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Now that India has the ignominy of having a super-bacteria gene named after them — New Delhi, to be exact — one wonders if that spells the demise of the healthcare sector and its “medical tourism” industry.

It wasn’t too long ago that Fortis was looking to expand beyond their shores in their competition with Khazanah for the Parkway pie. Now, they might just need to concentrate a wee bit more on their home turf.

If you want to find out more about this new Indian bacteria gene that can potentially have fatal and devastating effects, there is this fairly new writeup on Wikipedia.

For some reason or other, the research analysts from CIMB were exceedingly bearish compared to the analysts from the other banks and brokers. Wonder if they know something that the rest don’t? Just check out the number of Neutral or Underperform calls that they made last week.

Well, that’s a FLA (Four-Letter-Acronym) that came in vogue some time last year to represent “Too Big To Fail”. It was used particularly in the context of the TARP (another FLA: “Troubled Assets Relief Programme) coming into play for AIG because it was deemed its failure will have a cascading effect on the rest of the American — and possibly world — economy.

Now we have TBTF standing for “Too Big To Fall” as well. This article from Bloomberg is an interesting read on how the punishments can be disproportionate to the magnitude of the wrongdoing.

Directors in listed companies should be held to higher standards as they are responsible not only for the welfare of their staff and the company, but they are supposed to consider the interests of investors. Let’s hope that SGX-listed companies clean up their acts as there have been more than a few dodgy directors exposed in the media lately…

Wonder if any index funds based on the Philippine Stock Exchanges benchmark index will be able to claim any losses? Then again, I’m not sure if there are any pure index plays based on their markets…

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/news/story/0,4574,396706,00.html?

The Philippine Stock Exchange yesterday rolled out a new trading system that quickly plunged the market into disarray with wildly wrong data.

It took the bourse more than three hours after the close of trading to issue the correct figure for the benchmark index, after officials told investors to disregard the whooping 14 per cent gain erroneously calculated by the new system.

The coming week, and possibly the next few weeks will be marked by mayhem in the stock markets as investors veer between joy and horror within short spaces of time due to the earnings season.

Fundamentals (and possibly common sense) are thrown out the window as fear rules the markets. Alcoa, who led the earnings season with favourable figures, is also being dragged down now even though nothing fundamentally has changed about it the last few days when it first rallied after good earnings reports!

Unless you have a good appetite for risk, it may be wise for you and your money to stay out for now or take small positions…

I came across this comment on a forum: “I’ve not seen a single insurance agent recommending term insurance.” I realised that’s true. So far the term insurance policies that I purchased are based on personal requests to a friend whom I know in the industry. Otherwise, all other agents I have dealt with NEVER EVER offered term insurance to me although it would have been the best and most cost-effective option considering my financial profile.

I have always been a strong advocate of term insurance to my friends because it is a cheap and effective way to get coverage for death and critical illnesses. However, they will need to understand more of what term insurance is about because it does have some risk involved. Chiefly, there is no value stored in the policy, so any failure to pay can cause the policy to lapse; unlike life insurance policies where premiums can be drawn from the underlying value after some time. Another thing to note is that discipline will also be required to make good use of the cost savings between life insurance and term insurance. Either utilise it for essential expenditure, or invest it wisely.

After I just mentioned it in my earlier post, there was an article in the Business Times on how Temasek may be shifting their portfolio weightage towards resources. In relation to what I mentioned about Chesapeake, here is an extract:

‘Temasek’s move to resources is consistent with its goal of catering to Asia’s emerging middle class,’ said Melvyn Teo, director of the BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre at Singapore Management University.

‘Demand for resources will go up because of emerging economies like China but there is only so much supply, so prices will go up over time.’

The fund’s recent investments include convertible preferred stock in US natural gas firm Chesapeake Energy and India’s GMR Energy, and shares in Canadian platinum producer Platmin.

The energy sector is in the doldrums recently. Natural gas prices are at a multi-year low while BP has generally led the listed oil majors down a slippery slope. Nevertheless, some analysts feel that the energy sector is oversold and there are bargains for the picking.

Exxon Mobil (XOM) and Natural Gas (GAZ) are at trading bands last seen nearly 5 years ago. Also, United States Oil (USO) is trading at near historical lows.

Of the counters named above, you will probably need to pay more attention if you’re thinking of buying GAZ or USO. GAZ comes up as a “restricted trade” if you try to use POEMS to make a purchase (I’m not sure if the same problem crops up with other brokers), so a proxy you can use for GAZ will be the Chesapeake Energy Corporation (CHK) — incidentally a recent addition to the Temasek portfolio. As for USO, the ETF managers do not physically purchase and store crude oil, so they purchase Crude Oil Futures instead. While this works well in theory, USO has been pummelled recently by contango and the correlation between USO prices and crude oil prices have been drifting apart for some time. Just something for you to note.

Guess this article came at a bad time for Bursa Malaysia especially since they are perceived to have problems attracting retail investors to participate in their markets. I think it was only as recent as about 2 months ago that they organised a roadshow in Singapore to encourage retail investors to participate in the Malaysia bourse…

There’s a good article on Euro ETFs in the Business Times today.

If you personally think that Europe will pull out of its current financial problems but you don’t like the fact that it might be a long term play where your funds might be locked for a period of time, you can consider purchasing Euro ETFs from the NYSE instead of SGX.

When I last checked about 2 months back, the Euro ETFs on offer at SGX capitalised income instead of distributing them. If you prefer an ETF that does provides dividends, you can take a look at the SPDR DJ EURO STOXX 50 (FEZ). Unless you want to do dollar-cost averaging, please note that I’m not telling you to buy NOW, but you should keep this in your watchlist to go long when the time is right!