Musings of a 50+ year old boy – a halftime journey
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Is Traditional Banking Obsolete After Recent SVB-Like Bank Failures?
This is what traditional banks have been doing for hundreds of years: They collect deposits from mom-and-pop types of customers who normally use only one bank for all their financial needs. These funds are mostly CASA (Current Account, Savings Account) deposits and are relatively sticky, meaning that they do not leave the bank very easily…
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Art of War (China Style) – Strategic Moves Ahead
China is one of the oldest civilizations in the world, having a continuous recorded history of about 4,000 years. Other than the period of time when the Mongols took over China and started their global conquest, China had historically remained relatively peaceful and non-expansionist except for periodic short skirmishes with neighbouring countries like Vietnam, Korea…
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The Credit Suisse Collapse and the Ongoing AT1 Bonds Fiasco
The recent bank run has claimed several scalps in the banking world and the biggest one was Credit Suisse (CS). After 166 years of operation, this prestigious name is no more. Its dramatic collapse happened within days after the SNB (Swiss National Bank) central bank forced UBS to take over CS at a fraction of…
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SVB’ed – A Chaotic Week and More to Come?
The financial world was in turmoil for the last 10 days as one bank after another fell off the chair in a domino effect. First, it was Silvergate, then Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and First Republic Bank, followed by Signature Bank and then Credit Suisse. Naysayers were predicting the Great Finance Crisis (GFC) of 2008…
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My Recent HK trip – A Personal Reflection
Recently, I had a chance to revisit Hong Kong after more than 5 years. My last trip was in Feb 2017 for my previous banking job. My wife was also on a business trip this time and I tagged along for the free accommodation plus we decided to also add a weekend extension for a…
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Ukraine One Year On, Poor Myanmar
Ukraine crossed the 1st anniversary of the Russian invasion this week. It was 12 months ago that a superpower attacked the country on the premise of liberating its citizens from Nazi control. Since then, the war narrative has evolved while the world was severely affected just as it was getting out of the pandemic nightmare.…
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Getting Back to Normal
What is normal to us nowadays? After 3 years of Covid, anything before 2020 looks like a different world altogether. Youtube travel videos from 2019 and earlier cannot be used as a reference point anymore as many businesses may have stopped operating after years of lockdowns. Are we nearing the levels we were at before…
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The Advent of AI, ChatGPT and Others – Exploring the Next Frontier
AI (Artificial Intelligence) has always been a mystery for most people. We only think of Jarvis in Iron Man and what the movies tell us of sentient androids behaving like humans but way smarter. That perception is still too far into the future as we must take baby steps first. With the arrival of big…
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