How to save your hard earned money in the Forex market?

The forex market is a huge market and making money out of it takes an extreme level of patience. Most of the novice traders in the forex market fails to achieve success in the forex market since they don’t exhibit enough patience in the market. They simply consider forex trading as a get rich quick scheme. If you look at the professional traders in Singapore then you will notice that all of them are trading the live assets after learning the market basic with a great level of precision. And every single one of them trades with the reputed brokers like Saxo since in order to execute high-quality trades in the market the traders must need a robust trading platform. In this article, we will discuss how to save your hard earned money in the forex market.

Learn the market dynamics

Most of the novice traders in the forex market fails to achieve success in the online trading world since they don’t know how to trade the live assets by following all the trading parameters. But if you truly want to become a professional trader in the forex market then make sure that learn the basic trading skills from the forex trading Singapore community. It’s true that if you trade the live assets for the very first time then it will be a little bit difficult for you to understand the market basics. But once decide to become a professional trader make sure that you learn the market dynamics very precisely or else you will have a tough time to save your trading capital in the market.

Use price action trading strategy

Price action trading strategy is considered to be one of the most profitable trading systems in the forex trading Singapore community. The professional traders use the raw price movement and trade the key support and resistance level in the market by using the price action confirmation signal. Most of the novice traders in the financial market trade use price action signal in the smaller time frame and thus execute low-quality trades in the market. As a professional trader, you must always trade the higher time frame in the market to reduce the risk exposure. It’s true that if you trade the higher time frame then you will have to wait for long period of time for the perfect trading signal. But there is saying that patience has its own reward. So if trade the higher time frame then you can easily save the trading capital in the market.

How to save your hard earned money in the Forex market?

Don’t use indicators
The novice traders in the forex market load their trading charts with tons of indicators. They simply think that the more indicator they will use the more money they will make. But using too many indicators will mess your trading chart and thus you won’t be able to execute high-quality trades in the market. Forex trading Singapore is now very much popular and even the novice traders are not using more than two indicators in their trading chart. Most of them simply use the price action trading signal since it allows them to trade with proper risk management factors.

Summary: Everybody wants to be professional traders in today’s world. If you can truly master the art of forex trading then you easily secure your financial freedom. But mastering the art of forex trading is not at all easy rather it is one of the most complex tasks in the financial industry. So when start trading the financial instrument make sure that you follow the above-mentioned tips of this article to save your trading capital in the market.

How to invest hedge funds and index funds?

Most investors, thanks to partly financial regulations, invest their  money in index funds. These funds usually invest in all stocks –including failing companies and stocks with sky-high valuations and in fact aren't the right choice for most investors. Last decade was a good example: S&P 500 index has lost 24.8% in the ten years between 2000 and 2010 even when you take the dividends into account. While indexes performed poorly, talented hedge fund managers like billionaire David Einhorn returned 249.4% after fees and expenses during the same 10 years! Not only that, in fact, he has beaten the market in every single year.

But as you may have known, if you are not very rich, you cannot invest in hedge funds. In fact, even the very rich can’t invest in the most successful hedge funds because most of them are closed to new investors.

So your only option seems to use your own time and knowledge to pick stocks to invest. But just in USA markets, there are more than 6000 publicly traded companies. You probably don’t have the knowledge, resources, or time to follow and analyze all of these companies.

But there are some other options for retail investors out there. One of them is Insider Monkey.

Insider Monkey, one of the fastest growing financial research websites on the web, read by 1.5 million people every month, is a good option to mimic the investments by hedge funds. Although they have a web site with some free content, with a yearly fee, they also offer a premium newsletter that isolates the hottest stocks among the BEST hedge funds.

Insider Monkey is managed by New York based Ian Dogan who has a Ph.D. in financial economics and is an expert in insider trading. He has managed a $200+ million portfolio within a large hedge fund and now he is utilizing his skills to bring alpha generating investment strategies to Insider Monkey’s premium members.

Insider Monkey claims that their 15 Stock Small Cap Strategy has beaten the market by 18 percentage points per year between 1999 and 2009. Since the end of August last year, they have been sharing the stock picks of this strategy and according to them these stocks gained an average of 48.9% between September 4th and May 31st, vs. 17.8% for the S&P 500 index.

The subscription to Insider Monkey quarterly premium newsletter is for $499 per year. Other than quarterly newsletters, subscribers also get monthly mini newsletters. If you would like to see what does newsletter look like, you can download the free edition here.

Disclaimer
This blog article is to provide general information only and should not be treated as an invitation to buy or sell anything.  Users of this article should consider this as a one of the many factors in making their investment decision. Users should make reference to other sources of information and specific investment advice to obtain a more objective view of the market. Asia Singapore shall not be responsible for losses suffered.

Finance professionals find Singapore expensive, but still stay on anyway

Many Singapore finance professionals are concerned about the country’s high cost of living, but there are many other factors in the Republic’s favour, says George McFerran, managing director, Asia Pacific, eFinancialCareers.[1]

44 percent of Singapore finance professionals have said that they find Singapore expensive and they are concerned about the Singapore's high cost of living. But still 8 out of 10 recommends Singapore to their friends as a place to come, work and live. 75 percent of the respondents do not want to relocate or leave Singapore. 60% said that safety is the best thing about living in Singapore and the second best thing is the quality of living in Singapore.

[1] - Finance professionals find Singapore expensive, but still stay on anyway

Fresh Graduates Starting Pay in Banking and Finance

Application for full time banking and finance programs in Singapore in 2013 is now open and many wonder how much salary they can get from these jobs as fresh graduates. Below numbers are from $1Million Personal Financial Diary blog kept by a fresh graduate in Singapore. They are based on blogger's information collected from recruitment events and his schoolmates.


According to the blogger the application process is quite tedious:

"An online application form will take me approximately 30 mins to an hour as there is usually a section where I have to answer questions such as "Why did you apply to our organization" or "How is our bank different from others?" The most tedious one was the MAS application where I have to answer 8 questions. I can still remember the last question was something like "How will you spend/invest a million dollars?" Also, some applications require a pattern test or numerical reasoning test where I have to do some math questions in a short period of time."
Source : Fresh Graduates Starting Pay

Job	Starting Salary for fresh graduates
Auditor at Big Four accounting firms	$2,700 -  $2900
Corporate finance at Big Four accounting firms	$3000 - $3500
Operations at Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Bank Of America, etc	$3,750
Personal Financial Consultant at Standard Chartered Bank	$3000
Singapore Management Trainee Program at Standard Chartered Bank	$3,800
Personal Banker at UOB	$2,700 - $3000
Operations at UOB/DBS/OCBC	$3000 - $3500
Management Associate Program at HSBC/UOB/DBS/OCBC	$4000  - $4500
Sales and Trading at Goldman Sachs	>$8000
General Education Officer aka Teacher	$3,200
Graduate Officer at Monetary Authority of Singapore	$4,000 - $4500

Credit Suisse is not the only bank moving back office jobs outside Singapore

This week Singapore media reported that Credit Suisse is moving out "some" back office jobs out of Singapore. The news is based on a Financial Times article which reports that Credit Suisse is relocating dozens of back-office jobs from Singapore to India and Poland:

"Credit Suisse is relocating dozens of back-office jobs from Singapore to India and Poland as part of efforts to cut costs as some western banks find it more expensive to maintain staff to support the growth of higher-earning “front office” jobs in the Asian financial hub.

The development is a sign that Singapore is facing intense competition as a low-cost centre for banks’ back-office operations, even as its low tax environment and proximity to growth markets in Asia attracts top-earning investment banking and trading jobs from the west.

Source : Credit Suisse moving some Singapore jobs

Credit Suisse is neither the first or the only international banks to relocate back-office roles from Singapore to cheaper locations. As more international banks moved back office jobs from West to Singapore in the past decade, they also helped Singapore to become a very expensive location to make business. Although the taxes are low in Singapore, almost everything else is very expensive and the cost of both salaries and real estate has skyrocketed.

Cost cutting has fuelled the rise of Asian back-office centres in India and the Philippines, and to a lesser extent China and Malaysia. Banks – including ANZ, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, RBS, Standard Chartered and UBS – have relocated operations positions into emerging markets. RBS, for example, has shifted roles from Singapore and Hong Kong to India. Morgan Stanley last month moved about 80 back-office jobs from Singapore to India and Hungary. Non-client facing jobs at the junior or mid level are typically the most transferable. 

Source : An in-depth look at why Credit Suisse and its rivals are relocating back-office roles out of Singapore

Only Credit Suisse's move has been reported in the media in Singapore while I have not seen Morgan Stanley's recent 80 back-office job move anywhere.

According to Kyle Blockley, director, KS Consulting, offshoring out of Singapore started to gain momentum about two years ago:

 “Singapore has become a financial hub in one decade, which has been great for its growth, but detrimental for costs. Staffing is one of banks’ biggest expenses, so it’s to be expected that they search for cheaper locations.”
Source : An in-depth look at why Credit Suisse and its rivals are relocating back-office roles out of Singapore

Although there is still ongoing redundancies in Asia foreign finance professionals are still keen on Asia. But unfortunately, employers in the region are not as enthusiastic:

"Mark Enticott, managing director, ambition, Hong Kong, says: “There continues to be a high volume of expats wanting to move into Asia. The region is still perceived to be the growth engine of the world, but firms are mostly looking for candidates with local or Asian experience. Besides, employers aren’t willing to pay for expensive relocations.”"
Source : Four cold hard truths about Asia’s financial employment market

But there are also some positive news in this cost cutting spree. According to Bloomberg, Wall Street and European banks are transferring jobs from Japan to Hong Kong and Singapore to reduce expenses as the euro region’s debt woes dent global investor confidence. Tokyo is the world’s most expensive city for expatriates, according to ECA International’s Worldwide Cost of Living Survey conducted in March. Singapore is 32nd and Hong Kong 36th. 

Pump, pump it up Ben, Pump it up a little more

"Get your boody on the floor tonight, make my day" - Pump up the Jam

Yesterday, Asian markets as well as Singapore stock market went up with the hope that money printers-in-chiefs Ben Bernanke and Mario Draghi will step up to save the day for the corrupted, non functioning, well debted but well connected part of the world economy again. Pavlov's alpha dogs, called investors in Bloomberg, and their equally stupid trading algorithms reacted cheerfully to the stimulus "hopes". It seems like Keynesian stupidity will rule the world for a long time.

Whenever I see these investors, dancing on the floor and drunk with the printed money out of thin air, I always remember the sexy hip hop artist Ya Kid K. and her famous techno song, Pump up the jam:

"Pump it up a little more (Ben)
Get the party going on the dance floor
See 'cos that's where the party's at
And you'll find out if you're too bad"

If you know economics only as much as Paul Krugman, which pretty much means you do not know economics at all, this stimulus party may look good to you. But the only thing it stimulates is the mal investment!

The main lesson for us all: Pumping up the jam may have an ugly end.

Think about it. For the man on the street, financial institutions and banks are parasites making money from money (sometimes from clients money, frequently from tax payers money). Yes, they have became parasites thanks to stimulus packages but being a parasite is not their purpose or function. In a free market economy free from moral hazards of a money printing central bank, their purpose is to channel savings to profitable investments. But they need a mechanism to differentiate profitable investments from the unprofitable ones. And interest rate is the mechanism used to separate a profitable investment from unprofitable investment projects. If you keep it artificially near zero levels, the mechanism will stop working and savings will be channeled to first profitable and unprofitable projects and then mostly to unprofitable ones! Enter the great malinvestment period of our last few decades. By keeping the interest rates around zero, maestro (!) Greenspan caused savings to be channeled to endless stream of property projects and fuelled the great financial crisis of 2008 in USA. And to save US, Bernanke is pumping money in the world economy and creating a great bubble in the world scale.

What is at stake is more than our finances: European and American central banks are basically destroying decades of accumulated wealth, mostly created by their fathers and grandfathers, by saving the day for institutions called too big to fail (which are actually too nonfunctional to not fail). And China, who never fails to imitate West and USA, is busy with destroying 3 decades of savings by pumping them into houses which will never be occupied, trains which will never be used and bridges which will never be crossed.

So, future does not look bright. But luckily, stock markets are holding well.

Bonus Trends in Singapore Report 2012: Paying bonuses in a challenging job market

Bonuses in financial services in Singapore are down and high-earning bankers suffered the worst decreases according to a report named Bonus Report 2012: Paying bonuses in a challenging job market by eFinanceCareers. The report is based on a recent eFinancialCareers survey which examines 2011
bonuses in Asia Pacific for finance professionals who are bonus eligible and know the
amount of their payment.

But although the outlook does not look bright, a significant minority (29%) has bonuses inreases. This is due to the strong Q1 and Q2 results which were before things started to go down in Q4. But 34 per cent of  financial services employee reported bonus decreases and only 22 per cent said their bonuses stayed same. Looking at country differences, finance professionals in Singapore did not fare quite as well as their counterparts in Australia, Hong Kong and China, with 34% saying their bonus fell.

44 per cent of the financial services employee reported that their bonuses were below expectation and 37 per cent said that the bonuses were within expectation.

Bonuses at top fell most in Asia Pacific region:

"Top earners across Asia Pacific experienced the highest decrease when comparing 2011 with 2010. Those in the upper base-salary quintile (ie the top 20%) were much more prone to report a decline in bonus (47%) than those in the bottom quintile (29%). These employees are most likely to have earned excessive 2010 bonuses, and with many firms now in a costconscious mood, reducing their payments for 2011 is a quick way to reduce expenditure. “It’s a cost issue,” says Chris Jay, managing director, Morgan McKinley Singapore. “If you usually pay someone who’s on $400k a year a six month bonus, that’s a lot of money which you could potentially save.” "

Private banking in Singapore

For banking clients with sizable assets, high net worth individuals (HNWI), there is a special kind of banking where the customer service is more personalized compared to the retail banking experience for the man on the street: private banking. And as the wealth in Asia is increasing every year, Asian private banking is having more market share in Singapore. Private Banking in Asia and Singapore is recently hot; according to ABN AMRO Bank NV-Private Banking, Asia is the fastest growing private banking market in the world and home to 3.3 million high net worth individuals with assets totalling US$10.8 trillion.

Below is a list of private banks in Singapore:

1. ABN AMRO Bank NV-Private Banking. ABN AMRO is the oldest bank in Singapore and was voted one of the Top 10 Best Global Private Banks in Asia in 2011 in Asiamoney Private Banking Poll.
   
2. ANZ Private Bank has presence in 5 of Asia's key markets - Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Indonesia and UAE. They serve Singapore market from Ocean Financial Centre (ANZ is the anchor tenant of this newly completed building).
   
   
3. Bank Julius Baer & Co Ltd. With over 40 locations, Julius Baer's Singapore office is the biggest outside of Zurich.
   
   
4. Bank of Singapore Ltd. is a wholly-owned private banking subsidiary of OCBC Bank which is formed by the January 2010 acquisition of ING Asia Private Bank (IAPB) by OCBC Bank, one of Asia's leading financial services institutions. The combined private banking businesses of IAPB and OCBC was subsequently named Bank of Singapore.
   
   
5. Barclays Bank PLC
   
   
6. BNP Paribas Wealth Management
   
   
7. BSI Bank Ltd.
   
   
8. Citi Private Bank
   
   
9. Coutts & Co Ltd.
   
   
10. Credit Agricole (Suisse) SA
11. Credit Suisse AG
    
    
12. DBS Private Bank
    
    
13. Deutsche Bank Private Wealth Management
    
    
14. HSBC Private Bank (Suisse) SA
    
    
15. Societe Generale Private Banking
    
    
16. Standard Chartered Private Bank
    
    
17. UOB Private Banking
    
    
18. UBS Wealth Management Singapore

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