Made and still making money from S-REITs.

In an environment of very low interest rates, S-REITs are logical beneficiaries and in more ways than one. Regular readers would have heard this many times already. Readers who are new to my blog might want to read some of my older blog posts on S-REITs and why they are expected to continue performing well.

When we invest in S-REITs, it is with a primary aim of receiving regular and meaningful

Fraud: Credit cards.

When I was in Los Angeles with my dad once many years ago, he tried to buy some chocolates at the airport but his card was declined. The cashier told him that a message appeared on the machine that he was to call the card centre. My dad was puzzled since he promptly paid his credit card bills each month.

Anyway, he called the card centre using his ICC at a public phone booth. In case you are

Have conviction and make money?

It is impossible to see into the future. People who say that they can are like fortune tellers. How much are their advice worth? How much would we pay fortune tellers to read our palms?



Saruman's seeing stone in Lord of the Rings.


Whatever decisions we make are based on a whole gamut of factors. Then, we have certain expectations of how things would turn out after making such decisions.

The

Voices, noises and choices.

The amount of information out there is enough to make one feel somewhat overwhelmed or even faint. I have not been reading blogs as much in the last one week and kept my reading primarily to Channel NewsAsia, The Business Times and Yahoo!Finance. Even so, it probably is enough to make heads spin.

Some proclaimed that the U.S. housing market has bottomed and is picking up! Conventional wisdom

Low interest rates' a double whammy for some.

Central banks in many large economies around the world are keeping interest rates really low, near zero in countries like the USA and Japan, in fact. Low interest rates are seen as the way to encourage economic growth by making borrowings cheaper.



To revive their sickly economies, the relevant countries' low interest rates could be instrumental. However, as money would go to where it is

Economics 2012: Off the top of my head.

I have been doing more thinking. OK, so what's new?

In recent weeks, the stock markets rallied and with the strong closing on Wall Street last night, they look like they could move even higher next week.



The bulls say that the tide has turned and things are moving higher from here and that we should buy stocks on pull backs. The bears say that what we have seen recently is just a bear

Double dip recession or just very slow growth?

Stock markets around the world had a very bad week. Everyone it seems is expecting a global recession and the accompanying deflation.

In a truly deflationary environment, all assets will suffer and see their prices fall. Equities and precious metals were all sold down across the board, therefore.

However, reading an article in Bloomberg, it is interesting to note that in the USA, "railroads

Dr. Marc Faber: How not to lose money?

I have the greatest respect for Dr. Marc Faber and his insights have so far been spot on. In a recent interview, he said "I am ultra-bearish about everything geopolitically. In an environment of money printing, we have to ask ourselves, how do we protect our wealth? ... Where do we allocate the money?"

In summary:

1. Treasuries:

"U.S. government bonds are junk bonds," Faber said. "As