Musings of a 50+ year old boy – a halftime journey

I thought we have seen it all last week and that it couldn’t get worse, but boy was I wrong. The world went crazier this week. It was a week of unintended consequences that caused the financial markets to flip flop like mad every other day. I could see my Bloomberg stock portfolio MTM (Mark…

The perfect storm may have arrived. Financial markets went crazy this week again, gyrating like crazy every day as panic grip investors. One day the American index was down 1,200 points and then it was up 800 the next day, then down again and up the next day. Central banks all over the world used…

In the midst of the coronavirus scare that has spread globally to date, we had planned our first trip to NZ in Jan. As the panic situation was developing by mid-Feb, we were not sure if the vacation will materialize. The situation had worsened in S’pore (Alert from Yellow to Orange) just a few days…

The feared virus finally has an official name from WHO: Covid-19. It has been a week since we had a panic last Friday evening as the Dorscon alert was changed from yellow to orange after a day of rumours that it will be raised. Common sense was thrown out the door as we had a…

Let’s just first establish the timeline. The saga started in early Dec as cases began to appear in the Wuhan seafood market. By end Dec, the Chinese authorities had flagged the virus as an issue. Before the CNY holiday period on 25 Jan, most were well aware of it and China had already started to…

A nice weekend of CNY feasting from last Friday evening into Monday, the 3rd day of the holidays. At the back of our minds, 3 situations were developing rapidly and unravelling this week. The Corona Virus has started to sweep over the world and the infection rate just shot through the roof. It was first…

It has been a very busy week for me as I had to do my monthly business trip to Yangon and then travel to Bangkok for the annual microfinance conference till early Friday, before heading home to prepare the Chinese New Year (CNY) eve reunion dinner. The week started with an early morning Monday flight…

The Chinese New Year (CNY) dates are much earlier this year and it is just a week away on 25 Jan. So many things to do and so soon after we started 2020 and the finalization of new year resolutions. We usually have at least 3 reunion dinners to complete. The first 2 with the…