Aug 5, 2011

Josh Brown’s article from yesterday on the “ETF Singularity” is a winner. …we now have Concrete ETFs, Rare Earths ETFs, Global Aquaculture (Fishing!) ETFs, ETFs that hold only metals that are the color white (look it up – WITE, I kid you not)… We need to make an ETF of all the loony swap-based ETFs that have been launched over the last few years. And we could call it the World’s Traded Fund, so its ticker symbol would be WTF!

Jul 29, 2011

The price of COEs - Certificates of Entitlement, the piece of paper that allows you to buy a car in Singapore - has reached new 14-year highs. The COE for cars with engines larger than 1.6 litres - so, basically, any car that doesn’t suck - now costs $72,500 over and above the 105% tax on cars and the cost of the car itself. (The last time COEs cost this much was just before the 1998 Asian crisis; I’m not saying history repeats, but it occasionally rhymes.

May 20, 2011

(Note for the humour-impaired: this post is not investment advice; this post is comedy. Carry on.) As you should all know from extensive news coverage, the Rapture will arrive at 6pm on Saturday, and God will take all of his chosen people up to heaven for the least alcoholic Saturday night ever. Those who choose to turn away from him, however, will be left on earth for six months of unrelenting torment (and Facebook-organised looting - 455,518 people attending!

Apr 9, 2011

Even if you read nothing else this weekend, you must read John Hempton’s incendiary takedown of the SGX’s thwarted merger with the ASX. All I’ll add is that he’s absolutely right. Those dodgy S-chip listings that sucked up so much of Singaporean investors’ money in the mid-to-late-2000s (they were handing out prospectuses in Raffles Place as late as early 2008) are now collapsing or being suspended at the rate of one or two a fortnight.

Mar 18, 2011

I’ve ranted previously about people calling things “flash crashes” that don’t deserve the name. Fat fingers; gunning stops; these things aren’t a patch on the original flash crash. But what happened in USDJPY two days ago, in the witching hour between the Wednesday session in New York and the Thursday session in Singapore - that was worthy of being called a flash crash. The least liquid time of day in the FX markets is after 5pm in New York: the NYC traders are in the pub; the Sydney traders are still waiting for their first cup of coffee to kick in; and the Tokyo and Singapore traders (except for a few dedicated souls) aren’t at their desks yet.