Saturday, October 25, 2008

Hedge fund withdrawals

Combined with investment losses, hedge fund industry assets may shrink to $1.3 trillion, a 32 percent drop from the peak in June.

ie 300-400bn of asset withdrawal from markets caused this 30-40% decline

This is logical considering leverage used is 10-20x

Judging from these no.s another 300-400bn needs to be cleaned up, ie another 30-40% decline from here probably?

Investors withdrew a record $43 billion from hedge funds last month, more to come probably.

Average hedge fund down 18 percent this year. A bit too light... probably wrong no...

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Tobacco

Almost 40 million people have died of tobacco-related diseases since 1999, according to a ``death clock''.

One person dies every 5.8 seconds from causes linked to tobacco.

Tobacco use will kill 1 billion people this century, up 10-fold from the
prior 100 years

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Haw Par Villa

260,000 visitors to Haw Par Villa every year

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

Lehman mini bonds

50,000 over investors in HK bought USD 1bn worth of mini bonds from Lehman.
1,000 of them protested public to seek explanation from authorities.

Singapore - my guess, probably 60% of HK's problem
ie 30,000 investors, investing USD 600mn in mini bonds
ie 1bn SGD

DBS shareholder equity is SGD 23bn, net profit is 2bn SGD
So theoretically, they can repay the investors out of goodwill with little impact.

Eg. Repayment 20% over 5 yrs, SGD 200mn per yr -> 0.9% dent to their equity and 10% dent on net profit (quite big though)

Of course, they won't...

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

China coal mines

China produce 2.4bn t of coal in 2007
Coal provides 70% of China's energy needs
China is the world's biggest consumer of coal
2,000 pple die in China's coal mines per year in 07 and 08