Friday, January 2, 2009

How to be rich in 15 yrs

Article 1:
Year 2008 is a very difficult year for investments. My stock portfolio is down about 30%. Luckily, stocks only comprised 20% of my total investment portfolio. Thus, this only constitute a 6% drop in my total investment portfolio.

Some of my other investments did better, such as Gold (up about 9%); French Fine Wine Investment (up about 14.48%); and I avoided most of the losses in stocks by having 45% of my money in bank deposits. (Cash is King).

P.S. Last year I managed to lock in over 200% Capital Gains in stocks by selling out most of my stocks in year 2007 before the market Crash....what indicators did I rely on which helped me decide to sell out most of my stocks? This will be one of the many things that I will teach in the planned "How to Save, Invest and Accumulate Your First Million Dollars" Seminar.

I learn to be grateful when I read news about how even ultra wealthy people in the world are losing Big Money in year 2008.

Their large positions in firms, stocks turned bad in the last days of 2008

LEARN HOW TO SAVE,INVEST,ACCUMULATE.
The average household income in Singapore is about S$6,000 (if I didn't remember wrongly).

Imagine a person started work at age 24 and earned about S$6,000 average Household income for 15 years.....in 15 years, he/she would earn a total of S$1.08 million.

However, if I tell you that this person managed to achieve a S$1 million in investible assets over this same time period, Excluding his/her Residential Home.....

is it possible? It is indeed possible.

How do I know? Becos I'm the person who earns such an income and achieved S$1 million.

Why am I sharing this?

To show off? Nope. I'm sharing becos I think if more people realised that an average Singaporean can be a Millionaire in 15 years, then it means that many more people can do it as well.

I hope this sharing will inspire people, not put anyone off.

How did I do it? Well, I have decided to teach how I did it so that more Singaporeans can become a millionaire as well. In fact, I have a Dream, my dream is to help 1,000,000 persons achieve their First Million Dollars...by teaching them mindset, methods and strategies to do so, so that you can learn How to Fish.

One of my mentors once said to me:"Dennis, if I give you a fish, you'll only be full for a day. If I teach you how to fish, you will never go hungry again." I'm so glad that they (mentors) taught me how to fish.

There is a concept called "Pay it Forward", whereby we pass on the Good that we learned from others so that more people can benefit.

In the current Global Financial Crisis, we have read many real life stories of people losing most or all of their retirement savings. Why? Because they do not know how to Fish and had relied wrongly on others to "supply them the fish".

Year 2009 will be the year whereby I plan to start teaching others what I have learned from my multi-millionaire Mentors. If you are interested to attend such seminars to learn "How to save, invest and accumulate your first Million dollars, please email us at seminar@HousingLoanSG.comThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it , providing your name, email address and contact number.

When the seminars/courses are ready, we will inform you of the dates and other details, including Course Fees and Seminar Duration.

Wishing everyone a Joyous and Fulfilling Year 2009!

Cheers!


(LONDON) The financial crisis caught up with Kirk Kerkorian, Robert Tchenguiz and Adolf Merckle in the last days of 2008, denting their reputations for being among the world's savviest, not merely richest, investors.

Ultra-wealthy people such as the three men - a 91-year old US billionaire, a jet-setting London property tycoon and a media-shy German industrialist - are often thought to be at the vanguard of financial innovation, private bankers say.

'They're losing big money and their wealth is disappearing quickly,' said David Giampaolo, chief executive of Pi Capital, a London-based private equity investment boutique.

Rich investors often held large positions in specific companies or stocks, he said, and they had also often borrowed large amounts of money to boost returns.

'At the time, it didn't look irresponsible (but) now they've had double, triple whammy problems,' he said.

Hedge funds, still dominated by private investors, are among the players worst hit by the credit crunch, with some analysts predicting that their assets will shrink by as much as 80 per cent.

And the scandal around US financier Bernard Madoff - accused of defrauding rich clients and charities of US$50 billion - is another example of how the very wealthy are not immune to the financial turmoil.

Mr Kerkorian, best known for his ties to the ailing US car industry, this week said that he had sold off his remaining shares in Ford Motor Co, completing a retreat that cost him hundreds of millions of dollars.

Since October 2008, the activist investor has been cutting his losses on a US$1 billion investment in Ford that had lost most of its value, capping a two-year period during which he was involved with all three Detroit-based car companies.

Forbes magazine, which tracks the world's richest people, puts Mr Kerkorian's worth at US$11.2 billion from investments in casinos and other businesses. His losses made him one of 2008's poorest performers, it said.

Iranian-born Mr Tchenguiz draws most attention through newspapers citing his jet-setting lifestyle, including an expensive house in an upmarket London district and a sumptuous Louis XIV-style party he is reported to have thrown for his 40th birthday.

His Globe Tenanted Pub Co Ltd, which runs 424 leased pubs across the United Kingdom, said this week that it would appoint an external adviser, after narrowly breaching its debt covenants - early warning signs of financial trouble.

And business publication The Estates Gazette in October 2008 said that Mr Tchenguiz had dropped off its list of the 500 wealthiest people in UK property after losing £1 billion (S$2.1 billion) when Icelandic bank Kaupthing collapsed.

Germany's Mr Merckle, ranked by Forbes among the world's 100 richest people, was caught out by wrong-way bets on shares in Volkswagen AG, incurring massive losses.

His investment vehicle VEM Vermoegensverwaltung said on Wednesday that it would sign an agreement to obtain a bridge loan from banks as it worked on refinancing the group.

Banking sources have told Reuters that Mr Merckle's losses were estimated at 400 million euros (S$808 million), forcing him to hold talks on state guarantees from regional governments, although he ultimately opted out of such financing.

But Sebastian Dovey, whose company advises private banks as well as wealthy individuals, still sees a glimmer of hope.

'There is a certain ghoulish interest in covering savage drops in fortunes among other billionaires,' said Mr Dovey, a partner at consultancy Scorpio Partnership. 'Time will tell if these individuals have the skill for wealth re-creation. Most, we suspect, will.' - Reuters
A person uses the "nick" No Money to post in an internet forum and asked to learn from others.

Below is my reply to this person:
my first advice is change your nick. Please do not use "no money" as your nick.
Why? Becos whatever you think about and focus on expands. If you think no money, it is unlikely that more money would be attracted to you.

Your thinking would filter down to your subconscious mind. And your subconscious would "take action" based on what it is told. Thus, if you keep saying "no money", thinking "no money", that's exactly the result you would get.

Think positive. Think I will be a Millionaire. I am a Millionaire in the making.

Every night before I go to sleep I would say these positive affirmation:"I am Happy! I am Healthy! I am wealthy!

I say it in a very happy mood and go to sleep happily.

You might find it amusing. But it really works. I know, becos I've started doing this after I learned it from a Mentor who is a Multi-millionaire that this is what she does.

Some people don't believe in all these things about "positive". Well, my challenge to everyone out there is this:"please find me rich and wealthy people who are NEGATIVE. If you can find them, it shows that being negative can also leads to success. Which I think is NOT POSSIBLE at all.

P.S. It seems like such things really works. I managed to reach my First Million Dollars (excluding my home) in year 2008, 1 year before my original target. I have to thank my mentors for guiding me on my path to Financial Success.

Cheers!

I Guess that I had no Hope!
Free Mortgage Loan Calculator



Please enter your loan information below

Interest Rates (%) 0.6%

Loan amount ($)750,000

Loan Term (year)23 years


The loan result is

Monthly Payment$2909.88

Total Interest Payable$53127.05

If Charlene can only wait for 15 years,how?

But I can only pay half of my salsry =3,000,if not how am I going to survive?
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If I want it in 15 years

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Interest Rates (%) 0.6%

Loan amount $750,000

Loan Term (year)15 years


The loan result is

Monthly Payment $4358.01

Total Interest Payable$34443.53

You see,I can only hope that she is left on the shelf.

Bank Video 1:

FALL oF CITI GROUP
http://www.housingloansg.com/web/index.php?option=com_expose&Itemid=47
Last November, at the time when the government gave Citi a record $306 bn bailout, insiders told Fox Business that a possible break up of the bank was on the table. Citi has received $45 bn in capital injections from the government as well.

Citi, which has been hit with about $55 bn in credit-related writedowns and losses since the credit crisis began in the summer of 2007, is now moving toward a breakup of what was once the world's largest bank.

The government has also invested $45 bn in Citigroup's shares; its initial $25 bn investment fell rapidly underwater when Citigroup's market value plunged to $21 bn in late November, at the time of its massive taxpayer-backed rescue. Citi's market value is now below that of Home Depot, Kraft Foods, and UPS.

Citi's balance sheet has nearly doubled, to $2.2 tn, from 2005 to 2007-its balance sheet is twice the size of troubled insurer American International Group, which in turn got a government bailout package half the size of Citi's rescue.

But with the sale of a majority stake in its retail brokerage, Smith Barney, to Morgan Stanley, Citi's fourth quarter losses will be mitigated. Analysts now estimate Citi's losses could be in the range of $2.6 bn, but the sums could be higher.

What is happening at Citi is of a piece with what is hammering the entire financial sector. The banks do not face just a liquidity crisis, as the Federal Reserve and the US government have pumped out an estimated $8.4 tn in rescue funds through various government hydrants.

This is a solvency issue, where banks need capital now to take care of bad assets still sitting on their books-by some estimates, a total of $1.2 tn. So far, liquidity boosts have not improved asset values for things like subprime securities, built on top of bad loans.

The problem has gone clearly viral, as it has moved beyond bad mortgages and souring credit card payments, as borrowers struggle to avoid foreclosures during a deepening recession.

The banks are now being hit with bad commercial property loans, bad leveraged buyout loans and both consumer and corporate bankruptcies, among other souring credits.

The Citi Breakup

With the breakup, Citi is returning to its roots as a global commercial and retail bank while retaining units that will handle advisory, underwriting and market-making investment bank offerings sold to clients worldwide, with offerings that include loans, M&A advice, global trade services, and capital-markets services.

Despite telling Wall Street since last November that Citi had no plans to sell Smith Barney, Vikram Pandit, Citi's chief executive, said he would now sell a majority stake in the Smith Barney brokerage to Morgan Stanley. Citi will keep a small brokerage unit, operating out of Citi branches and its capital markets divisions.

The joint venture will have 20,390 financial advisers and $1.74 tn of assets, a brokerage which would be bigger than the Thundering Herd at Merrill Lynch in both the number of brokers and assets under management.

The joint venture will be run by James Gorman, a top Morgan Stanley executive who could be in line to succeed Morgan's chief executive John Mack, who is expected to retire in 2010.

Morgan will swap into the joint venture its retail, private wealth management and international private wealth management units.

Citi will put into the joint venture Smith Barney US (excluding its branch-based and institutional financial advisors), Smith Barney Australia, and Quilter, its UK investment bank. Fox Business has been reporting since last November that Citi planned to unload Quilter, among other assets.

Morgan will get a 51% stake in the joint venture and will pay Citi $2.7 bn in cash upfront, with an option to buy out entirely the new entity in five years.

Citi will book a $9.5 bn pre-tax (or $5.8 bn after-tax) gain on the deal. It will also get about $6.5 bn in tangible common equity, and add $6.4 bn to Tier 1 capital, its regulatory capital cushion, estimates Meredith Whitney, top bank analyst at Oppenheimer Equity Research.

"There is no other way to view this move, in our opinion, than as a way for Citi to raise cash prior to its 4Q [fourth quarter] earnings release," says Whitney.

A Good Move for Citi?

Citi's Smith Barney unit contributed nearly 40% of Citi's net income in 2007, one reason why Citi's stock dropped on the initial news of the joint venture deal with Morgan Stanley.

Richard Bove, a top bank analyst at Ladenburg Thalmann, says "from a pure business standpoint, this deal makes no sense for Citigroup. It will be contributing 60% of the earnings to the new company, getting 49% of the resulting profits. This shortfall may not be covered by the" $2.7 bn in cash that it gets from the sale.

Other Asset Sales at Citi

Citigroup insiders now say it is moving to separate riskier consumer finance and securities businesses from its global commercial banking operations.

Insiders say a "bad bank" structure is "not quite the approach" Citi is taking, as one top level executive puts it, where Citi would launch an entirely new "bad bank" structure that could then get direct private or public capital infusions from investors or the government.

Instead, Citi could place bad assets, including loans, securities, and entire units worth more than $600bn-less than a third of its $2 tn in assets-into a separate division to isolate them away from the parts of the company that are working and throwing off profits. Whether or not Citi would then bring this division into the market as a new offering for investment remains to be seen.

Citigroup's Pandit had said less than a year ago that Citi would move to unload potentially $500 bn in assets. The assets now under discussion have grown larger than that sum, and could include potentially a sale of its CitiFinancial consumer-lending unit, and its Tokyo-based Nikko Asset Management, among other items-all with the aim of raising quickly cash.

However, a bad bank structure for US banks could be in the works. Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke suggested in a speech that creating a huge government-run "bad bank" to own the toxic assets now roiling the balance sheets of financial companies could be an option, similar to the Resolution Trust Corp. structure the government deployed to deal with the savings and loan meltdown in the early ‘90s.

Other Bank Losses

Deutsche Bank (DB), the largest bank in Germany, now expects a loss of $6.4 bn. Fox Business has already reported that Bank of America could report a $3.6 bn loss, as it digests the problematic balance sheets of Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Financial.

Lawmakers have been highly critical of the TARP, arguing that taxpayer funds haven't led to more bank lending as planned and that the Bush administration failed to use the funds as it promised it would, such as to advance programs to prevent mortgage foreclosures.

Banks' lending has been constrained because many are sitting on large losses and others are fearful that new losses could emerge. A Goldman Sachs study updated late Tuesday estimates that investors and financial institutions could lose $2.1 tn on bad loans, but that only half of those losses have been realized.

BOA&CITI DOOM:http://www.logoblog.org/wp-images/logo-design/citibank/citi-bank-logo-new.jpg
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Citigroup and Bank of America released their fourth-quarter results on Friday morning that showed both the deepening problems in the U.S. financial sector and the steps that both banks are taking to survive.

Citigroup unveiled a broad restructuring designed to shed weaker businesses and troubled assets, and also reported an $8.29 billion (5.56 billion pound) fourth-quarter loss, its fifth straight quarterly loss.

Bank of America reported posted its first quarterly loss in 17 years and slashed its dividend, just hours after winning a multibillion-dollar lifeline from the federal government to help it absorb Merrill Lynch, which lost a record $15.31 billion in the quarter.

The net loss at Bank of America alone was $1.79 billion, or 48 cents per share, and compared with a profit of $268 million, or 5 cents, a year earlier.

The following are comments from market participants on the banks' results:

COMMENTS:

MICHAEL HOLLAND, FOUNDER OF HOLLAND & CO, OVERSEES MORE THAN $4 BILLION, NEW YORK -- ON CITIGROUP

"On the one hand, this is the fifth consecutive quarter of losses. It's just a continuing bad dream for the management and shareholders of Citi.

"On the other hand, the history of good bank/bad bank is surprisingly positive. It worked a couple of decades ago, so I think it's one of the first steps towards some positive news and the end of this nightmare.

"It's the first major step towards the dismantling of the empire.

"We have for the first time in a long time some reason to think positively."

PETER DIXON, UK ECONOMIST AT COMMERZBANK, LONDON -- ON CITI

"It's quite clear that the numbers are dire. It's interesting that Citigroup is clearly inclining to split up. It's an indication that the era of big financials is at an end for now. Banks have to divest themselves of their noncore businesses if they are going to survive. It's going to be a very difficult period.

"The problem is of course if you start to get rid of what's perceived to be noncore assets who is going to buy them?

"There is going to be massive cost cutting. That's clear. The outlook for the whole banking sector is going to be grim because not only banks around the world have to cope with the toxic assets on their balance sheets, they also have to content with a deterioration of the economic cycle which is going to impact them."

MARTIN SLANEY, HEAD OF DERIVATIVES AT GFT, LONDON

"The negative earnings-per-share numbers for both Citigroup and Bank of America, and a horrific loss for Citigroup in excess of $8 billion are worse than the market had expected, but this disappointment is being overshadowed by the colossal bail-out deal for Bank of America announced overnight.

"The predilection being shown by the U.S. government to continue to put up the cash and guarantees required to support the too-big-to-fail players is being lapped up by the markets.

"Despite the worse-than-expected numbers, U.S. stock markets are still expected to open up around 1 percent, focusing on the bigger-picture ramifications of the funding lifeline."

MATT MCCORMICK, PORTFOLIO MANAGER, BAHL & GAYNOR INVESTMENT COUNSEL, CINCINNATI, OHIO -- ON CITIGROUP

"I think people knew it was going to be bad, but I'm surprised it's this bad. (Citigroup CEO Vikram) Pandit has his work cut out for him.

"It seems that every release I see from them is about the future, and how this newest plan is the best thing for them. I don't want them to take on more water, but they are facing some serious, serious challenges. Even if they divide into two divisions, the results all fall to the same bottom line.

"I'm not sure this is their way out -- they're getting hit on all sides, and they're struggling. This is an extremely difficult road, regardless of how many parts they split into."

CASSANDRA TOROIAN, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER, BELL ROCK CAPITAL, PAOLI, PENNSYLVANIA ON BANK OF AMERICA:

"None of it's a surprise at this point."

"They were probably one of the best banks out there balance sheet-wise until they did the Merrill deal, I think they had a handle on things pretty well.

"I think it's really unfortunate that they had to cut the dividend."

ON CITIGROUP:

"Again, it's about what we would have expected: ugly all around.

"I am a little bit surprised at the size of what they have marked down. What have they been doing this last year?

"(The reorganization) comes as too little, too late. I am astonished it took them 12 months to do this."

ANDREW BELL, HEAD OF RESEARCH, RENSBURG SHEPPARDS, LONDON

"I am not surprised that (Citigroup's net loss) is a big number in an environment in which you want to try and get all of the bad news out as quickly as possible.

"The authorities obviously want banks to have the confidence to start lending again and they won't do that until they feel that they are protected against further losses on the legacy portfolio of asset-backed securities.

"The longer they hold back from lending, the greater the depths of the recession would be."

MATT MCCALL, PRESIDENT OF PENN FINANCIAL GROUP IN RIDGEWOOD, NEW JERSEY

"Everybody out there believes that the government will not let these banks fail, and that's what giving the market a bounce today.

"But, I still don't know how we're going to pay for all of this. It's either our taxes are going to get raised very high, or this is going to crush the U.S. dollar, which leads me to like commodities right here."
Info:http://www.stomp.com.sg/mypaper/

Extra Space:http://www.extraspace.com.sg/personal_storage.php

Pop@Bras Brasah:http://www.streetdirectory.com/asia_travel/travel/travel_id_928/travel_site_12997/

TA:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technical_analysis

Preferred Shares:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_stock

Corporate Bond?:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_bond

Municipal bond=Bonds issued by STATE GOVERNMENT

Credit rating=abillity to pay debts

Type of speculators:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculators#Type_of_speculators

Kenyes's expansion monetary system:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

SDR FROM IMF:Notes:
(1) SDR per currency rates are based on the representative exchange rate for each currency.
(2) Interest rate on the financial instrument of each component currency in the SDR basket, expressed as an equivalent annual bond yield: three-month European rate; three-month Japanese Treasury Discount bills (effective February 5, 2009, replacing the thirteen-week Japanese Government financing bills); three-month UK Treasury bills; and three-month US Treasury bills.
(3) IMF Rule T-1(b) specifies that the SDR interest rate for each weekly period commencing each Monday shall be equal to the combined market interest rate as determined by the Fund. Under IMF Rule T-1(c), the combined market interest rate is the sum, as of the Friday preceding each weekly period, rounded to the two nearest decimal places, of the products that result from multiplying each yield or rate listed above by the value in terms of SDRs of the amount of the corresponding currency specified in Rule O-1. If a yield or rate is not available for a particular Friday, the calculation shall be made on the basis of the latest available yield or rate.
WHERE DOES IMF GETS ITS $:http://www.imf.org/external/np/exr/facts/finfac.htm