just view us as money machines for them to suck more money.
The older generation has wisdom.

Most of them witness bank failure in their youth.  That is why they rather borrowing and lending money among friends is very common.

They also know that as long as our friends return the money, we will feel safe to lend money to them again.

It is a pity that most of us do not want to talk about our financial woes even to our closest friends.

Lending money to friends is risky.  You may not see the money again.  You may not hear from your friends again.

The demise of cherished friendship is more painful than losing the money.

Bad timing in stock market investment

For the whole week, I had set the buying price the night before the stock market opened.

I had failed to buy anything for 4 days, since I set a much lower price for the stock I wanted to buy.

On Thursday night, I did the same thing, without much hope that the stock market would crash.

On Friday morning, I went to work as usual, without knowing that a terrible earthquake and Tsunami would hit Japan.

While working in the office, busy with all the deadlines, and paperwork, I received an automated text message informing me that the transaction was completed.

I had bought the stock I wanted, at the price I wanted.

I told my colleagues that the stock market must have crashed badly, since I could get the price I wanted.

I did not check the news.  I assumed that the oil price had gone up, and that the stock market reacted negatively.

I did not know that my timing in stock market was so bad.

I did not know that a devastating tsunami due to the biggest earthquake on record in Japan had happened.

We did not have time to surf the internet, and I could not undo the transaction even if I had known.

Well, bad timing in stock market investement happened at times.

Just too bad that my savings is not locked in the investment.  I cannot donate more to help the victims in Japan.

If the stock market recovers next week, I can sell the stock away, and use the profit to help in disaster recovery.

Earthquakes in Japan happen very often.  It is not the earthquake that kills so many people, it is the terrible Tsunami that kills.

The only thing I can do now is to pray for good weather, so that the rescuers can reach the ground zero, and help the survivors.

I wish that the nuclear plant disaster is contained as well.

I guess bad timing in stock market is not as bad compared to what the Japanese are going through.

Bad luck in investment and money matter is a very small matter.

Fortunately none of my family members travel to Japan this time of the year, and none of my friends are there too.

Frustration with buying shares online

After the outbreak of Middle East Crisis, I have been watching the gold price, silver price, oil price and stock market closely.

In the initial stage, I do practically nothing, except to read the news, and see the money flowing in and out of stock market, as oil price goes up and down.

The stock market crash is severe enough to bring the share price down to a reasonable stage.

The gold and silver price are going up, and I am neither buying or selling.  The price is too low to sell my physical bullions, and too high to buy additional gold or silver bars.

Since the Singapore stock market crash, I have been paying attention to a few stocks.

After the market kind of stabilizes, with most share prices staying at the same level or even going up, I feel it is time to buy.

From Monday until now, I have set the price for buying a few stock.

The problem is that these are good companies.  Even when STI falls, these few stocks manage to retain their share price.

The most frustrating day was when all the share price of my selected stocks go up.

It is very frustrating to miss the chance to buy by just one or two cents.

One or two cents does not seem that much in reality.  However, when you are talking about buying 12000 shares online, the 1 or 2 cents difference matters.

Imagine buying a stock at 75 cents, and selling it at 76 cents.  The one cent hardly makes you rich.  Once you multiply by 20000 shares, you will have a gross profit of $200.

That is why I rather wait, then to increase my offer price.

Buying shares online makes investment nearly hassle free.   However, buying shares online does not take out the frustration of waiting for share price to fall.

It is hard to find good stocks in time of crisis.

Since I am rather lazy to read through the whole annual report, I just scan through the annual reports of these companies.

I look at their pre-tax profit, and cash flow statement.

The next thing I look for is the dividend declaration.  If there is no dividend, I forget about buying it.  If there is declared dividend, then I compute the rate of return.

Most of the profitable companies pay very good dividend, especially when you compare with bank interest.

For example, a 4 cent dividend when the current share price is just 45 cents.

That is equivalent to more than 8% interest rate.

Which bank can give you this kind of interest?

The last thing I look for in the annual report is the management message to the investors.  Most management teams will honestly mention about the work-in-progress for this financial year.

If the company is a manufacturing company, construction company or in supporting industries, it will have orders coming in.

The more orders, the more profitable the company will be.

That is my lazy method of selecting companies for buying shares online.

Since I am not rich, I do not need to keep track of 1001 companies in the stock exchange.  I just need to have a watch list of at most ten companies in different industries.

When the price of just one company falls to a reasonable range due to market sentiment, that is the time to buy.

The frustration comes when the share price refuses to drop by just half a cent.

It is very annoying to see the share price at $0.775 when I set the buying price at $0.77.  Even when the share price does drop to $0.77, I may not be the first in the queue.  There are many investors in the queue.

That is why I always set the buying price the night before.

The risk is that when I manage to buy the share at 77 cents, the stock falls to 71 cents.

It happens all the time, especially during stock market crash.

I just take comfort that the share price of good companies always rebound in a matter of days.

Have you been buying shares online?  What is your experience in buying shares online?

Is the bull run in spot silver price per ounce sustainable?

The bull run in spot silver price per ounce is making me nervous.

While I am very happy to see the increase in silver price, I think the factors driving up the spot rate are more of madness and fear, rather than logical analysis.

Silver is increasing at the rate of nearly a dollar a day.

That means it is increasing at the rate of 2% per day.  Imagine that!

If only your salary can increase at the same rate, I am sure you will be a very happy person.

The fact is that two days increase in spot silver price per ounce is the same as the inflation rate.

If you have bought physical bars, your holdings increase in value even though the mint is still making it.

By the time you receive the newly minted bars, the price would increase by 20% to 40%.

It certainly sounds good.  Does it sound scary as well?

It seems that everyone is mad.  They are pushing the price up higher and higher for the sake of speculating in it.

If the price continues at this rate, and the oil price keeps hitting new high, the new laptops and TV are getting more expensive.

Silver is an industrial commodity.

The increase in spot silver price per ounce definitely leads directly to the increase of products.

The factory owners are not the one pushing the spot silver price per ounce up.  They prefer to have it low, so that they can make a better profits.

The investors are worried about possible correction.  Silver price does not usually increases at such insane speed, unless speculators are driving it

Even the fear of Middle East crisis escalating cannot explain the madness in silver price.

The only explanation is the herd instinct, and greed.

When the big fund managers buy silver, they do it with good reasons.  They can analysis the situation in Middle East, and make informed decision.

When the investors see the fund managers buy silver, and the spot silver price per ounce increases, they follow.

When everyone sees how the price goes crazy, they enter the market, and drives the price even higher.

What will happen next?

A correction is the logical step.  That will occur when the big funds stop buying, and the investors stop buying.

The correction in the near term is likely to be a minor one.

As long as Middle East crisis is not resolved, gold, silver, and oil will keep going up.

What can we do now?

I do not know about you.  I am waiting out for the price to stabilize.  I do not feel safe to sink money into it, nor am I comfortable with selling the physical bars.

Reevaluation of Investment portfolio daily

The old advice of reevaluating investment portfolio every year does not work in a crisis.

Since the start of the Middle East crisis, every working day brings surprises to the investors.

If you do not reevaluation your investment portfolio, you may have suffered a paper loss of more than 20% from the stock market.

A crisis does not come often.

When it happens, you have to follow the news and make daily decision.

What to buy?  What to sell?  When to buy?  When to sell?

These are the questions that need answers.

If you are informed, you can make a few thousand dollars in a matter of days.

If you ignore the news, and do not take care of your investment portfolio, you will find that you pay for it dearly.

The value of the Dollar declines, the gold price shoots up, the silver price reaches a new high practically every day, the stock market goes yoyo in reverse direction from the oil price.

That is why you need to protect your assets.

How do you reevaluate your investment portfolio?

1.  Read news

You have to start by reading the news.

Your investment decision yesterday did not matter as much as the current situation.

What has happened in the night is more important to you.

If you wake up to see the stock market crashes in Asia, particular in China and Hong Kong, you will see a similar trend in Europe market and New York stock market.

Everyone seems to follow the same herd instinct in a crisis.

You need to follow the current situation in the Middle East.

The death of the dictator in Libya will definitely cause the stock market to soar.  He is arrogant and mad.

When the people are revolting, he still dared to ask the oil companies to give him money.

What kind of a fool is this!

2.  Check price

The next important thing is to check the price of oil, gold, silver and stock market index worldwide.

It does not take more than a minute to do all these.

You can know the sentiment of the investors when you see the price.

The herd instinct is that when gold price is high, everyone will buy and push it higher.  That is reflected in the increase in gold price.

The same thing in a stock market crash.  When the price is low, everyone will sell, and it causes stock market crash.

3.  Overnight commentaries

If you have the time for it, read the overnight commentaries.

These are the experts advice.

While they do not always predict accurate, they are always right when it comes to the analysis of historical events.

Read the buy, sell or hold advice for the investment you have in mind too.

If the advice is to buy gold, you will find the gold price soaring high.

4.  Make your decision

The experts’ advice are not always right.

However, most people will follow the advice.

When the experts advice to exit the stock market or to sell a certain stock, you can look into the rationale.  If you do not agree, you can always buy when the price is low.

If you want to follow, make sure you sell before the others.  That is hard, since you are not the first one to get the information.

By the time you read the advice, the price is already low.

The best is to do the opposite.  When others are exiting the stock market, you can go ahead and buy.  Just wait till they have sold practically everything.

When the oil price soars, and the stock market crashes, buy stock.  This requires courage and knowledge.

Reevaluation the investment portfolio takes time and courage.

Your effort will pay off.  With a bit of luck, you can even make more from your investment activity than to work for a whole month.

That is why do your homework, make your decision, and pray for good luck.

Characteristics of content farms

The term, content farms, comes into focus when Google announces the change of search algorithm.

The purpose of the change of search algorithm is to provide quality articles for the readers, and reduce the importance of content farms.

Even though Google did not mention any website known as a content farm, we can make a guess by the impact.

Nearly all autoblogs and article directories experience a drastic drop in search engine traffic.

We can safely say that article directories, even the best of them, are content farms.

What are the characteristics?

1.  Bulk of articles

The top article directories publish thousands of articles per day.

No other website can match the rate of publishing.  Even the most popular news websites do not publish so many articles.

It is hard for a blogger to publish a blog post once a day, much less to imagine the publication of 2000 or more articles per day.

Some article directories even allow instant or near instant publication.

That is why content farm is an apt description of many writing sites and article directories.

2.  Duplicate content

Many article directories do not require unique content or content that is not published elsewhere.

That means you can write an article, published in your website, and then publish it in the article directories.

Once your content is uploaded in the article directories, other webmasters will download it and publish in their websites.

Many autoblogs also use the content from article directories.

Google is against the practice of duplicate content.

3.  Short articles

The articles in many article directories are short.

The affiliate marketers just want to get more links or readers to their sales page.

That is why it makes sense for them to write many articles of 250 words rather than one lengthy article of 800 words.

Many writers know that longer articles have a better chance of getting search engine traffic.

One article in Hubpages used to rank in the third page of search result for a given keyword.  However, under the new Google algorithm, it ranks in the top position.

That particular article has more than 4000 words.

While longer article does not necessarily mean better quality, long article is deemed to have more information for the readers.

The bulk of the articles in article directories have less than 400 words.  It is very rare to find an article with more than a thousand words.

After all, the writers do not earn directly from article directories.  They earn only from the sales of products in their websites.

They earn only when readers click through the link from the article in the article directory, and enter their blogs.  That is why most writers do not post high quality content for free in the content farms.

Most affiliate marketers outsource the writing of the articles to freelancers in developing world.  They pay just one cent per word or even less than that.

That is why the quality is poor in most cases.

It is unthinkable for a normal person to write 50 articles in a day, especially when he or she is not a native speaker.

4.  Too much advertisements, banners and outgoing links

Many writing sites, such as Associated Content, Helium, Triond, and others, have too many advertisements in a page.

When you read the article, you will notice the banners and advertisements covering three quarters of the page.

The actual content just takes up a quarter of it.

Everyone knows that too much of a good thing is bad.

The same concept applies here.  When there are too many advertisements, the search engine spiders sort of devalue the web page.

The ratio of advertisement space to the content is an issue.  If the article is long, such as 4000 words, the advertisements and banners are not crowding the page.

If the article is just 250 words, then the advertisements and banners seem to over flood the content.

Most article directories do not have many advertisements and banners.  However, they have too many outgoing links.

The outgoing links in the resource box is limited to two in most case.  Some article directories allow outgoing links in the content as well.

Stock market volatility and best time for stock investment

These few weeks are exciting weeks for the day traders.

The stock markets worldwide behave like a yoyo in motion.

The alternate sharp rise and sharp fall provides excitement for those who can catch the timing in selling and buying.

It seems that when angels (investors) are afraid to tread, fools (speculators and day traders) rush in to make a killing.

The major funds and many investors are rushing out of the stock markets after hearing the news of Middle East crisis.  They are pushing up the oil price, the gold price and the silver price.

However, the crash in stock market allows the day traders and courageous investors to pick the leftovers.

I find that stock market volatility provides the best opportunities to make money.

If the stock market crashes, and keeps on crashing, then there is no point to enter market. The best is to sell if the stock markets worldwide are heading towards a collapse.

However, the Middle East crisis does not bring about a direct stock market crash.

It sends the stock markets all over the world into a yoyo situation. Up one day, down the next, and so on.

It is not a small drop in Index, such as the STI or the Dow Jones Industrial Index.  It is a major up and down.

The best is that there is a correlation to the price of oil.

When the oil price comes down a bit, the stock market goes up a lot.

When the oil price hits new high, stock market crashes all over the place.

If you have the spare cash, you can make use of this chance to make a quick buck.

However, be prepared to hold on to a stock if the stock market falls for three days.

If you have chosen a strong company, there is no need to panic, and sell at a loss.  The best is to buy a strong company that can withstand the impact of Middle East crisis.

Even if you do not earn now, you still get the stocks at a bargain.  You can forget about those penny stocks.

What for increase the risk and uncertainty when the Middle East crisis is still looming, and unlikely to settle soon?

The best is to have enough money to buy stocks of a few strong companies, and watch it every single minute.

You cannot afford to lose out the chance to sell if you are in it for capital gain.

The trend of stock market yoyo is not going to last forever.  Always read the news from Reuters and Bloomberg before the stock market opens.

Make a quick decision to buy or sell according to the current oil price, and current situation.  If the situation worsens, you have to sell even if you are at a loss.  It is better to get out than to see the stock market drops by 2% or more.

I think when Gaddafi dies, the stock markets everywhere will see a spectacular recovery.

Chinese buy gold and push up gold price

When I watch the news and see how the Chinese snap up gold bars after gold bars in the shops in China, I wonder how high the gold price will rise.

The Chinese even snap up the 100gram gold bars without second thought.  100 grams gold bar is more than 3 Troy ounce.

At the current spot rate of more than USD 1400 per Troy ounce of gold, it will cost more than USD 4500.

That is just the spot rate.

The actual price for the gold bar is definitely more than that.

Given that one USD exchanges for more than 6 Chinese Yuan, the cost of a 100 gram gold bar would cost more than 27,000 Chinese Yuan.

Even middle class Americans hesitate to lock in the value of USD in gold price, yet the Chinese are so keen to purchase the physical commodity.

What is the impact of Chinese buying gold to the rest of the world?

1.  Gold price

The gold price keeps on rising due to demand.  The Chinese are not the only ones buying it.  Many investors are forsaking the stock market, and invest in precious metals due to Middle East crisis.

2.  Property bubble in China

The Chinese are not investing in properties, since they feel that properties are overpriced.


If everyone holds the same attitude, the property bubble in China will burst very soon.

When that happens, the stock markets will experience another round of drastic fall.

When the price of properties drops to a reasonable level, the Chinese will sell their gold and silver, and buy properties again.

That may signal the drop in gold price.

It is unlikely that the property bubble in China brings down the Asia countries, since China has been working on monetary and fiscal policies to prevent further growth of property bubble.  If the property price increases at a slower pace, the bubble may not burst.

Even if the property bubble burst, the price should not drop drastically.  The desire to own a house is the dream of all the Chinese.

The buying power of the rich and middle class mainland Chinese is a determining factor in the rising of gold spot rate.

It does not mean that the price will keep on rising.

The Chinese are opportunistic buyers.  They will sell and lock in profits, especially when Middle East crisis blows over.  They will sell when the price is good, or the property price goes down.

The question is whether it is a good time to buy or sell.

The best is to buy a bit, and save part of your money in cash form.  When the price increases, you can sell to lock in profits.

When the price drops, you can buy a bit more in the future.

It is best to own some gold bars and silver bars if you love physical products.

The price of silver is increasing at a faster pace than gold.

If you have bought silver near the end of January 2011, when the price of silver per Troy ounce drops to USD 26, you would have made more than 30% by now.  The current price of silver per Troy ounce is more than $34 now.

Even gold does not increase at such a spectacular rate.