Seth Klarman is a well known value investor and the founder and president of The Baupost Group, a Boston-based private investment partnership.  His book Margin of Safety is now out of print

Follow the link to download the book my10000dollars.com/MS.pdf

“Increasingly actuaries are required to lead the risk strategies of organisations instead of restricting themselves to the traditional field of product design,” the society’s president Peter Doyle said.
He said the global financial crisis had opened a whole new career path for actuaries.
Read the full article here

I reckon you could also be read as “We don’t know what’s going to happen, so we’re creating a ‘Estimated Guessing Department’”

South Africa 2010 budget maintains policies
Did you know we lost 1 Million jobs in SA. The Government needs more tax payers… where the jobs going to come from?
Blue chips have their belts tightened right now, so perhaps the small to medium Enterprises?

Oh, fuel is going up (which means everything is going up)
The general fuel levy has been raised by 17.5 cents a litre with effect from April 7, with 7.5 cents of the levy going towards funding a new multi-product petroleum pipeline between Durban and Gauteng, the Treasury said on Wednesday.

Anyway, I’m still on the sidelines. Very keen to trade again (didn’t buy any gold) but I’m still waiting for the BIG drop

And for those superstitious actuaries out there, see below your year ahead

From: Firepig
Year of the Tiger Financial Forecast

Everybody probably knows the Year of the Tiger begins February 14th, but most people probably do not know the person who rides the lucky Tiger. It is none other than Tsai Shen, Chinese god of wealth and prosperity!

May good fortune and prosperity be yours in 2010.

Should You Buy Gold Now?
• The dollar is falling
• Central banks in emerging nations are buying
• Dollars are sloshing around the global economy
• Inflation will return someday
• Individuals and institutional investors are chasing the momentum

Abu Dhabi gives Dubai R74.9 billion in surprise bailout
Abu Dhabi stepped in to help fellow United Arab Emirates member Dubai with a $10 billion (R74.9 billion) injection, of which $4.1 billion was allocated to troubled state-owned conglomerate Dubai World to pay immediate obligations, Dubai said on Monday.

Federal Reserve is a Ponzi scheme !??

On Wednesday I sold my Vodacom shares (they went up on some news about a collaboration of sorts with Tellumat). So I’m completly out of the markets right now.

I’m banking, not shorting (but I am looking into it) on the markets right now. So you’ll find me sitting on the sidelines waiting for the big fall!
And yes, I’m sure they’re going to hit the deck again.

Think, the world has just had a MAJOR depression, mega food lines in New York, Wankers, sorry I mean Bankers are still dishing out Million Dollar bonuses to one another (oh and good job England (hands clapping allround) you’re going to name the people who get the bonus’s – BIG help to the economy).
So the world economy IMO is still in the shitter.
They were lieing to us then and they’re more than likely still lying / sugar coating / hiding the truth right now!

Dont forget to read: On Tuesday it was revealed that the Bank of England had granted close to £62 billion in emergency assistance to the two failing Edinburgh banks between October and 2008 and January 2009. However it chose to keep the loans secret.

Now, TARP’s $700 Billion bailout… it really doesn’t inspire much confidence for me. Think back a little… what caused the subprime lending problem?
Oh wait! “The money is created by the Federal Reserve/Treasury and lent to the institutions needing a rescue. The Fed/Treasury gets back IOUs from the institutions.”

So… Who owns America’s debt?

Americas Debt

I believe we are going full circle, ‘things’ are being hidden from the people and it’s going to end in a big mess (again).
And when it does, I’m going to buy back into the markets and let it build up again. Note that I won’t be swinging those trades round for a while though!! (note to self: find new website name

Yes, China and India are looking up, but I’ve yet to have an good in-depth look into their markets.
Have a profitable day!

Needless to say bank stocks are down!
The Rand has since recovered to 7.90.

Being a pessimist, I’m waiting for markets to go over the falls again.

The rand went into freefall briefly on Monday morning.

RMB Currency strategists said that following the worst day for Wall Street in months on Friday, US small business lender CIT filed for bankruptcy over the weekend in what was one of the largest corporate failures in history.

“The US dollar/rand spiked immediately to 8.25 as trade opened in Asia on Monday – but this was a massive overreaction and we should come into regular trade at around 7.90 this [Monday] morning.

“Indeed, trade up at the highs was very brief and illiquid and the scope for getting any orders filled was almost non existent,” RMB said.
Still, the spike showed just how nervous markets were – and how the rand was an obvious victim, RMB said.
“Now, it’s all about global risk appetite.

“The fear really is that the global recovery will not have any legs and we will slip back into a W-shaped recession,” RMB said. This, it said, would ultimately be signalled by the data going into next year.
“For now the nervous markets will react strongly to any data signalling confidence and consumer intentions.”

Source: Busrep.co.za

However one has to ask: Has the world grown 50% over the past year. Bear in mind the ‘debilitating financial crisis that plunged the world into its worst recession since World War II‘??

Are we coming up for a double dip recession!??

Personally I still believe this is another bubble!? As soon as everyone jumps on the train there will probably be a big sell, however I believe its going to dive for other reasons as well.
Less jobs = less spending = less tax for governments = Less

Oil is up to $75

As Charles Hodgson from CNN said this morning “Tears before bedtime”

With regards to my trading right now, I’m presently holding 297 Vodacom shares Wish I wasn’t due to the call terminations costings going down

Have a profitable day!

Non-resident inflows already topped the R67.5bn invested in the local stock exchange in the whole of 2007, Glynos said. And they follow a R57bn outflow last year.
Foreign inflows have helped push the JSE’s all share index up 18 percent since the start of the year.

Glynos also said that according to technical analysis, the gold price could reach $1 300 (R9 560) within the next few months. The precious metal, which burst through the March 2008 record of $1 033 a week ago, touched a new record high of $1 068.30 yesterday before retreating to just below $1 060. It is 20 percent higher than at the start of the year.

The JSE and the gold price are beneficiaries of unprecedented levels of liquidity abroad, after the series of monetary and fiscal rescue packages in many economies over the past year.

“Large quantities of funds that have been cautiously sitting on the sidelines in risk averse investments ultimately need to be invested to generate stronger returns,” Glynos said. Global investors are seeking yield in emerging markets with a better growth outlook.

Glynos attributed much of the JSE’s recent gains to foreign investors because local fund managers, he said, “haven’t committed to the equity market in a wholesale manner”. He said they were more cautious about “rotating away from risk-averse asset classes such as cash” as interest rates in the money market were still compensating for inflation and offered security in uncertain times.

However, he warned the run up in stock markets and commodity prices did not necessarily reflect optimism about economic fundamentals.
To some extent, they demonstrated a lack of confidence in the US dollar and were a response to “ultra loose monetary policies” abroad.

The dollar’s role as the global reserve currency is in doubt as central banks round the world increasingly shift into other currencies, particularly the euro. Investors are also following suit.
Nedbank Capital said yesterday that the dollar was near a 14-month low against a basket of major currencies.

RMB commodity analyst Josina Oliphant said gold responded more to dollar weakness than most commodities.

Source: Busrep.co.za

Michael Geoghegan of HSBC said he had delayed expansion plans because he fears the upturn could be short lived.

The chief executive said the economy could follow a W-shaped trajectory, with the rebound going into reverse and growth retreating into the red.
Mr Geoghegan’s words carry weight because of the global reach of his bank and its track record on identifying economic turning points.

In February 2007, HSBC was one of the first financial giants to warn of the impact of the sub-prime crisis in the U.S., when it wrote off £6.5billion. The intervention will fuel the debate between Labour and the Conservatives over when to slash public spending and hike taxes.

Click here to read the full article on the dailymail.co.uk

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — Contrarian economist Marc Faber is cautiously optimistic on the outlook for China, saying he sees few signs of a mismatch between supply and supply in the real estate sector, while its fiscal policies don’t appear to be repeating the mistakes made by Western counterparts.

Faber famously went bearish on U.S. stocks shortly before the 1987 stock market crash and also forecast the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In 2002 he authored Tomorrow’s Gold, which spelled out in prescient fashion the rise of Asia in the global economy.

Too slow revaluation

Beijing, he says, made the mistake of allowing its currency to appreciate too slowly against the U.S. dollar.

Being abolished the yuan’s peg to the dollar in 2005 and now allows the currency to fluctuate 0.5% from a central rate, which the People’s Bank of China sets daily. Since the revamp, which included a 2% revaluation, the Chinese currency has appreciated about 21% against the dollar.

Looking ahead he sees the Chinese currency doubling in value against the dollar, following a pattern similar to the Japanese yen’s appreciation against the greenback in the early 1970s.

Faber says investors should acquire Asian equities on pull-backs as global growth momentum shifts to the East. Although he’s skeptical about growth in the global economy, he remains upbeat on natural resources

Declines in the U.S. dollar are symptomatic of the underlying weakness of the U.S. economy.

Households in emerging markets look set for a meaningful rise in wealth while those in most developed economies should see their fortunes stagnate and even decline.

That’s a reversal he said of the last 200 years when more advanced nations saw their real GDP per capital rise 20 times “as the West ripped off poor countries”.

“Your children who live in the developed world, in Western Europe and the U.S., they may not sink to bottom of the ocean economically,” Faber told the crowd, “but in my opinion in real terms, real GDP per capita, it will not increase, if at all I think it will decrease slightly.”

Their belief in the market’s recovery may be as irrational as their earlier irrational pessimism, he says. And he warns that the recent global equity market rally, which started in early March, “is simply a rally within a longer-term bear market and is likely to be unsustainable”.

Since March 9 when global equity markets bottomed, stock markets have made remarkable recoveries.

“The JSE has rallied over 30 percent in rand terms, but a far more impressive 81 percent in US dollars. Over the same period, the Standard & Poor’s 500 has notched up gains of 45 percent, while China is up 62 percent in their local currency,” he says.

“Markets may well still grind higher over the next few weeks, but investors should note that markets are approaching an over-bought level. And the historically dangerous month of October is only nine weeks away.”

October, of course, saw the 1929 stock market crash, which went on to trigger the Great Depression. More recently – in 1987 and 1997 – it saw some blood letting on stock markets – though these had little impact on the real economy.

Plexus group chairman Prieur du Plessis, is more upbeat. He says, despite some risks, equities are the place to be.

“South African equities are likely to uphold their stronger relative performance in US dollar terms towards the end of the year and into next year, given the improved outlook for commodities,” he said.

And he predicts that resource-related and domestic economic cyclical equities will benefit from improved local currency strength and are likely to outperform.

Source: busrep.co.za