REGULARS
There is no risk in gambling
At the end of September just passed I talked to two different clients about achieving different objectives. One was a young man with a relatively modest investment, the other like myself, a mature gentleman, has a substantial investment. Both their objectives were the same. Each of them wanted profit over the next 12 months; the young man with the modest investment wanted 30% return over that period. The mature man required 10%.
Are both of these objectives attainable? The answer of course is they are if they are prepared to take the appropriate risk.
So before explaining that answer let's examine what risk is.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines risk in terms of "....the chance of hazard, bad consequences, loss etc..."
Frank Wharton (1992) provides the following definition. "A risk is any unintended or unexpected outcome of a decision or course of action".
Here are some more definitions.
Risk: "the possibility that the positive expectations of a goal oriented system will not be fulfilled"
Risk: "....is the compound estimate of the probable frequency severity and public perception of harm"
Risk: "is a condition in which there is a possibility of an adverse deviation from a desired outcome that is expected or hoped for"
So having accepted one of these definitions of risk let's look at "Risk management" and before we do that here is a definition.
"Risk Management: "the art of making alternative choices, an art that properly should be concerned with anticipation of future events rather than reaction to past events"
The essence of risk management lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing where we have absolutely no control over the outcome and the linkage between cause and effect is hidden from us.
To put it all in some kind of layman's perspective let's say the following; For a risk to exist there must be at least two possible outcomes.
If we were to know for sure that a loss was the result there would be no risk; we would avoid the situation or accept the consequences.
For instance when we buy a new car we know that the value of the car will depreciate with age and use. Here the outcome is certain and there is no risk.
One of the things that always strike me is the finance view of gambling. There is no risk in this as you are assured a definite loss, the expected return is negative. This is correct when all outcomes are weighted with the probability of the outcome. The result is a certain loss, thus no risk.
In this way when a client equates investing with gambling, they are specifically wrong. We invest in the knowledge we expect a profit, the expected return is positive.
When we gamble we undertake an activity in the knowledge (explicit or otherwise) we will incur a loss but in the hope of an alternative outcome.
There is no room for "hope" in investment management- well there might be, but not amongst professionals. It is important to understand that risk can be quantified whereas uncertainty cannot. To be able to assess risks involves breaking the overall risk down into its component parts.
My two clients who remember are looking for a return of 10 and 30% respectively must decide whether to take on a particular risk while balancing the possibility of a gain against the possibility of a loss.
Risk taking is as much about opportunity as it is about loss. As we have already stated such risk taking is often equated with gambling or speculation. It is thus correct to consider risk reward, this being the trade off between the risk taken and the expectation of reward, as do many financial market practitioners rather than purely focusing on risk elimination
It is interesting to note that the client looking for 30% return would be bitterly disappointed to achieve the 10% which would make the other client content.
I should have emphasized the fact that these two clients are looking for their respective returns over a five-year period and as a financial planner that makes the task much easier.
There are many ways to go about it. I could put my 30% client into China India and perhaps a mining fund and return 150% in 6 months and then put him on deposit for 4 and a half years (only joking) but possible.
The 10% client is much easier to cater for. Right now one can get up to 5% in deposit accounts and a little more in govt. and corporate bonds. Spreading some of his portfolio across equities, asset allocation and property funds etc should meet his objectives. The ability to switch freely away from high-risk assets into deposit funds without charge is one of the many ways of achieving these clients' targets using risk management.
As long as I explain the risk these people must take and they are prepared to accept it, then I feel certain both these objectives can be achieved.
Your comments appreciated to jerry@swissinvestcenter.net
MAG'S PAGE
This month please spare a thought for all your Thai friends who are learning English.
Collins - that doyen of English dictionaries - reports an explosion of new words on its' 'Word Web' of the English language, which is reputedly now growing at the rate of a staggering 30 million words a month.
In purist terms not all of the examples cited are traditional dictionary fodder, consisting as they do of two word descriptions rather than single or hyphenated words.
Nevertheless they show a fascinating New Age vocabulary that often doesn't sound too polite, and in some cases is downright puzzling.
For example, 'Butters' are very ugly girls. 'Sadfab' is used to describe 'a single woman who is eager to have a baby before she is too old', while a 'Biznisman' is a Russian who has become rich through dubious means.
'Band Aid Baby' is a little more obvious, meaning a child produced to patch up a shaky marriage. (I must say I prefer to have gone through life as a Baby Boomer.)
There are some quite amusing and more self-explanatory words though. One of my favourites is 'Muffin Top' (a roll of flesh spilling over the top of a tight skirt or trousers.) Now THAT I can identify with. Then there's a 'Smirt'. Someone who flirts while smoking outside an office or pub.
The whole thing makes you try to invent words of your own, which is probably how it all started.
So what's a Smurf? Someone who smokes while surfing? And where does that leave a schmuck?
According to a Director of HarperCollins it's all 'a very exciting area of language (which) we think older people will embrace as well'.
Dream on ducky.
Meanwhile words also figure in the Top Ten Funeral Songs published last month in the UK.
Having pop tunes played at funerals is of course nothing new. I remember being reduced to a blubbering wreck when Bright Eyes was played at a friend's funeral many years ago. You've read the book, you've seen the movie, now eat the pie.
But the current top ten is so schmaltzy and predictable it makes you wonder if Baby Boomers have finally lost the plot.
Top of the list is James Blunt (who?) with Goodbye my Lover. Also included are the rather predictable offerings of Robbie Williams (Angels), Bette Midler (Wind Beneath my Wings), and of course Elton John - who should never be forgiven for his Diana-esque rendition of Candle in the Wind.
Surprisingly Sinatra's' 'I Did It My Way' doesn't appear in the Top Ten, but surely can't be far behind.
Why any of us have bothered to follow the charts since the 60's is a mystery. Why can't the dear departed be seen off with something a little more upbeat? Bat out of Hell or Another One Bites the Dust could be fun, and Slades' Noddy Holder could surely cheer up many a Yuletide widow given half a chance.
Or how about choosing songs to reflect the way the departed actually met their maker?
So here are my Top Ten funeral songs to fit the occasion.
In at number ten is Freight Train by Nancy Whisky. In ascending order its Fever at 9 by Peggy Lee. Number 8 those ageing rockers the Rolling Stones with Street Fighting Man. At 7 AC/DC give us High Voltage (a good one for American prisons) while sixth place goes to Back Stabbers by the O'Jays.
Now for the top 5 countdown. At 5 it's Elvis Costello with Accidents Will Happen. Number 4 has to be Fire, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.
The top 3 are close but Cher makes it to 3 with Bang Bang, and its really neck and neck for the final two with Motorbiking by Chris Spedding coming a close second to our all time number one. Yes - number one funeral song to fit the occasion is ....
Strange Brew by the legendary Cream.
More next month - Bye for now guys and gals.
ARTS & CULTURE
Futurism to metaphysical
This month's meander through art movements takes us down the lane of futurism, with a couple of detours along the side street of De Stijl and the promenade of Pittura Metafisica, otherwise known as Metaphysical painting. The stroll will continue in future issues as we get closer to the here and now.
Futurism was a 20th century art movement. Although a nascent Futurism can be seen surfacing throughout the very early years of that century, the 1907 essay Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst (Sketch of a New Aesthetic of Music) by the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni is sometimes claimed as its true jumping-off point. Futurism was a largely Italian and Russian movement (Mayakovsky being a prominent Soviet Futurist poet) although it also had adherents in other countries.
The Futurists explored every medium of art, including painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and even gastronomy. The Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti was the first among them to produce a manifesto of their artistic philosophy in his Manifesto of Futurism (1909), first released in Milan and published in the French paper Le Figaro (February 20). Marinetti summed up the major principles of the Futurists, including a passionate loathing of ideas from the past, especially political and artistic traditions. He and others also espoused a love of speed, technology and violence. The car, the plane, the industrial town were all legendary for the Futurists, because they represented the technological triumph of man over nature.
Marinetti's impassioned polemic immediately attracted the support of the young Milanese painters - Boccioni, Carrà, and Russolo - who wanted to extend Marinetti's ideas to the visual arts (Russolo was also a composer, and introduced Futurist ideas into his compositions). The painters Balla and Severini met Marinetti in 1910 and together these artists represented Futurism's first phase.
The painter and sculptor Umberto Boccioni (1882-1916) wrote the Manifesto of Futurist Painters in 1910 in which he vowed:
We will fight with all our might the fanatical, senseless and snobbish religion of the past, a religion encouraged by the vicious existence of museums. We rebel against that spineless worshipping of old canvases, old statues and old bric-a-brac, against everything which is filthy and worm-ridden and corroded by time. We consider the habitual contempt for everything which is young, new and burning with life to be unjust and even criminal.
Futurists dubbed the love of the past "pastism", and its proponents "pastists" (cf. Stuckism). They would sometimes even physically attack alleged pastists, in other words, those who were apparently not enjoying Futurist exhibitions or performances.
Many Futurists instinctively supported the rise of fascism in Italy in the hope of modernizing the society and the economy of a country that was still torn between unfilled industrial revolution in the North and the rural, archaic South. Some Futurists' glorification of modern warfare as the ultimate artistic expression and their intense nationalism also induced them to embrace Italian fascism. Many Futurists became associated with the regime over the 1920's, which gave them both official recognition and the ability to carry out important works, especially in architecture.
However, many leftists that came to Futurism in the earlier years continued to oppose Marinetti's domination of the artistic and political direction of Futurism.
Pietro Illari. In his 20's Illari joined the Parma Socialist Party and worked on their paper L'idea. By about 1920 Pietro Illari was heading the Parma Futurist group that had been founded by the anarchist Renzo Provinciali. Illari steered the vision of the group from Anarcho-Futurism closer towards the Left wing and actively involved the group with the Arditi del Popolo.
In 1922 he joined the Italian Communist party and worked on their journals L'ordine Nuovo and Idea Communistra, becoming the Parma Party Secretary in a short space of time.
Illari had strong links with Marasco's Futurist group in Florence and was also in contact with the Anarcho-Futurists in La Spezia who were all militant anti-Fascists, very critical of Marinetti and violently opposed to the pro-Fascist element within Futurism headed by the Mario Carli / Emilio Settimelli faction. He was in contact with the Communist-Futurist Franco Rampa Rossi who collaborated on his periodical Rovente, a journal that, while inherently Left wing and anti-Fascist, was also in violent opposition to the "official" political line of mainstream Marinettian Futurism.
However, in June 1922 he quit the Communist party for unknown reasons but possibly because the Communist Central Committee forced him to choose between Communism and Futurism. Illari, under no illusion that he could survive either artistically or politically under a Fascist government, emigrated to Argentina in 1924 where he taught children of Italian immigrants.
During these years, Futurism expanded to encompass other artistic domains. In architecture, it was characterized by a distinctive thrust towards rationalism and modernism through the use of advanced building materials. In Italy, futurist architects were often at odds with the fascist state's tendency towards Roman imperial/classical aesthetic patterns. However several interesting futurist buildings were built in the years 1920-1940, including many public buildings: stations, maritime resorts, post offices, etc.
The legacy of Futurism. Futurism influenced many other twentieth century art movements, including Art Deco, Vorticism, Constructivism and Surrealism. Futurism as a coherent artistic movement is now regarded as extinct, having died out in the 1920s; many of the Futurists were killed in two world wars, and Futurism was, like science fiction, in part overtaken by 'the future'.
Nonetheless the ideals of futurism remain as significant components of modern Western culture; the emphasis on youth, speed, power and technology finding expression in much of modern commercial cinema and culture. Ridley Scott consciously evoked the designs of Sant'Elia in Blade Runner. Echoes of Marinetti's thought, especially his "dreamt-of metallization of the human body", are still strongly prevalent in Japanese culture, and surface in manga/anime and the works of artists such as Shinya Tsukamoto, director of the "Tetsuo" (literally "Ironman") films. Futurism has produced several reactions, including the literary genre of cyberpunk - in which technology was often treated with ambivalence - whilst artists who came to prominence during the first flush of the Internet, such as Stelarc, Natasha Vita-More and Mariko Mori, produce work which comments on futurist ideals. Natasha Vita-More also designed Primo Posthuman as the artistic futurists' body design.
A revival of sorts of the Futurist movement began in 1988 with the creation of the Neo-Futurist style of theatre in Chicago, which utilizes Futurism's focus on speed and brevity to create a new form of immediate theatre. Currently, there are active Neo-Futurist troupes in Chicago and New York.
DE STIJL (in English generally pronounced duh-STILE; from the Dutch for "the style") was an artistic movement in the 1920s. The movement is also known as neoplasticism - the new plastic art (or Nieuwe Beelding in Dutch).
Proponents of de Stijl sought to express a new utopian ideal of spiritual harmony and order. They advocated pure abstraction and universality by a reduction to the essentials of form and colour - they simplified visual compositions to vertical and the horizontal directions, and used only primary colours of red, blue and yellow along with black and white.
In many of the works under this movement, the vertical and the horizontal lines slide past each other and do not intersect. This feature exists in some of Mondrian's paintings, the Rietveld Schröder House and the Red and blue chair.
The neoplatonic philosophy of the mathematician M. H. J. Schoenmaekers influenced the de Stijl movement.
Piet Mondrian, the group's best-known artist, published their manifesto titled Neo-Plasticism in 1920, though he first coined the term in 1917 in Dutch, Nieuwe Beelding. The painter Theo van Doesburg published a journal named De Stijl from 1917 to 1928, spreading the theories of the group. De Stijl artists also included the sculptor George Vantongerloo, and the architects J.J.P. Oud and Gerrit Rietveld.
The works of de Stijl influenced the Bauhaus style and the architectural international style, as well as clothing and interior design.
In addition to the movement's influence on the visual arts, architecture, and design, it also had an effect (though admittedly slight) on the world of music; the Dutch composer Jakob van Domselaer (1890-1960), a close personal friend of Mondrian's since 1912, created a number of musical works based on the principles of Neo-Plasticism beginning in 1913.
PITTURA METAFISICA (metaphysical painting) was an Italian art movement founded in 1917 by Carlo Carrà and Giorgio de Chirico in Ferrara.
Metaphysical Painting, a short-lived but significant Italian movement, sprang from the chance meeting 1917 of Carra, de Chirico and the latter's brother, the poet (and occasional painter) Alberto Savinio, in a military hospital in Ferrara. The two painters already knew of each other and formed an immediate alliance, being able to paint in the hospital, and were encouraged by Savinio's poetry. Carra had been among the leading painters of Futurism. De Chirico had been working in Paris, admired by Apollinaire and avant-garde artists as a painter of mysterious urban scenes and still lifes. Metaphysical Painting sprang from their urge to explore the imagined inner life of familiar objects when represented out of their explanatory contexts: their solidity, their separateness in the space allotted to them, the secret dialogue that may take place between them. This alertness to the simplicity of ordinary things "which points to a higher, more hidden state of being" (Carra) was linked to an awareness of such values in the great figures of early Italian painting, notably Giotto and Uccello about whom Carra had written in 1915. Their art, normally seen as purposeful naturalistic representation of figures, objects and actions in a controlled scenic space, could also seem mysteriously still and removed from the ordinary world; in the midst of war it offered a poetic language both in-turned and strong and a corrective to the disruptive, fragmenting tendencies within Modernism. This desire to reattach his art to the great Italian past was stronger in Carra, whose paintings of the time are also more economical and focused than de Chirico's; the latter continued to explore the enigmatic nature of the daily world in a more wide-ranging manner. The two artists were together for only a few months in the spring and summer of 1917. Other painters were affected by their example and ideas, most notably Morandi. The movement, as such, may be said to have dissolved by 1920 but its reverberations were felt for a long time, contributing both to the more poetic aspects of Surrealism and to the revival of classicism in the painting of Sironi and others in the 1920.
Surf DJ Chart
Randy Cornhole. I love all genres of music from Mozart to Motorhead but my true love lies in pure ‘plank spanking' rock. Picking a top10 was a heinous task and to be honest it changes by the hour. Listed below is currently on my iPod's most played listings, the following bands can also be heard on my rock show at Surf 102.5 fm – Mon, Wed and Saturday 7.00pm – 9.00pm amongst a host of other great bands.
Artist Title Description
Frank Zappa Whipping post. Allman brothers track with Bobby Martin vocals
Nick Drake Hazy Jane II. A great loss to music at 26, Nick was truly gifted
Doors L.A Woman. Driving beat with Lizard stylie manic vocals
Tim Buckley Dolphins. A Leonard Cohen dirge given the Buckley croon
ACDC Let there be rock. Delivers great tongue in cheek energy
Bob Dylan Like a rolling stone Just a classic song
Queen Seven seas of rye Early Queen, vocally spectacular
The Who Won't get fooled again Full length version,(scream of the decade)
Stevie Ray Vaughan Superstition Hot blues treatment (Stevie Wonder classic)
Focus Hocus pocus. Yodelling made cool by freaky Dutch rockers
MOVIE
The Departed. Years ago, a powerful Irish mafia figure placed a small selection of his youngest, brightest men into the Massachusetts Police Academy as cadets. Their purpose is to eventually rise within the prestigious ranks of the city's police department, to serve as the eyes and ears of their boss. While somewhere else, a young cadet was assigned with an equally dangerous task: infiltrate the Irish syndicate headed by the man sending in his own to the Boston Police. Now, one cadet is an up and coming police official with a torn allegiance to his job and to the criminal mastermind that put him there. While the other cadet is the trusted number two of that man, only finding his professional duties are becoming blurred with his current state. But new clues have lead to unfortunate discoveries, when both sides realize they're being watched by the enemy. It's now all just a matter of time before the men assigned to find out whose the infiltrator, could come to a bloody end when someone's identity may be revealed.
This stellar cast can be seen in theatres in Bangkok at press time, and is likely to be all over the country soon. Make sure you don't miss it!
www.atimes.com
By Pepe Escobar
Russia and Iran lead the new enegry game
Whatever the West may have thought about it, Russian President Vladimir Putin has already spectacularly preempted this weekend's Group of Eight (G8) summit in St Petersburg with his own bit of Pipelineistan news. Putin announced in Shanghai on June 15 that "Gazprom is ready to support the construction of a gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and India with financial resources and technology".
He was referring to a fabled US$7 billion, 2,775-kilometer, 10-year old project - an Iranian idea - which should now be finished by 2009, developed by Gazexport, a Gazprom subsidiary. As a result, by 2015 both India and Pakistan should be receiving at least 70 million cubic meters of natural gas a year.
Thus the two top global gas producers - Russia and Iran - reached a strategic partnership abiding not only by their own interests but the interests of India, Pakistan, China and part of Central Asia, something that spells nothing less than an auspicious economic future for a great deal of Asia - independent from any American interference. Washington was not amused.
Not surprisingly, everyone else in the region begged to differ. For Iran this represents the coveted Pipelineistan way to the east. India will save at least $300 million a year. Pakistan will receive as much as $600 million a year in transit fees. The pipeline will inevitably be extended to Yunnan province in China. No wonder the announcement was made at the annual meeting of the Chinese-inspired Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The Russian masterstroke is to divert the bulk of upcoming Iranian gas exports to Asia - while Russia is still negotiating a very complex and very lucrative deal with Brussels to supply the European Union. Tehran and Moscow have reached a remarkable agreement. Putin and Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad will be working in tandem. In Shanghai they all but decided to consult on all matters regarding gas prices and the new routes of Pipelineistan. Control of prices plus transportation routes obviously spell out a gas OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) just around the corner (Putin though was careful to dub it just "a joint venture", not a cartel).
Now, a decade and a half after the end of the Cold War, the US and Russia's lines of friction are startlingly similar: Eastern Europe, the Black Sea basin, Ukraine, Moldavia, Georgia and Iran. Sixty years ago, the Soviet Union offered Iran an energy partnership. Now Moscow is offering not only a nuclear partnership - building the nuclear reactor in Bushehr - but still an energy partnership, in the manner of selling its own gas wealth the most profitable way for both sides.
Putin is an accomplished chess player. Accusations of heavy-handedness - on civil liberties and on energy policy - aside, the Kremlin does not need a confrontation with the "colonialist" West (the qualification is Putin's). What it needs is to find the best use for the massive financial flows that are pouring over Russia. The Russian weekly Vlast identifies "a new Russophobia in the West, hypocrite and erroneous". The Russian response is to challenge the West to accommodate to its own terms. The Kremlin calls its own internal experiment "sovereign democracy". As the Kommersant daily put it, "the West must answer to a series of ultimatums posed by Russia, including its refusal of European rules on the energy market, it particular position regarding Iran and the assurance of non-intervention on Russian internal affairs".
Putin's message to the G8 is loud and clear: we're back. And this Gazprom nation, also reveling on oil at $75 a barrel, and rising, is doing things its own way - like exterminating, with perfect timing, public enemy number one, Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, or banishing homeless people, street vendors, intellectuals and opposition voices from St Petersburg ahead of the G8 summit. There's virtually nothing the West can do about it. Russia is not struggling to be part of "the West" anymore; it has evolved its own system, and not unlike the Middle Kingdom, at the center of the system lies the Kremlin.
Preemption is the (Russian) name of the game. Russia's strategic partnership with China has been solidified via the SCO. On the ultra-sensitive Iranian nuclear dossier, Moscow's game is extremely flexible, and all about nuance, as are Russia's relations with the Islamic world. It is charging market prices to both Ukraine and Georgia for its gas. And sooner - rather than much later - the gas OPEC with Iran and Central Asia may be a done deal.
Useful Telephone Numbers for Hua Hin
Railway station
032-512 770, 032-511 073
Bus station of Hua Hin
032-511 654, 032-512 543
Bus station of Prachuabkirikhan
032-601 901
Bus station of Pranburi
032-621 443
Hua Hin Hospital
032-520 401
Dog Rescue Center
0-1981 4406
Wild life Rescue Center (Tayang)
032-458 135
Department of Land Cha-am office:
032- 430 846-7
Department of Land Hua Hin office:
032-536 164, 032-512 407
Department of Land Prachuabkirikhan:
032-611 211
Department of Land Pranburi
032-622 199
Local Government (Hua Hin)
032-521 340, 532 471
Local water supply
032-511 677
The Power Board of Hua Hin
032-512 215, 032 513 165
Observer office:
032-531 078
Red Cross.
032-512 567
San Paolo Hospital
032-532 576-85
Polyclinic International
032-516 424, 032-516 425
Shell Cooking Gas
032-511 144, 032- 515 620
The Communication Authority of Thailand
(Hua Hin)
032-511 351
Rotary Club of Hua Hin
0-1916 6637
Meeting every Thursday 8.pm
at Hua Hin Grand Hotel & Plaza
[
return to the top ]
