SECRET's OUT! IS THE CALL WARRANTS GAME OVER?

It used to easy. It was so easy to make money on this one. You bought a Call Warrant when it was first listed on Bursa, kept it, and watched it go up 25%-100% in a month. People who know me know that this was my modus operandi. Not all of them agreed with my methods, but I was laughing all the way to bank while many got caught holding speculative stocks (in a Bull market, which really doesn't make sense). It was supposed to be another raid on the Call Warrants yesterday, specifically the new Genting and Bursa (CBs). I argued that since investors really didn't understand these instruments, they'd bid it UP (high Implied Volatility, in Options parlance). I argued that our investors are still in love with "penny stocks", and what better penny stocks than KLK,MISC,Tenaga,YTL,Resorts,Genting (makes you salivate, doesn't it?) etc. Hey, basically, we got a party!

THE ROOF CAME CRASHING DOWN YESTERDAY. I didn't manage to get my hands on Bursa and Genting Call Warrants. The bulls took it to over $1 for Genting and $2 for Bursa (they've pulled back a bit today, with Genting CB at RM0.935, -0.05, and Bursa CB at RM1.63, -0.02), . Are these guys nuts! Don't they understand the conversion ratios? Anyway, maybe the easy money in these instruments are gone, and we'll have to be more patient on a pullback (which always results in a "carnage" since these are highly leveraged instruments).

In the meantime, lets wait for Public Bank and Maybank Call Warrants.

There are also THREE IPOs which I am applying for: Boustead al-Hadharah REIT (0.99), PanTech (1.18), and Dufu Technology (0.70) (sounds like Star Wars, doesn't it? Count Dufu instead of Count Duku.....). I abhor REITs but felt I had to go for Boustead since its the first plantation REIT. Pantech is involved in Oil & Gas (good according to Feng Shui Masters) and Dufu is in the Electronics Industry. Not my favourite, but what the heck. Gotta put money to work!

Rgrds,
Chief Shook

IT'S ALIVE, AT LAST

Finally, after hours of constant struggling (I'm not a programmer, mind you, and I must be dumbest guy I know of in HTML), the website Onlinetrading188.net is up and running. I'll be building links and a host of other things in the next few days in order to give the Blog and Website the same "feel", at least in terms of topics we discuss, which will revolve around Forex, Options (international equities), Local Equities, and Mutual Funds.

The screenshot is shown on the left.


OnlineTrading 188 will feature resources and articles on alternative investment assets such as Forex and Options. On the site now is the FREE Forex Course. Coming soon are the FREE Options course, an e-book on Tax, Options and Forex. The idea to provide pre-training through the Web is have potential students learn up the basics first before attending real classes. I just can't believe in charging people RM3,800+ for a course of Forex and Options. Better use that money for trading capital. So why is our training different? Go find out on the site!

The idea behind all this seemingly craziness is simple: WE NEED BULL MARKET TO MAKE MONEY. Although you can make money in sideways markets and Bear markets, it's not that easy (and neither is it that fun). By spreading my investments in many different types of market, I am ASSURED OF AT LEAST ONE BULL MARKET. This means that I will perpetually be having fun. Good deal, eh?

This is the START OF THE JOURNEY, so I'm quite excited. See you again, and let's drink to ONLINE TRADING 188!

Chief Shook

A JANUARY EFFECT IT IS

Both the Dow and KLSE blasted up north this week. So we do have a January effect, now don't we? The Dow ended at 12,556 (a new closing ALL TIME HIGH, which I'm sure we'll see be taken out next week) and the NASDAQ closed at a 6-year HIGH of 2,502. The NASDAQ is leading the rally, and this is even being felt at home where analysts are trying to prop up chip stocks here (Unisem, MPI, etc.). What was more impressive about Fridays rally was that it came on the heels of APPLE being sued by CICSO and a warning from AMD. Looks like even bad news can't stop the BULLS. Larry McMillan even mentioned that the bulls once again stole the show despite the S&P500 being close to breaking down its uptrend channel. The US Dollar fell against the Euro and Cables, although it did initially went up after the release of the Retail figures (got caught on that, bummer. But it was a good week for currency trading anyhow).

The KLSE closed at 1,119 and will most certainly blast through the 1,121 high. Its quite unfortunate that we're a laggard and still far away from the 1330 points set back 13 years ago! Just hope the party doesn't end soon (I have my own ominous thoughts on these), because WE'VE JUST STARTED HERE! Helloooooooooo.....Next week is Options Expiration week, so we should a slightly upward bias to the DOW (which means we'll probably see an upward bias to the KLSE, too).

I was still stuck in trying to get the Website out. But now all problems have been resolved and I'm looking at Tuesday, 17th January, as the date to launch the site. I'm still building the FREE Options and Forex training courses, and we should be able to see it online by January 22nd 2007. Sorry for the delay, as I realise that there has been a lot of DEMAND for these services. I'm not a technical guy, so it really took some time to understand the Internet thing. On the other hand, distributing these services without the Internet would have been a great NO-NO (I would die of exhaustion, seriously).

Cheers!

INTERNET ISSUES RESULT IN EXECUTION RISK

Execution Risk - The inability to execute your trades. As long as the lines to the USA aren't fixed yet, we might be facing an execution risk on our trades. True, not trading is costing us in terms of opportunity costs (and maybe some losses because we can't hedge), but that's the price one has to pay for a global trading environment. I was panicky two nights ago as my trade on the Aussie/US forex pair did not go through (instead, Firefox conveniently hung up and the Internet line was too slow - and Firefox is the BEST, mind you). Luckily it was a practice account.

Hope that the earthquake in Taiwan is a one-off thing (you wouldn't think so if you're watching the National Geographic channel, though). Telekom says 50% of the lines are restored, with 80% to be restored by Jan. 12 and 100% restoration by Jan. 20th, 2007 (read it here). I'll drink to that! In the meantime, stay tuned for the launch of onlinetrading188.net! (yawn, I know it's been delayed, but is really due to "technical" problems, which of course, inevitably can be traced back to humans!)

WE'RE ALIVE AGAIN AND A GOOD 2007 TO EVERYBODY

Well, it's almost a week after the Taiwan Earthquake hit and it looks like we're coming back alive, albeit slowly. Better than nothing though, as the Internet in Malaysia crawled to a standstill during the first two days. Shows that we need a better Disaster Recovery Plan (maybe other links than the current ones we use which are in an earthquake prone area). What happened was downright catastrophic as connections to FXCM, Easy Forex, Options Xpress, and Think Or Swim completely broke down. This prevented us from trading except on Friday. No hedges were able to be put in, so I'm looking at Wednesday (3rd January 2007) for this. But life goes on and hopefully we'll be up and running again this week.

At these times, I really wish GOOGLE had an online trading service (they can do anything and be a monopolistic, for all I care), since they were the ones to get their systems functioning after the Quake. The rest still struggled, and Yahoo!'s service was intermittent (Good try, though).

A Happy New Year for 2007? I'm not quite sure, and I must agree with Kadir Jasin on his take for the New Year (read it here, its titled "Tiada ucapan tahun baru Buat Anda."). Things are not all that rosy down here now and from reading the blogs, you can clearly see that we're facing 2007 with no end in sight for the increases in basic necessities (food,fuel,electricity,water,tolls).

Well, it's really hard to control the external or other factors which have lead to the inflationary pressures. I do see that housing loan rates are going down, although the housing market is slow.
In the meantime, let's hope for a volatile market in 2007 to make money from.

In the meantime, anxiety or not....HAPPY NEW YEAR and soon to be CHINESE NEW YEAR, too!