21st century Economy Politic Quadrant

The Economy-Political Quadrant may seems like telling where to keep or invest your money despite good or bad time.

It indeed works very well during 20th century. Unfortunately comes to 21st century, not only has the year changed, personal finance arena has changed drastically as well.

Gold has been speculated so much that it MAY no longer be the standard of money.

There used to be only 'property' in the city. Now there are satellite towns, suburbs ... agriculture lands and even dust bins ( recycle ) have become valuable estates too. While property remains the right category to invest into whenever economy is booming, but predict the right future seems like tougher than buying lottery.

Government bonds used to be de-Facto action when a country is stable. But in today's world, a country is as smart as a taicon's finance. One day they are the LARGEST, the next day they are GONE.

Stock market used to be the back bone of a country's economy. However, the market of derivatives has become so HUGE that the REAL and PHYSICAL is NO LONGER more real than VIRTUAL

So in 21st century, the element of Stock-Property-Funds-Gold is really questionable. However, one fundamental that doesn't change is that

you will have to identify what to do at what time that is BEST for YOU !

Hope you will find your own very best Economy-Political Quadrant soon !

Recession over, what's NeXT ?

Sometimes I feel very depress when my prediction comes TRUE.

For those who don't know yet, zzzz is going through a transition where political power could potentially shared between 2 parties; instead of just one-side-say-it-all like the past 50 years. Unfortunately, the initial phase of this transition has ended in a way when our new Prime Minister has strategically resolved it.

At the moment New Economy Model was presented, I immediately sensed the game err they plan to play. Because exactly the same game plan has been played in USA before. While it is true that zzzz CAN become a developed nation by adopting those moves but it has also been proven that such finance structure is NOT sustainable. Just see what has happened in USA and what is happening in Europe.

Although as if recession is over now, actual effective inflation experience the SHARPEST rise in last 2 months, as high as 25% to 50% if you visit hypermarket often. That is not the worst. What is happening now is that major manufacturers are deceiving consumers in large scale openly. While their products have inflated severely, they run advertisements and promotions as if their products are ON OFFER ! All these are done as part of the exercise to smoothen the transition into a developed nation, hence they have government support behind the scene at all cost. Ahem ... at consumer's cost that is. While these are nothing new to those who have seen it all, but sadly ... there are more consumers falling into it than realizing it at all.

As mentioned in what can we do when bully by the big boys, there is probably nothing much we can do to STOP anything now. So there are just a few things we can probably watch carefully and ride on so that we can get a piece of the pie too ...

• Property will rise drastically. Wherever you are staying right now and despite how much you like it, it may become more worth while to sell it off in the next 10 years. So do plan ahead where you may want to stay 5-15 years later. This may become your LAST and ONLY ticket when the nation is developed and you are still under developing.

• Double your salary in the next 2-3 years. If you wait till the wave carries you, you will always stay behind. You salary WILL increase AFTER the effect of inflation fully kick in. But by then, your increased salary will mean much less. So you really have to think for yourself now. If you are really royal to your employer, your employer should have seen this coming too and take care of you but did it ?

Other than that, derived finance products like futures, options and forex will over shine proper financial planning so much that a lot of weird and ad-hoc theories will surface out. Most people will no longer be able to differentiate what the real proper investment is. On the other hand, that is due to more and more improper investments will actually obtain real returns for the new few years. So if all you care is to get more money, then it should fine temporary.

Hence, MalPF only has one advice to all. Be deviated all you want, just remember to engage an exit strategy and keep yourself in high cash flow condition.

Currency Turns Evil - part 3

Money was created to ease up buy sell transactions, you no longer have to take in 100 chickens just because you want to sell your diamond ring.

Since each country has its own system and seldom cross borders in the past, each of their money is different in unit called currency.

Then, country needs to do business with another country. They have to sychronize the value of their currency, they use gold for that purpose.

Slowly some smart 'finance' guy realizes that the 'impression of Gold' is as good as the real gold to increase value of their currency.  ( actually the impression is much better and easier to acquire than the real gold )

If the value of currency is just like the value of any traded goods - govern by supply and demand, why don't we trade the currency like the way we buy sell stocks ?

F O R E X is borned !

Before I proceed further, let me set the record straight that Forex is one of the most liquidated market which has Total Freedom.  Something I always pursue all finance institutions to go for.  So there are many good things about Forex.  However, there is one aspect that is evil, very evil indeed - and that is the part I am going to talk about here - its room for an unlimited speculative nature.

To Buy or Not To Buy ? JUST SAY IT  ...

So in Forex you buy sell currency like you buy sell anything.  And the item for sale is in the form of currency pair like this GBP/USD  (buying Pound with USD).  Says someone is selling 10 units at USD1.5125 each and you buy all 10 units.  Then the next seller is selling 5 units at USD 1.5200 and you buy all 5 units too, then the next seller is selling 1 unit at USD 1.5205.  So GBP value has just rised from USD 1.5125 to USD 1.5205 because you have bought the 15 units of GBP/USD.

correction :  You said you want to buy those 15 units but you actually don't.

like wise, the seller who said selling you the currency ... guess what ?  He doesn't have any Pound Steering neither !  He just said he want to sell you !

There is no real money involved !  What happened is the seller and the buyer have committed into a contract for the above transaction.  The contract stated a future date for the actual buy sell transaction.  So before the contracted date, you can resell what you have bought but haven't paid yet.

Remember just now you said you want to buy 15 units of 'goods' ?  If you sell them out at your purchased price before the contract expiry date, you will earn and lose Nothing - Zero !  But throughout the process, you have increased the value of GBP at that particular time.

Buy A Million with A Dollar

Another unique thing in Forex is what forex guys normally called it 'leverage'.  Basically you can say you want to buy 3 million of GBP with only USD 1,000 capital.  

Since there is no real currency involved and it is all about what the seller and buyer said, the real profit and lost is the difference of the movement.  For example, changes from USD 1.52 to USD 1.53 is only 1 cent difference.  So you don't have to have USD 1.52 to buy anything.  As long as you have 1 cent, you can say you want to buy the thing but as soon as you make a lost of 1 cent, the system automatically sell your contract out and deduct your 1 cent.

Lastly ...

Sorry if this write up is a bit boring.  This is a topic that cannot easily get agreement and I am trying my very best to express this in my laymen view ...

So by now you can see how you can use a minimum capital to speculate the value of a country's currency at ease - just say it !

Says you are an USA international trader.  You are buying 10,000 phone booths from England.

England quoted you GBP 1,000 each.

Currency Exchange at that time is 1 GBP = 1.50 USD

So your total payment is USD 15 millions

If you know forex very well, you can speculate sell GBP at lower price or buy USD at higher price until 1 GBP = 1.40 USD

If you managed to do that, you have just saved USD 1 million !!  

And your seller has just lost an equivalent amount !! 

This is actually happening every day !  A lot of 3rd world international wholesale businesses do not use forex in their finance management, their business profit range at 5-15%.  And their business contracts are usually renewable in 3 and 6 months and mostly in 1 to 2 years.  Everytime when the currency exchange flutuate more than 15-20%, they will lost all their profit ... no matter how smart they sell, no matter how much they mark up the selling price, no matter how much cost saving they did .... a cunning business counterpart can easily overturn all their effort just by Saying It !!

Guess what ?  There is no such thing as MYR pair in Forex trading.  MYR is so small that one single investor like George Soro can brankup a whole country simply by trading currency.

So the next time you are trading currency ... you are most probably NOT trading to bring up the value of your own country's value.  Instead you are most probably just helping USA and Britain ...

You can earn a lot in Forex no doubt ... but beware at what cost.

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Derivative - Options

Just to emphasize, this is not the FULL picture yet ... so dont make impulse decision that you want to go trade options straight away ... it will require quite long a study ...

source from http://teraoptions.com/stock1.html