Happy Diwali

HAPPY DIWALI

To All My Blog Visitors Celebrating 

This Festival of Lights

TM and MAXIS as defensive stocks in my Portfolios.

I am back from the cold. I must say being away for almost six months has given me a sense of control over my activities including blogging. As the market environment deteriorated over those months so too my portfolio which I am managing myself.

The current market turmoil due to both external and internal factors has a great impact on wealth creation. Despite earlier knowledge that the oil and gas industry is cyclical, I fail to clear my position on a related stock on time and my loss on that is particularly staggering. I also have a plantation stock which is still giving a tiny dividend regularly but the share value has depreciated as well. And there is the stock that I bought based on its rapid rise in price only to be followed by its rapid decline. Well, these are my losing stocks which I will hold till better times come.

I am glad though I did not buy those stocks loved by foreigners like AirAsia which lost rather heavily when the capital flight out of the country started and remains so to date. I have so far, on paper, lost about 16% of my capital investment but it could have been higher if not for my two defensive stocks, MAXIS and TM. These two are quite resilient in times like this. It's so fortunate that I decided to participate in TM's dividend reinvestment scheme as I could acquire the shares at a discount and without extra charges. These two stocks have mitigated my severe paper loss on my three other stocks. TM's dividend is at 9.3 sen per unit and that of Maxis's at 5 sen per unit down by 3 sen and all due in two weeks' time. In the past the annual dividend rate for TM was 22 sen per unit and that of Maxis was 40 sen per unit.

My regret is for disposing my Axiata and IHH stocks so soon after making some capital gains. I would not have lost so muchon paper had I kept these two as they are in the defensive category in times of market depression. But as they say market will always rise after a decline and it's not a matter of if. All you need to do is to sit it out and monitor the economic and financial data of relevant countries such as the US and China, the oil and commodities' prices and of course the domestic factors which would have some impact on the Ringgit and our stock market due to bad investors' sentiment. In addition, I am hoping the Fed doesn't raise US interest rates too fast as our currency would further drop precipitously.

My unit trusts, the fixed price ones are fine albeit their dividends have lower purchasing power of imported items. The variably priced unit trusts are the ones suffering due to market's tumbling.

I am looking forward to receiving dividend for my AS1M on 01 October and thinking of investing it in AMB value trust whose price is currently low at 34 sen per unit. Life continues but investing strategies need to be changed to adjust to present market downfall.
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Alternative therapy for cancer and chronic diseases is mostly hype

I am sharing this article The Wellness Warrior, Jess Ainscough, has passed away  with those who are considering alternative therapy for themselves, their relatives or friends. In my practice I have come across patients who would rather choose alternative therapy for their medical conditions. Some factors which make them choose this unconventional treatment include, like the case in the article, the conventional solution is disfiguring like amputating an arm or a foot. Others are the after effects of conventional drugs like nausea,vomiting and diarrhoea or loss of hair among others.

People are attracted to traditional or alternative treatment because they do not have many of the above side-effects and that they are in control of their own dosing. With no doctor to monitor they can take one day and not the next. In a nutshell, they are much in control of their own "medicating" along with their "prayers".

I met a lady who was diagnosed as a diabetic and not being given a proper advice and counselling, she decided to go on a fast to "reduce" the sugar in her blood. And one day she was prescribed with "metformin" the first line drug for diabetes and again not being given the proper advice on drug taking, she took the drug on an empty stomach following which she had voluminous diarrhoea and became really sick. She then decided to go on an alternative therapy and avoided conventional medicine. No one could convince her to have conventional treatment for her diabetes. I feel really sorry for this lady.

Another lady from a wealthy family who suffered from cancer was being treated with the best in a hospital in Singapore and was in remission when she decided to go for an alternative therapy and within a few weeks of starting it (with prayers from the religious man) she became worse and expired.

Alternative treatment is here to stay as long as people think that conventional treatment is not effective (that is not curative), a lot of time anyway, the treatment delays the process of the cancer invasion and some are palliative and few curative especially if detected very early. Most cancers, by the time they are detected, the rogue cells have already travelled to many parts of the body especially to the liver where they "breed".

The same for treatment for chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes: the conventional treatment is to delay damages to all the organs in your body as a result of high pressure and high sugar level. They are not curative.

I hope you discuss well with your experienced doctor before you embark on alternative treatments for your maladies.

Happy Chinese New Year of the Golden Ram

Wishing all my relatives , friends 

and blog visitors 

a Happy and Prosperous New Year 

of the Golden Ram

Happy Valentine's Day - 14 February 2015

FoR All THoSe wITh LoVE in TheiR HeArTs ToDay

..................And  to my Valentine , My Love and

 My Best Friend, Jeff.

The Touching Story of Jeremy the Koala

Koalas are adorable. You can hold the tame ones close to your chest without any fear of being attacked or even scratched. I did that some years ago at Lone Pine, a Koala sanctuary in Brisbane, Australia. A treasured memory.

The story of Jeremy the koala rescued during the recent Adelaide Hills bushfire reminds me of Sam the koala whose image I have always placed prominently in my blog. Sam was also rescued during the a widespread bushfire in Victoria, unfortunately she died due to some internal infection unrelated to the fire.

Jeremy the  three-year old male koala also had his paws burnt and had to be treated to prevent infection. He was very well looked after and later released back into the wild. Here are his images for my record and blog visitors.

Sad looking Jeremy found with his paws burnt during the bushfire
Source : ABC News

Sedated Jeremy being treated with all paws in antiseptic solution.
Source : ABC News

Jeremy's paws were soaked,treated and bandaged for several weeks, at an estimated cost of cost of more than AUD 6000 to the Australian Marine Wildlife Research and Rescue Organisation (AMWRRO). However donations poured in from good-hearted people when they saw him being treated on the FB of the organisation. Jeremy's paws have now healed and he was just released back to his natural habitat today.

Rehabilitated Jeremy being released into the wild , one last look at his human  saviours
Source : ABC News

Stories like this really warm the human heart. What would animals do without human under these circumstances? By the way the fortunate koala is named after a fire volunteer Jeremy Sparrow who found him and brought him in for treatment and so saved his life.