Stocks to look at

Reckitt
Varian
Sasa
Shenhua

Review
IBM
Sembcorp
SATS
SIA Engineering

China's Water Projects

The Three Gorges dam: a worrying precedent

Last year, for the first time in 140m years, the Chinese sturgeon failed to breed in the wild.

The danger to the sturgeon was one risk cited by opponents to the world’s largest hydropower project, the $26bn Three Gorges dam, whose approval in 1992 kicked off two decades of construction of mega-dams in China. Hydropower now accounts for 23 per cent of China’s installed generation capacity and the companies that cut their teeth on the Three Gorges project are now the world’s premier dam-builders.

Along the Yangtze, the world’s third-longest river that cuts through central China like a muddy highway, the costs of the dam are just beginning to be totted up. A landslide wiped out a power substation on the reservoir this summer, while the 1,300km stretch of water below the dam regularly experiences low levels that may be exacerbated by the separate project to divert water north. “Dam refugees” can be found in the slums of Shanghai and other eastern cities, after resettlement programmes proved inadequate and riddled with graft.

Senior officials responsible for the dam were reshuffled during China’s anti-corruption campaign, in a rare acknowledgement by Beijing of the problems that have plagued the project.

Bringing the Yangtze to help the Han River

The “Bringing the Yangtze to help the Han River” canal project is needed because of a much larger project, 250km to the north, that cuts the flow of the Han, a Yangtze tributary. About a quarter of the water in the Han will be reallocated to arid northern China in a $60bn engineering effort that critics say will create shortages in the south.

Buy Commodities, Sell Brands, Driverless Technology and Ebola

1. Buy Commodities, Sell Brands

Berkshire has a substantial interest in 10 of the top 100 most valuable brands in Millward Brown’s latest annual BrandZ survey, reflecting Mr Buffett’s penchant for enduring names such as Coca-Cola, American Express and Walmart. As he wrote in his 2011 letter to shareholders: “‘Buy commodities, sell brands’ has long been a formula for business success.”

Berkshire Hathaway was the name of the now defunct textiles company Mr Buffett acquired in the 1960s.

2. Driverless Technology

Driveless technology market is expected to grow rapidly. Exane BNP Paribas forecasts the market for automated and assisted driving technology will be worth some $25bn by 2020 and $57bn by 2025, compared with $6bn today.

3. Ebola

GENEVA (Kyodo) -- The death toll from the Ebola virus outbreak topped 4,000 by midweek, doubling in about a month, the World Health Organization said Friday.

     The pace of infection appears to be picking up in West Africa, while cases have been reported in the United States and Spain.

     The Ebola deaths totaled 4,033, up from the 3,000 threshold breached roughly two weeks earlier. Liberia reported 2,316 deaths, followed by Sierra Leone's 930 and Guinea's 778. Nigeria had eight deaths and the United States had one.

     The WHO counted a total of 8,399 cases. Senegal, Spain and the United States each reported one case and Nigeria had 20. The three most affected countries -- Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea -- accounted for the rest.

Thailand traditional trade

60-80% still traditional trade.

Singapore Commercial Property Related

Alpha Investment Partners - Unit of Keppel Land, interested in Japan properties

Robinson Road commercial property price $2,300psf (Finexis Building), with yield at 2%, quantum S$110m.

Seller: Buxani Group, advised by CMG (Capital Management Group).
Buyer: Sin Capital, started by David Sin, former AIG and GS staff.

Property was valued at $48m in 2006.

Buxani still owns Thong Sia Building (bought at S$120m from Raffles Medical), 3 floors of Samsung Hub and 26 strata office unit in Parkway Centre (Marine Parade Central) and Katong Junction (bought for S$55m in 2012).

China Properties

Average Shanghai property 35,000 Rmb / sqm
Chinese property stocks historical average - trades at 25% discount to NAV

Healthy Life Talk

Singapore stats
Singaporeans live long, but last 10 years of life usually bedridden or under going treatment ie bad quality of life.
Singaporeans die of cardiovascular/diabetics related,

High healthcare costs
1x Stent cost = $10,000
1x cancer = $250,000

How many years taken away
Stress 2 yrs
No exercise 4 yrs
Drink 2 yrs
Diet 4 yrs

Personalized checks
Go for something more indepth, don't do the same checks over and over again
Check for Retina Detachment
Check of frs framingham risk score
Check for Osteoporosis (wife)
Check for Gout hydrochlorothiazide

Recommendations
Exercise = 150 min per week
Vaccines = Hep A, Flu vaccine (every year), pertussis (whooping cough), pneumococcal
Supplements = B12, multi-vitamins etc

Work related improvement
Highly rotational movable screens
Pantry reform - stuff fruits etc
No night calls

Global Insurance Stats

All in USD
Global mkt size 2.6trn
US 600bn
Jpn 400bn
UK 350bn
France 200bn
Germany 100bn

Insurance spending per person
UK 5100 USD
Ireland 4200
Switzerland 3100
France 2900
Finland 2900
Denmark 2800
Japan 2800
Hong Kong 2500
Belgium 2400
Sweden 2200

Insurance mkt as % of GDP
Switzerland 4.9%
US 4.8%
New Zealand 4.5%
Netherlands 4.3%
Slovenia 4%
Canada 3.9%
Germany 3.8%
UK 3.4%
Australia 3.2%
S. Korea 3.2%
Taiwan 2.9%
Japan 2.2%

From industryk

Radiation Notes

External 

Measured in mSv, over lifetime if more than 100mSv - risk of cancer becomes significant
Most people will not reach, not even nuclear plant workers.

Atomic bomb - exposure of 1Sv ie 1000mSv, about 6-8% of Hiroshima bomb survivors will get cancer, or offspring will get cancer.

Comparing magnitude

0.098	μSv:	banana equivalent dose, a whimsical unit of radiation dose[14][note 1]
0.25	μSv:	U.S. limit on effective dose from a single airport security screening[15]
5 to 10	μSv:	one set of dental radiographs[16]
80	μSv:	average dose to people living within 16 km of Three Mile Island accident[17]
0.4 to 0.6	mSv:	two-view mammogram, using weighting factors updated in 2007[18]
1.5 to 1.7	mSv:	annual dose for flight attendants[19]
2 to 7	mSv:	barium fluoroscopy, e.g. Barium meal, up to 2 minutes, 4–24 spot images[20]
10 to 30	mSv:	single full-body CT scan[21][22]
68	mSv:	estimated maximum dose to evacuees who lived closest to theFukushima I nuclear accidents[23]
0.67	Sv:	highest dose received by a worker responding to the Fukushima emergency[24][note 1]
4.5 to 6	Sv:	fatal acute doses during Goiânia accident
5.1	Sv:	fatal acute dose to Harry Daghlian in 1945 criticality accident[25]
21	Sv:	fatal acute dose to Louis Slotin in 1946 criticality accident[26]
64	Sv:	nonfatal dose to Albert Stevens spread over ~21 years, due to 1945 human experiment[27][note 1

Amazing that someone survived a 64 Sv dosage...

Linear No Threshold
The theory is that no matter how small the dosage, there is a risk of cancer.
But unlikely to be true - bcos if true then pilots and stewardess all ganna cancer.

The other spectrum - some radiation is actually good. Since radiation is also used to kill cancer cells. Not too convincing.


Internal

More risky - esp to kids

Measured in Becquerel

Limit in food is 1000 Becquerel per kg

Normal meal in Japan now has 10 B/kg, a lot of meal measurement being done as a result of the heightened fear. The highest meal recorded is still less than 100B/kg
But there are some vege that recorded 27000 B/kg
ie 1 week tour in Japan is unlikely to have any long term impact

Known case from Chernobyl
Kids who drank milk and eat vege (exposed to radioactive iodine) - has a significant chance of getting Thyroid cancer. Kids are vulnerable bcos iodine is trapped in their small thyroid.

This risk should not happen in Fukushima as precautions were taken (kids are given non-radioactive iodine pills)

Unknown unknown
A lot about radiation is not known. Even the iodine case was only known like 10 years after the fact.
The risk is another what if - what if actually a small dose of some other radioactive substance actually causes a great deal of damage in the human body?

However it is safe to say that this risk should be quite remote. We should worry about a lot of other things that have a higher chance of impacting our health - like eating too much fried food, or drinking too much alcohol, or not exercising enough.

Brazil Notes

Problems
1. Too many red tapes
- 10x longer to file tax returns, 2600 hours
- high freight charges (due to poor road infrastructure)
- high taxes (resulting in Peter Pan firms, refusing to grow up)

2. High crime rates
3. Inefficient school system, less than 50% of children leave schools educated, teenagers do badly in international tests
4. Poor infrastructure and public services (medical)
5. Bad pension system

Resulting in
1. low investment (18% of GDP in fixed investment)
2. 20bn spent on high end shopping abroad by rich Brazilians (due to high taxes), in Miami

Agri
1. Huge exporter - in top 3 for most of the 15 traded crops
2. No tariffs or subsidies
3. Very large farms - 1300ha vs US at 70ha
4. Decades of innovation and knowhow accumulation
5. Climate, soil and fertiizers
- tilling of acidic soil (due to lime in soil) and lots of fertilizers resulted in very fertile land for various crops

Reasons for poor Infrastructure
1. Cumbersome environmental licensing
2. Need private co.s to invest in infra (too few roads, rails, silos, ports etc)

Pension
1. 3% of GDP on survivor pensions vs OECD's 1% (resulting in 30 yr old wife able to live on 70 year old dead husband's pension)
2. 11% of GDP in public pension, one of highest in the world
3. Education budget is high but cannot produce results - due to high pension for teachers, teachers can retire early, get good pension and burden the system, new teacher pay is very low