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March 23, 2014 - 3:48 am

And the richest man in Asia, the legendary Hong Kong tycoon ''Superman'' Li Kashing, has been busy dumping 20 billion yuan ($7 billion) of Chinese property from his portfolio.

''This is a signal worth attention,'' Wang says.

Smart money leaving the sinking ship??

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March 20, 2014 - 8:24 pm

jmsrachel wrote:

"it's the end of the world as we know it"

Very apt Joe. In a few years you'll be reminiscing over a beer, "remember the good ol' days when …..".

I don't think I've ever seen a RE markets under threat from so many angles as now.

Export earnings are set to take a substantial hit over the next 12 – 18 months as China unwinds. We're already seeing extremely low prices for coal and declining prices for iron ore, copper etc. That's going to rub off hard as the govt tries to contain budget deficits while keeping growth alive. That translates into more layoffs as exporters struggle and their associated businesses (logistics chain) also feel the pinch.

Banks are a real threat if liquidity freezes. AU banks are heavily exposed to China. ANZ is up to its eyeballs with Reinhart's financing of the new Roy Hill mine. There is an avalanche of supply coming on over the next 18 months just when demand is retracing. 

Hot money flows out of China have fueled property markets globally. If the Chinese unwind gets out of control (and I can't see how they can retain control of such a complex credit problem) then the early signs of Chinese selling their stashes of globally distributed property to cover debts and maintain their personal liquidity will start to show soon in property markets locally. Sydney and Melbourne could get hit quite hard. It will be bad enough if the Chinese simply stop buying. It will get magnitudes worse if they start selling because just as they have little regard for what price they pay when times are tough they give little regard to what they sell for.  

If you start to see panic in the market it's game over.

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March 19, 2014 - 3:32 am

jmsrachel wrote:

Freckle how's the economy in Malta? Would love to go back one day.

I wouldn't mind living there for 3 months of the year. That may happen in a few years once I get a few things out of the road here in NZ.

The economy there is OK I in local terms. Wages are extremely low but cost of living is cheap by anyone elses standards. There are a lot of beautiful places in the world that are dirt cheap by antipodean standards.

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March 19, 2014 - 3:26 am

Thanks for the update King.

It's early days yet and a sunny day doesn't make a summer. My position on the US hasn't changed. If anything I only see a deteriorating picture emerging as the US appears to be heading towards a recession (in official terms – reality is it's more like a depression in many states). Long term I still see a significant risk. I'll be surprised if this fund survives longer than 5 years without losses. The only buffer I see at the moment is the potential for FX to soften any loss and boost gains.

One thing you haven't mentioned is how much of your gains were FX gains and how much were actual investment gains.

Unit prices are only real when you exit. Anything else is just speculative valuations. 

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March 19, 2014 - 3:12 am

thecrest wrote:

Ask some of the truck rental companies near your goods if they have any "ferry drivers" they use to reposition vehicles from one way rentals.

He's far west NSW. Tough trying to get stuff out that way for sure let alone backloads or anyone going that way. A DIY job if ever I saw one. 

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March 18, 2014 - 8:08 pm

interesting…

Still 325 for sale and 196 to rent…..

Young fella has left. He's back in Malta and his boss is hunting work in NZ. How the worm has turned.

Friends business is still functioning ….just… but now they have physically left the place she's FIFO. Her husband's business collapsed (light fab engineering and maintenance). It's been bought out by the other part but they'll take a $100k loss which is a small miracle. The partner will go broke eventually but he's a 1st class a'hole anyway so no loss there.

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March 18, 2014 - 7:47 pm

Freight companies are in it to make a dollar not a charity. You're talking around 40hrs + for someone to do this job for you including load and unload. 

Sounds like you have less than 20 cube so you should be able to hire a 3.5t pantech to do the job yourself. Perhaps have someone who can take your car and drive the hire truck back. Other than that do a round trip yourself to position your stuff.

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March 18, 2014 - 4:54 am

Quote:

Population size is not the deciding factor in terms of sustainability. We don't all live on disconnected islands and your theory is not applicable. Sustainability is highly dependent on the practices of society.

Amazing how you you draw these conclusions.

Social practices simply determines how efficiently a resource is utilised. Sustainability implies that the resource renews itself at a rate equal to its depletion rate. Eventually increasing demand on a resource will tip depletion rates ahead or renewal rates.

If population was not the defining factor then following that line of logic implies that a population could grow to infinity if only it's practices could cope with an infinite population. It's patently obvious to the simplest mind that this is mathematically impossible. Population management is the defining factor in all farm management. Best practice might extend your stocking levels but it has its limits.

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March 18, 2014 - 1:49 am

sciencesurf wrote:

If anything it proves my point that you are jumping the gun.

Maybe age has its benefits in some respects. I've been watching this thing for 20 years on and off. The optimists point to all sorts of reasons why this scenario won't play out, however none of their solutions are gaining traction and the situation continues to slide in the direction of disaster. 

So unless Superman is going to come racing over the horizon sometime soon I'll keep tracking towards prepping for the inevitable.

Quote:

We are far from  reaching the critical point of sustainability.

We passed sustainable when we hit 3 billion.

Quote:

If anything I believe our reliance on 'dirty' resources will diminish into the future. We are tracking to become more efficient in our practices,and more reliant on sustainable sources of energy. In terms of solar sustainability China is a world leader.. Yes, we are not there yet but change is being made.

we better start tracking a lot faster then.

Quote:

I remember being fed information whilst at school in the early 90's that oil would be depleted in 30 years… Now there's your furfy.

Then you weren't listening. Hubbard was predicting peak oil. IE when supply and demand would separate. Discovery rates aren't matching decline rates. Everyone alrteady knows this but cling to the idea that technology and some new super field will be found. problem is there has been no significant new finds for decades now.

Quote:

Advances in technology, exploration and processing techniques have led to this number to be revised in excess of 100 years..

I thought you were smarter than this. This is pure fiction!!

Quote:

And then LNC comes along and finds the equivalent of Saudi Arabia in Shale Oil in South Oz.. Lets hope we never need to touch it.

You need to stop reading marketing hype for investors. The field has a theoretical capacity but has not been proven and is an assumption based on a few test wells. Even those show that anything they may find may simply be uneconomic or require more energy to extract than it produces. Shale is the wonder story of the last decade but is fast proving to be an absolute disaster both ecologically socially and financially. Dutch Shell dropped shale because it simply couldn't make it pay.

At current depletion rates US shale could be played out in as little 10 -15 years. 

The path toward U.S. energy independence, made possible by a boom in shale oil, will be much harder than it seems.

Just a few of the roadblocks: Independent producers will spend $1.50 drilling this year for every dollar they get back. Shale output drops faster than production from conventional methods. It will take 2,500 new wells a year just to sustain output of 1 million barrels a day in North Dakota’s Bakken shale, according to the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Iraq could do the same with 60.

Consider Sanchez Energy Corp. The Houston-based company plans to spend as much as $600 million this year, almost double its estimated 2013 revenue, on the Eagle Ford shale formation in south Texas, which along with North Dakota is one of the hotbeds of a drilling frenzy that’s pushed U.S. crude output to the highest in almost 26 years. Its Sante North 1H oil well pumped five times more water than crude, Sanchez Energy said in a Feb. 17 regulatory filing. Shares sank 7 percent.

Quote:

Its not too late..

It was too late decades ago. People will ignore the risks of collapse in favor of self preservation. It will always happen to the other guy and its some one else's problem is standard MO for dealing with these things.

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March 17, 2014 - 11:31 pm

Jamie M wrote:

lol – that will go down well with my wife…. "but Freckle, from the internet forum I spend too much time on, told me to do it!"

Cheers

Jamie

Yeah but the rest of the passengers will luv ya 

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March 17, 2014 - 9:51 pm

wilko1 wrote:

……and proceeded to have a conversation about how "did we just make 200k in a hour" and discussing it, also compared it with the lucrative property mentoring program that they did a few years back.

Whenever someone, who's livelihood is integrally connected to the industry and who says, "I do it to help people", I just cringe.

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March 17, 2014 - 9:08 am

Just to burst your bubble once again…

'Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'?

Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies – by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance – have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a 'perfect storm' within about fifteen years.

But these 'business as usual' forecasts could be very conservative.

People will say we're alarmist but as you can see there are some very serious institutions and minds looking at this problem. They aren't doing it to scare people or to advance some hidden agenda. Logic will tell even the simplest mind that exponential growth in a finite world is not possible indefinitely. An economic correction will just be the start.

Pass the popcorn…

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March 17, 2014 - 4:20 am

Slip some vodka in his/her bottle. About half a nip. Should be quiet as a mouse after that

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March 16, 2014 - 7:56 pm

Jamie M wrote:

haha – you got me there! I'm actually quite worried about it. Going to NZ was hard enough- I don't know how we're going to go with the flights to Europe, especially since she doesn't sit still for a second

Cheers

Jamie

Fly Emirates. They have a stop in Dubia. If the stopover is over so many hours you get accommodation included in the price. I think they have a 9-10hr layover option from memory. Breaks the haul nicely before the next leg to Rome.

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March 16, 2014 - 7:49 pm

alfrescodining wrote:

What a shame – there I was getting my hopes up!

Picture upload function should be easy.

It's actually easier to upload offsite and simply link it. 95% of my pics/graphics are simply links to referred material but occasionally I'll download a pic, edit it and re-upload to a storage site. An annoying aspect of linking pics here is that it has a sizing function which has never worked other than limiting the pic size to the limits of the text display box. 

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March 16, 2014 - 1:40 am

I see Abe's getting ready to stir the pot again. I sometimes think Abe is on a Kamikaze mission when it comes to Japan.

Sorry for Nothing

NEW YORK – Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is once again stirring Asia’s cauldron of national rivalries and historical resentments. This time, he has instructed a committee of historians to reexamine the official apology delivered in 1993 to World War II-era sex slaves held in Japanese military brothels. It is clear from various recent statements that some of Abe’s closest advisers believe that the apology was not in order, so the committee might well conclude that Japan was never officially involved in prostitution, and that its “sincere remorse” should therefore be withdrawn.

What perverse reason could Abe have for pursuing such an outcome?

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March 16, 2014 - 1:31 am

zmagen wrote:

as for for wages excluding overtime and bonuses falling down – nice way to try and ignore the fact that the total including them has actually gone up, as we've discussed here previously. Please don't make me rehash the same info.

Let me see if I'm understanding you Comrade Ziv. 

The total wages are up but on an individual per person basis they're down and that inflation growth that exceeds wage growth is OK because at least you don't have deflation which actually increases the buying power of the individual.

Not sure if you actually figured it out that the wealth of the 99% is surely but slowly being transferred to the 1%. 

I luved this one;

“Exiting deflation is positive for growth because it assists recovery in the job market,” said Takuji Aida

…and this guy's a Chef Economist no less. It's scary when we've got idoits like that in charge and even scarier when the masses can't tell there's an idiot at the wheel.

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March 15, 2014 - 10:03 pm

It seems Japanese firms aren't listening to Uncle Abe… it's now raise wages or else!.. 

Japan turns more and more into a basket case by the day. The similarity in Argentinean and Venezuelan government last ditch tactics to make economies do what they want it to do is all too familiar. 

When governments start telling business what prices they can sell at, what wages will be and other dictatorial legislation and regulation that makes business conform to the communist socialist model you know things are getting closer to the end. The desperation is almost palpable.

Japan to name, shame firms that refuse to hike pay

……last night the Japan labor ministry reported that monthly wages excluding overtime and bonus payments fell 0.2 percent in December from a year earlier to 241,525 yen on average per worker, a series of declines which has now stretched to 19 consecutive months.

What say you comrade Ziv

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March 14, 2014 - 3:57 am

This will be interesting…

Chinese Authorities Halt Virtual Credit Card Payments; Tencent, Yahoo Crashing

I've been buying a few K in stuff out of China through AliExpress for a few months now. About NZ$900 is still waiting to ship. Alibaba (a B2B) hub and AliExpress (a B2P) hub use Alipay to facilitate their hubs. This is like PayPal being suspended so you can imagine the angst going right now amongst customers with skin in the system but more importantly the 1000's of merchants who will be hanging out to get paid after shipping their goods. Payments sit in ecscrow and are released on confirmation from the buyer that they have arrived and are in merchantable condition. 

I just did a US$3k deal with another Chinese manufacturer and we side stepped the Alibaba system for the sake of expediency. I wouldn't normally do this but for a few weeks now the hairs on the back of my neck have been up with regard to deals out of China. 

Ali site's offer the Chinese manufacturers and smaller merchant facilitators (those doing smaller deals for the large run manufacturers enabling the sale of smaller quantities). Anything that damages confidence in their payment system could take a long time to rectify. To say this will be interesting is an understatement.

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March 14, 2014 - 3:33 am

Death by a 1000 cuts continues I see. But hey I hear CRE is up….. whhoopy!!

Misery Index Rising to 33-Year High on Abenomics: Japan Credit