A Week in Hell

Last week was hell for me as i suffered a terrible illness. Fever, cough, joint paint, flu, sore throat and ulcers. Everything else is ok except for ulcers. I had sore throat and throat ulcers (2 of them) at the same time. Those ulcers were killing me. A relatively small ulcer was at the right side of my throat and a much bigger one on the left side. They caused some pain in my ears too. When i went to a doctor, he told me that those are not throat ulcers but rather just mouth ulcers at the back of the mouth. There are no solution as they were caused by virus infection and antibiotics won't do. The only thing that I can do is let my own immunity system take over and heal by itself. Since those ulcers were at the back of my mouth and I can't touch it, it's impossible to apply any medical gel such as Bonjela to them. I tried everything: various herbal teas, Ribena, milk, salted water (gargle or drink), magic powder, drink crazy amount of plain water (> 20 litres per day), various lozenges (from cheap $3 dollars per half dozens to expensive $40 per half dozens), various cough syrups, honey (pure honey and diluted with water), vitamin C, B12 and B2 supplements, various gargle solutions, listerine etc. but nothing work at all Well it took me 4 days and 3 nights to recover from those damn ulcers (although everything else went away in the first day). I count not eat anything for the first 2 days and able to take some chowder in day 3. Very minimum sleep during that period as well. I just realize that such as small problems (mouth ulcers way down in the throat) can cause such an immense pain that turn my life upside down last week. THANKSFULLY they are gone and healthy life could not be sweeter. Health is probably the most undervalued assets in mankind history. A small health problem and immediately everything collapse in from of us and that's it. Wish everyone a healthy life ahead and forever!!!

What A Game!!!!!

Recently I am busy as hell. 4 researches paper pending!

However I still took the time to watch yesterday UCL and all I can say is WHAT A GAME!!!

Who said Italian football is doom? Who said Italian football is boring? Who say Italian football is all about defense?

Bayern Mucich vs Inter yesterday was one of the best match in UCL history and perhaps, football history.

First half belonged to Bayern and second half belonged to Inter and they took their chances. Eto'o was fantastic. Although his first goal was offside, he scored one and set up 2. Bayern got tonnes and tonnes of chances and they could easily score five or six but they blew it.

In the end, it was a hell of a football game and any football fans should watch it and here's the highlight.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLOU5YWzok0

The Death of Italy Football???

is 2011 the year which Italy football die?

Italian clubs perform very poorly during the season with all their Uefa Europa League contenders eliminated (last surviving club was Napoli which was defeated by Villareal). All 3 of Italy representatives in Uefa Champions' League, AC Milan, Roma and Inter lost their home game and are expected to be eliminated. Italy serie A is officially ranked number 4 in Europe behind Spanish La Liga, English Premier League and German Bundesliga. There are speculation that Serie A will fall behind French Ligue 1 soon.

I started watching football since 1990 and 1990's was the decade where Italy football is the king of the world. Some call it "world cup league". The greatest and best football player played there.

From 1990 to 1999, European football was dominated by Italian Clubs. Uefa Champions' League (previously called European Cup), Europa Cup (at the time it was called Uefa Cup) and European Cup winners' Cup (now cancelled) were superbly dominated by Italian teams. Of the 10 UCL finals during that decade, Italian clubs played in 8 of them (only 1991 and 1999 saw no Italian representative).

Domestically, Italian serie A was the most watched and most exciting football league in the world. During the time, there were 7 giant clubs that controlled the serie A and any of the 7 teams could win it. Juventus, Inter, AC Milan, Fiorentina, Parma, Lazio and Roma were all giant teams in Europe winning multiple championships. Competition in serie A at the time was fierce and colourful. Player like Zinedine Zidane, Gabriel Batistuta, lothar Matthaus, Roberto Baggio, Ronaldo, Alessandro Del Piero and countless others pushed serie A to the top of the football world by substantial margin.

Today, serie A is just a boring and lifeless league full with teams that have no chance of competing in Europe and heavily in debt. Even the big teams like Milan and Juventus failed to keep up with the rest of the world especially clubs from Spain, England and Germany.

Inter is the only good team in Italy, winning last season UCL. However since the departure of Jose Maurinho, Inter, under the hand of Rafael Benitez and Leonardo, is slowly move towards mediocre European club.

So how can Italian Clubs improve?

1) Financial Management. The main reason Italian football fell into today's slump is poor financial management. Teams overspent every year and eventually, they did not money to even pay the wages of players. Invest wisely for players, focus more on player development and most importantly, attract foreign investors that can inject large sums of money (remember how Chelsea become a giant today).

2) Balance domestic league and European competition. Italian clubs generally focus more on domestic league. Focusing on European competition can attract fans outside Italy and ultimately increase number of viewers for Italian football.

3) Constantly changing. teams in Italian football need to change constantly to keep up with the pace of Spanish and English football. Tactics, technique, skills, mentality etc. need to have constant changes.

4) Marketing. Football need fans and Italy alone do not have enough fans. Marketing will attract fans outside Italy and revenue from sales and TV rights will improve. English football is the prime example of excellent marketing. Before mid 1990's English football was far inferior compared to serie A but now, they are wee superior.

5) Winning matches. Ultimately, football is about winning and winning is the best way of attracting fans.

Can Italian football overcome their recent slump or will 2011 be the death of italy football? I favor the first.

What really cause the fall???

Recently financial market take a big hit. Except for certain commodity markets (energy, precious metal), markets around the world tumbling significantly. We all know about the Egypt problem, China rate hike issue and currently Libya issue. However are these issue the reason market take such a big hit?

NO!

Markets have been rising constantly since the crisis 2007/2008. US markets are around 15% of the high in October of 2007. Some markets even surpass the 2007 high with significant margin. Since we know stock market is the reflection of real economics, one must wonder are we near the economic condition of 2006 or even better than 2006?

NO!

We are nowhere near 2006. We are not even close to it. In fact global economy today is worse than 2001 or 1993. So the question is why global financial markets keep on rising?

HOT MONEY!

Markets rising are not caused by improvement in real sector or monetary market, but only caused by hot money generated by unresponsible central bankers and hugely leveraged commercial and investment banks.

So why now?

We had similar problem before this. Greek debt issue, Dubai default, China inflation concern...... none of these caused any problem to the overall markets. Markets merely sniffed and continue higher. So why Egypt and Libya can cause such a big fuss?

Markets responce significantly on such issues shows that there are weaknesses in the bullish trend that we are having in recently run. The Egypt and Libya issues are just a need "the straw that broke the camels back". Markets are heavily overbought in monthly scale with RSI of over 80 for most of stock markets. Dividend per price for stocks are at historical low. VIX index just had a double bottom indicating risk incoming and volume of hot money is in trillions. Real portfolio investment data around the world shows that increment of 100% since 2009.

So, even without the Egypt and Libya problems, it is very likely that markets will have a U-turn. At the moment it is unclear whether the middle east political problem can cause any significant contraction to financial markets globally but the reality is there: we will have a huge contraction or at least, a significant retracement that will bring us back at least 30% of current level.

VIX

This is the weekly chart of VIX or volatility index. Every indicator on this chart (Macd, Stochastics, double bottom etc.) shows a bullish outlook. So if VIX is bullish, chances are stocks are bearish. Lookout!

3 Great Movies

Watched 3 movies this weekend. 1 at cinema and 2 on DVD. All 3 are great movies so I plan to share my thought here. Btw as predicted market is going south (with or without the Egypt problem). Commodity had a great rally thought (slv!!!)

1. The Way Back.

The way back is a great movie. IMO it excel in 3 areas: directing, acting and story. I think this is Peter Weir best work ever and he done a fantastic job of turning The Way Back into one of the must-watch movie.

Acting is also superb. Jim Sturgess, Colin Farrell, Ed Harris, Saoirse Ronan and rest of the cast are all amazing. It is their acting that make this fictional story believable.

Story is also another superb element of the film. The main storyline is good but the real clever part of the story is the interaction between characters.

However, they are some "not-so-good" part in the film. The opening part is boring and too long. There are some unnecessary characters and the ending is pretty stupid. (spoiler alert! go back to Poland after 1989? lol)

Great movie, 8.5/10.

2. Buried.

I didn't go to watch this at cinema and it was a bad decision. The movie is great in its genre. The real clever part of this movie is the originality of it. 1 actor, 1 location, 1 simple story. That's it.

Ryan Reynolds I think did a good job. Although he is overreacted in some parts, overall his acting is believable. Director Rodrigo Cortes manage to turn this into something exciting and suspenseful.

For me the best part is the ending. Although many critics and viewers criticize the ending, I think it is great. Spoiler alert! When the guy said sorry they found Mark White instead of Paul Conroy, it is a dagger to the heart and will leave a much longer memory on the viewers than simply a successful rescue.

There are some flaws with this film like the snake part is really stupid and the joke about voice mail is dump as hell. Still a great movie. 8/10

3. 127 Hours.

Unfortunately in Malaysia, this movie still hasn't screened yet. This is a fantastic film based on a true events. Most elements of this film are superbly done. James Franco is amazing. He deserves the oscar this year. His portray of Aron Ralston is both funny and merciful. Unbeatable performance.

Director Danny Doyle is great and manage to keep the 90+ minutes movie entertaining with only 1 actor.

The beginning of the film is probably the weak part of this film and the inclusive of that 2 females is bad and boring.

The film should get 8 or 8.5 but because of Franco I will give it 9/10. One of the best movie of the decade for sure.

Next movie for me (at cinema) is probably sucker punch (kick ass trailer!!!).

Beginning of the End?

Yesterday was a significant day in financial markets. Although stock markets across the globe weren't badly affected (Europe markets were the relatively underperformer).

However commodity markets were severely affected. energy decreased more than 2% and precious metal decreased more than 1%.

The most important indicator, copper, gave up more than 2% as well.

Bearish sentiments are all around every corner. Although firms' earnings are good, they are past data. Quantitative easing 2 (QE2) is not likely to save the economy from going south.

From technical, financial and economics point of view, there is no way the stock markets can maintain at current level. The contraction or at least correction that were predicted by many analyst last year is still pending. All we got last year was some small downs and mostly marginally increases.

Unemployment stay high across the developed nations, China inflationary pressure and artificial expansion of monetary aggregates. All of these can only lead to lower stock markets.

So, can we gain from all these?

(1) Hold as many money in risk free (or minimum risk) assets as possible.

(2) Invest in dividend yield firms in minimum exposure markets (such as New Zealand or Indonesia).

(3) Short the over inflated markets (almost every markets lol)

(4) Wait to buy any commodities when the prices are reasonable (I prefer silver and sugar)

Just think for a second: markets around the world has risen at least 100% from their lows and at most 40% of their high in 2007 but the economy are going nowhere in the past 3 years (at least for developed nations). How can stock markets keep getting better??