Poll Result

A week ago, during the market downtrend, i put up a poll on my blog. The purpose was just to know how others thinking on current market turmoil. The result showed people still have confidence on Malaysian economy.

60% voted that Malaysian economy will still be robust even after the U.S. sub-prime mortgage settle down. 20% said Malaysian economy will NOT continue its robustness while 20% said they don't know where is Malaysian economy will be heading. Well, i do not know whether the votes was influence by other sources, but i am confidence that the votes are genuine.

So, there you go. it looks like the views are inline with the Malaysian Central Bank's statement. Just as pre-caution, lets monitor U.S. Federal Reserve action for the whole month of August and the upcoming scheduled meeting. In addition to that, lets monitor Bank of Japan's decision on their Monetary Policy Meeting on 22-23 August, the day after tomorrow. Since Japan economy did not expand as expected, I opine the rate will stay. There is no OBVIOUS reason for BOJ to increase rate.

KL StockPick.

The idea of 70 million Malaysian by the year 2020

You know, when I hear this from Tun Dr Mahathir, I was clapping happily. Because I was really thinking that Malaysia needs to have more population to support our economy by itself. As example, let’s have one country that is small in size but big in population which support its own economy. The country is JAPAN.

Japan is a small country (land area: 374,744 sq km), a little bit bigger than the size as Malaysia (land area: 328,550 sq km). However, their population is 127,433,494 (as of July 2007) about 5.5 times more than Malaysia. When does Japan have their baby-boom? The answer is, during World War II (WWII) and after WWII. What does this have in common with other countries that have big population like China, India and United States? This baby-booming activity happened during and after war, when a country is on a very fragile and vulnerable condition. During these times, people do not have job, therefore they don’t have anything to do and they make babies. Same goes to United States during WWI and WWII. China had their baby-boom a little earlier and those earlier babies, when they grow-up, they also produce more than average number of babies. The same case goes to India.

So, what is so different when Tun proposed Malaysia to have 70 million Malaysians by the year 2020? The differences are, it was proposed during no war, thriving economy, politically stable and people living in harmony. I bet now you can see that he was proposing to have a baby-boom during good times. It is totally upside-down, 180 degrees different. See that?

When we have job, there is income to support our family. When we have income, we can opt for good facility for the wives to deliver the babies. Thus, we can improve our infant mortality rate. When our infant mortality rate is lower, there is no waste of babies (excuse me of this term) who are born every year. When we have thriving economy, we can provide good education to them. Good education leads to quality human capital. Quality human capital leads to continuous booming economy, a knowledge-based economy. You can compare that to having babies deliver during hard times like war time. High infant mortality rate, sad parents when knowing their baby has little chance to survive. Even if they survived, good food, good education cannot be provided because their country is in war. This will lead to poor human resources of that country. Then, the country will have to struggle to support their citizens. See the points?

Solutions
How to make Malaysians produce a lot of Babies?
1. Make it easier to get married - parents must ease of the traditions.
In a country like Malaysia, where traditions is still being considered, parents must let their children marry easily. When parents see their child’s girl/boyfriend has a good quality characters (responsible, has a job, caring, etc) ask them to get married right-away. Traditions becoming number 2. Their children marriage is highest priority.

2. Government must make it easier to register marriage.
Right now, we have to go thru a heck of procedures to register marriage. For Malays, being the majority populations, have to go to their registered IC religious office to get some signatures, etc. This makes marriage difficult. For the Malaysian-Chinese and Malaysian-Indian, I am not so sure. Maybe the registration is easy, but the road-map until the registration is painstaking. Therefore, I would like to suggest to the government to allow couples who is ready to get married, to legally register their marriage at the chain of post-offices in Malaysia. Of course, the registrar of Malay, Malaysian-Chinese and Malaysian-Indian must be station there (new job created already). And, for couples to register, they have to bring their parents together for registration. Everybody signed the documents and wallah! one couple married. The ceremony can be prepared after that when the couple is capable to hold the ceremony. Or parents can help them make preparation. The point here is for couples to marry legally. Can you imagine how many young Malaysians will sigh relief when they hear this news from the Government?

3. Parents are not to be excessively materialistic.
In this age, not the children are the one who is materialistic, but the parents. It is understandable that the parents want the best for their children, but when it comes to ‘excessive-valuation’, it makes the child sad and blaming their parents for not accepting their future life-partner. As I said, ff the child’s girl/boyfriend is responsible, has a job and purely cares and loves for their child, ask them to get marry.

4. Incentives from Government on having many children
Now we have tax deduction per child for our personal income tax. Government can enact a new law which a family of 8 children and above will be waived of paying any personal income tax. Malaysian will be very happy to have a big family. Government does not have to worry about their source of income (due to loss of income from big families) because economy of scale by having big population will automatically support the economy. Government will be happy as well.

All of the above 4 solutions will propel Malaysia to achieve 70 million population by 2020. By simple maths, if all married couple in the range of 20-45 year old now, which is about 60% of our population (that is about 14 million people, divide by 2) 7 million couples to have 10 children per couple, we will have 70 million children age 10 by 2020. Plus existing population age 0-19 year old of about 5 million; we can have 75 million young populations by 2020. Don’t forget that by 2020 we will be a develop country.

PJ-Investor.

Public Transportation Systems

Now I understand why LRT commuter in KL is sooo much lower that Singapore MRT systems. Yesterday night I made a simple comparison by using PUBLICLY AVAILABLE SORCES, which is GOOGLE Earth. Unlike other writings, which made the conclusion at the end of their writings, I made the conclusion in my earliest paragraph for you to grasp the points that I’m going to tabulate.

Conclusion
Singapore MRT systems (stations) was planned first before building the surroundings residential or commercial or industrial development. Where as Kuala Lumpur did not planned the LRT Stations first, but they will put the LRT Stations wherever available places which was left undeveloped like next to river, existing road, existing rail track, etc.

Factors that Influence Commuters
These factors made LRT unpopular due to access to the stations always blocked by river, rail-track or road. In Singapore, the MRT Stations is located almost at the center of the residential development. This makes residents of the apartments or flat in Singapore do not have to walk far away to get to the station. And another method of transportation from their residents are by feeder BUSES. Their feeder buses are not FREE. Our feeder buses are not FREE too. However, since their residential developments are well-planned, their residents are using BUS to get to the Stations. Therefore, they do not sweat when travel to the nearest MRT Station. They have a lot of buses to circle their residential area and the frequencies are rapid too. Like 10 minutes per bus. By simple calculation, they just need 6 buses per hour per route. Of course this kind of rapid frequency just operate during rush hours like 7-9 am and 6-9pm. Other that that time range, they can deploy the buses to take longer route to the nearest township. Their feeder buses are sharp on time when it comes to the concern bus arrival timetable.
Now, compare that to our feeder bus service. You’ve heard that our feeder buses are not on time. They can come and pick-up the passenger whenever they want. Even we have a beautiful bus arrival timetable, it is just a timetable. The driver does not really make an effort to follow the timetable. This makes our bus commuters inefficient in managing their time. And, you’ve about people complaining about they have to change 2 buses to get to the LRT Stations or Komuter Stations too. This shows inefficiency in utilizing the resources, which is the buses. Why to they need to change 2 buses to get to LRT Stations. The buses are meant for FEEDER bus, which means the bus feed commuters to the LRT or Komuter Stations. Therefore, we should only utilized one bus per route. The second bus can find other un-service route to pick more commuters. With this kind of inefficiency, even if you offer FREE feeder bus, nobody will ride the bus. People would rather drive to go to the Stations and park their car at the parking lots. While parking lots will take a lot of space, this leads to inefficient usage of space!

Coaches
While MRT coach is up to 6 coaches, our LRT coach only 2 per one time service, even during peak hours! Now, how would you expect our public transportation system is going to make money when we do not grab the opportunity during peak hour commuters? We would rather see the 2 coaches that we prepare become packed like sardines or when the coach is over-weight and derail? This is nonsense and ridiculous. Compare 2 coaches and 6 coaches, which make 3 times revenue and possibly 3 times profit (if any). Simple mathematics!

Solutions
Expedite Residential Development around a Station.
Well, we can’t change the route of our LRT or Komuter Stations anymore. It would be costly to re-built and re-plan our routes. Therefore, what we can do is to expedite the residential developments that surround a Station. Build a lot of strata property around a station. Do not build landed properties. Let landed properties be built in some other hilly areas or near jungle area. You might complain that a rail line near residential area would disturb the comfortness of the residents. Believe me that having a LRT station near your apartment is more convenient than to change 2 feeder buses to get to the station. The convenience will override the comfortablity. Further, the LRT will not operate at 1-6am during your sleep time.

Shades
Provide shades to link to the Station and make it beautiful and colorful. This is a cheap solution to get people to walk to the stations. This will also help us to reduce the obesity problems that most Malaysians have. And, as you are all aware, Malaysia is a tropical country. During daytime, it is very hot and humid, when it rains, it rains heavily and you’ll get wet. Having shades link to the station makes life easier for the commuters. Some MRT Stations in Singapore has shades.

Feeder Bus
We should prepare more feeder buses to serve a particular area. Make it more frequent during rush hours. Like 10 minutes per bus. Rush hour is from 7-9 am and from 6-9 pm.

Stations Waiting Area
Separate the public transportation waiting area and the normal public waiting area. Therefore, bus lining up to fetch or dispatch commuters and the normal friends or relatives or parents who are waiting for their children/spouse/relatives have different waiting area. The public transportation waiting area is nearer to the station compare to the normal public car. Make the waiting area for public transportation ONLY. People who do not use the public transport has to walk farther.

Lets try this and see the difference. I believe we will transform our public transportation system to the most efficient and most profitable public transportation system in the world.

PJ-Investor.

GESHEN

This stock was discovered yesterday and today it looks good and just started to show its positive build-up.

Let’s take a look at the fundamental and technical.

This is what I found.

Stock Price (30.July): 0.58

PE: ~9x EPS: 6 sen

NTA: 0.66

Total Shares: 80,000,000

Cash (based on last Q report): RM 13,295,000 Cash/Share: ~16.6 sen

Short-term Borrowings (Short Term based on last Q report): RM 2,054k, ~2.6 sen

It has cash, little borrowings, trading below its NTA. Lets strip its cash from the price, it is like buying it at 33 sen. SUPER CHEAP!

Let see the Daily & Weekly Chart.

Daily

Weekly


Chart is by ChartNexus