Daily Routine

Morning

1. READ - newspaper, magazines
2. THINK - Meditate, Plank, Mantra

Office

1. UPLOAD - 2 new things
2. COMPLETE - 2 tasks

TO DO 2W Feb 16

1. Blog VN or -ve int rate
2. 360
3. Note Giant Sup

Weekly Theme

Mon
Interest: music, blog, biz, others

Tue
Exercise, vegetarian

Wed
Emails, work related, fwd stuff

Thu
PA

Fri
Family/Self

To This 2

1. Focus on minutes - 1440 minutes every day, can do a lot of things.

2. Beat procrastination with time travel - Your future self cannot be trusted, do things now.

3. Set daily priorities - Identify the Most Important Tasks (MIT), use 2 hours to complete them.

4. Schedule things into the calendar – less about to do lists.

5. Make it home for dinner

6. Use a notebook, capture everything there, use calendar on phone for To Dos

7. Only check email 3 times a day, don’t disturb the flow.

8. Avoid meetings, don’t hold them if possible.

9. Say “no” to almost everything. Focus on things that really have impact.

10. 80/20 – 80% of outcomes will come only from 20% of your time

11. Delegate and outsource - identify your unique ability, outsource everything else

12. Focus on energy, not time – maximize energy to maximize productivity, sleep well, watch diet, exercise and short break throughout the day

13. Touch things once – if something takes 10 min to complete, do it now

14. Morning routine – Wake up early, devote 60 minutes for mental, physical and spiritual health

15. Work theme – create days of week for different areas, batch tasks together

Do This

Japanese songs

1. 　三日月
2.　あかいスイートピー
3.　花がさく
4.　今井美樹
5.　ありがとう　いきものがかり
6.　Ambitious Japan

IBM

EPS $12, FCF 11-12bn
IBM Cognitive Business Solutions supported by over 2000 specialists and 50000 analytics engagements, partherships with FB and Twitter.
Currency drag 8% of revenue due to strong USD, or $1 in EPS
Strategic businesses: 34bn USD, 40% of 80bn overall revenue

Pretax profit and margins 2016
700m systems hardware OPM 10%
8300m software OPM 39%
4600m global technology services OPM 15%
2400m global business services OPM 15%
2400m global financing OPM 130%
-3700m eliminations

Bread and butter business (sw) losing to cloud and new competitors like ServiceNow
Losing 2% share annually in core categories

Application Infrastructure and Middleware 31% in 2012 dropped to 29% (Websphere and MQ-Series)
Database Mgmt 21% to 18% (DB2)
IT Operations 18% to 15%
Storage Mgmt 16% to 15%
Application development 22% to 20%
Enterprise Content Mgmt 20% to 18%

Not strong in SCM and CRM (Mkt share CRM 18% Salesforce 12% SAP 9% Oracle 6% MSFT 4% IBM)

Not content in Project and Portfolio Mgmt, Virtualization Infrastructure (VMWare 90% mkt share), Office Suites and Digital Content Creation

CCC -ve, Big Blue!

FT: Why lower rates mean higher liabilities

Why lower rates mean higher liabilities

When Daimler used €2.5bn of the cash on its balance sheet to top up its pension fund last December, it rather took the market by surprise. But the move by the German carmaker, while unusual, reflected another unintended consequence of the flood of cheap money from the European Central Bank. Many companies’ pension deficits have widened significantly because the discount rate used to value pension liabilities has fallen in tandem with interest rates.

Lufthansa is also suffering from this unwelcome side-effect of the low interest rate environment. Earlier this month, the airline said the deficit in its defined benefit pension scheme had risen by more than 40 per cent since December, and is now more than €10bn. Lufthansa wants to scrap DB pension arrangements for employees but has yet to negotiate a less onerous scheme with unions. Its pilots have gone on strike repeatedly to protect early retirement benefits.

Similarly, the deficit in Siemens’ pension plan rose to €11bn at the end of March, from €9.6bn at the end of December. At BASF, the chemicals manufacturer, pension provisions more than doubled to €9.6bn in the first quarter, compared with a year earlier. Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating agency, estimates that a 50-basis point change in discount rates adds a whacking €1.85bn to BASF’s liabilities.

It is not just pension fund trustees in Germany that are feeling the pain. Standard & Poor’s estimates that, in 2014, the sharp fall in long-term bond yields increased the post-retirement benefit obligations of the top 50 companies it rates in Europe by 11 to 18 per cent. It is predicting a further widening of scheme deficits this year. Even at the end of 2013, pension schemes at these 50 companies were underfunded by 30 per cent, or nearly €200bn.

Pension deficits are not debt in the conventional sense, and many companies face no statutory requirement to set aside financing for them. Nor have S&P or Moody’s downgraded any company’s credit rating because of a widening of its deficit. S&P believes, however, that if interest rates remain low, pension deficits will become a more material negative factor over the next two years. More companies, in that case, may have to follow Daimler’s lead.

Wishlist

200 CT200h
200 Stocks 2016
300 condo downpayment
200 Viet 2

Stocks to note

BATS
Shenhua
Genting
SMM
BLT

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Diageo
RB
Keppel
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