Slow Me Down, Lord
Slow me down, Lord!
Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind.
Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time.
Give me, amid the confusion of my day, the calm of the everlasting hills.
Break the tensions of my nerves and muscles with the music of the sining streams that live in my memory.
Help me to know the magical power of sleep.
Teach me the art of taking minute vacations: of slowing down to look at a flower, to chat with a friend, to pat a dog, to read a few line from a good book.
Remind me each day of the fable of the hare and the tortoise that I may know that the race it not always to the swift; that there is more to life than increasing its speed.
click pic to enlargeSouther live oak with Spanish moss
Let me look forward into the braches of the towering oak and know that it drew great and strong because it grew slowing and well. Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life’s enduring values that I may grow toward the stars of my greater destiny.
By Wilfred Peterson
Investment
A recent topic in a tennis forum sets me musing over my maiden venture in buying shares early at the start of my working life.
When the office was abuzz with news that SIA shares were plummeting by the hour, I said to myself in disbelief: “That cannot be! Our national carrier and pride ground crashing! (no pun). The power that be will not let that happen!”
To put my money where the mouth is, I almost emptied my savings in buying two lots. Two thousand shares were by no means a small consideration those days. Sure enough, share prices recovered within days and I beamed with confidence that my intuition was right. I resisted promptings to dispose quickly because I wanted the price to, in the terminology of the airline industry, to ‘soar’.
When I finally took position with a very tidy sum much to the envy of my colleagues, the counter continued to trade even higher. In retrospect, my colleagues missed the boat because they hesitated, forgetting that ‘He who hesitates is lost’. What caused SIA to slide the slippery ‘route’ for a couple of days remains unknown to me.
Encouraged by that episode, I embarked on further excursions in the stock market with the assistance of a friend who acted as my remiser. Those were the days when everything seemed going my way. It is said that in good times, even fools make money. However, as in everything in life, sometimes you lose; sometimes you win. Between then and now, I have come almost full circle and to ruminate on my investment path viz. country club membership, endowment policies, the infamous internet and communication, merger and acquisition unit trust funds would be a lengthy exercise on paper, spanning 30 (?) years and my recollection would be rather hazy.
Presently, the disparity in interest rates between what banks charge borrowers and pay depositors is scandalous. Given this uneven equation, even the most mismanaged bank will make money. It doesn’t encourage leaving your money in saving and F/D accounts. My portfolio is therefore endowment policies with profits, India and China funds, F/D with a fixed interest rate plus interest based on performance of the STI index and mostly premium currency investment. I am happy with the latter yielding potentially higher returns for the same time frame.
However, this form of investment is not without risks that banks prefer not to highlight but put them in small prints so tiny and fine that you need a magnifying glass to be able to read them. In fact, you may be required to sign an agreement absolving them from any blame. And although banks will not want to admit it, I view this as a form of betting against movements in currency exchange rates.
Naturally, therefore, returns are dependent on movements in specified currency exchange rates that, in turn, can be affected by many factors like national and international economic conditions, political and natural events, sudden interventions in the money market by central banks and other bodies imposing foreign currency exchange controls. Fluctuations in exchange rates of the paired currencies you selected may result in the loss of the principal sum to a considerable extent should the proceeds be paid in the alternative currency at maturity. One only has to look at the currency crises of the late 90’s affecting Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The trick, therefore, is to be selective. Go only for fundamentally strong currencies like euro, aussie or kiwi and avoid USD. The US economy is forecast to be weakening next year and the Asian economies may see repercussions from the new strain of bird flu virus.
Finally, never buy investment products from the banks. None of them are advantageous for you. That's right, none. They are all exploitative (of you) to a certain extent.
The only reason for their existence is to make free money off your money. They assume zero risk, and make a guaranteed return, while you take a risk and return is not certain.
For e.g. so called capital guaranteed funds.
Assume you invest $100k into this fund.
What the banks do is to invest 70-80% of your money in perhaps 5 year bonds which pay 3% p.a.
After 5 years (ignoring compound interest, which will make the actual return even larger) the bonds are guaranteed to pay you back $15,000.
So the banks will take a slice off this guaranteed $15,000 portion, maybe they'll take $2000 - $3000.
That leaves you with $12,000. Using this $12,000, the banks will use this money to buy options on futures, or stock indices and take a bet on their direction.
You can only lose what you paid as premium for your options, you cannot lose more than that, so that is how they "guarantee" your capital protection.
Let's say they make 15% from trading the first year. They'll probably makan a portion of that, and leave the rest to compound for you.
But they may also lose the money used to trade options.
Bottom line, with a little education and study, you can do the same thing without paying the hefty fees to the bank. And any savvy investor will not invest in capital protected funds, why do it, when the long term returns of a properly allocated portfolio will return you 9% p.a.?
So you see, bank products prey on the ignorance of lay people, and that's how they make money off you. My advice is to stay away from all investment products offered by banks.
What Christmas Isn’t
The lights-up started weeks before Christmas at a downtown shopping belt. It’s that phenomenal time of the year again, the unabashed commercialization of Christmas in the name of the birth of Jesus Christ.
It is arguably the biggest economic stimulus (apart from the 'great' singapore sale?) for the country and retailers set aside big budgets to outdo each other dressing up their stores. Typically, sales figures appreciate dramatically before the year bids adieu. It is no coincidence that shoppers are in a veritable whirl of unbridled consumerism and most people end up with a disorder of sorts – the ‘presents-I-don’t need’ and ‘what to do with white elephants?’ syndrome. Nancy Reagan had a solution when she was first lady at the white house; she recycled them. After all, material gifts given her couldn’t have been cheap stuffs given her position as the President’s wife. To me, it makes sense to reduce economic wastage. Think how what was spent could have gone to help the poor and needy instead.
Caught up the merriment, the fact that the origin of Christmas is pagan is irrelevant to most Christians let alone the absence of biblical support for the celebration of the birth of Christ as an annual event. “Christmas’ and ‘Nativity’ are words not found in the Bible. And the choice of Dec-25 as the commemorative date is at odds with reality - shepherds keeping watch over their sheep by night in the cold of winter?
To reiterate, the birth of Christ was and is just a recorded event in the Bible without the commission to Christians to turn it into a festivity. When Jesus was borne, the birth of Christ was done with, mission accomplished! Yet many churches fall into the lure of the commercial trappings of Christmas as an annual party celebration when they should be setting their horizon on the next coming of the Messiah.
As instructed in the Bible, Christians are to meet every first day of the week to break bread and drink wine in remembrance of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. “Do this in remembrance of me until I come again.” How many churches are faithful in adherence to what is so unequivocally stated in the Bible? Perhaps it is too much of a bother to do it every weekly whereas the Christmas affair is just once a year.
Slow me down, Lord!
click pic to enlarge
