Musings about Life and Investments

https://www.ft.com/content/f5f9ff74-9647-11e9-8cfb-30c211dcd229 H2O dumps illiquid Windhorst-bonds as it battles crisis London subsidiary of France’s Natixis left with €500m exposure as it tries to staunch outflows H2O Asset Management has scrambled to offload hundreds of millions of euros of illiquid bonds as the asset manager battles a crisis triggered by an outsized bet on debt linked to a controversial German financier. The Mayfair-based firm, which is a subsidiary of French bank Natixis, has suffered a €1.4bn drop in assets across six of its funds, according to data up to Thursday, after the Financial Times revealed the scale of its holdings of bonds tied to Lars Windhorst, a flamboyant entrepreneur with a history of legal troubles. After dumping €300m of this private, non-rated debt on Friday, the sales accelerated on Monday. The asset manager, which was founded in 2010 and whose assets have ballooned to more than €30bn, announced at the end of the day that its exposure ...

I shall explain further in another post. But I've looked at HYG, high yield US bond ETF and it appears to have turned positive. Credit markets always front runs stocks because bond markets usually have more institutional investors. 

I've started a new Youtube channel to talk about investments. The video is rather amateurish because I'm still getting a grip on how to edit. I spoke about the markets that are likely to do well, and as a test case, Macquarie Group. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DiXD2FRjg0 With regards to Airbnb, we did try one outside of Singapore, as an owner of a house abroad. The experience has been terrible. We paid 15% management fee to an operator, who promises to fulfill bookings, send cleaners etc. Since then, occupancy rate has been less than 70%. In order to get 50% more net cashflow compared to Buy to let, we needed over 70% occupancy. The volatility of the occupancy is a lot. In Nov, Jan, Feb it can be as low as 30 - 40%. In Dec when there's a Christmas market, or in Mar, Apr, May and pretty much most of summer it can be over 70%. However, it brings other problems. We have a big house with a large garden. People tend to book houses for parties. My neighbour told ...

Stan Druckenmiller averaged over 30% returns the last three decades — impressive. But what’s even more astonishing is the lack of volatility… the guy almost never loses. He never had a single down year and only had five losing quarters out of 120 altogether! That’s absolutely unheard of. And he did all of this in size. At his peak, Druck was running more than $20 billion and he was still managing to knock it out the park. Druck also said the following: The stock market IS NOT the economy. The sweetest spot is when economic growth is weak and inflation low. The Fed will be on your side. When growth is strong or inflation high, the Fed is no longer with you. https://opportunistictrader.com/2018/11/26/legend-druckenmiller-on-why-the-fed-not-earnings-move-markets/

I share my personal views on this blog and will not be liable for any investment losses if you follow my views. These are standard disclaimers. Actually, I do have my own betting averages and I'm quite confident that I'm well above 60%. I easily can make 10 - 15% return per year without leverage, whether bull or bear by investing in stocks, shorting stocks to hedge or gain Alpha, currencies, commodities. I believe H2O Multibonds is very near the BUY zone. it is just 3% from the 150 days moving average. I shall present a video shortly on this. I believe 2019 is a bull market. I've been a bull since end Feb 2019  http://musingsjeffong.blogspot.com/2019/02/hear-hear-credit-markets-indicate-that.html This is just a near term bull back and a buying opportunity. Gold in terms of USD, or XAUUSD has turned from negative to neutral and I will wait for a better level for buying opportunity. Here is my one and only Youtube video on the markets.  https://www....

There are multiple issues with Arsenal. Chief among all is Kroenke, an owner who is absent for most games and takes money out of the club. Arsenal will continue to slip down the rankings with Newcastle now the new financial powerhouse of football. Petrodollars will push the Toons to the top 4 soon. Second, we have a coach who is a 7/10, not an 8 or 9. Wenger started out being a 8 or 9. In the last 10 seasons, he fell to 6 or 5. Unai Emery is an improvement, a transition, but not a transformation. The xGoals for was lower, xGoals against was worse than Wenger's final season. Third, we lost Alexis Sanchez and Aaron Ramsey who are the powerhouses of our midfield. We made a huge mistake keeping Ozil. We have less problems in defensive midfield. Lucas Torreira and Matteo are our future. Granit Xhaka is ok provided he is given a chance to play. He's not a tackler, doesn't have speed, but he can spray the ball 20m up field and create deadly chances. We need someone industrious...

H2O managers came by to update us. Their view is that 2010 to 2019 is similar to 1990 – 1999. This was the period where developed equities outperformed Asia / Emerging Markets. Oh yes, we also had the Asian Crisis of 1997 – 98 when I started work. It was one of the most traumatic experiences I had. I remembered the CLOB shares that had to be transferred to a Malaysian broking account otherwise it was worthless. The Indonesian Rupiah falling from 4000 / USD to 13,000 within days. Singapore’s SIBOR rate shot up to 13%! The white line is the MSCI Asia ex Japan Index. The pink line is the valuation of price to book. The green line is the trailing earnings per share. MSCI Asia x Japan is now at 1.54x Price to book. It has retraced over 50% of the rally that began on Christmas Eve. This is 19% above the 10 year low of 1.29 on 29 Feb 2016. The reason for the steep decline of Asian stocks is primarily due to the fall in EPS probably caused by trade wars. I’ve done analysis in the past...