ALL THINGS BIG AND SMALL 2.0

  Introduction More important than the daily ups and downds of the Dow Jones, the S&P500 and the Nasdaq Composite is the big picture insights that can be gleaned from other asset classes such as the US Treasuries (Bonds) yield, the US Dollar, and the spot price Gold. Refer to the charts above. US Treasuries Yields (data from FRED the Federal Resserve Bank of Saint Louis) Theoretically Bond prices rise in an deflationary economic environment (i.e. their yields in % fall). Bond yields determine interest rates in an economy. So because demand for loans is low in slow economic growth conditions, interest rates charged by lenders e.g. banks fall, which means bond prices rise. This is because when interest rates fall, existing bonds with higher coupon rates (fixed interest payments) become more attractive to investors than newly issued bonds offering lower interest rates. This increased demand for the existing, higher-yielding bonds drives their prices up.  But our chart above s...

ONE-POT RICE MEAL: Nutritionally balanced, delicious, convenient - and cheap. Ingredients: Tua Chye (Bitter Mustard Green), Long Bean, Cherry Tomato, Roast Pork, Dried Cuttlefish. Put everything into the rice cooker. Add Sweet Black Soya Sauce and Lard to taste. Eat with: Sambal Belacan and Small Onion & Garlic Clove pickled in White Vinegar. Feeds 2 people for 2 meals. Cost: if you have to do costing for this you need to queue up at a Soup Kitchen.

 Satay in Indonesia is usually Beef, Mutton or Chicken. But in the the food stalls along the roads up the mountains of Bandung also sell Monitor Lizard (Biawak) and Rabbit (Kelinching) Satay. But frankly, they are a disapointment. The meat of both animals are extremely tough- I had thought Rabbit meat would be tender. But the Satay man told me there are free range rabbits and not those living in a cage. 

 BANDUNG, INDONESIA: DRINKING CIVET CAT POO COFFEE Kopi Luwak Farm: ( Civet Cat Poo Coffee Farm) This farm has 80 Civet Cats from 8 species. They are released in the coffee tree garden where they instinctively are able to pick the most fragrant and high caffeine and other beneficial enzymes. It seems the poo-encrusted beans can be used as face scrub for a clear and smooth complexion. But the beans are not digested and they pass it out as poo. These are collected and roasted. According to the manager of the farm there are 12 species of Luwak in Indonesia and the medicinal properties of their poo differ. In the images below, you can see the Coffee tree with its  berries, and a handful of undigested  beans retrieved from the Civet Cat's poo. In the video, are some of the Civet Cats at the farm.

  A MONSTER ARCHTOP. I got this monster made-in-China Farida 18" archtop from a friend in the UK relocating to Hong Kong and wanting to get rid of excess baggage. Farida is more well-known for their acoustic guitars, this archtop is no longer in production. You can gauge how huge this thing is by comparing with the '68 Morris copy of a Gibson ES175 (Left) which has a lower bout of 16.75 ", and the '78 Yamaha copy of a 17" Gibson L5-CES (Right) The Farida is heavy and won't fit into any standard archtop gig carrying-case. It is very well-made with an Ebony fingerboard, and very loud when played unplugged. And has an old-fashioned sound like those rhythm guitars in a 1930s big band going comp comp comp before electric guitars were invented. Looking at the tail-bridge, it's a copy of the 1939 D' Angelico New Yorker which probably has a valuation today of at least $50,000. Walking Down an Aisle with Eighty-Eight Guitars on the Celiing At the Hard Rock ...

  Data as of 4/4/25 and standardized to Z-Score. 4/4/25 MAGA Man Tariff blood bath leads to S&P500 tanking 5.97%. But financial markets are not just about equities (stock market). Other asset classes are: Bonds (Debt), Currency, Commodities, Real Estate and Gold (a Commodity with special properties). We leave out Crypto currencies for now.  Comparing the recent performance of the different asset classes can provide a more unbiased insight of what's ahead. The tracking ETFs used for the chart above are (ticker symbols provided): AGG#iShares Core US Aggregate Bond ETF  DBC#Invesco DB Commodity Index Tracking Fund  GLD#SPDR Gold Shares  SPY#SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust  UUP#Invesco DB US Dollar Index Bullish Fund  VNQ#Vanguard Real Estate Index Fund ETF  ETFs may not track the underlying asset class with 100% accuracy but it's good enough for our purpose when data for specialised asset class Indices are not readily availabable or free of charge. Be...

  A radar chart is useful when: Comparing multiple entities across multiple variables – It visually displays strengths and weaknesses across categories. Identifying patterns and outliers – The shape of the plot helps quickly assess which variables perform well or poorly. Highlighting multi-dimensional data – Radar charts are effective in visualizing performance, competencies, or risk factors. For example, in the chart above, we have five stocks (AAPL, MSFT, TSLA, AMZN, and NVDA) evaluated across five financial metrics: •                 Revenue Growth •                 Profit Margin •                 Return on Equity (ROE) •                 Debt-to-Equity Ratio •                 Dividend Yield A Radar chart of the five stocks would look like this: # Chart gener...