Why Malaysia needs maids more than they want to admit

From Bernama:

With 34 per cent of management positions held by women in Malaysia, the Southeast Asian nation is only slightly behind China which, at 36 per cent, remains the region's diversity leader.

According to recruiting expert Hays' 2015 Hays Asia Salary Guide, the figure for Malaysia was up from 29 per cent last year.

Malaysia was followed by Hong Kong (31 per cent, down from 33 per cent the previous year) and Singapore (27 per cent, unchanged year-on-year).

 The excerpt above is from Bernama regarding the high percentage of women in the work force.  Malaysia is one of the exceptions when it comes to work place diversity.  But our high work place diversity isn't possible without some help from other countries.

Maids in Malaysia have gotten a bad rap.  Indonesia now doesn't want to send us maids and agent fees have increased by a large amount.  A lot of Malaysians say we don't need maids in Malaysia.    But Malaysia as a whole needs them as an economic backbone.

One of the main reasons for the outstanding diversity in the work place is that if you take a sample of working mothers with children, in top management, a large portion of them will have maids for help on home matters.  It is extremely difficult for women to be in the work force if maids were scarce in Malaysia.

On economics terms, Malaysia take note, maids help the nation grow its revenues.  If families don't have maids, likely one of the parents will have to stop working and women leaving the work force is never good

AppAsia....the Edge Financial Daily must be smoking something

From the Edge Financial Daily:

The Edge Financial daily should exercise some control in its stock selections.  They may argue its not a recommendation, but have some quality control for goodness sakes.  This is not just any publication, it is the premier financial publication in Malaysia.  Putting penny stocks like these just enriches all the pump and dump schemers.

I'm not sure who this Anticipatory Analytics Sdn bhd.  is but the Edge should give them the boot as well for printing such garbage.

AppAsia, is a speculative stock.

1.  This company has had NO record of track earnings, hasn't turned a profit except for 2012.  Almost every year, they have lost money.

2.  10 times book value.  This is a joke.  Even by raising 13 million ringgit, no way is this company worth 73 million ringgit on fundamentals.

3.  If no news in the next year or so, this stock will go to the toilet.  so will all the people who jumped on this retarded valuation today.

4.  Surprise, no dividends.

Quantitative easing, everyone is doing it!

I'm not bullish on US stocks for a major reason, I think growth will slow. The only avenue of growth for companies is through exporting (i.e. Weak dollar) which is what James Altucher of Formula Capital is arguing for a bull market. I agree with him in a perfect world where the world's interest is the US' interest...... however,

James Altucher of Formula Capital is a moron. I watched some of his videos on CNBC. His whole bullishness is predicated on what is going to drive stock market profits is the low dollar. He fails to consider one huge monkey in the room, China. China is NOT going to sit by idly while US and Europe trash their own currency. China will devalue their yuan and join in the race to the bottom.

So, until China decides to devalue the yuan, the markets will do alright. But, once the devaluation happens, the stock markets sell off. The US dollar will appreciate, and guess what, the profits of US companies will go with it. That is why I'm not bullish on US stocks. In this case, there is nothing the FED can do. They can ease even more, but I think they won't once China shows the US they have the gonads to wreck their own currency and go toe to toe with US in the trashing of their own currency.

In simple terms, the Yuan will not go up against the US dollar, stock investors will see this (they don't now) and slash their growth estimates for stocks, thus sending markets back down into correction or a bear market.

Honestly, I don't even think central governments care about gold. So what if it goes to ten or twenty thousand an ounce? Honestly, they will care more about what is happening with their economic well being and whether people are working than what happens if some shiny metal is worth ten or twenty thousand bucks an ounce.

Dow Crash of 10%

While it is interesting how the media try to spin 10% drop in the DOW on Friday as an error or mistake, the truth is that it doesn't take much for the market to do that. The 1987 crash didn't really have many events causing the 20% drop.

The latest reason seems to be a huge amount of options were bought causing a major bank to sell a lot of stock when they wrote the option. This is one of the more likely reasons.

Another possible reason is the selling of futures which equates to the counter party hedging their futures position with stock. The counter party needs only put up some margin, while the seller buys the stock to hedge. A 20% margin would equate to 5 times the margin amount of selling power. This is another way to create some massive selling power.

I mentioned earlier that the buying of futures could cause a massive rally. I also mentioned what could happen if the futures weren't rolled over, massive selling power. Options buying and selling have the same dynamic. Writers buy or sell the underlying position to hedge against the buyers.

I would think the real reason behind the crash would probably be a dynamic of either futures or options. All this talk about high frequency trading, mistaken orders, failed circuit breakers probably are not the root cause despite what is mentioned in the media.

Possible manipulation on the stock market by US government?

Usually I tend not to write about this kind of speculative thing, but I find this rally fishy and evidence presented by zerohedge, although circumstantial, shows most of the rally since September 2009 has taken place in the after hours. The data might be coincidence, but yes, the US government boosting stock prices through buying futures would be a perversion of government intervention in free markets and this is showing the world that the stock market can be gamed through the futures market.

The world has believed that investing is something that is based on the performance of companies and economies. If they have to account for whether or not the government will buy or sell futures to game the market, then basically they will have wrecked decades of faith and trust by the public in markets. More people will know that the market is really a gamble and investing will have become a thing of the past. Why would people invest in the market if they know that it can be manipulated?

Of course, this after hours manipulation might just be nothing but an anomally but hopefully this thing gets sorted out or people will just lose faith.