Personal Thoughts about Diabetes and Carbs.

[This is another non-investing related post]

I lost count of the number of times where my well-meaning advices went to deaf ears. Consider this: none of the advice I dispense, if accepted and practiced, would benefit me in any form.

Again, if you are a normal human, or you are suffering from type 2 and pre-diabetes. Please. Please listen to what I have to say.

As an Asian, the following is commonly utter when someone tells you that you are on a low-carb diet.

"You can't have so many meals without rice. You will die!"

"How would you have energy if you don't have rice (or any other forms of complex carbs, for the matter)"

If you are not suffering from type-1 diabetes, where the pancreas is no longer producing insulin, please give this blog post a serious thought. I am writing this as my mum register another incredible high glucose reading of 20. A normal human should have 4-6. My mum had ignored my advices since she was only type-2 diabetes. Now... it is too late.

Prolonged high glucose levels in your blood causes blindness, heart attack, stroke and kidney failure. Think of your blood as being overly thick, like a sugar syrup. Blood vessels are incredibly narrow in your retina, and your ability to recover from open wounds reduce dramatically when you have diabetes. That give rise to infections, which subsequently can lead to amputations.

High glucose levels in your blood is a result of ineffective or not enough insulin in your blood. Insulin, is a chemical produced by your body to allow glucose to be adsorbed into your muscle cells to produce energy.

So how does glucose get into your blood? Mainly through carbohydrates. That include rice (any kind, brown or white), noodle, bread, potatoes, yam, etc. Anything that you thought of as a rice subsitute during war years, is a carbohydrate.

Would you die if you do not have rice/bread for your meals? No.

Because otherwise, there is no chance the cavemen could have evolved into the modern man today. Through the miracles of agriculture, we are able to support perhaps a larger population than we are supposed to. But the modern man body is not meant to process so many carbs.

You make the conscious choice of ingesting carbs. The carbs go into your body and get process into glucose, which is transported around your body by your blood stream. Insulin helps adsorb the glucose into your cells to produce energy.

So if your glucose level is high, yes, it could be because your insulin is not effective, or not enough. But why blame the worker when the workload could be simply too high? Isn't it easier to stop ingesting so much carbohydrates?

Too much insulin promotes fat storage around your belly. I know this because I suffer from this. I have slim arms but a very large belly.

***

If you are struggling to pay for an expensive lifestyle, it is not your income that is the problem. it is your lifestyle.

The food that you put into your mouth, is the lifestyle. Your source of income, is the insulin. Your financial well being is your body. Why bet on your pancreas to produce those insulin, day in, day out?

***

I have no disillusions that a low-carb diet is definitely more expensive. But there are alternatives. You can have that cai-png without the rice.

You can have that teh-c without the sugar.

You can live without all that carbs.  

***

I have lost about 2kg and felt a little slimmer around the waist since I started on this again a week ago. There are significantly less uric acid crystals deposited on the sole of my feet. I know this because I went for my foot reflexology session yesterday, and I could tell the difference. It was night and day.

The food pyramid is a lie.

Personal thoughts about COVID-19 situation

[This post is not about investment]

COVID-19 and Vaccination

Every other day, I check on the number of COVID-19 cases detected in a few countries
Israel is one, whose number is unpleasantly high. However this is attribute to reluctance to continue masking. Israel is in the fore-front of all COVID-related measures-- from vaccination, opening up and its measures (passports), and now very unfortunately booster shots. 

The lesson to take away from Israel is that masking is not going to go away anytime soon for Singapore. The world should adsorb this free lesson-- vaccination is not going to be enough.

The second country that I pay attention to is Vietnam. It has low vaccination rates, a rather disappointing effort by both the administration and its citizen to control the disease. Yet the people are known to be very resilient, and I do like the country very much. I hope they will emerge from this terrible ordeal soon. It does look like, from the numbers, that things are not turning for the better.

I have just watched a video from Alabama regarding how COVID-19 is wrecking havoc on the healthcare system. Apparently, a doctor claimed that 95% of the patients in hospital are not vaccinated, and among them, the obese are not doing very well. I guess everyone should read beyond the perplexing headlines of increasing Israelis infections-- the prevailing science of masking and vaccination has not been disproved.  

Vaccination has its risks, but there are certainties and uncertainties. It is certain that for now, vaccination does work. It is also certain for now that there is no good way to cure someone of COVID-19. I think the choice is very clear.

When the infections are low, the motivation to get vaccinated is weak. Singapore does not enjoy any inherent advantage against Delta. We will get the same high numbers that every other nation experiences when we open up.

We have to accept that masking and vaccination is here to stay.

***

COVID-19 reveals a particularly tricky part of human nature-- rational self-interest. When it is clear that the objective of wearing a mask is not to protect the wearer, but those around him, the motivation to don one, drops due to discomfort. I am pretty sure that if masking protects the wearer, the attitudes out there will differ.

Academics argued that there are not enough data to support the need for booster shots, and that the economic losses are severe if the world in general does not get vaccinated together soon enough.. Yet wealthy nations decided to go ahead with booster shots, and the impoverished ones around them could not get enough single doses. Vietnam's rate is about 16% iirc. This is another sign of self interest in play.

Despite the clear advantage of democracy and two-tier system (in toppling regimes peacefully), many nations with such systems struggled to move quickly to control the situation, either through inertia or pure incompetency. 

There was a research about how optimists and pessismist cope in concentration camps, and it appear that the latter actually has a higher survival rate than the former. I think it might be wiser to just live day-by-day... and just do our best.

Aug 2021 Portfolio Update

SPDR Singapore Straits Times Index Fund (ES3): 10.75%
Hong Kong Tracker Fund (2800): -3.04%
SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY): 21.61% 

My little portfolio: 41.81%

Transactions Made:
-Wrote 43000HKD worth of ICBC put, 4.3 HKD strike, at a premium of 669.99 expiring 30-Aug. That represents a yield of 1.5% in just over one month.

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This represent my modest foray into the world of put option writing. I still have mixed feelings about selling puts. It has a touch of "I let God decide" moment... if I really feel that a stock is cheap enough, I should outrightly buy the stock and wait. Of course I could buy the call options but how far out (OTM) or in the money (ITM) should I purchase? 

Timing is impossible. I thought OKP would have recovered by now (it is by far my biggest position), but it was year after year of waiting. So I don't think I have much luck with call options.

If the stock do advance, I got nothing about a theoretically nice annualised yield about 12%. But if the banks were really as cheap as it is, the upside is at least 20%, without dividends considered.

So I still do not understand the lure of options. Perhaps it would make sense to add an OTM call option on top?

Not too sure if I should pursuit this.

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Other transactions include:

- a pretty dumb trade on Douyu, which was already divested at a slight loss.
It seems cheap on valuation but it isn't selling below cash per share. This is one of my moments of ill-discipline and I am not proud of it. Ironically Douyu sounds like trembling fish, which was exactly what I was (trembling) when I saw the decline in book value.

- small increase in OKP for my mum's portfolio
OKP is cheap. No other brilliant ideas, so I will continue to add a little considering the increasing cash hoard.

- purchase of Central China Management (special situation)

CCM saw a 33.94% decline since IPO on 30-May.

Controlling share holder and its CEO had bought shares around the $2 region. 
They have also announced results recently.

So back the envelope calculation looks like this:
it has 2.2B RMB of cash.

It has about 560m of liabilities, so net cash is about 1.6B RMB (est 1.92B HKD). Market capitalization is 6B HKD. So you are paying for about 4.08B HKD for this company.

Its net profit is about 362M RMB for the first six months, which is 434M HKD.

So it looks quite cheap. Spin-off have a natural sell-off effect during its initial periods of trading.

8.6 cents HKD of dividend representing a yield of 4.7% for 1.83 HKD per share as I am writing.

I think this company is quite cheap.

***

That Tencent vs Alibaba debate

I love how many Youtubers are out there advocating the stock and breaking down the business operations of both companies. Quite honestly, I could never have the patience to look at big conglomerates, and they spare me a lot of heart pain.

All I could offer is my opinion after looking at the numbers plug into my humble little excel worksheet.

BABA offered us 3 years of financial data, whereas Tencent had publish over 10 years of annual report data. I am just going to use the last ten years for the latter, and the following do not consider the recently announced results for both.

Firstly, both are tremendous growth companies based on their revenue. BABA's top line grew at 42.05% (Jesus Christ...) and TC at 36.95% (pretty fantastic considering it was over ten years).

Net margins for both companies are sufficient, although BABA experienced a slow decline from 24.5% to 20% for the last three years, and Tencent's 33.16% last year was good.

My favorite metric is looking at the net working capital and it seems like BABA has a growth of 20.3% over Tencent's 14.53%. BABA is also cheaper than Tencent. My calculations tells me that at today's price, Baba cash yield to a business owner is about 6.354%, whereas Tencent is at 4.7%.

Both are wonderful cash conversion companies. Tencent's CCC is a negative -172 days, versus BABA's -91.3 days.

I think the Ant Financial issue has somewhat died off. It could still be another piece of bad news for BABA. Otherwise, I do feel that Alibaba is cheaper. Alibaba has a greater cash to debt ratio for sure.

I love buying companies when they are in trouble, especially when the trouble isn't from management, but politicians. I am just not sure if I am comfortable buying big growth businesses at an OKAY price. Munger seems to believe it, and so do Bill Miller, Monish Prabai and Guy Spizer. But I am not that kind of investor (I just like to buy cheap stuff).

Stay the Course.

 

“your thinking is too linear, there are many ways to make money.”

“only noobs use book value”