Dividends

Schroder, Collonial, AMPCI, Challenger, Blackrock, Perpetual... All the funds have now paid their dividends to shareholders. The return is pretty good, having in mind the current conditions of the market. The dividends partly reduce the potential loss caused by the drop in the prices.
This is a bonus I haven't expected. Nice present for the holidays. :)

Sitting Still

There's a brilliant line as a conclusion in one of Vanguard texts:

"no-one should underestimate the effort involved in sitting still"

It summarizes the agony of the current moment. Investors and traders read about "buy low, sell high" stuff. But, practically, most people buy high and sell low. To avoid those situations, one has to overcome emotions when everyone's buying or selling and just wait. But waiting is anything but dull and boring. It is one of the hardest things to do.
It is quite depressing to see your life savings drop 20% or more. That makes years of one's life disappear in a very short time frame. Hope that things will be better is the only thing one has to sail through such times. But it is not easy. :)

US Abandoning Capitalism for Socialism

United States Abandoning Capitalism for Socialism :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website

This is a recurring theme lately. Developed capitalist countries resembling the socialist countries from the 80's. Interesting development.

Bear? - Not. Confirmed.

Commenting on yestarday's post - Bear. The confirmation did not take long. :)
I said that day I was expecting the market to go up while the mentioned projection (and some other) were bearish. The projected targets were 4800 and then even further down to 4676.
As we can see, that was the day the market started going up. Today it's around 5000. And I reckon it has some way to go. The support has been confirmed. Actually, I'd like to see it confirmed again. That would mean it is a strong one and that the upward movement can be expected in the future.
Things are going ok. No bad news. Write-offs by the banks are mostly done. We never know what tomorrow brings but at the moment all is ok and hope to see it moving upwards slowly.

Just to update... The current projection from Sonray is 5039, then 5167. Up, up.

The more I look into market analysis the more I'm certain we would've been better off throwing beans on the floor. :)

Market Briefing

Interesting webinar tonight. Held by Options21 online.
The audience asked obvious questions. Where is the market to go from here? Is the bear market over? Will the indexes fall further? The best answers are the simplest - no one can tell the future.
Fundamentally - the market has yet to fall.

There was an analysis of the current situation in the financial markets, relations between banks, financial instruments, and markets. The depth of the current crisis in the US is huge - around 500 trillion.
The presenter stated he does not like CFDs. His preference are options - hedging risk, controlling risk (stop loss). That is an interesting view.

Good advice was to actually ignore the news. The news just reinforces the fear, hysteria, greed, and other emotions. The best source of information from the market is the market itself.

VIX = fear index. Fear index shows lows in the market. Compare fear index with the price graph. This clearly shows how much emotions affect the prices in the market. And that indicates the oversold/overbought securities.

Investitor - Investor

investitor.ba - Početna

Here's the first investing-related web site in Bosnia that I know of. Not counting the actual stock market exchange and the site from the securities commission. Then, there are web sites at brokers that offer certain functionality. But this one looks more community oriented and objective. These are just the first impressions. I'll put them to the time test and let's see how they fare.

Bear

Sonray analysts predict 1st stop of ASX200 index to be 4800 and then 4676. Let's watch if this will be the case in the next few days.
I think it won't. But, I'm not an analyst and I'm not predicting anything. :D

Bull

Australia - Stock Market

The markets are testing the support and confirming it. This also looks like it could go up from now on. It's not only the graphs that tell a story. Have a look at the news. All the forecasts are pretty bad. I have established earlier that forecasts are pretty much useless in terms of predicting the market movement. It is natural that at the darkest hour the situation looks so bad that all the forecast are gloomy. That makes sense. That's one of the reasons markets ARE down. Obviously, that leaves room only to go for the better at that point.
I read that after Merryl-Lynch write-off some are hoping that this might mark the beginning of the end of credit crunch. I hope things go nice and slow from here, markets get to recover properly, and everything goes for the best. There is something in the air that signifies the things are moving in that direction. At least there are no more bad news popping up all the time. Oil is down significantly. Inflation is high and expected to go down as the economy has slowed. None of the major banks went under. Everyone has corrected their earning forecasts for the next 12 months.
Just as I said on Wednesday when markets hit the low, that was the best time to buy. Only it was quite difficult to break through the stigma of bad news and smell of blood surrounding the market at that time. But then there was a short jump, coming back to confirm the support, and now I expect to see upward movement from here.
What do you think? As I said, it's not only the technical analysis that predicts this sort of movement. It's the current situation and various sell-offs that happened recently. There is not much hot air left to sell. Prices are pretty much at the real company values. Whoever is patient to wait for the next bull market can have their savings/retirement/house deposit grow. Hope this is not just a wishful thinking. That's why there is this blog, so we can go back and have a look at the comments in certain periods, while comparing it to the market index graph. :)

Wizard Clear Advantage MasterCard Payment Options

Since I'm going away for holidays I need to pay my credit card charges and deposit some extra amount as my initial credit limit on the card is low. This card is a recommended holiday money option so I want to have some funds available on the account. The advantage is that ATM and overseas transactions do not draw extra charge, meaning you can have local currency at your destination(s) without extra cost and at current currency exchange levels.

The payment options are (probably) specified on the statement. That's what the web site says. But, I will be away before I get my first statement so I called the call center to find out my options. The card description on the web site states different payment options but no details on how to do it.
Australia Post charges a certain percentage and I hate standing in queues so that option is out.
There are two other ways to pay the card charges (top-up): BPay and Direct Debit.
For Direct Debit, a form is available in the Control Centre for your account. Fill in the form and post to Wizard. I can't wait to see if everything will work out OK with this option but may do that sometimes later.
That leaves BPay, which was my initial idea anyway. BPay biller code is 150615. Posting this number online might save them some calls to call centre. :)
Reference number IS NOT your card number, which I expected it to be. It differs only slightly, so unless one gets her first statement with payment details the call to the call centre is still necessary to get proper payment details.
So, I'm sending in my first payment to cover for the previous months' cost and some extra funds to be available at any ATM I see when I get out of the plane in Europe.

G7 Socialism

The Greatest Transfer of Wealth in History is About to Unfold :: The Market Oracle :: Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting Free Website

He, he, funny how there are more and more confirmations of how socialism and capitalism changed places. Developed countries are more and more mimicking the former socialist countries. Look at governments saving major banks as if they were state property, at war generals hold press conferences and that is the major source of news (hence the popularity of Al Jazeera in Iraq invasion), etc. At the same time capitalism is growing stronger and merciless in former socialist countries of Russian and China. Well, the last still officially a socialist country. Since Castro left, I reckon Cuba is soon to join the club.
The middle class might be disappearing in G7 countries but is growing in the developing nations.
Guess there is that third level. The one of countries grasping for air and unable to support or develop themselves. But that's another topic.