But can one really make money in Forex trading?
Especially if the minimum trade is around S$20,000? Some people who don’t have the savings to spare go into margin trading (borrowed capital) which I personally wouldn’t recommend because it will make your decision making too emotional.

There definitely is money to be made though since the forex market is a 24-hour market and has a US$4 trillion turnover daily. In fact, the entire market is run electronically, within a network of banks, and so yes, at the end of the day, it is the financial institutions that make the money, but with the internet the little players can now also participate.

If you are interested, it is important to check out Forex News on the web to get a better gauge of the market and how / which currencies are moving.

And if you are completely new to all this, definitely be equipped before you make the jump. Study up online, practice on demo trading or even take a Forex Course to learn the ropes.

“Imagine, I have to fork out 50,000 COV (cash over valuation), I can’t afford it,” lamented a friend who is trying to purchase a second hand HDB unit.

DTZ reported that the percentage of buyers with public housing addresses who purchased units worth more than $1 million reached 43 percent in Q2 of 2010, up from 36 percent in Q1, while buyers with private addresses who acquired units above S$1 million hit 73 percent from 69 percent in the earlier quarter.

WHO’S BUYING?
Apparently, Singaporeans are the ones buying (as opposed to previous years where the rise in prices have largely been a result of foreign buying). Singaporeans’ share of private home purchases rose from 71 percent in Q1 to 74 percent in Q2.

Permanent Resident (PR) buyers’ and foreigners’ share of total purchases in Q2 declined, most likely due to the sluggish economic growth in Europe and in the US where many are worried about a possible double-dip recession. In other words, a fear that the economy will move back into a deeper and longer recession because the initial recovery was not substantial enough.

“Yeah, I don’t want to work for someone. I just want to set up this website so I can have passive income,” young stalwart declares as he types away furiously on his tiny phone.

“Ehrm … you do realise you are spending 10-15 hours in front of your computer everyday including weekends and when you’re not doing that, checking on your 3G phone if there are any queries made by people using your website?”

“Yeah? Uhm, what do you mean?”

“That’s far from passive, isn’t it? That’s a lot of hours of work.”

“No, I’m not working.”

“You mean you’re not being paid. You are working.”

“It’s just my hobby, after I finish all the tweaking, I can do whatever else I want. The website becomes passive income. It will be on 24/7 and I don’t have to do anything and it will make money for me.”

“You mean you won’t need to upgrade, tend to requests by customers, resolve disputes, change to meet new technologies being developed even as we speak?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t take much time,” he says completely oblivious to the fact that he is constantly checking on the site, fixing bugs, upgrading, and the most time consuming, answering or talking to potential customers. If the tallied his hours, I am sure it would be more than 15 hours a day.

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Not long, 3-4 years, but that includes when I was still in uni studying,” receives another sms he needs to reply to as I take my coffee wondering why the time in uni doesn’t count. In addition, given his skills, he could have made much more than his so called passive income in the 3 years he has been out of school and working on this passive income project of his, something inspired by Kiyosaki and Ferris who believe that we should make money off of other people’s sweat.

“So how come after 4 years you’re still not done?”

“No lah, dun say like that lah, there’s just new stuff that has come out, that’s all. And my customers have lots of good ideas you know, so I think it would be good to implement them.”

“Are you sure this is passive income?”

“Yeah, because I can be sleeping and the site will still be making money for me,” now showing infuriation that I don’t get it.

“Enough?”

“Yah, lah, soon, now it’s still a hobby,” and thus ended our passive income conversation.

And perhaps it is this very simplicity in purpose of a mountain ascent that beckons many in the business world to try to summit the most challenging mountains in the world. A mix of adventure that can go wrong and an incredible sense of accomplishment, complete with bragging rights that only a few have ever achieved the same, makes most entrepreneurs appreciate the climb. The daring and unknown end of a difficult mountain ascent is a microcosmic version of entrepreneurship sans that stuff that make it dreary.

Interestingly, while reading about this subject matter, it was brought to my attention that author Jon Krakauer who wrote Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster has pointed out that that it is actually harder to climb the second-highest peak of each continent instead of the highest. Collectively, they are known as “the Seven Second Summits”, each of the seven being the highest peak of their continent.

SYNOPSIS FROM WIKIPEDIA
In Asia K2 (8,611 m) demands greater technical climbing skills than Everest (8,848 m), while altitude-related factors such as the thinness of the atmosphere, high winds and low temperatures remain much the same. The summit of Mount Kenya (5,199 m) is a rock climb, while Mount Kilimanjaro (5,895 m) can be ascended without any technical difficulty.

In North America, some sources consider Mount Logan a more difficult climb than Mount McKinley (generally known as Denali in the climbing community), although the climbing and outdoor recreation website Summitpost considers Logan no more difficult than Denali, because it is neither technical nor steep.

In South America Ojos del Salado involves a short scramble while Aconcagua is just a walk. In Europe Dykh-Tau is a considerably harder climb than Mount Elbrus. In Australia Mount Townsend is a considerably more challenging climb than Mount Kosciuszko, even though both are relatively easy.

I find this fact fascinating … does the same case play out in the businessworld? Is it easier to be / stay first or second?

In that case, as in 2 other previous cases, it was always the other party at fault so I never had to worry about insurance. Last year though, I was in another accident where I was clearly at fault and boy I had no idea what was in store for me when it came to paying automobile insurance premiums this year.

I had been getting 50% discounts due to not having made any claims for seven years running so I knew it would go up, but not by as much as it did. This is when I started hunting for insurers again and found that it is not for the faint of heart.

First, I was amazed by the number of car insurers there are in Singapore. For such a tiny country, we have a lot of insurance agencies.

Second, as is standard in the insurance industry, there is in fact “no standard”. In other words, they all have such varying terms and conditions that it is impossible to compare policies at a glance. It requires a lot of knowledge, time, and effort to pore through those documents.

Third, the price differences can not only range greatly, there are also various freebies to entice you to join a particular agency, from petrol vouchers to free car wash, oil change and even bonus accident coverage. Of course, nothing is really free, so the more attached freebies, the harder it is to tell what has been shaved off.

Anyway, I gave up after a few weeks of looking through several insurance companies and just asked a friend to find the best one for me. Who needs the internet for research when you’ve got friends?

Stress in fact is life-saving, especially when our lives are actually under immediate threat. Energy is mobilized to the tissues that need them the most, our heart rate and blood pressure increase, and digestion, growth, immunity and reproductive systems are inhibited for later processing. After all, they are not important if you’re dead. Moreover, stress actually blunts pain, sharpens cognition and improves certain aspects of memory.

But chronic stress as we humans experience it – simply depletes us instead of helping us. The hormone glucocorticoids are released into our system in high quantities over long periods and is actually more damaging than whatever is actually causing the stress.

Funny thing is, even though most of us intuitively know this, we do very little to change our condition, perhaps because we are in a hormone-induced state of pain-freeness. How much does “balance” and “wellness” factor into your busy life as an entrepreneur?

Who woulda thunk Toyota would end up in this mess?

And it seems that the worse isn’t over. Repercussions continue with every small problem being completely blown out of proportion by the media.

It got me to thinking- what would I do? What’s the best PR way to handle this? What could have been done better?

I suppose there will always be new blood that comes along but doubt the same surge occurring. Truth be told, some gates or walls should be thrown up. For the current ease of publication on the web also means the total disregard for quality. Perhaps that is why there are more and more sites that are providing platforms for writers who truly put in an effort. You can now even get free web hosting for your own URL so that you won’t be lumped in with all the other nonsense in free blogging sites.

The business model for these services is simple. If you have your own domain name, you probably are serious about your blog or site since you took the time to find one available and then pay for it. Even if you’re not serious, giving you the free hosting adds to the links back to my service. Free marketing if you will. If you’re serious and good, you’ll definitely want to upgrade your service at some point and that’s when I can start making some cash.

The model also helps the non-techies from having to deal with the domain hosting riff-raff: companies who oversell their bandwidth, their disk space, and have no back-up systems available.

Sounds much more solid than just throwing up a free blogging site. The only exception is whether there is a big enough market that does want to blog and eventually spend money on keeping their blogs. In other words, we’re back to the same question, “is blogging dying?”

This is especially so if you are expanding: hiring more people, stocking up on inventory, renting more premises. Even if your reserves and monthly revenues can cover your initial capital requirements, cash flow will be very tight.

Case in point is a retail mom and pop shop that was doing such brisk business it opened up 3 more within the year as they were able to secure really cheap inventory from Yiwu, China. Taking out a loan never crossed their mind as they were cash rich. In fact, the biggest mistake was that they never even had a relationship with the bank except for their savings account. This was a sole proprietorship and the year was 2007. We all know how fast & how bad things got Q3 2008 and well into 2009. People simply stopped spending as fears of lay-offs loomed. After several months of dwindling sales, the proprietors were no longer able to meet their rental obligations as all their reserves had been used up or taken up in inventory. To further compound their problems, their inventory continually rose in cost since they were housed separately in warehouses. Sadly, the 30+ year shop had to close all its doors forever as it sold off all its remaining assets.

Expansion and marketing strategies aside, I believe that had the couple simply taken out a business loan, they could have weathered the economic storm which proved to be much shorter than the media had predicted it to be. Unfortunately, banks don’t like to lend money to people who actually need it. In other words, you want to apply for a loan when you have money, not when you don’t have any.

But which kind of loan should you be getting since there are so many kinds?

Here are some more popular ones:

(1) Working Capital Loans
(2) Invoice Factoring
(3) Floor Plan Financing
(4) Consolidating Business Debt
(5) Lines of Credit
(6) Merchant Cash Advances

In my opinion, the best loan in terms of easy processing & fast funding is number 5: a line of credit. Why? Lines of Credit usually require NO Collateral, so you don’t have to worry about your personal assets should you hit a downturn. Furthermore, you don’t need to take out a loan when you don’t need the money. It’s just there, just in case you do.

But if you are in real dire straits like the couple mentioned above and the banks already know how much hot water you are in and refuse to give you a loan, then number 6: merchant cash advances is probably your best bet. Aside from the fact that you can get approved quickly (3-10 business days), there are no set monthly payments. Why? These are loans that purchase your future credit card receivables at a discount. So you only pay back the loan when you actually sell something. Of course, these loans will not be as big as the ones you can get from a bank, nor as cheap, but if you’re in a financial emergency and just need to tide things over, they are a good option to look into.

So go check out the different types of loans today, whether you need it or not. Who knows, you could be days away from getting the small business financing you need to start growing your business in a big way.

As usual though, the numbers don’t tell the real story. Most of the money is not really going into revolutionary ideas and innovations but into evolutionary ones- with as much as US$704 million going into electric- car related products and services.

Given the rise in frequency and intensity of natural calamities (the latest being the 6.2 earthquake in Mindoro, Philippines last week followed by the 7.2 earthquake in Baja California yesterday), it’s a no brainer to expect more investments pouring into this sector for the next few years (not even counting government funding). And if you don’t think that’s the case, just see where investment mogul Warren Buffett is investing.