Naturally with my new venture, I have been busy. Haven't even got round to do presentations to broking houses yet. Thankfully word of mouth helped snare over 500 trial users for Murasaki in just two days, and the number of paid subscribers have been encouraging.
Diligent users of the system have managed to go into Tambun at 64-65, Green Packet last week at 42 and again yesterday at 44, ... and as highlighted Borneo Oil last week below 47. Other stocks which have showed up from the system was Perisai, twice last week and again yesterday. Other stocks itching to move include Adventa and Jaskita.
Trial users should attend our free Masterclass to get a better understanding of how to use and interpret the system. There are 101 things you can do with it, don't short change yourself by just looking at one or two indicator on and off. The four indicators all play an important role to improve your investing decision making.
We will be making our way to other towns and cities in 2-3 weeks, so look for us.
Sign up for a free 5 day trial by logging into www.murasaki.co
Monday, October 15, 2012
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Empurau ... Baby!!!
Had a special treat last night a few friends from Sarawak came over and brought a 5kg Empurau fish as well. we had it cooked at Unique Seafood SS23 and it was wonderful. Even with 13 people, we couldn't really finish the fish (as there were other dishes as well).
In case you were wondering, thats just one fish sliced into two. My friend got it from friends of an estate who caught it from a river. He probably got it for a couple of thousand ringgit. If Unique Seafood had an Empurau this size, they'd probably retail it at RM8,000 or more.
The scales were fried as probably they were too thick to be eaten off the fish being a 5kg fish. The last Empurau I had we ate the scales off the fish and they were wonderful.
While eating a 5kg fish was unique, I think the best size for an Empurau is probably 1.5kg-2kg. Still a fabulous treat.
In case you were wondering, thats just one fish sliced into two. My friend got it from friends of an estate who caught it from a river. He probably got it for a couple of thousand ringgit. If Unique Seafood had an Empurau this size, they'd probably retail it at RM8,000 or more.
While eating a 5kg fish was unique, I think the best size for an Empurau is probably 1.5kg-2kg. Still a fabulous treat.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012
Why I Started Murasaki ts
I have mainly been an employee for most part of my life in the financial industry. There were a couple of times I went into business ventures with partners. One nearly got listed on ACE back in 2000 but suddenly the rules changed and caused the company to be shuttered. For the past few years I have had the pleasure of not being "employed" but still allowed to do whatever I wanted. I have had opportunities to start some business ventures but they never really caught my passion as making money for money's sake seems too frivolous. I rather spend my time on something that actually will make money, and something people really needed. Then its also important that the business must be easily leveraged, i.e. you can replicate in other markets with minimal capital investment.
I looked at what I am supposedly "good" at, I may not be good but I like the markets a lot. When I was in my late 20s, I played the markets like everyone else and lost more money than I could afford. People nowadays lose 30% of the capital and they scream bloody murder... Pussies! Have you ever lost more than your capital with no way of repaying back? Thanks to the go-go 90s, you can do that, you can get RM100,000 or RM200,000 limits with your remisiers with actually zero deposits. Suffice to say, you don't just have one account with one remisier, so technically I was able to buy up to RM500,000 with almost less than RM50,000 deposit, and I did back then, just like almost everyone else.
To do that, basically you can only go contra, i.e. 7 days holding period, you sometimes may be able to contango some of it and go another 7 days but thats pretty much the end of story. So, when you have wiped out your RM50,000 (so easily) and find yourself owing still another RM70,000 when you are not even 30, and your monthly salary was a wonderful RM7,500 then, you know you are in deep trouble.
I decided that I better get better at this or just go do something else altogether.
For the next 5-6 years, I studied diligently on what cause prices to breakout from a slumber. What were the patterns that caused share prices to move out of their "range". Over the years I have tested and retested many formulas, looking at various moving averages, standard deviations based on volume, volume velocity etc... I believe I managed to isolate some very good early indicators that would help me do that.
However, I still did not feel that was sufficient, I needed to know about the fundamentals, I needed to know whether money was moving in or out of a stock as well. So I took what was widely available and tweaked those other factors to come up with 3 pillars solid information to aid my investing decisions.
The fourth pillar is the only one technical indicator that I firmly believe in, breaking out of the 52 week highs. However the systems out there only advocate a buy when a stock break out convincingly. I thought that was myopic and silly, you would watch a stock move up 20%-30% towards its 52 week high and do nothing until it breaks the high, then jump in ??!! The 4th pillar helps me to track stocks moving towards the breaking high, we can buy when the uptrend is confirmed with just less than 10%-15% to its 52 week high, if it fails to break - sell, if it breaks, then double up. Seems like a no brainer to me.
Armed with the 4 pillars, I spent the last 7 years talking to various tech nerds and programmers to get this onto a web based solution. All said it was very difficult, you can do that easily with end of day prices, which I blatantly refused as that is so inferior. The system needed to be live to extract the earlier info in the quickest manner.
Two years ago I met my business partner for this venture, he was the original chief software architect for Tong Kooi Onn, and he basically created Phileo Allied's internet banking and internet broking systems single handedly back in the early 90s (not plug and play stuff). Needless to say, it looked like a no brainer to him.
For far too long, the markets have only favoured the few with the better information flow, the better networking. Murasaki equalises the platform for everyone, with it you don't even need to hear from the horses' mouth, you don't have to kiss anyone's derrier to get the extra information.
I am very excited that after 10 odd years from ideas germination to fruition, I have something which I believe will be a big game changer for investors. My team of 6 will be going around the country in the coming weeks and months to broking halls and holding information sessions on our product. You have nothing to lose, you can even sign up for a free 5 day trial, no obligations.
As always when I mention my business plan to people, the unvoiced hurdle in their minds would be "something like this coming out of Malaysia or by a Malaysian, sounds ludicrous". Maybe I should migrate to Switzerland, and set up this company and let it be called a Swiss product, what do you think? (Off on a tangent, the recent jv announced by Vincent Tan's MOL with Soft Space is a good example. Soft Space is founded and run by a Malaysian, his mobile payment system is a huge game changer and there are only 3 companies in the world that can do what his system is doing. The one based in Switzerland is already worth more than $3bn. Its like a mobile charger to your handphone, only it is not, it can accept your credit card as transactions and you can sign your signature on the phone. It revolutionises payment systems. Now, hawkers at night markets can accept credit cards, people doing insurance sales or MLMs can accept credit cards ...). Malaysia Boleh, but its not from shouting stupid slogans. Go and find something you like passionately, try and find things people would need, or improve on the status quo ...
What about back testing? In my mind for the past ten years I have been using the same system but because I am not a computer, I miss out on many things. I can only gather maybe less than 30% of the required database to make my decisions, something a live web based system would help eradicate. Now that its all uploaded, I am confident it will improve anyone's investing decision making by a huge quantum. My staff of 6 were just as skeptical, but for the past 2 months, they have been back testing and most of them were novices in the stock market. Now all of them are buying one or two shares a week and hitting the spot. Just talk to my staff on Saturday, they bought Scomi at 29 sen, Golsta at below 80 sen and Great Wall Plastic at 93-94 sen. When they told me they were going to buy Scomi, naturally I scoffed because I know the company, they said it matched all the rules of thumb I have set, so I said you go ahead and buy (I didn't) ... they bought, they now laughed at me. Sigh, its funny cause sometimes we are "crippled" by the old knowledge we have.
The official launch is this Saturday but some smart people noticed the website and started signing up already for the free trial. I would like to remind all users that we are still doing some patching work every now and then till Friday so the service may be slightly interrupted now and then. Do note that we will be launching for Singapore market in January/February 2013 and Jakarta market in June/July 2013.
I looked at what I am supposedly "good" at, I may not be good but I like the markets a lot. When I was in my late 20s, I played the markets like everyone else and lost more money than I could afford. People nowadays lose 30% of the capital and they scream bloody murder... Pussies! Have you ever lost more than your capital with no way of repaying back? Thanks to the go-go 90s, you can do that, you can get RM100,000 or RM200,000 limits with your remisiers with actually zero deposits. Suffice to say, you don't just have one account with one remisier, so technically I was able to buy up to RM500,000 with almost less than RM50,000 deposit, and I did back then, just like almost everyone else.
To do that, basically you can only go contra, i.e. 7 days holding period, you sometimes may be able to contango some of it and go another 7 days but thats pretty much the end of story. So, when you have wiped out your RM50,000 (so easily) and find yourself owing still another RM70,000 when you are not even 30, and your monthly salary was a wonderful RM7,500 then, you know you are in deep trouble.
I decided that I better get better at this or just go do something else altogether.
For the next 5-6 years, I studied diligently on what cause prices to breakout from a slumber. What were the patterns that caused share prices to move out of their "range". Over the years I have tested and retested many formulas, looking at various moving averages, standard deviations based on volume, volume velocity etc... I believe I managed to isolate some very good early indicators that would help me do that.
However, I still did not feel that was sufficient, I needed to know about the fundamentals, I needed to know whether money was moving in or out of a stock as well. So I took what was widely available and tweaked those other factors to come up with 3 pillars solid information to aid my investing decisions.
The fourth pillar is the only one technical indicator that I firmly believe in, breaking out of the 52 week highs. However the systems out there only advocate a buy when a stock break out convincingly. I thought that was myopic and silly, you would watch a stock move up 20%-30% towards its 52 week high and do nothing until it breaks the high, then jump in ??!! The 4th pillar helps me to track stocks moving towards the breaking high, we can buy when the uptrend is confirmed with just less than 10%-15% to its 52 week high, if it fails to break - sell, if it breaks, then double up. Seems like a no brainer to me.
Armed with the 4 pillars, I spent the last 7 years talking to various tech nerds and programmers to get this onto a web based solution. All said it was very difficult, you can do that easily with end of day prices, which I blatantly refused as that is so inferior. The system needed to be live to extract the earlier info in the quickest manner.
Two years ago I met my business partner for this venture, he was the original chief software architect for Tong Kooi Onn, and he basically created Phileo Allied's internet banking and internet broking systems single handedly back in the early 90s (not plug and play stuff). Needless to say, it looked like a no brainer to him.
For far too long, the markets have only favoured the few with the better information flow, the better networking. Murasaki equalises the platform for everyone, with it you don't even need to hear from the horses' mouth, you don't have to kiss anyone's derrier to get the extra information.
I am very excited that after 10 odd years from ideas germination to fruition, I have something which I believe will be a big game changer for investors. My team of 6 will be going around the country in the coming weeks and months to broking halls and holding information sessions on our product. You have nothing to lose, you can even sign up for a free 5 day trial, no obligations.
As always when I mention my business plan to people, the unvoiced hurdle in their minds would be "something like this coming out of Malaysia or by a Malaysian, sounds ludicrous". Maybe I should migrate to Switzerland, and set up this company and let it be called a Swiss product, what do you think? (Off on a tangent, the recent jv announced by Vincent Tan's MOL with Soft Space is a good example. Soft Space is founded and run by a Malaysian, his mobile payment system is a huge game changer and there are only 3 companies in the world that can do what his system is doing. The one based in Switzerland is already worth more than $3bn. Its like a mobile charger to your handphone, only it is not, it can accept your credit card as transactions and you can sign your signature on the phone. It revolutionises payment systems. Now, hawkers at night markets can accept credit cards, people doing insurance sales or MLMs can accept credit cards ...). Malaysia Boleh, but its not from shouting stupid slogans. Go and find something you like passionately, try and find things people would need, or improve on the status quo ...
What about back testing? In my mind for the past ten years I have been using the same system but because I am not a computer, I miss out on many things. I can only gather maybe less than 30% of the required database to make my decisions, something a live web based system would help eradicate. Now that its all uploaded, I am confident it will improve anyone's investing decision making by a huge quantum. My staff of 6 were just as skeptical, but for the past 2 months, they have been back testing and most of them were novices in the stock market. Now all of them are buying one or two shares a week and hitting the spot. Just talk to my staff on Saturday, they bought Scomi at 29 sen, Golsta at below 80 sen and Great Wall Plastic at 93-94 sen. When they told me they were going to buy Scomi, naturally I scoffed because I know the company, they said it matched all the rules of thumb I have set, so I said you go ahead and buy (I didn't) ... they bought, they now laughed at me. Sigh, its funny cause sometimes we are "crippled" by the old knowledge we have.
The official launch is this Saturday but some smart people noticed the website and started signing up already for the free trial. I would like to remind all users that we are still doing some patching work every now and then till Friday so the service may be slightly interrupted now and then. Do note that we will be launching for Singapore market in January/February 2013 and Jakarta market in June/July 2013.
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Asia's IB & Equities Business Levelling Out
FINANCEASIA: Asia’s investment banking industry has changed dramatically during the past four years. The ready supply of equity deals that once attracted banks from all around the world is now a shadow of what it once was. So far this year, equity deals have generated fewer fees for banks than advising on mergers and acquisitions, according to Dealogic.
That is quite a change. As recently as 2009, equity capital markets made up a whopping 69% of Asia’s investment banking wallet. During the bumper harvest of 2010, equity deals generated roughly $3 billion in fees, while this year Asia ECM is on target to earn around a third of that. Put simply, nobody is making any money.
Fees are down, but banks are still over-staffed for the level of activity. Everyone is chasing the same deals, which generally means that there is less to go round. The desperation is a sure sign that more cuts are on the cards. According to some, headcount may still need to come down by as much as a quarter.
“People are sitting around doing nothing,” said one senior banker last week. “The good ones are asking us when the next round of cuts is coming — they want us to do it sooner rather than later.”
The question facing Asia’s investment bank chiefs is whether today’s low level of activity is a permanent adjustment, or whether the flow of initial public offerings will one day return.
Most are betting that this is the new normal and that the years of bloated fees from China ECM deals were the anomaly. The more optimistic are even inclined to accept this as a healthy development.
“If you look at the breakdown of fees across the businesses in Asia today, it looks very similar to our business in New York,” said the banker. “It looks sustainable.”
That’s true. The fee pie is a picture of neatness — roughly one-third M&A, one-third ECM and the remaining third split evenly between debt capital markets and leveraged finance. If banks can reduce their costs and some of the less competitive players exit, as expected, the industry may return to an even keel.
The challenge is choosing where to find the savings amid the egos and personal fiefdoms of the region’s most senior bankers. With the benefit of hindsight, cutting in China rather than Southeast Asia would have been a profitable move at the start of this year because, if 2012 is indicative of the future, Asian investment banking is no longer just a China story. During the first three quarters of 2012, China accounted for less than half the Asia ex-Japan fee pool.
Yet some banks have struggled to cut their losses there, thanks in part to the years of plenty that went before. Most of the profits earned during the past few years came from China, which means there were plenty of powerful voices steering the cuts towards other parts of the business during the first round of cuts.
A lot of the over-staffing in Asia is obviously at the more junior levels. Bankers found it easy to argue for bigger teams when they were earning huge fees, and jobs were handed out liberally to many a nephew of someone or other. So there is still plenty of room to cut costs, but the next round may also see some more senior names let go as banks are forced to take some of the tough decisions that they have so far dodged.
How they manage that process could set the tone for how their business will perform during the next few years. Welcome to the new normal.
OK, One Time Only ... Gangnam Style Gone Mad
Beyond comprehension but the bloody song is so addictive and the video too funny ... too many people with too much free time on their hands:
Oppa KL Style
Oppa Ipoh Style
Oppa Singapore Style
Oppa Super Kampung Style
Oppa Orang Sabah style
Oppa KL Style
Oppa Ipoh Style
Oppa Singapore Style
Oppa Super Kampung Style
Oppa Orang Sabah style
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Best Chapati Ever??? What About The Curries & Dips??? ... Teh Tarik Too???
Since I am not a young ciku anymore, and since I love Indian food (southern northern whatever), I guess I have tasted quite a bit of Indian food. But its always a big danger to claim this is the best of whatever ..., because statistically we cannot make that claim till one has tried all that is out there ... and even then, there will one or two buggers who will say their mum makes it best.
So, here goes nothing and everything, the best ever chapati I have tasted (and accompanying dips and curries as well) belongs to Restoran Santa Sweet House @ Jalan Sarikei, next to Tawakal Hospital.
Chapati is such a simple thing, how to be the best? One, straight off the pan piping hot, pick your chapati straight from the pan. Two, its the thinnest chapati ever, really really thin, I don't know how the guy does it. Three, sufficiently crispy on the outside and because its thin you don't get the doughy feel at all.
You can have it with their famous dhal or their even more famous sardine curry. The sardine curry has the right touch of spices and sweated onions that kinda pops in your mouth in a refreshing way.
The mutton curry is very very good as well.
But you know what was the best discovery ... its their teh tarik ... I can verify its the most pleasant one I ever had because they use fresh cow's milk..... OMG its that good.
I guess when the owner is a hands on guy, ultimate nice guy .... and you taste the chapati, .... if one can ensure that the simplest thing on their menu is already so damn good, you can bet that the rest would be deserving of equal grand treatment under the auspices of the owner.
Must try everything, the gulab jamun and osen chicken sambal are divine as well.
Yes, too good to be true, so many wonderful stuff all under one roof. Plus its a very muhibbah place too, all Malaysians once having taken their seats nod knowingly to one another, ... that "hey, so we are dining at the best place money can buy of chapati and curries" look.
No 15, Jalan Sarikei, Off Jalan Pahang
53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Phone: Joe- 0162648836; Gopi- 0149263052
So, here goes nothing and everything, the best ever chapati I have tasted (and accompanying dips and curries as well) belongs to Restoran Santa Sweet House @ Jalan Sarikei, next to Tawakal Hospital.
Chapati is such a simple thing, how to be the best? One, straight off the pan piping hot, pick your chapati straight from the pan. Two, its the thinnest chapati ever, really really thin, I don't know how the guy does it. Three, sufficiently crispy on the outside and because its thin you don't get the doughy feel at all.
You can have it with their famous dhal or their even more famous sardine curry. The sardine curry has the right touch of spices and sweated onions that kinda pops in your mouth in a refreshing way.
The mutton curry is very very good as well.
But you know what was the best discovery ... its their teh tarik ... I can verify its the most pleasant one I ever had because they use fresh cow's milk..... OMG its that good.
I guess when the owner is a hands on guy, ultimate nice guy .... and you taste the chapati, .... if one can ensure that the simplest thing on their menu is already so damn good, you can bet that the rest would be deserving of equal grand treatment under the auspices of the owner.
Must try everything, the gulab jamun and osen chicken sambal are divine as well.
Yes, too good to be true, so many wonderful stuff all under one roof. Plus its a very muhibbah place too, all Malaysians once having taken their seats nod knowingly to one another, ... that "hey, so we are dining at the best place money can buy of chapati and curries" look.
No 15, Jalan Sarikei, Off Jalan Pahang
53100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Phone: Joe- 0162648836; Gopi- 0149263052
Monday, October 1, 2012
Chart Of The Day
We all know what Microsoft stands for, milking the one main product which wasn't really theirs to start off with forever ... well, the end is near. Apple which nearly collapsed many times till Steve Jobs returned to the fold, is now officially the most valuable company in the world, surpassing Microsoft two years ago and has never looked back.
As of yesterday, another behemoth has gone past Microsoft, Google.
As of yesterday, another behemoth has gone past Microsoft, Google.
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