Archive for October, 2009
Monday, October 26th, 2009
The world’s greatest moneymaker is seemingly going through the current financial crisis without any problems.
Warren “Oracle of Omaha” Buffet is 79 this year and worth about USD40 billion.
Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy.
He has always enjoyed himself in a falling market, which, as he sees it, provides him with the best opportunities.
Since 1965, his company, Berkshire Hathaway’s value has achieved a mind-boggling 20.3% average annual growth – 336,000% over the years – 84 times that of the standard US index fund, the S&P 500.
He ignores short-term share price movements, either up or down.
He has never started a business, nor invented anything, nor came up with a way of making businesses more profitable.
Still lives in his kampung, more than a thousand miles from Wall Street.
Still works from the 14th floor of a boring looking office building he has rented for almost 50 years.
He has never had a computer, calculator or even a stock ticker in his office.
If a deal needs complicated calculations before you can decide if it is right, then it probably is not.
Always leave a margin of safety so that if things don’t work out as he’d hoped, you don’t lose money.
He has one personal assistant.
He hates meetings.
He hates busy schedules.
In other words, he’s rather laidback.
He drives himself from his house to the office, a few miles apart on the same road.
Most evenings he’ll eat a ham sandwich, then do several hours of online bridge under the name T-Bone.
When you call him up, he often picks up the phone himself, or call back immediately later.
Since the 1960s, he’s been buying companies rather than mere stocks. Wonder if he’s going to buy companies involved in Kettlebells anytime soon?
The difference between owning a business outright and owning shares in it is only one of degree.
Buy shares for the long-term and, as a shareholder, think like you’re buying a part of a business.
You should think like an owner.
Invest in profitable businesses with good prospects rather than looking for undervalued shares.
Focusing on share prices makes you a mere speculator, whereas a real investor looks to the asset itself to produce the return. Like someone buying a farm: do not worry about its price but rather its productivity.
Think long term, rather than the figures for the next quarter.
Treat the business like it’s the only business your family owns. You can’t sell it. You’re going to own it for a hundred years.
Looks on his shareholders as partners who buy into his company to be part of a business and something they expect to die with.
If you take the couple of centuries we’ve had, the 19th and the 20th, we’ve had about 15 bad years in both centuries, and we’ll have fifteen bad years in centuries to come. Capitalism overshoots, and market people do get irrationally exuberant sometimes, but that’s the nature of it. You want a dynamic system, and you want a market system that’s free to make mistakes to some degree.
Source
The BBC, 25th oct 2009
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Sunday, October 25th, 2009
The BBC reported on 18th September 2009 that Katherine Jackson, pop icon Michael Jackson’s mother will receive more than USD1 million (more than RM3 million) a year from his estate, to be used to support her and his 3 children, who are now under her care since June.
It will be about USD26,000 (about RM88,000) a month for herself and USD60,000 (about RM200,000) a month for the kids: Prince Michael, 11, Paris Michael Katherine, 9 & Prince Michael II a.k.a. Blanket. Well, that should be enough to pay for holiday gifts!
That amount for Ms Jackson is supposed to pay for a helper, housekeeper, driver, utilities, clothing, grooming and “other expenses.”
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Sunday, October 25th, 2009
Duncan Greenberg wrote on 9th October 2009 that analysing self-made members of the Forbes 400 gave results such as these:
- Have parents who are good at maths. Among the most common occupations of parents of current US billionaires were that of engineer, accountant and small-business owner.
- September is the most popular birth month among American billionaires.
- A degree is not mandatory to be successful. Nearly 15% of self-made American billionaires never completed university, most of them in the tech sector, an illustrous list that includes Bill Gates (Microsoft), Steve Jobs (Apple), Michael Dell (Dell), Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook).
- it seems that quite a few billionaires who were Yale graduates were also members of Skull and Bones, the secret society whose list of members includes investor Edward Lampert, Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman and FedEx founder Frederick Smith.
- have a stint at investment bank Goldman Sachs: 6 of the financial tycoons spent some time there. Its crown jewel, the “risk arbitrage” unit launched the careers of billionaires and former billionaires Edward Lampert, Daniel Och, Tom Steyer and Richard Perry.
- have a penchant for Naot shoes. Just kidding 
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Friday, October 23rd, 2009
According to Choi Tuck Wo in his London Log published in The Star on 22nd October 2009, money may not necessarily be evil but the craving for it certainly seems so.
What we see around us is the power of money – it drives the world.
It is a double-edged sword: can be used to achieve good or bad.
Choi wrote that many street vagrants in London, given a choice, would accept money rather than food.
But money does not buy happiness, for Britons in London at least. The city has everything money can buy but the country is far behind fellow Europeans France and Spain when it comes to quality of life.
Annually, Londoners earn more than GBP10,000 more than the average European.
True happiness comes from within and depends on one’s perception: there are many depressed rich people.
Rich people who need to lose weight can afford to purchase all the weight loss products they need, but once they reach that ideal weight, it does not guarantee them a true and lasting happiness.
The old adage still holds true: true happiness is being in the company of one’s loved ones: friends and family. That can be interpreted as: money’s only worth it if it can be shared in a meaningful way with someone special.
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
As mentioned by Business Week in October 2009:
Jamail Larkins, 25 of Ascension Aircraf: aircraft sales and leasing. After earning a first degree in aviation business admin, rather than going to work for Boeing or Lockheed Martin, he decided to go on his own in 2006. He has 4 employees and had USD7 million in revenue last year.
Aaron Levie, 24, and Dylan Smith, 24, Box.Net: an online collaboration tool founded 2005. They dropped out of university to pursue their dream. It now has 3 million users representing 50,000 businesses. The company has 50 employees and has raised USD14.5 million VC. “It will be profitable soon.”
Shama Kabani, 24, Click To Client, online marketing agency. Founded in 2008: builds websites, handle SEO, create and manage social media campaigns. Now has 6 employees, and takes on 25 projects a month. Also acts as online marketing department for 6 clients. Revenue in 2008: USD120K.
Jesse Gossett, 23; Jayson Uppal, 23; Chris Jacobs, 21, Emergent: renewable energy consulting. Now has 30 clients, mostly municipalities. Last year they had USD108K in revenue.
Becky Stockbridge, 25, I Bec Creative, web development & graphic design. Started in 2006, now has 4 employees. Last year scored USD225K in revenue.
Lauren Berger, 25, Intern Queen, internship placement consultancy. Launched 2008, it matches interns with more than 500 companies from across the USA who pay to be listed on her website. In 4 months, she had USD100K in revenue.
Eric Koger, 25, and Susan Koger, 24; ModCloth, online marketplace for independent designer fashion and decor. Perhaps you can get an artificial christmas tree there?
Launched 2002, has 104 employees. Their website gets >1.25 million unique visitors a month. Sales in a month: USD1 million.
Sean Conway, 25; Justin Miller, 21; B.J. Stephan, 24; Fadi Chalfoon, 23; NoteHall: Online marketplace for class notes. Launched 2008, last year had USD40K revenue.
Joanna Van Vleck, 26; Trunk Club: online clothes shopping service for men. Launched November 2008, the site uses webcams to meet clients, then assess their needs, then ship a box of clothing to them. They’d pay for items they liked. She bought marked brands wholesale from suppliers then sold them retail. Now has 6 employees, 36 independent contractors, actually fashion consultants who work remotely, and about 2,000 members. She says the company is good for up to USD2.5million in revenue this year.
David Karp, 23; Tumblr: microblogging platform. Launched 2007, the site now has 1.8 million users and received USD5.5 million VC. 10 employees. Not making money yet, but “will be experimenting with revenue-generating features this quarter.”
Source
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Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
According to an article I saw at Yahoo a few days ago, start-ups which most likely will fail, at least in America are as follows:
1. Running a restaurant: never mind that you’re a good cook. 60% of restaurants close in its first 3 years of operation. Catering also fall in this category.
Why: low profit margin, need strong managers, which most people aren’t.
2. Direct selling: new team members usually join in after learning what the highest earners in the company earns. After some time, saturation creeps in.
3. Online retail: it is more difficult now to for small players to compete with established retailers as compared to the early days of the web. Peopleare more likely to buy stainless steel tiles off a well-known company than yours.
4. High-End Retail: less people nowadays are spending money on luxuries. The good days might come back, but not now.
5. Independent Consulting: not as easy to do as it seems: in reality, many struggle with time management, spending more time looking for work than actually doing it.
6. Being a franchise owner: there are risks uniquely associated with it, for example overly restrictive contracts and high royalties that makes it hard to profit. A 1995 study by Wayne State University found that more non-franchise businesses were still operating after 4 years than franchise ones.
7. Traffic-driven websites: as the internet ages, it’s only to get harder to earn income via online advertising. You could need millions of dollars to get any presence and you’d need a huge amount of traffic before you’re somewhere.
So what business should one start? Experts argue that you should “create firms in which they have professional experience so they have a competitive advantage in the market.”
Source
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Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
It was reported in Utusan Malaysia on 5th October 2009 that twenty and thirtysomething women of the flesh from Uzbekistan would enter Malaysia in groups of 3 or 4 on either student or tourist visas which are valid for 3 months.
They would then “work” for RM1,000 to RM1,500 per “session” in Kuala Lumpur for at least 5 “sessions” a day, 5 days a week. That translates to a staggering RM100,000 a month.
And that is only for “service charge.” The cost of hotel, food and clothing are all additional costs: supposed to be borne by the customer.
That means only a select few could afford them. The ladies would simply brush off advances of those whom they perceive to be less in the money.
Never mind that most of them can’t speak a word of English, what more Bahasa Malaysia.
Their income enables them to maintain a lifestyle far more lavish than most people in Malaysia. They would not normally be found roaming the roadside, but rather could be found inside nightspots. It is not known whether they use live chat software to initiate communication with potential customers.
The unsaid yet prevailing urban culture seems to be that men who are found to have one of these ladies in their arm are considered cool.
Apparently the most expensive of all the hookers available locally, even costlier than China Dolls, they are renowned for their “red cheeks.” Add to that mix beauty, youth, height and sexy figure, they are in a league of their own as compared to prostitutes from other countries.
However, the Chief of Immigration, Datuk Abdul Rahman Othman was quoted to have said that their pretty faces belie their hot tempered, violent inner selve. Reports have been received on men who were kicked by the ladies after failing to settle the agreed amount.
Interestingly, only a decade ago these “white horse ladies” were not in vogue locally. But tastes change.
After their visa is over, they’d leave Malaysia, go to another country in the region and continue their ways there.
If they kept at it for 10 years, they’d have made more than RM10million !!!
Since 2005 up to 30th September 2009, 211 Uzbekistan women have been arrested.
No wonder they kept coming!
Source
The Star, 5th Oct 2009
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