Irwan’s

This is a story about a friend from a kampung, a deeply rural kampung that nobody outside has ever heard of its name. One day, a guy reached the kampung in Ferrari Cayenne and met with my friend. He said, “Boy, you don’t deserve this way of life. Come, I’ll teach you how to be like me”. By that Cayenne, my friend went out from that village and met with his new world.

The man turned out to be a genius, financially. He might not own the largest number of stocks, but his portfolio outgrowths any top investors’ throughout the history of stocks. He owned the largest number of profitable mutual funds and thanks to his powerful analytical mind, he might be the only one who wasn’t affected in the bursting housing market. How he had done that is impossible to fathom by a mere mind but the kampung boy religiously studied any wisdom thrown to him.

20 years has passed since he went out from his kampung. He thanked the man for all his efforts and head back to his rural kampung. His intention was to educate all his villagers to be like him, to be financially prepared even for the worst economic condition. He wasn’t even sure whether his villagers know what economic stands for.

After being sleepless for many nights, he finally had an idea. He planned to build a blog based on what he’s learnt from his master. He will explain every detail that is still intact on his mind about investment, stocks, economic and every other thing about money. He called his blog, kampunginvestor.com

p/s: despite the long dramatic introduction, this post is about a new blog launched by my friend about investment. Don’t forget to visit his blog at kampunginvestor.com

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Quite a neat program but this is my first time so…

Ok let’s test how the image behave:

Ok the resizing is not bad and who doesn’t love the drag and drop features. how bout copy and paste:

Hey it works. It even automatically put drop shadow effect. Neat.

If you haven’t noticed, live writer also supports watermarking. You can save the setting as default and it will apply the same setting to all pictures.

erm.. what else. oh the usual block quote:

This is a block quote. I main use it for cut and paste material from the web. So let’s test a

couple

of

lines. there you go

Overall, I’m quite please with it and I recommend you guys to use it. There are still a bunch of functions that await me to discover.

Here is the latest preview (as of 19 July 2008) – Download

or you can download the stable version - Download

If you are wondering about the photos, the girl in the first picture is one of our unofficial tour guide in Singapore Trip. The scene is a beach in Sentosa Island. Her family is the first Singaporean family that I’ve ever meet. They are wonderful and kind.

The second picture was taken in Central Park tunnel. I asked them to act as the couple in Cloverfield movie, when the bomb was about to drop. Apparently both of them didn’t watch the movie, justifying their total failure in showing appropriate emotion.

Iphone 3G Black and White

Since AT&T in the US still doesn’t have certain date for contract-free Iphone, I’ve been trying to locate the best place to get Iphone 3G around the world.  One of the best place to get Iphone 3G now is New Zealand as all Iphone from there are already unlocked and confirmed can be used with Celcom, Digi and Maxis.

However, the price is still not buyer-friendly. It’s retailed at RM2800 for 16gb and RM2450 for 8GB. This is cost price and does not include handling and shipping which might reach beyond RM3k after all cost. At the time being, I won’t bring in the Iphone unless the demand is high enough to justify the risk. Otherwise, I might take some units if someone is really interested to get the Iphone and willing to deposit some amount first.

This is all that I got right now. Don’t forget to reply of what you think about the above price.

After a week of internet cutoff (someone with mindless greed try to steal the cable, but failed), I opened my email and 100 plus emails make their way into my laptop. Most of them are this blog comment notifications. One email caught my eyes. It’s from an domain name company in Beijing. Here is what it says:

JULY 14,2008

Jai Nischal Verma

Domain name & Internet keyword

Dear Sir/Madam,

We are Beijing Erimart Network Service Co, Ltd which is the domain name register center in China. We received a formal application from a company who is applying to register “irwan” as their domain name and Internet keyword on July 13,2008. Because this involves your company name or trade mark so we inform you in no time. If you consider these domain names and internet keyword are important to you and it is necessary to protect them by registering them first, contact us soon.

Kind Regards,

Jason.Yang

I actually don’t know what to do as this is my first time receiving this kind of email. I just shot them an email back asking for further clarification and my further options.

p/s: sorry for not replying and updating this blog

In the last post, I talked about gold as the investment of choice in bad economy. After reading an article from investmentu.com, my current understanding is not quite true. Here is the excerpt:

Dr. Jeremy Siegel, a professor of finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and author of Stocks for the Long Run, has done a thorough historical study of the returns of different types of assets over the past couple hundred years.

What he discovered is dramatic:

• $1 invested in gold in 1802 would have been worth $32.84 at the end of 2006.

• The same dollar invested in T-Bills, with interest reinvested, would have grown to $5,061.

• $1 invested in bonds would be worth $18,235.

• And $1 invested in common stocks with dividends reinvested - drum roll, please - is now worth more than $12.7 million.

Read more here

As our market is going through uncertainties both in politic and economic itself, people are flocking to investments that are able to hedge such uncertainties. Many opt for bonds that offer security but less-than-inflation rate of growth. However, there is one vehicle of investments that strive in the time of political and economic struggle. It’s gold.

Before you jump straight into this golden arena, there are few things that you have to know. This guide will ensures that you will be better prepared in Q&A session with your investment advisor.

Question. What kind of gold should I buy?

Answer. Gold comes in many forms. So you have to know which suits you best. First we have bullions or gold coins. In Malaysia, the only bullion coins is Kijang Emas. It’s available through local banks. You can get more info from Maybank page.

If you are not keen to keep the coins by yourself, you can save the hassle by opening gold investment account, like the one offered by Public Bank. This gives peace of mind and reduces unnecessary risk of keeping the real gold in your house.

Q. When should I buy?

A. If you read online articles, they will tell you that it’s always the best time to buy gold. Most probably because those people the ones selling gold. However, it’s quite true but I won’t give you that straight answer. Gold is a limited expensive metal, is not a derivation, have resilient value and rather high liquidity. Besides, the value of gold usually strives when inflation rate increases, currency is having debasement or future economic prospect is in gloom. All of these put gold as a preferred investment when other investment vehicle fail to offer enough confidence to investors.

Q. How much should I buy?

If you would like to have gold as part of your investment, it’s best to consider it as a low risk low return investment. Having said that, I would say 10-30% is a good range when economic is having a good time and you can increase it if you are expecting economic slowdown. That’s it if you are a speculative investors, if not, just do regular investment on gold and you should be fine.

Q. How about gold stock?

A. Gold stock are shares of companies that deal with gold mining, extraction, processing and minting. While it’s closely related to gold, it’s still stock, not precious metal. If the stock rides on the bull market because of gold, you are lucky but it doesn’t offer the same qualities that people seek by investing in gold. So make sure you know what you are doing.

Q. Where can I track daily gold price?

A. Kitco has a good graph of daily gold price movement on their site. Check it out.

Q. Ok, I’m interested, what should I do now?

A. If you are ready to make gold investment, go to nearby bank and ask them about it. You’ll learn a lot more when you already have basic of gold investment.

Good investing

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