ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

  Part 3: Vulnerabilities: Sulfuric acid, Helium, and PM Wong’s Qatar trip Oil and gas are not only fuels. Processing them yields by-products that modern industry cannot do without, and the Gulf is a dominant supplier of several. Three matter especially for Singapore: Sulphur, Sulphuric Acid, Helium What they are used for in Singapore • Sulphur. Mostly a by-product rather than a raw material here. Singapore's refineries must strip sulphur out of crude to meet clean-fuel and low-sulphur ship-fuel rules, and recover it as elemental sulphur. Its main industrial use is as the feedstock for sulphuric acid; it is also used in rubber and specialty chemicals. • Sulphuric acid. Ultra-pure "electronic-grade" acid is used in wafer fabs to strip photoresist and clean wafers between hundreds of process steps. Ordinary grades are used in chemical manufacturing on Jurong Island, in metal finishing and plating for electronics and chip packaging, and to control acidity in industrial w...

  Part 2: Singapore’s six layers of defence against potential energy shocks 1. The hub itself. Singapore is the world's third-largest oil trading hub and sixth-largest refined-products exporter. The energy majors and traders based here can redirect cargoes from anywhere, and they need Singapore's refineries running. 2. Diversity of supply. Two gas pipelines plus LNG from several continents mean that losing one supplier becomes a price problem, not a blackout. 3. Buffers. Undisclosed fuel reserves, dual-fuel power plants, underground caverns, and rules introduced in 2023 that force electricity retailers to hedge their gas costs. 4. A strong currency. The Monetary Authority of Singapore manages the Singapore dollar's exchange rate rather than interest rates. It let the currency strengthen faster in April and July 2026, which makes every imported barrel cheaper in Singapore-dollar terms. 5. Cash, not price caps. About S$2 billion of extra support on top of Budget 202...

  A world in a fuel crisis, a city that keeps humming Since the US–Israel war with Iran began on 28 February 2026, tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has been choked, Qatar's giant Ras Laffan gas complex has been knocked offline, and Houthi forces have attacked Saudi oil facilities and Red Sea shipping. The head of the International Energy Agency has called it the greatest energy security crisis the world has faced. Singapore has felt it in the wallet, but not in the queue. Petrol is about 25% dearer than before the war, electricity tariffs jumped 17% in the third quarter, and inflation has climbed to a two-year high of 2.3%. Yet there has been no rationing, no dry petrol stations, and no four-day work weeks. Elsewhere the picture is harsher. Sri Lanka brought back QR-code fuel quotas. The Philippines declared a national energy emergency. Indonesia capped fuel purchases at 50 litres a day. Europe's energy inflation reached 18.8% in September. This post asks why. The sh...

  I do my weekly updates on gold/silver prices based on distilling the output of my 7 AI-driven models and deriving a conclusion based on my domain expertise. The models are: 1. GBDT-GARCH- My base model combining ensemble of gradient-boosted Decision Trees, GARCH, Monte Carlo and Quantile Pinball Loss.  2. DXY Monitor- tracking USD against EUR and JPY 3. Real Yields Monitor- tracking Nominal Interest Rates minus Inflation 4. JPY Carry Trade Unwind Monitor-Treasuries/JGB yield gap, FX stress, intervention risk, position crowding, BOJ and Finance Ministry news. 5. Hedge funds leveraged basis trade risk monitor- what those devils in the Cayman Islands are doing 6. Private credit, corporate bonds, AI debt risk monitor: A problem because they comete for Treasuries for funds 7. Gold/Silver Headwinds Monitor: Probabilities on which of the 6 factors above will break first  For this week, we analyse two charts from my models. The forecast probability chart and the s...

Blessed am I.  Benditoak (in Ilocano )

The Singapore-Johor Causeway is the busiest land crossing in the world. Every morning, 330,000 Johor residents make the trip to Singapore to work, and return home in the evening. By motor-cycle, motor vehicle and bus. Trucks laden with goods bound for the Singapore market also make the trip. On the flip side every day an average of 50,000 Singapore residents go to Johor for food, entertainment and  shopping and even healthcare products/services due to the favorable SGD/RMY exchange rate. This injects money into the Johor economy.  Below are 4 charts that show the impact of Singapore on the economy of Johor. Important clarification:  In economics, a Johor resident working in Singapore is counted as part of Johor's labor force that is employed. But his income is attributed to Singapore's GDP. However, this Johor resident's household income will include the portion of wages earned in Singapore that he brings back and converts to RMY (Malaysian Dollars) which is boosted by th...