US Treasury style investment with better yield & Reliance

If you look at the attached chart, you will see that the AAA rated bond from Temasek Holdings (Sovereign Wealth Fund of Singapore) offers a better yield than the underlying 10 year US Treasury bond and moves exactly in line with the US Govt bond.

Today, US Treasury 10 year bond yields 3.41%. It had touched a peak of 3.73% on 8 Feb. and has been declining ever since due to strong demand for USD assets and hence this bond continues to rise and its yield decline.

10 year or similar bonds from US Govt are global benchmarks and any yield provided by any corporate or any Govt issued bond adds a risk premium on top, to provide a higher yield. US Treasury yield plus risk premium equals any bonds net return.

As on date, if you buy Temasek Bond maturing in 2019, approx 10 years, actually 8.5 years now remaining, at USD 102.30, it will give you a yield of 3.98% which is way higher than any AAA rated bond as on date.

In addition, as the maturity period comes closer, the yield will continue to approach the 5 year US Treasury yield of 2.16% and then to 2 year Treasury yield of 1.20%.

Once yield declines, price rises, therefore, this bond shall continue to provide higher and higher price or capital gain as time goes by.

Potentially, a AAA rated bond could give 3-5 dollar or percent gain and a yield of 4% which is total of 7-9% in a USD investment just this year.

Since our bank is very comfortable due to the AAA nature and despite the 8.5 year remainder term, this bond may be leveraged upto 3 times, however, I would only recommend one time leverage to extract that additional 2-2.5% yield and not take any additional risk.

PLEASE DO NOTE THAT YOU MAY HAVE SOME FUNDS WHICH ARE MEANT FOR FIXED DEPOSIT KIND OF INVESTMENT AND THIS BOND PROVIDES A VERY STRONG, ROBUST AND AN EXCELLENT ALTERNATIVE, AT THIS POINT IN TIME, FOR ALL SUCH DEPOSIT ORIENTED FUNDS AND TO HOLD THIS BOND FOR A YEAR OR TWO AND OBTAIN ALMOST 4% YIELD (WHICH IS TWICE OUR OWN BANK's DEPOSIT RATE ON USD FOR 1 YEAR of 2% AND ALMOST 4-6 AND UPTO 10 TIMES THAT OF MAJOR INTERNATIONAL BANKS).

On another note, which is related to India....

Most investors believe and say that if Reliance stock goes up, so does Indian stock market and vice versa.

I just wanted to share some facts on such theories which are mentioned in the media and taken as fact by investors.

If you look at the attached chart, you will observe that this was in fact true until early 2009 when markets fell down in 2007 and 2008, however, since that time, Reliance shares have either gone down or remained within a very tight range but the Indian stock market index has continued to rise.

Over the last 10 years, this chart shows that Reliance actually outperformed the Indian stock index, but since 2009 it has lagged the broader market.

This goes to show that the 'other 29' stocks in the Index do have a strong role to play in the Indian stock marrket or any market index for that matter, especially going forward henceforth.

Why no one from Wall Street goes to jail? Corruption and Politics in USA and its impact on us

There is an amazing article on Rolling Stone again by Matt Taibbi who had last year described Goldman Sachs as a “great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

This time, he elaborates as to how the CEO’s of various investment banks in the USA, are politically connected and have gotten away from any prosecution despite being directly responsible for perpetuating the world’s worst financial crisis and bringing the US financial system to a meltdown and yet no one was ever held responsible.

One must understand that for each trade there are 2 parties to a transaction. When further extended, this means that each time a bank or any large institution such as a hedge fund or a pension fund makes a profit, there has to be someone on the other side of the trade who has to lose.

When someone asks me to explain how did all the ‘losses’ or ‘billions’ disappear from the markets, this is the answer: They went into the pockets of hedge funds, large banks, pension funds etc. who bet against the markets and this allowed the transfer of wealth from individual investors (who were the investors on the other side of the trade) to large corporations or large players in the markets.

One of the quotes from the article sums up the entire piece “"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."”

In order to understand how the large banks did what they did, please do read this article due to be published in the March 2011 issue of Rolling Stones magazine.

To understand how high level politics, corruption and insider dealings were going on in the Morgan Stanley case or for that matter, for any large corporation in America, especially in the financial services, defense industry, oil industry, media or pharmaceuticals (areas where USA dominates), please read the quote below:

“Pause for a minute to take this in. Aguirre, an SEC foot soldier, is trying to interview a major Wall Street executive — not handcuff the guy or impound his yacht, mind you, just talk to him. In the course of doing so, he finds out that his target's firm is being represented not only by Eliot Spitzer's former top aide, but by the former U.S. attorney overseeing Wall Street, who is going four levels over his head to speak directly to the chief of the SEC's enforcement division — not Aguirre's boss, but his boss's boss's boss's boss. Mack himself, meanwhile, was being represented by Gary Lynch, a former SEC director of enforcement.

Aguirre didn't stand a chance. A month after he complained to his supervisors that he was being blocked from interviewing Mack, he was summarily fired, without notice. The case against Mack was immediately dropped: all depositions canceled, no further subpoenas issued. "It all happened so fast, I needed a seat belt," recalls Aguirre, who had just received a stellar performance review from his bosses. The SEC eventually paid Aguirre a settlement of $755,000 for wrongful dismissal.”

No wonder, USA is going through economic and social turmoil since June 2007 when subprime crisis erupted. The overwhelming urge to be a global superpower, greed, corruption, arrogance combined with the urge of global hegemony and decadence of the past 50 years, post industrialisation is now coming to roost and bringing the American empire to its knees, while the Emerging economies continue to gradually rise more and more and reshape the world going forward.

Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
Financial crooks brought down the world's economy — but the feds are doing more to protect them than to prosecute them
By Matt Taibbi
FEBRUARY 16, 2011 9:00 AM ET

Welcome to the World of Mobile Blogging!

I just got around to testing and enabling my iPhone to send email and the text shall get published on my blog instantly!

Wonders of Technology, I say!

Hope to use this more frequently, let's see.