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I accidentally stumble upon this 2 videos. Both of them have some kind of magic that keep drawing my attention. I really don’t know what to say about them. Are they ’similar’ or are they ‘contrast’? I don’t know, but I want to hear what you want to say. You will learn 2 words after watching them. First word “GEEGEEGEEGEE”. Second word “Yatta!”. :)

THE GIRLS – 1,274,583 views (4.5 star rating)

THE GUYS – 1,364,321 views (4.5 star rating)

I am trying to write a “free-flow” speech-liked post and will edit it later. That means I am writing what comes up in my mind the moment I am writing (or more correctly, speaking).

There will be a lot of spelling and grammar mistakes. Please bear with me. In communication, it is not the correct spelling and grammar that matter, it is how well I can deliver the message to you that matter. I really don’t care how many missing ’s’ and how many missing ‘ed’ in my writing. [Malaysian should be proud of our ability to speak and write multiple languages]

This is a very very very long post but it will be very very eye opening and interesting post. Since I only write once in a while, you can read a few paragraphs a day (who knows maybe you need to wait for the next PM changed before I will write another post).

This is a follow up to my cancer post and all the comments there. Please read that post first if you are new here.

Why Observations and Conclusions from the so called scientific approach can be way wrong?

Modern medicine beats any medicine and healing approaches in the world because of their so called scientific approach. Everything looks so systematic and effective. Smart people go to University to take medicine courses and become doctors because of the systematic education approach. Experiments are done in statistical approach to get the ‘correct’ observations and conclusions. It swipe the entire globe in less than a century and every corner of the earth is now believing strongly on them.

They are REALLY doing a fantastic job on handling trauma cases, i.e. snake bites, lion bites, fell off the cliff, shot my missile, crashed by a train, beaten up by Jet Li, bullet in the brain, nuclear bomb aftermath, etc. They do a superb work in the emergency ward. No other healing methods can even come close to them.

Unfortunately, they failed miserably outside the emergency room. You just can’t use the emergency “cut it open with a knife” mindset on treating everything!

For heavy weight diseases like cancer, heart attack, high blood pressure, diabetes, stones to the lower weight fever, flu, sore throat, nose sensitive, pimples, dandruff and to the NEVERLAND allergies, hair lose, myopia, far-sightedness, etc. They just failed. Not only they failed, they failed after dumping billions of dollar into it.

They claimed to be scientific, but most of the time they like to tell their cancer patient, “Cancer cells are spontaneous and random!”. Spontaneous and random never come close to scientific. They tell the high blood pressure patients,  “People usually get this when they get old!”

Most scary thing they would say to their patients are, “You have X more days to live!” They also like to blame genetics and hormones when they are confused.

Ask yourself, do you like these kind of answers? Do you like doctors telling you you are sick because you are old, your inherit some genes problems or that your hormone has some problem that we can’t do anything to?

Why do you get flu? Why do you get sore throat? According to modern medicine, that is because our bodies are invaded by germs – bacterias and viruses! I suppose that is what you believe in if you haven’t encounter anyone like me who tell you loudly and confidently, “No! It is not!”.

How is the scientific experiment done? The researchers take a lot of blood samples from both the sick people and the normal people. This is call the statistically approach. According to them, the bigger the sample, the more accurate the observations and conclusions.

After analyzing all the bloods, they notice that in the blood of the sicked, they found those tiny little things under the microscope that is NOT in the blood of the normal people, which they call the germs – the bacteria and the viruses.

The sample is big. So they claim the observation to be correct. So they make the conclusion that these germs/aliens in our bodies causes the disease! So as long as we can kill them, we get heal!

So what’s the problem here? Isn’t that it sounds scientific and logical? Isn’t that it looks very intelligent?

Because they make the conclusion that germs are our ENEMY, the way to handle it is to use WAR. They use the “war to stop the war”approach on healing. It looks like they are right, because your flu, your fever and your sore throat do get better after taking all those antibiotics and drugs that they invented to kill those germs.

But…

Fact #1

Even if you don’t take any antibiotics and drugs, your flu, your sore throat and your fever will also get well later. It might be slower and you might not feel comfortable, but can you see that you can heal without any of these medicine? You can heal without doing anything?

Come one step further, it is not those antibiotics and drugs that really heal us but it is our own body that heal us! It is our own healing mechanism in action. The antibiotics merely help in reducing the cause factors and the drugs might only serve the purpose of making you feel better (less pain).

Fact #2

Science and logical thinking is not as simple as this -

1. If the sky is cloudy, it will rain.
2. Today the sky is cloudy.
3. Today it will rain.

WHY? Because there are just too many factors that you will missed that make observations and conclusions totally useless. The modern medicine says

1. Germs cause diseases.
2. He has germs in his body.
3. That’s why he is sicked.

It looks OK and logical and very intelligent. Let looks at how many factors you can miss because of that.

1. My car is red.
2. There is a red car.
3. That must be my car!

So all red Ferrari in the world is mine! I would prefer the world to work that way, but we just got to look at the car plate number, the car model, and lot of other factors.

Fact #3

We always heard of food poisoning. It usually happen to an entire family and maybe an entire school. All of them take the SAME poisoned food, but can you explain why the responds from them can be way different?

Let’s say a class of 30 students eat the same poisoned food, 5 might die, 10 need to be hospitalized, 10 have only mild syndromes while 5 don’t even feel a thing!

WHY? Isn’t all of them take the same poisoned food? The same cause? Because ‘poisoned food’ is not just the only factor! It is only one of the important factors, another important factor is the body which takes the poisoned food.

Take another example, when flu strike, most school children will be infected because the germs is everywhere. But still there are always a few students that is not infected at all! Germs is part of the reason, not the only reason.

So what went wrong with the Germs Theory?

They went wrong in the focus! They found germs in the sick people. So they think that if they can kill those germs, then can win the battle. This is called the war approach. Or the anger against anger approach.

The objective of curing is healing! Not killing!

If you observe that bacteria is in the body of the sick patient, lots of conclusions can be made and lots of  approaches can be taken. Not simply ‘get the germs out there’.

The modern medicine like to assume that the sick person is innocent. If we are sicked, it is because something else make us so – the germs (and hormones,  genes, age, cancer cells, etc). We are not responsible for that, we have nothing to do with that. We are suppose to be healthy and normal no matter what we have done to our self. We become sicked when those notorious germs come and attack us like the aliens invade the earth. And it must be played as a war game. We need to kill those bastards that come to invade our neighborhoods.

The blaming and “I am not responsible” mindset is the problem.

Well, if you take a large sample, says 10 million people and you notice that the 9 million sick people have germs in their body but the 1 million normal people don’t have, you can also make a conclusion that the 1 million people is actually doing something different and that’s why they don’t have germs in their body! 1 in 10 people is meaningless, but 1 in 10 million is very significant.

What modern medicine shall be doing is to observe and research on this 1 million people and see WHY given the same situation, given the same bacteria, given the same food, they are not infected! And then teach those 9 million sick people to do what the 1 million is doing (or not doing).

Why some nurse who come close to SARS patient got infected while some don’t? Why the 2 roommates who share the very same room and got bitten by lots of mosquitoes, 1 got dengue and the other got nothing?

Example – The discovery of High Growth Hormones (HGH)  and the conclusions they made.

Scientists and experts do a lot of research on HGH and notice that when people get old, their brain no longer release this hormone and that’s why they are aging. So they thought they found the way to stop people from growing old! How? By consuming HGH!

It looks fantastic on the surface but this again demonstrates the “blaming” and “I am not responsible” mindset.

They blame the lack of HGH for making them old. So to solve that, they inject HGH into their body.

What should modern medicine be doing instead?

If they observe that people who get old no longer produce HGH, they should look at why there are so many people who are 80 and 90 and are still producing a lot of HGH and see what they are doing differently! Why those 1 million in the 10 million still producing HGH in their body while the 9 million is not? Find the reason and teach that 9 million people to do what the 1 million is doing (or not doing)!

The conclusion that “old people will stop producing HGH” is very misleading because there are many old people that are still producing it. The same goes to the conclusion that “germs causes diseases” because there are many people who just aren’t infected in the same environment by the same bacteria.

To put it one step further. If we are to inject flu germs directly into the body of 2 persons, 1 might get sick while the other might be totally normal. If you then check their blood, it is true that the one that is sicked has loads of germs in his body and the other one has none. Can you make a conclusion from this case and say, “bacteria causes disease”? Do you think that will be correct?

[Tips: Do you know that if you have taken HGH, you are not allowed to donate blood? Do you know that you are not allowed to take HGH if you are pregnant because it can affect your child? Do you know that HGH is a banned drugs for sports? You should ask yourself why such a good thing cannot be taken for the above situations.]

Story – The most famous doctor in my neighborhood

When I was a small kid before I went to school, there came the first doctor to my neighborhood. He is so famous and popular that they named the entire garden under his name! He seems to have the power to heal anyone very quickly. What is his secret? He will give you lots of antibiotics and drugs to eat anytime you go to see him.

With his healing philosophy, do you know what happen to him today? He is still a doctor and is still sitting in his same old clinic 30 years later and he is still very famous and popular. But now he double his size and he has got himself high blood pressure and diabetes. He tells his patient, “It is normal for old people to get this and that. See I also have it. Don’t worry.” His patients like his answer.

AhYap: The most abnormal thing human do is to assume abnormal as normal!

Human psychology is interesting and funny. For human -

- It’s normal when a lot of people is doing the same thing.
- It’s normal when a lot of people is believing in the same thing.
- It’s normal when it is happening to a lot of people.

The term of this psychology phenomenon is called “references”. People are usually confuse most of the time when they live on this earth. They don’t know where they come from. They don’t know where they are going after they die. And they don’t know what are they suppose to do when they are living!

In order not to get confuse, they look at people around them and see what they are thinking and doing and they follow them. Normal becomes a number game where majority wins.

But we can’t treat abnormal as normal just because everyone else is doing that, just because it is happening to everyone else.

Today, 9 out of 10 Chinese kids in Malaysia are wearing spectacles! The parents think it is normal since their classmates are wearing spectacles too. But in our parents generation, it is quite rare for them to wear spectacles! Even Indian and Malay kids are rare to found wearing spectacles.

If modern medicine observes this, they will use the ‘blaming’ mindset again and blame the genes! What genes? Chinese Genes! Because they observe that the Malay and Indian genes are OK.

But if it is genes, why our parents and grand parents are not wearing them?

Now 1 out of 3 people will have cancer. Almost everyone will have either one (or many) of these in their life time – high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attack, diabetes, stones, etc. Shall we feel comfortable with this just because everyone around you is the same as you? Shall we lie to our self and treat this abnormalities as normal?

What crisis is more severe than the “Financial Crisis?” The “Health Crisis”!

Fast forward 20 years from now, if the modern medicine refuse to have a big changes to their mindset, what will happen today to the world economies – the financial crisis, will happen to the world humanity, as the health crisis.

They have many similarities. They are both caused by the people that we believe as smart, as intelligent. The people that we call experts. In the financial crisis, we trusted the Stamford and Harvard MBAs who work in the big banks and financial institutions who think they can calculate anything. They screw up.

Now the smart people in the health industry – the doctors, the researches, the drugs companies, the hospital, the Universities, etc. are going to create the most severe “health crisis’ in our civilization.

When you are stupid, the most harm you can do might be to steal your father’s gun and kill 17 people in your classroom and then shoot yourself. Even the smart terrorist can only blown up 2 towers in the US killing over 5,000 people with 2 planes.

What can all the smart people in the entire modern medicine industry can do to the world if they continue what they do now?!

Its is more scary than a nuclear warfare. It will be like many nuclear bombs drop all over the world. So many people suffering and dying. Everyone has cancer, everyone has diabetes, everyone has heart attack.

50 years ago, cancer is not even in the top 10 causes of death. Now it is #1. Just because 99% of people will die of cancer 20 years from now, it doesn’t make any sense to say that it is normal because it is happening to everyone. Modern medicine should look back 50 years ago and see why they are not getting cancer instead of blaming the cancer cells for everything and declare a war on them!

Heart attack that is far up in the chart 50 years ago is now #2 killing cause. Why? Because human are suppose to die of cancer? People are suppose to die of hearth attack because these are the normal way to die?

[Skeptics and critics, there is no point for you to pull out statistics and tell me actually heart attack is not #2 but #4 or cancer is not #1 but #2. What can you get from that?]

The theories we are having now no longer serve us. Why need lots of facts and proves, a lot of researches and experiments that can’t deliver any results that we want?

Do you prefer loads of chart and figures that don’t create results you want or your prefer a method that has not much proves, under-researched but is giving you the results you want? Which theories you want to believe in?

Cancer statistics using modern medicine therapy is simple. 5 out of 10 who undergo the treatment (chemotherapy, operation removal, etc.) will die within 5 years. That’s less than 50% survival. The statistic is also biased because if one die in the 1st day of his 6th year, he is still consider a survivor. The statistic will not be updated after tracking the patient for 5 years.

People who choose not to undergo modern therapy shows significant better results. Nope, we don’t have amazing laboratories to do experiment. We don’t have loads of charts and figures and scientific terms to show you. But many of those who undergo natural healing therapy actually live 10, 20 or 30 years more! All you need to do is to find their stories in Google! There are just too many of them.

Modern medicine should do a lot of research on them and see what they are doing differently then others and learn from them! And then they should teach other cancer patients to do what they do!

[Unfortunately, this is difficult for them because natural therapy is simple, easy and cheap. They have complicated minds and they need to make things complicated before they can be happy. And most important they can't charge you expensive medical bills for simple therapy. That's why they have to invent complicated treatment for you so they can charge you more.]

If modern medicine is not ignorant and willing to look and listen. They will definitely notice the same pattern among the survivals, their method is  always to change their lifestyle. Keyword – lifestyle. They change what they eat, how they live and how to think.

If you continue to do the same thing, you will get the same results. If modern medicine continue to do the same thing, they will get the same failures.

AhYap favorite’s quote, “If you do what others people do, you will get what others people get. They are poor, unhealthy and unhappy.”

Obama’s favorite quote, “Change we need!”

We need better theories. I don’t invent these theories, they are already out there for a long time. It is just the ignorant that is trying to ignore it.

Better Theory #1 – Germs don’t cause diseases, your lifestyle does.

Germs in just part of the equation. In order for germs to stay in a body, the body must be a suitable medium for their survival. They are just living organism like us. They need food and protection (predators). It is very difficult for us to live in Antarctica because it is too cold and it doesn’t have much food. All living organism has their preferences of survival. For example, fish need to live in water. Germs has their own preferences too.

If our blood has plenty of food for them and our immune system is weak, they will love to come and live there! There are too many toxin in our blood that serve as their food which also cause our immune system to be weak.

Think! If there is no food, how do this organism survive? If there are plenty of active white blood cells in your blood (their predators), how can they survive? If they can think, they won’t even want to get near you!

Germs is natural to us! Germs is normal! They have natural flow. They live in places that they can live in. And you can always found them in places suitable for their living. Just like we have people in almost all lands on earth. Just like we have fish in almost all water ponds. Just like grass and trees will simply grow back up again after you demolish them.

Better Theory #2 – Cancer is not a disease! It is a healing mechanism!

A long post has been written on this. This is an important post to read. When the toxin level in our body reach a critical level that our body couldn’t tolerate anymore, our body enter a ‘red alert’ situation and send out cancer cells (the Ramboos, the Ninjas, the Heroes) to control the situation.

Killing them will only make the body send more of them. The solution is to treat the root cause. What have you done to the body until it has to send out an army to work for you? Once you undo what you do, your body will order the cancer cells to retire.

Better Theory #3 – High cholesterol in your blood is a protection mechanism. Cholesterol is created by the body, they are not consumed via food!

High cholesterol is the cause of high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and other blood vessel relate diseases. Because cholesterol jam the blood vessel, blood has to flow harder and thus result in high blood pressure (too much blood in too little space), heart attack (heart work too hard until it failed) and stroke (blood vessel exploded!).

Modern medicine observed this, which is true (partially true) just like how they observe the germs in sick patients, how they observe the cancer cells multiplying fast. Their approach is to use medicine to control the high blood pressure and to ask patients to consume food without cholesterol.

Does it work? Yes, in the short term. But the drugs and medicine used will cause kidney failure in the end because the drugs themselves are poison too. You solve one problem by creating another bigger one. You declare war on the wrong subject – cholesterol. You use the blaming approach and blame the cholesterol. You use ‘war approach’ to cholesterol.

[We should call these drugs 'cancer' instead because they are really destroying us]

Modern medicine believes that cholesterol is digested via food. Again you see how experiment can give wrong observations (more politely, incomplete observations) and then make wrong conclusions (more politely, inaccurate conclusions) and wrong approaches (more politely, inappropriate approaches).

They observe all high blood pressure patients and notice that most of them consume a lot of high cholesterol food. So it is logical for them to assume that they have consumed the cholesterol via food.

There is an interesting case in isolation. In their effort to fight cholesterol, they encounter a case where an entire family is in critical cholesterol level and is chosen to be the experiment target. For several years, researchers have done a lot to them including putting them to Zero-Cholestrol food. And yet, their body is still showing a high level of cholesterol.

They scratched their head helplessly. And they use their best blaming victim again, “It’s genetic!” Poor Mr Genes getting blame again and again for anything the modern medicine fail to tackle.

One day, a guy came in and say to the researches, “Since you can’t do anything for several years, why not lend me your patients for 3 months and see what I can do?”

They agreed, since they want this guy to feel ashamed of himself. If their team of smart intelligent researches can’t do a shit on this in several years, how can this man does something in 3 months? [Just like why some  people think AhYap is a sohai because he thinks he can influence people and affect modern medicine by writing blog posts. And critic me again and again.]

This man, brings the cholesterol level of the ENTIRE family down to normal level in less than 3 months. All the experts couldn’t believe it and is showing their BIG round eyes and BIG mouth opened.

He is not trying to show off, he is trying to show the world the right observations, the right conclusion and the right approach. Just like what I am doing with my blog post. There is nothing to show off. It is not ignorant writing, and it is not that I don’t care! It is because I care too much and I have great pain seeing people suffering. I understand that my tone of writing might not be suitable but those will be changed to softer tones (I need some time).

The man explained, “Cholesterol can be created by the body anytime the body needs it!“. But hey, isn’t cholesterol a bad thing? It looks like a bad thing because you see it as the cause of high blood pressure and heart attack. But it exist for the simple reason! It protects your blood vessel from corroding!

Again all theories above come from the same school of thought. Your blood toxic and acidity level grow so high that it can actually corrode your blood vessel! If that happen, you will die! And in order to protect you, your intelligent healing mechanism of your body actually creates cholesterol and stick them around your blood vessel to protect them from the acidic blood!

Slowly, it cause unpleasant symptoms like high blood pressure, heart attack and stroke that you hate. But hey man, do you see the reason why it exist in the first place? Do you understand now why the genetically-high-cholesterol family can’t get their blood pressure down even with cholesterol-free food? And why the genes really has nothing wrong? [Actually can you see that not only the genes has nothing wrong, it is actually performing its work pretty well by creating cholesterol in your body?]

If your blood is not toxic and acidic, even if you consume cholesterol, it will be eliminate by the body quickly because your body doesn’t need it!

Now you see how Germs, Cancer and Vessel-Related disease can be linked together easily with the same school of thought while modern medicine try to look at all of them as isolation, as random, as genetically based, as war, as invaders…

Theory #4 – You have pimples not because your hormone has problem. You have dandruff not because your scalp got problem.

Grown up teenagers will suddenly have a lot of pimples and acne on their face. Modern medicine says it is due to the change of hormone. Mr Hormone, you are another poor victim of modern medicine after Mr Genes.

Continue Reading »

Perspective, perspective, perspective. We have a lot of incorrect perspectives that we need to change. While some wrong perspective won’t affect us much (like whether the earth goes round the sun or the sun goes round the earth), some wrong perspectives can actually kill a lot of people!

doctor

Doctors are intelligent but they don’t have wisdom (see I am making enemies with police, BN, mutual funds and now doctors!).

They are damn smart. Their brain can memorize and process information billions of times faster than ordinary people like you and me. Put me to study medicine and I am sure I will be sent to Hospital Tanjung Rambutan for treatment.

I don’t care how smart are you but if you are learning, memorizing and processing the wrong information, you are still only smart at doing the wrong thing! And that’s ‘no wisdom’. Please note that I am only referring to doctors involving in treating disease and sickness. I still have 100% respect to doctors on handling emergency cases and savings lives of those hit by a car or bitten by snakes. But for treating diseases and sickness, it is a total failure and it only show how foolish are they.

Luckily, there are some doctors who are awakening, such as Dr Kradjian on milk and calsium. But there are just too little of them. We need more of them.

Today, AhYap is going to change your perspective on cancer and explain to you why it is actually a good thing and not a bad thing that the modern medicine make it to be.

Cancer is a not disease.

Cancer is a healing mechanism.

Cancer is the symptom and not the cause!

It is stupid and foolish to treat symptom and not the cause which is what modern medicine is all about when it comes to treating disease and sickness!

The initial assumption by doctors that cancer cells are the enemy is already wrong. If you start with a wrong assumption, everything that follow is wrong. If you want to go to Singapore and you keep on going north, you just won’t get there. Not only you won’t get there, you are getting further and further away and end up in Thailand! So doctors are doing more harm to the patient than on healing them.

So what do doctors do? They treat cancer cells as enemies, who they think without invitation, without any reasons, suddenly come and attack the body. So their treatment philosophy on cancer is to kill all the cancer cells! They declare war on cancer cells!

STUPID!!!

1. Cancer cells is not your enemy but your friend.

2. Cancer cells actually come by your own invitation and with a meaningful reason!

3. They didn’t attack your body, they are trying to heal you!

I know you are saying (especially doctors and those heavily influence by modern medicine), “Sohai, do you know what the hell you are talking about?” I don’t care what you think, I still have to write because there are at least 1% of the people in the world who are open minded enough to accept a new perspective and thus save a lot of life! I would rather be Galileo than to hide the truth!

Have you heard of people who totally recover from cancer? Did you investigate on them and see what have they done in common?

When it comes to disease, always treat the cause and not the symptom!

- When you have acne and pimples, there is nothing wrong with your hormone and your skin and the bacteria! Eating hormone pills and keep painting your face with Oxy is treating the symptom and not the cause.

- When you have dandruff, there is nothing wrong with your scalp. Actually your scalp is performing its function very well! Washing your head with Head and Shoulders is treating the symptom and not the cause.

Head and Shoulder Shampoo

- When you have sore throat, there is nothing wrong with the virus. Eating antibiotics and Fisherman pills is treating the symptom and not the cause.

- When you have gastric, there is nothing wrong with your stomach releasing hydrochloric acid. Eating Actal pills (alkaline pills) and drinking milk is treating the symptom and not the cause.

Actal Pill

- When you have kidney stones, gall stones, bladder stones or brain stones, there is nothing wrong with the kidney and the stone. Ask your doctor to cut it open and dig out the stone is treating the symptom and not the cause.

- When you have headache, almost all the time it is not your head that have problem. Eating Panadol is treating the symptom and not the cause.

The list can go on so long (heart problems, high blood pressure…). And I will definitely write and explain all of them in my blog later. I am a real life victim of pimples, gastric, dandruff, milk(!), antibiotics, headache, etc and have a lot of stories to tell.

Then what is cancer cells doing in our body?

The cancer cells is just normal cells that have been asked to mutate to perform certain things (keyword – asked to).

It starts to get interesting isn’t it? :D

Who asked the normal cells to mutate and why they are being asked to mutate?

Continue Reading »

Sometimes (actually most of the time) what the Malaysian government really want is very confusing and contradicting to the people.

When the economy is not good, government use the magic pill called ‘interest rate’ to boost up the economy. By lowering interest rate, businesses can access to cheaper funds to expand their business and produce more goods/services. They will hire more people and thus create more jobs, expand production and thus increase purchases of raw materials, etc. Consumers are also tempted to borrow more money to spend, such as buying cars, house, Armani, etc. So the reason to reduce interest rate is to increase spending.

Government also setup emergency funds for SME to borrow and use. Reason? To increase spending.

EPF asks us to reduce contributions from 11% to 7% so we can have the extra money to spend and thus get the economy rolling.

I understand all these. But at the same time, government also ask us not to spend money. They say the economy is not good. They ask us not to go shopping, not to buy house, not to buy car. They ask us to keep all our money and spend nothing.

They even ask us not to buy vegetables but instead plant them ourselves. Ask us not to eat in mamak store but cook ourselves. They even suggest something call the ‘no spending day’ where we choose a day that whole Malaysian will not be spending.

Ahem…..

I am confused. Mr Government, what do you actually want me to do? To spend or not to spend?

When they ask us not to spend and give suggestions that we should plant vegetables ourselves and organize ‘no spending day’, you know that they come from politicians that can talk but don’t know what they are talking (ahem, they are leaders chosen by you).

Lets look at planting vegetables ourselves.

In KL, if you have land in your house to plant vegetables, I think you are the less affected by the economy downturn! Most people stay in condos, apartments and terrace house and where should they plant the vegetables? In the toilet bowl? Or on top of their proton saga?

Now look at the effect of ‘no spending’.

Everyone is not going to Mid Valley and mamak store and kopitiam. The management of Mid Valley and the CEO of the mamak store decided that since there will be no business, why do business? So they close shop. All staff no need to work and no salary is paid because their work is no longer required. Staff has no salary, business also not making money. Business don’t pay rent anymore. Premise owner also don’t have money to pay loan installment. The ex-staff also don’t have money to eat and feed their family! They spend their savings if they still have some. Factory also stop running because mid valley won’t buy their productions because no one is buying. Factory worker also lost their job. Factory are not buying new machine, machine seller also go out of business. Factory and Mid Valley are not using electricity, TNB also lose money. Everyone no money to eat, farmers also stop planting because their crops are left to rot because no one is buying. Borrowers don’t have money to pay housing loan and car loan. Loans start to default. Borrowers become bankrupt, bank loses money and don’t want to lend anymore… then parti keadilan blame BN for all these, Lim Kit Siang and Kapal Sigh blame Najib and Ong Kee Tiat for these, the Malay blame Chinese for all these, and the Chinese blame feng shui for all these…

Sorry to be too fat fetched. I just want you to know the chain reaction of not spending is very big. Even if the whole Malaysians stop spending for just 1 day, the effect can be very destructing.

Although most of us didn’t go to business school. The economy can be understood by this simple metaphor. The whole economy is like our body. The money flowing is like our blood. Our blood need to circulate to do all the works of transporting oxygen to the body and carbon dioxide out of our body. The blood also contains white blood cells that protect us from ‘alien’, platelets that stop us from bleeding to death, etc. The blood play an important role to sustain the health of the body. All it needs to do is just to flow and flow and continue to flow. What happened when the blood stop flowing? The body dies. The same applies to economy (the body), the money (blood) flow decides the health/state of the economy (body)

Blood stop flowing = die.
Blood flowing too slow? tired, boredom = economy downturn/recession.
Blood flowing too fast? stress, high blood pressure, heart attack! = inflation, “hard landing”, unsustainable growth and economy collapsed.

interest rate = one of the magic pill to control how fast the blood flow. Higher = make it slower. Lower = make it faster.

Japan interest rate is almost zero. The magic pill don’t work in Japan. The Japanese themselves don’t spend money. Everyday is ‘no spending day’. The Japanese can only sell to non-Japanese so actually the non-Japanese are doing blood infusion to the Japan economy to sustain their life. Now the whole world does’t have enough blood and no longer be able to do blood infusion to Japan. That’s why Japan is the first country in the world to get into recession in this ‘crisis’.

Leaders are meant to lead and teach people. Choose your leaders wisely.

Doctor say you should drink more milk to get more calcium so your bone can get stronger. All milk advertisements also say the same thing. You never doubt that. Anlene says 2 cups of anlene give you all the calcium you need in a day. By watching the TV ad every day you also think it is true, since no body ever tell you it is wrong. And newspaper also tell you it is true. Everyone (the blinds) is telling everyone else (the blinds) drink more milk for more calcium.

So as a good son or daughter you buy milk for your old mum to drink. Because you want to be ‘good’ to them, you force them to drink 2 cups of milk daily. She is also very happy because she got a good son that love her so much.

But what if I tell you instead of loving her you are actually trying to kill her?

Something that everyone else say is correct can be way wrong. And you have to always remember the story of Galileo, the man who said it is not the sun that circle around the earth but the earth that is circling around the sun. Everyone think he is way wrong at that time and even lock him up in his own house for his entire life.

That’s why I wrote a long post on be open minded and ready to investigate. A lot (almost all!) of things in this world that you think is right can be just way wrong. Remember Galileo, be open minded.

Why milk actually leak calcium out of your body instead of giving you the calcium?

There is no lie by the packaging of the milk that it indeed contain a lot of calcium in the milk. But unfortunately not only that the calcium will not be absorbed but it actually will leak more calcium that you originally have out of your body! That means the more milk you drink the more calcium will get out of your body! The more milk you drink, the more quicker you will get calcium deficiency and bone problem.

Did you brain just say, “No way!” ?

Why drinking milk leak calcium out of your body?

Because I want you to do the investigation yourself (using Google is enough), I will just explain it in a few short sentences. If that drive your curiosity, investigate on it and see if you will still let your mum drink milk.

Yes, milk contains calcium. But milk is also liquid protein that is called acid lactic. So milk is actually acidic! (gastric patients are asked to drink milk, which is also very foolish, I will explain in another post). When you drink too much milk, your body become acidic. But our body cannot tolerate acidic and cannot function well (and will even die) if it gets too acidic. But our body is a very intelligent machine that it will try to correct everything by its own. So when your body becomes too acidic, it starts to drain calcium (alkali) from your bone and teeth to neutralize your blood! Your body has choose to respond to the crisis by ‘borrowing’ calcium from your bone and teeth!

Skeptical? Investigate yourself.

THE MILK LETTER : A MESSAGE TO MY PATIENTS

It seems that the countries with the highest intake of dairy products are invariably the countries with the most osteoporosis.

For the key to the osteoporosis riddle, don’t look at calcium, look at protein. Consider these two contrasting groups. Eskimos have an exceptionally high protein intake estimated at 25 percent of total calories. They also have a high calcium intake at 2,500 mg/day. Their osteoporosis is among the worst in the world. The other instructive group are the Bantus of South Africa. They have a 12 percent protein diet, mostly p lant protein, and only 200 to 350 mg/day of calcium, about half our women’s intake. The women have virtually no osteoporosis despite bearing six or more children and nursing them for prolonged periods! When African women immigrate to the United States, do they develop osteoporosis? The answer is yes, but not quite are much as Caucasian or Asian women. Thus, there is a genetic difference that is modified by diet.

To answer the obvious question, “Well, where do you get your calcium?” The answer is: “From exactly the same place the cow gets the calcium, from green things that grow in the ground,” mainly from leafy vegetables. After all, elephants and rhinos develop their huge bones (after being weaned) by eating green leafy plants, so do horses. Carnivorous animals also do quite nicely without leafy plants. It seems that all of earth’s mammals do well if they live in harmony with their genetic programming and natural food. Only humans living an affluent life style have rampant osteoporosis.

Update: This post has sparked a debate here. Interesting! :D

Speechless.

CHANGE WE NEED!

Related:
Resurrection of Racism
Slaves to Racial Bondage
PKNS – Get the Best Person for the Job
Race and Islam

It looks like I am going to miss my target of writing 12 posts in a year. Wahahaha. I can’t even manage to write 1 post per month. BTW, if you google sohai, my sohai post is ranking as #1 now (sometimes #2). Thanks Google for its recognition to this meaningful word. Hopefully one day dictionary.com and wikipedia.com will also include the definition to their database. :D

Back to what I want to write today. What does the so-called ‘financial crisis’ means to you as an ordinary investor? What does the 50%+ fall of the whole world stock market (30% fall in October 2008 alone) means to you? Is my popular 20% compounded growth plan still relevant? Is my review on ICAP a rubbish? What about all the value investing posts that I have been writing?

Instead of answering them directly, let’s ponder some interesting facts that newspaper won’t be publishing and you won’t see them as headlines in NTV7 news.

What investing gurus are saying?

Gurus from all over the world are using almost the same word to describe the current crisis. It is not ’sad’, not ‘disappointing’, not ‘bad’, not ’scary’ but ‘exciting’! They are using the word exciting to describe the current stock market.

Ken Heebner a guru who compound more tan 20% per year for many years is actually buying bank stocks!

What did Seth Klarman, another great value investor said a few days ago (just before the market tank another 10% in a day)?

“Normally, as a buyer you have to compete with a lot of very, very smart competitors,” said Mr. Klarman. “But many of the smartest people are on the sidelines now because of redemptions, margin calls or panicked-out-of-their-mind selling. So you don’t have to be as smart as you did before. You just have to be in the game.” article link

What he said contains a lot of intelligence that you need to understand. Let me explain the whole concept in AhYap’s style.

Perspective #1 – What happened when you are forced to only sell and are not allowed to buy

I have condemned mutual funds many times but I have to do it again because now you will learn the most. Unlike ICAP, mutual fund is open ended. That means the fund size can increase and decrease depending on how many people willing to pour money into it or take money out of it. So a mutual fund as large as RM 100 million can shrink their size to RM10 million if the holder want to take the money out from it.

In normal days, mutual fund usually invest only 70-90% of their money and keep the remaining in cash. The prospectus will specify the percentage that need to be invested. Say a mutual fund that specify that they need 90% of money invested in the stock market all the time, they have to follow that and make sure 90% of money in the stock market, no matter if the stock market is overvalue or undervalue.

The problem is that when time of panic selling comes, 10% cash is not enough for redemption (the fund doesn’t have enough money to pay to his holders who sell the mutual fund). So where do they get the money to pay them? They have to sell stocks to get money in order to pay them. So when more and more and more people what to get out of mutual funds, the fund managers have no choice but to keep on selling their stocks no matter what is the price! The fund managers may think a stock is cheap at RM3 but are forced to sell it at RM1 because someone want to get out from the fund.

The ice ball roll bigger when more and more people want to get out of the mutual fund. The continue selling from the mutual fund creates a big SUPPLY but the DEMAND is very low. Everyone what to sell but no one what to buy! They ask for lower and lower price. Price tank. Market tank.

The fund manager might be very intelligent in investing. But he can’t do a shit even if he is as good as Warren Buffett. Because he has no choice! He can only be at the sideline watching. First he is forced to sell at cheaper price. Second he cannot buy anything that he think is cheap because he has no money to buy! Money flow out quickly from the fund and no new money flow into it.

When you are in mutual fund, you are partnering with many Ah Beng and Ahmad that you don’t know (maybe just live next door to you) and what they do affect your investment.

How have margin calls affected the stock market? Many people borrow money to buy stocks and use the stock they bought as collateral. Same thing as you borrow money to buy your house and use your house as collateral. Problem is when the value of the collateral drops to a certain value, they are required to either increase the collateral (pump in more money) or sell stocks to reduce the borrowings to the acceptable margin level, which is what we called ‘margin call’ [i.e. your broker call you and tell you that you don't have enough margin].

Unfortunately most people don’t have money to pump in! If they have the extra money, why would they need to borrow? So they have no choice but to sell no matter what is the price! The key phase that is same as the mutual funds, ’sell no matter what is the price!’.

This creates another surge is selling orders that crash the stock market. And mind you, it is not you and me the small little guy that have only RM23 in Maybank account that is margin called but the BIG guys that control billions of dollars! These guys run hedge fund (unregulated but leveraged mutual funds) that borrow a lot of money to invest! These guys are forced to sell because their collateral (stocks they bought) are no longer enough to cover their borrowings.

In short, the force selling of mutual funds and margin calls has create a big SUPPLY of stocks, contributing to a big fall to the stock market. Because they have to sell disregard of price, but the selling doesn’t have much relation with the underlying value of the stock.

Here comes the intelligent investor.

People who are not forced to sell or who have the courage to buy now has the advantage than those who choose to sell or stupid enough to buy mutual funds all the years. Unlike common mutual fund which is open-ended, ICAP is a closed-end fund. It doesn’t need to sell even a single stock even ICAP shareholders are dumping the share in the market. ICAP can keep anything that the fund manager thinks is cheap and at the same time can utilized the RM50 million cash it has to buy more shares that is selling at big discount. That means the next door Ah Beng who owns 1 million shares of ICAP and dump it crazily in the market yesterday until the market price drop to RM1.20 can’t do a shit to its real value (NAV – RM1.42).

For individual investor who has money right now, you also have the chance to grab stocks that are in big discount. Stock market are currently in 4-5 years low. That means in order to buy something at current price, the last chance is 4-5 years ago.

Perspective #2 – The Gap Between Price and Value

Price is what you pay and value is what you get. You can pay whatever price for anything but what you get is just the value. You can pay RM500 for a Mc Fillet O Fish but what you get is still a Mc Fillet O Fish (RM5.90).

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine, but in the long run it is a weighing machine.”
– Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor

Warren Buffet explains what his teacher said a few weeks ago in CNBC.

“Well, the stock market in the short — my old boss Ben Graham said that in the short-run the stock market is a voting machine, in the long-run it’s a weighing machine. As a voting machine, it responds to people’s emotions. There’s no literacy test for voting. You vote according to how much money you have, not according to how smart you (are.) So the stock market does some very silly things in the short-run. Over the long-run, it behaves quite rationally. And, you know, five years from now, ten years from now, we’ll look back on this period and we’ll see that you could have made some extraordinary buys. That doesn’t mean it won’t get more extraordinary a week or a month from now. I have no idea what the stock market is going to do next month or six months from now. I do know that the American economy, over a period of time, will do very well, and people who own a piece of it will do well. But they shouldn’t own it on leverage. That’s what people have learned in this period, that you’ve got to be able to play out your hand and it’s a big mistake to let somebody else be in a position where they can sell you out.”

Why the gap between price and value will eventually closed? Why it is a “weighting machine” in the long run? Because the longer time goes by, the more OBVIOUS the fact that Mr. Market is mispricing a stock and eventually more and more people will noticed it, buy it and push up the price.

Mohnish Pabrai bought IPSCO for 3 times free cashflow (read my post on PE Ratio), a stock that Pabrai knows the market is mispricing. Since it is a voting machine in the short term, the price may remain low and even drop further for the short term. But what will happened after 3 years? The company would have generated cash that is more then it market capitalization! (market cap: the price the whole company is worth i.e no of shares x share price) That means you are exchanging RM1 for RM1 cash in that company PLUS the factories, inventories, future profits, management, employees, palm trees, Diamond water filter, toilet papers, CEO’s secretary, etc. ALL FOR FREE! At this time, even sohai can notice the value-price gap! It is so obvious.

Pabrai bought it at $45 and sold it for $155. And Pabrai said currently many of his stocks is trading at 1 times free cash flow. How long do you think he needs to wait before things get obvious for others?

Perspective #3 – How many McChicken will be sold in China and India?

Tan Teng Boo organized a seminar last year about his theory on ‘i Capital Long Boom’. After paying a few hundred bucks, you received a ’seminar’ book that look more like a nuclear bomb manual written in Russian. You listen to Uncle Tan speaks for numerous hours about facts and figures and looking at charts and data on the screen that you can never underestand. And yet, ironically, everyone get very excited!

Dump away all the statistics – the nickle comsumption per capita, the price of USD vs Nigeria Naira, the washing machine sold per household, stainless steel nuts and bolts consumption, etc etc etc … Why not just ask yourself a few questions.

How many Nike shoes do you think the China and India man will buy in the next 10, 15, 20 years?
(Hint: China has 1.3 billion people. India has 1.1 billion. India population will surpass China in 20+ years. US population is only 0.3 billion!)

How many chicken (real chicken ok) have to be fried by KFC in the next 10, 15, 20 years?

How many condoms are required by China and India man to make sure they don’t have too many ‘liabilities’?

How many toilet paper do they need? Toothpaste? Hand phones, computer chips, rubber bands, Diamond/Nesh water filter, Crocodile underwear, etc etc etc.

It is mind boggling. The China, India and all other Asian countries will play a big role in the world economies in the future. Tan Teng Boo describe it as something that happened once in a millennium.

Perspective #4 – When Price Drops, It Gets Less Risky, Not More Risky!

Given that you have done a thorough analysis on a stock and you bought it a discount, the stock will not get riskier when the price fall! For example, Mohnish did a research on IPSCO, a cyclical steel company. His analysis read like this -

Continue Reading »

AhYap is confirmed a dai sohai for being conned gao gao not once but twice from the same men. This proves again that AhYap is only good at talking cock theory but fail to implement them practically. If you are a follower of my blog, you would have read my post on the immobilizer conman and thought that I am very smart. Unfortunately, I have to admit that, “Book smart is not street smart.” [To know how book smart I am, I have at least 10 books highly relavant to conning tactics and its psychologies]

Time: Saturday evening
Place: My House @ Ipoh

My friend and I was at my garden and suddenly 4 Indians driving a blue van stopped in front of my house. That was scary because I really wonder if they are bad guys! Then 1 of them came down, point to my grass and start talking about my grass. He told me the name of my grass, different types of grasses, problems with my grass, etc. etc.  Then he said that he work as the gardener for a golf course for 25 years and he do gardening for people at part time. He knows what he speaks. He talk for a very long time outside the gate until at one moment he requested to come in to explain in more details the ‘problem’ of my grass. [I Broke Rule #1 - Never let stranger come into your house]

As precaution I only let him in and have others waited outside. He pointed to some yellow patch of the grass and some holes and told me that there are ‘worms’ eating the root below and digging the hole up. The hole indeed look like being dug by some insects, and I have also heard of such worm that eat the roots of grass. So I didn’t doubt about that. But till now, I still don’t expect myself to pay him anything.

He then started to promote 2 products. The first one is bat’s shit. Yep, the fertilizer made with the shit of Batman by Joker and Two Face. Actually I google it and find out that the correct term is bat guano. It is indeed a very expensive type of fertilizer that is high in phosphorus which is good for roots growing (Nitrogen is good for leaves, Potassium is good for flowers).

The 2nd product is a ‘liquid’ that he said his golf course imported overseas specially for use in their golf course. Until now I also don’t know its real purpose. Something like preventing the grass to grow tall but make them grow to the side, thus making your grass more ‘carpet’ and at the same time killing the weeds because they no longer can ’stand up’. I have never heard of such product but I am very curious on it.

This Indian guy is very skillful in talking. He can speaks Indian, English, Malay and Hokkien! (I don’t know Hokkien!) And he knows almost everything about plants and gardening. He talked for a very long time and the goal of the whole process is to convince me that he is ‘genuine’ and ‘trustable’.

How he broke pattern (breaking pattern in NLP means make someone suddenly dumb and stupid and can’t think normally like he did before. For example if you are talking very excited about something to your friend and suddenly he asked you a question that is totally unrelated, your thought pattern was broken and you respond by asking, “WHAT?!” and then you forget until where you talk until just now) -

He told me that you can’t buy this craps (bat craps) anywhere else because he ’steal’ it out from his gold course! The greed in me kicks in. And I didn’t doubt this fact at all. He said he had to steal a little bit a day from the golf course (including the ‘liquid’) so no one notice. He say he wants to cari makan a bit.

He keeps talking and talking (for a very long time) to convince me to put those shits and urine (the ‘liquid’ lar) to my grass. So I asked about the price and he said the urine cost RM95 per bottle and the shit cost RM65 per packet. Sounds expensive to me. So I didn’t agreed.

He kept on talking and talking. He asked his teammates outside to bring in sample of the liquid which is filled up in old 7up and Sarsi bottles! And he showed me some of the bat shit and let me touch it. He is trying very hard to convince me. I later asked him how many bags and bottles I need. He said 3 bottles and 3 packs is more than enough.

You see, I indeed love my grass very much and if the products can really deliver what it promised, I am willing to pay. My parents said this is the reason I fall for it – I can afford the money.

2nd event that break my pattern came in. My friend wanted to say bye bye and leave my house, so I opened the gate for him and then the Indian guy immediately order all his friends to come in and bring in all the urines and shits. He opened up the shit and ask me to see (see shit!). Then what he did is too surprising for me. He started pouring the bat shit to my lawn. I thought he was just giving me a demo on a small area but hell not, he is pouring a lot! Then he instructed his partners to continue pouring the shit while asking another one to spray the liquid to my glass.

Since my pattern was broken, I thought I can afford a try of that since it is around RM400 for 3 bottles of 7up and 3 packs of shit. So I didn’t stop them but let them finished.

It was scary. They keep pouring and pouring and pouring until my whole lawn is full of black shit. Fortunately they are not ’smelly’ like fertilizer made with chicken shit. End up they have used 5 bottles of liquid and 6 packs of shits!!!

This is a very common sales technique. If you tell somebody in advance the whole thing will cost RM815, they won’t want the deal, but if you tell them one pack is RM65 and mostly you will need 3 packs, they have higher chances of agreeing, which is my case! The problem is that they will quietly add up the number of packs without asking you and when you know about it, it is too late. Shit is already on the floor! It is very hard to argue, unless you know it is really a con case and reject it. But I don’t know yet!

[In Ipoh got a very popular Hakka mee store. They use this tactic to ALL their customers. When you order the fishballs and fu-pei, you might say, "I want 20 mix mix." Then come a big bowl of fish balls and fu-pei and you eat happily with your family. After you finished and you wanted to pay, they charge you very expensive and you ask, "WTF! How much is your fishball and your fu-pei, I only order 20!" And then he will answer, "Oh, we give you 30 fishballs and fu-pei mar, that's why." @*&$$%(% How do you argue? Fishballs are already in your stomach! Pay lor.]

He is so good. He put all the empty bags and bottles on the floor and asked me to calculate how much to pay him! This is funny, now I feel like what he is saying is, “Now I want to cheat you, you calculate how much you should let me cheat. Since you calculate it yourself, that means you agree to be cheated by me. I didn’t force you at all.”

So I calculated with my Sony Ericsson and the amount is scary, RM815 (double the RM400 I expected). He said RM800 is OK, RM15 no need to count. He also promised me that tomorrow he will bring me a lot of nice pebbles to put beside my plants and bring me ‘uri powder’ (powder made from urine?) for FREE! [actually he means he will steal the pebbles and uri powder for me] The powder according to him is used to prevent grasshoppers and other insects eating the leaves of the plants.

So I try to act smart and wanna fished him back to make sure he will come back tomorrow to give me those stuffs (greed again!). What I don’t know is I am actually trying to fish this shark back to bite me again tomorrow. I gave them only RM700 and ask them to collect the RM100 tomorrow after they bring me the pebbles and uri powder. (greed! greed! greed!) Sometimes when you think you are acting very smart, you are actually acting very stupid. That’s me.

Although I have paid them RM700, I felt quite happy with the shits and is eagerly waiting for my lawn to turn green and nice. (I love my lawn a lot, my girl friend sometimes said I love my lawn more than I love her) It is always easier to sell someone things that they want and need, like selling weight loss program to women, selling Yunnan hair care to Yap Kim Hock and other bald mans, selling ‘healing’ pills to cancer patient, etc.

At night I told my parents my story of the “encounters of the 4 Indians”. As expected, parents always worried that their children get conned. So they said things like, “Where got shit that is so expensive!”, “You trusted people too easily already lor”, blar blar blar. And that make me very angry because they still talk to me like a kid and THIS, drive up my ego and I want to proof that I am right.

I also googled for bat shit at night from the internet and notice that the price is indeed very expensive! 1 kilo cost around RM40 to RM50! So the little-greedy man feel very proud of himself on the day. But I can’t find anything about the liquid because I don’t even know the name of it.

— — — — —

Time: Sunday evening
Place: My Same House @ Ipoh, now with bat shits.

They came back!

Continue Reading »

[Since AhYap.com is a weird blog, I choose to write about electricity while everyone is writing about petrol, haha.]

When I look at Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) business model, I think it is a joke. However, many people including all those ‘experts’ in newspaper think that Tenaga Nasional is a very good stock because it has a monopoly on the electricity supply of Malaysia. All houses and businesses in Malaysia must pay TNB to get their electric, to watch Astro, refrigerate their watermelon and surf porn online. They also say it is a very good business because TNB income is very ’stable’ and so you can also expect to receive ’stable’ dividends.

But listen carefully, a monopoly business doesn’t mean it is a great business. And ’stable’ income doesn’t equal to ’stable’ dividends.

The biggest problem with TNB is that they simply control the price of their goods (electricity)! Even if their cost jump up a lot, they still can’t adjust their tariff (until yesterday). What is the meaning of monopoly when you can’t even control the price of your product! When you can’t control the selling price of your product but at the same time the cost of your product keep increasing, you will make less money or even lose money!

At this case, the monopoly end up hurting itself. What is benefit of your monopoly when you have to sell something fixed at RM100 while you produce it at RM150! And because you monopoly, you become compulsory to lose that RM50 no matter what. And the more customers you have, the more money you are compulsory to lose!

Do you think it is funny if your business look like that? Do you want to own such businesses? How do you expect to receive ’stable’ dividends when you have ’stable’ loses! Businesses can’t pay you good dividends when they are actually burning money, instead of generating money.

[The above examples are over-exaggerated by AhYap for Drama Effect, TNB is still able to cover their cost and make some money, but not a lot of money. They are also paying dividends, but not a lot of dividends. And with such business model, I don't think they can make good money and pay good dividends in the future even after the rate hike.]

It becomes more ridiculous when you realized that TNB runs on a business model that punish big customers! I don’t know what other businesses would do that and I really can’t accept that as an investor and a consumer. When you use less electricity, you pay lower tariff. The more you use, the higher the tariff would go! That would means if you buy 1 burger from McDonald, they charge you RM3, if you buy 2, they have to charge you RM10! WTF.

Businesses are meant to make money. Businesses like TNB is a ridiculous business because it didn’t reward their customers that use more! And end up investors don’t make much money from owning this stupid business.

It is almost guaranteed that if you spend more in a shop or buy more of a same products, the shop will happily give you discounts! That’s the correct way to do business, to motivate their customer to spend more so they can make more money. The customer is happy to get the discount and the business owner (and the investor) is happy to make more money. It is a win-win situation.

If you buy a box of Durex with 12 condoms in it, you expect each unit to cost less than the 3 condom pack! They motivate you to buy more (and fuck more), so you get more discount and enjoyment while they make more money. Same applies to Head and Shoulder shampoos, Whisper pads, Jack n Jill potato chips, Scottex toilet paper, Renoma underwear and almost everything else. The bigger pack you buy, the cheaper the averaged cost per unit.

If you go to popular restaurants like McDonald, KFC, PizzaHut, Starbucks, etc. All add ons are always cheaper than your initial purchase. McDonald sells 1 banana pie for RM2 and 2 pies for RM3! Starbucks large coffee is double the size of the small but cost only RM 2 extra! PizzaHut lets you add-on a salad bowl for only RM1 (normal price RM6) when you already order main course. [Damn it, suddenly I realized I eat a lot of junk food.]

Usually if you buy cloths over certain amount, say RM200, you will automatically get say 10% discounts. They are motivating you to spend more so they can make more money. Some shops will give you free gifts (actually sample/trial packs as bait to fish you for buying more in the future). Even if they don’t give you discount, they might give you a cool paper bag to wrap your goods instead of plastic bag so you look more cool when walking around the shopping complex.

Credit card companies motivate you to spend more by giving your bonus points to redeem for gifts! And they even motivate you to owe more money by offering you lower interest rate the more you owe them. So they can make more interest income from you. Even lousy companies like Malaysia Airlines (MAS) offer Enrich Miles to let their customers earn free flights. The more your fly, the more free flights you can redeem. And you got more Enrich Miles if you fly first class or business class (so they can charge you more on those seats). We also have Bonus Link card, Real Rewards card, Jusco Card and even Sen Heng card! The more you spend, the more gift/discounts you get.

Service industries motivate you to buy more by offering you bulk packages. Your averaged cost of signing up a 12 sessions slimming treatment at Terimee is cheaper than you sign up for 3. Your averaged cost of signing up a life time membership with California Fitness is cheaper than a 1 year membership. Even the QQ Express Cut at Mid Valley gives me a stamping cut that gives me 1 free cut for every 6 cut, so you earn an extra idiot look hair cut after they make you look like a sohai for 6 times! Many food restaurants like Coffee Bean are giving away loyalty cards that earn 1 stamp for each visit. And you can redeem free drinks/food after certain amount of visits.

It is very clear that businesses should always reward customers that spend more and customers that are loyal. But what does TNB do? They punish them! The more electric you use, the more expensive you need to pay. This is stupid.

I understand the reason behind this ‘ridiculous’ tariff structure is because the government wants us to spend less on electricity to save on energy. If that is the case, TNB can be considered as a good government entity or an environment friendly company BUT DEFINITELY not a good business/investment.

As a consumer, I want cheaper goods if I spend more. As an investor, I want a company that will motivate their customers to spend more so it can make more money for me. Thus, as a consumer and an investor, I think TNB-sucks-damn-a-lot.

There are many perspectives to look at businesses and this is one of the very rare one. I don’t expect you to read it in newspaper. I end my post with our new electricity tariff for you to enjoy.

Home Use (Monthly Usage < 400kWh)
kWh Tariff (cent)
1-200 21.80
200-400 34.50
Home Use (Monthly Usage > 400kWh)
kWh Tariff (cent)
1-500 30.00
501-600 39.00
601-700 40.00
701-800 41.00
801-900 43.00
>901 46.00

After reading 20+ books on stock investing, I still don’t know how to analyst a company! And to finish reading those books, it took me a whole year. So many books, so much time, yet so little gained.

Everything that I have learned can be summarized into 1 sentence, “Buy wonderful businesses at discounted price.” That’s the whole strategy of value investing. That’s what those books trying to tell me.

The biggest gain from reading those books is actually to realize that it is impossible to do it myself. It is impossible for me to read 10 years annual reports for just a single company to find out if it is a wonderful business. It is very boring for me to dig deep into the income statements and balance sheets to calculate the intrinsic value of the company so I can figure out if it is selling at a discount.

The problem is not that we don’t spend enough time and effort on it! The problem is that investing is an art and not an exact science. The sentence, “Buy wonderful businesses at discounted price” make a lot of sense, but implementing it is a very very tough job. It is like you also know your should not get angry easily but you rant all the time when are you inside your car and press your car horn just because the car in front didn’t move after 0.01 second after the light goes green. You know it, but it is hard to be done. You also know that you should exercise more to get healthy but when it is time to go exercise, you say “tomorrow lar, today very tired”. You know it, but it is hard to be done.

What are wonderful businesses? What price is undervalue and what price is overvalue?

I don’t mind spending time reading 10 annual reports for a company if after that I can figure out if it is a wonderful business. I also don’t mind spending 10 hours reading all income statements and balance sheet if I can figure out its intrinsic value.

But it didn’t work like that! After reading 10 annual reports doesn’t mean you will know if it is wonderful. Spending 10 hours to get an ‘intrinsic value’ doesn’t mean it is an accurate one and you can make money from it! There is no guarantee that the effort and time you put in will give you the results you want, because deciding whether a company is wonderful and finding its intrinsic value is an ART and not a SCIENCE!

10 different guys reading the same 10 annual reports can come out with 10 totally different conclusions on whether it is a good company or a bad company. 100 different guys trying to calculate its intrinsic value and they can get 100 different answers. There is no exact answer! You will only know who is right and wrong after years has passed and the future performance of the company and its stock price becomes history.

The best you can do about the future is to predict it. Prediction is an art!

I love money. But I am not really passionate about stocks. I just love its compounding power, but I feel boring reading annual reports and income statements. It is simply not my cup of tea! I have a lot of other interests, passions and hobbies. I am interested in learning and doing a lot of things but I really don’t want to be an investing guru (or a politician)! I am passionate about heath, I am passionate about my spiritual practice, I am passionate on talking cock, but I am not really passionate on picking stocks!

If you look at all investor gurus, there are very passionate in investing. They spend their entire life in investing, although they say they are long term investor and they can buy a stock and hold it for 10 years without looking at it, they NEVER DO THAT! They still look at the stock market everyday, they just don’t buy and sell everyday, but they still look and still do a lot buy and sell within a year! Because it is their passion, their life. They can’t live without looking at stocks. Also, it is their job and career because they make money by investing for others.

But it is definitely not my passion. It is also not my job and my career. I feel stressed with stock. The less I look at it, the more happy I am. So, why spend so much time on it? But I realized that the best way to compound my money is to use stocks! So what should I do?

“To be happy, you need to find someone who loves to do what you hate to do, and can do it a lot better than you.”

This is the key concept of this post, and the key strategy of how I compound my money, how I do my stock investing.

Instead of going to research and pick my own stocks, I actually went to research and pick my own fund managers! I want to find someone that is good at doing what I hate to do!

4 of my favorite investors are Warren Buffet, Mohnish Pabrai, Peter Lynch and Tan Teng Boo. Every value investor loves Warren Buffet. He is the richest man in the world now after compounding for 50 years!

I like Mohnish Pabrai because he has proved that low risk high return value investing works! He started his investing business in 1999 which is quickly followed by the dot com bubble. And yet, not only that he is not affected by the market downfall but he actually deliver an outstanding performance where he manage to obtain 28% compounded return until today! If you study him and look at his strategy, he is so conservative with his investment, making his invertors able to sleep soundly at night.

The chart below shows the severity of the dot com bubble where the NASDAQ Stock Market has plunged sharply from the peak of 5,000 points in the end of 1999 to only 1,100 points in the end of 2002! That means if you have $5,000 at the peak, you are left with $1,100 after ‘negative compounding’ for 3 years. And yet, Mohnish Pabrai, a strict value investor, made 28% compounded return from 1999 until today!

nasdaq-10y

Peter Lynch is the best mutual fund manager in the world. Yep, I condemn mutual fund a lot but Peter Lynch is actually one of the very rare distinct fund manager out there. While owning lots of stocks in his mutual fund, he achieved an outstanding 29.2% compounded return for 13 years! What he did is simple, “Buying wonderful businesses at discounted price”. But different than other gurus, he made it by buying hundreds of wonderful businesses. For comparison, Warren Buffet, the richest investor and richest man in the world, only owns around 60 stocks.

You should have heard of Tan Teng Boo if you have read about my ICAP post. He is one of the best brains in Malaysia which luckily our lousy government haven’t exported to Singapore. I have seen him spoke a few times. The first time is already 4 years ago when I attended a seminar organized by him. When it comes to money, you won’t be confidence with a person by just someone ‘recommend’ him to you, like what I am doing right now. You must listen to him speak yourself. Listen to how he answers the questions throw to him. There are many videos of his interview in his website here. Watch yourself.

I decided not to invest with Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Harthaway because I know it is very hard to invest billions of cash and get spectacular returns. Warren Buffets has been compounding his money for 50 years until he becomes the richest man in the world, how big more can he be?

I like Mohnish Pabrai. But to invest with him you need $2 million USD. “*_* So you know why I didn’t invest with him.

I like Peter Lynch. But he is retired now.

There are just too many reasons why Tan Teng Boo is the best person for me to outsource my investing. The man that loves what I hate to do and can even do it better than me! I found my ’slave’! [I think investing is painful so doing investing job everyday look like a salve to me, but he enjoys it, so let him be. keke]

1. He is so near. A Malaysian who just live in KL. A real person that you can touch (hand & shoulder only, not butt). A real person that you can see with your own eyes (not TV or picture only). Someone who also know who is Adbullah Badawi and Hishammuddin.

2. He has a newsletter published weekly so you know what he thinks every week. And his newsletter has several paper portfolio where you can mimic his buy and sells!

3. He is the fund manager of the only closed-end fund listed in KLSE! You can let him invest for you as low as RM2.17 per share right now! [not USD 2 million]

So why do it yourself when someone can do it better for you?

I prefer to have more time myself doing things I like.

I buy my first batch of ICAP in February 2007 at RM1.54. At that time I have only read a few books on investing (not 20 yet), confidence on value investing is still very very weak. And I am also doubtful to Tan Teng Boo. Within 2 weeks, the whole market suddenly crashed when the Shanghai market fell 9% in 1 day. Being one of the panic chicken, I sold it for RM1.48 and lost money! I started scolding Tan Teng Boo as a cibai. Look at the ICAP chart below, you will see a sharp fall end of February 2007.

icap-price-nav

I can say all value investing books will have this quote by Warren Buffet.

“We simply attempt to be fearful when others are greedy and to be greedy only when others are fearful.”

Somehow, I remembered that later. And I actually started to buy back ICAP after the crash. I buy gradually for the next few months. In June, I become very confident and sold all my mutual funds and convert all proceeds to ICAP. The highest price I ever pay for ICAP is RM1.70. My averaged purchase price is RM1.55. I hold just 1 single stock and nothing else for a long time. No mutual funds, no blue chips, no Amanah Saham Wawasan 2020.

Lets look at 2 of the mutual funds I sold in June (I also sold my ASW2020 to my father, haha).

ING Global Real Estate Fund – Bought this in September 2006 after I failed to buy any ASW2020 after queuing for 2 hours at Maybank. So I immediately walk to Hong Leong bank to buy this fund. Bought price is RM0.5103. Today’s price RM0.3999. Investment return based on NAV if I hold it until today is -22%! But because it does pay dividends all the time, the return will be slightly better but I take note that I need to pay around 5% commission when I buy. So does buy and hold really works? Do mutual funds work?

Public Global Select Fund – Bought this on its launching period in September 2006 too. Commission is 6% with 1% free units, so net commission is 5%. Look at the chart below, it is -8% since inception and if I am still holding it until today for 18 months, my return will be -13% (8% + 5% commission). They even perform poorer that the market (red line)! What is the need to pay 6% commission and 1.5% annual management fee to the fund companies when they can’t even do better than the overall market?

PGSF

They even perform worse than Fixed Deposits and ASW2020!

Luckily I didn’t hold any mutual funds anymore. Because another important thing that I have learned from reading those investment books is -

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