A very bullish chart

Agree? Hit $1.31 already!!!

UOB KAYHIAN

Slowly but steady. Its price is reaching 52-week high. I like its pattern.

CPH 4th review

Despite good results and dividends, its price is dropping...

China Paper third visit

Its price has recovered since it announced revenue and net profit jump, and a dividend of RMB 0.111. Better than I anticipated.

China Paper Holdings Revisit

With recent relatively high trading volume, many investors are still interested in this counter. The price has bounced back from as low as 30 cents. The most anticipated result is due by 1st Mar. Will it announce a dividend of 0.1 RMB?

pay-per-click ads revisit

After my previous post The Advertisements That I have tried, I tried some more ads companies. Here is the update:

(1) BidVertiser has closed my account. Reason: invalid clicks. Frankly speaking, if it feels clicks/impressions rate is too high, or constantly clicks each day, it will think you are fraud.

(2) CrispAds only counts the clicks from several countries, excluding Singapore. So does BannerBoxes / RevenuePILOT.

(3) AdBrite has a setting which allows you to display general advertisements, even gambling and adult contents.

(4) After trying so many companies, I feel it is not a good channel to earn money online. With so few viewers and traffic of your blog, how could you think your blog worth a lot? Each valid click worths 3 to 7 cents only. I think UOB online rewards is even better than this "online making money". If you did an online transaction using UOB internet banking, you get points worth 25 singapore cents.

China Paper Holdings

In favour factors:
(1) Steady growth: FY05 Q1 gross margin: 25.09%, EPS 6.86 fen RMB. Q2: 25.66% and 8.66 fen. Q3: 29.97% and 11 fen. Q4 will be reported by 1st Mar. 06.
(2) Increased capacity: announcement on 3rd Jan. 06. Output increased by 12.5% or 20,000 tonnes.

Uncertain factors:
(1) Major shareholder Rise Business Inc. was exiting.
(2) Changed auditors during FY05.

An email from BidVertiser

We are sorry to inform you that due to a violation of our Terms of Service, we have terminated your account. Reason for termination: Invalid clicks generated by any of the following actions:

1. Clicks generated by the website owner. Clicking on the BidVertiser ads on your own site, for any reason, is strictly prohibited.

2. Asking or encouraging others to click on the BidVertiser ads. Asking or encouraging others to click on the ads for any reason, either directly or indirectly, is strictly prohibited. Using sentences such as "click the ads to support us", "visit our sponsors" or "please click the ads" will lead to account termination.

3. Displaying the BidVertiser ads in an unrequested pop-up, pop-under
or third-party's frame. Pages showing the BidVertiser ads may never be loaded in an unrequested pop-up, pop-under, floating HTML item or as an inner frame of a third party. Promoting your website or purchasing traffic from clicks-exchange networks is strictly prohibited.

4. Displaying the BidVertiser ads on sites that contain prohibited content. The BidVertiser ads may not be displayed alongside any type of content prohibited by our program policies, such as adult or mature content, or illegal drugs content.

5. Generating automated scripts or any other method solely meant to generate clicks on the BidVertiser ads.

We would kindly ask you to remove any BidVertiser HTML code from your website ASAP.

Adsense Exchange?

All pay per click agents can disconnect a publisher’s account if it feels frauds. This includes not only self-clicking. Now all over the world there is a certain "Adsense Exchange" where you essentially pay and exchange members rotate clicking each others ads. Many people are induced and actually go and join. While you may see some immediate increases in your AdSense dollars, Google will ban your account sooner or later. This is very important, you will get banned. It may take a day, a few weeks, a few months but you'll get banned. No problem.

If you are truly looking to earn an income with Google Adsense, there is no quick route. You must have quality developed sites with fresh content being added. You must tweak your sites and make them somewhat unique! You must NOT click your own ads! You simply do these things and you will make money from Google AdSense.

The Advertisements That I have tried

As in the previous blog, I listed so many companies which provide pay-per-click advertisement. So far I have tested five of them. Here is the result:

Tested but removed: (1) Google adsense. It is very fast and convenient. However, due to its popularity, you see same advertisements everywhere. I removed it. (2) AdBrite. It doesn't provide general advertisements on your site. Only interested advertisers indicate to place ads on your site, and then you can make money. So my account was zero for more than two weeks. (3) AllFeeds. This one is a surprise. All the ads don't work. Clicking on them will transfer to allfeeds homepage.

Currently running: (1) BidVertiser. (2) Clicksor. I will elaborate them later.

P.S. Amended at 11 AM. Clicksor often times out to fetch data. I decide to remove it too. But I applied for RevenuePILOT. They will reply me in 1 or 2 business days. :)

P.S. Added at 2PM 16 Feb 06. RevenuePILOT only accepts clicks from UK/ US/ Canada/ Australia. I have to remove it as well.

P.S. Added at 9AM 17 Feb 06. Contextweb.com rejected my application to open an account, citing that they don't provide ads situated for my category. They will notify me when they start the category in the future.

Pay-Per-Click Advertisement

In current tide of second generation of internet, many of us create our own blog sites. After you have created your website, and you are getting some visitors. So next step you want to earn some revenue. Currently there are many companies out there that will provide you advertisements to display on your site.

You receive money (pay) per click (PPC) or a percentage of any sales that your lead makes. Google AdSense is currently the main player in the Pay-Per-Click advertising field. Nowadays you often see "Ads by gooooogle" when you are surfing. Google's high quality network infrastructure enables it able to accept big number of websites. But it has a drawback. Just imagining many sites are displaying same advertisements, who will click the ones on your site?

Some companies provide advertisements based on the content of your site, or contextual. While some claim to display the one who bids at highest price.

For your reference, here is a list famous companies who offer Pay-Per-Click:
7Search / Adhearus / Adsense / AdSonar / AffiliateSensor / AllFeeds / AzoogleAds / BidClix / Bidvertiser / BrightAds / Chitika /Clicksor / Context Web / FastClick / Revenue Pilot / TargetPoint / Yahoo.

Publishers and Advertisers

Thanks to the booming blogs, which some people call the second generation of internet, many of us become bloggers, or publishers. Where publishers exist is where advertisers do. Although a blog provides little chance of boosting sales, people won't waste it. Thus many advertisement agents are born. They are bridges to advertisers and publishers. They collect money from advertisers and share it with publishers. The money is based on eyeballs, i.e. impressions or clicks.

Due to the nature of personal blogs, the audience of personal blogs, normal newspaper advertisements could not find it is worth advertising on them. But many online book-selling stores are different. They sell books about how to make money online. For example, the book title could be I make online weekly money of $3,000 without doing anything. Or Secrets of Google Adsense. I believe many blogger wish to earn this free money too.

It is not surprised that many authors live upon these kinds of books. And even an author claims that 20% of online clicks are fraudulent. He can tell them from legislated clicks. Advertisers can refer to him to find out truth. Of course advertisers must pay for it. Blogs created a lot of business in deed.

Making money is not easy

Although your account balance may accrue by some clicks, Google people are very intelligent to detect invalid ones. They don't disclose how they found that. They have therefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that this step was taken in an effort to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

A publisher's site may not have invalid clicks on any ad(s), including but not limited to clicks generated by:

(1) a publisher on his own web pages; (2) a publisher encouraging others to click on his ads (3) automated clicking programs or any other deceptive software (4) a publisher altering any portion of the ad code or changing the layout, behavior, targeting, or delivery of ads for any reason.

In conclusion, your web pages must have the ability to promote advertisers' interest. Only in this way can you get paid. NOT EASY.

Where are you going, Straits Times Index?

I want to ask this question too, because I am not sure about it too. Some favorable factors are:
(1) Singapore will hold its general election soon. The government will paint a rosy picture as usual. (2) Local economy speeds up since 4Q last year. Government has lifted the GDP growth prediction. (3) Regional economy entities are doing well. Japan finished decade-long recession. China won't see retreat until Olympic year 2008.

But we must keep in mind that negative factors are not faded. These are: (1) High record crude oil price, which may reach us$100 per barrel. (2) US economy halts because of high interest rate. (3) Potential pandemic of bird flu.

What can you draw from above? I only know that in the next three month, the market mood is positive.
Disclaimer: This website doesn't recommend you buy anything.

Year of the Dog

The coming year is the DOG in Chinese zodiac. Dog has the long history of being with human. Its most admirable character is loyalty. Its bark sounds like "wang...wang...", which means flourishing in Mandarin. I hope the stock market will also thrive and we all have a good year ahead.

A year has passed. At the very beginning of brand new year, I wish I could overcome some problems in investing. One typical problem is that I could not hold the good stock for enough long time to enjoy the big price jump. I often feel hands itchy when it shows some paper profit and have the impulse to sell it.

Here I have some prescription to share with you.
(1) Leave the market for some period. Don't be so over-analyzed. (2) Do you find another more promising share? If not, better not sell current holdings. (3) Join some online forums to discuss with fellows.

Remember: Big profit comes from holding, not trading.
Disclaimer:This site is not an inducement of investment.

Share Buyback exercise

Sometimes a company or a director of that company buys into shares of itself. What does this mean?

If the company has a lot of cash reserve yet not find an investment opportunity, it may declare a special dividend. Or indirectly, it buys its share from open market. It means its shares are the best investment at that time. Through buyback, the floating number of shares decreases. So the earning per share would go up, making its share more attractive. For example, local banks such as OCBC and UOB are both in such share buyback exercise.

Sometimes a director might buy his company's share in open market. I.e. a director of Lasseters kept buying its shares during last several months. In this case, he signals to public that he is confident about the future of the company.

Last situation is actually not buy back. However, I like it most. It is an investment fund that keeps buying a company. If you check last year announcements about Eu Yan Sang, you would find that before its share price jumped, Aberdeen Asset Management Asia Ltd made lots of purchases. If someone notices such situation, do drop me an email.

Disclaim: This website is not an inducement of investment.

Brokers in SGX market

From SARS year 2003 to end of 2005, the share price of Singapore Exchange Ltd almost tripled to $3.10. But for the two main broker firms in SGX, Kim Eng and UOB-Kay Hian, their prices hover only a little bit above history. See the left picture. It is from SGX website.

With SGX posted a historical 2Q result (quarter ending 31/12/05), I guess stockbrokers should follow its steps. UOB-KH will post its financial year report soon. We can expect it will announce at least a final 7 cents dividend. So its price target of $1.25 is almost guaranteed.

Kim Eng has announced a "dividend policy" last Nov. when it issued 3Q result. It wrote: The Directors believe that through several years of solid earnings and prudent strategic management of its assets, the Company has been able to fortify its balance sheet so that it can sustain all current business activities, comfortably manage a significant upturn in such business activities while having the flexibility to pursue expansion should the right strategic opportunities arise.

It is so optimistic. A generous dividend is almost seen.

More Facts about Adsense

After you set up a blog, and signed in Google Adsense, your journey to making money started. You keep on blogging and blogging, hoping more people will visit your site and at the same time, Google will pay you more. However, do you know where your income comes from? If you understand more about Adsense, you may generate your revenue more quickly.

Google puts ads on your site, and share the ad income with you. That is where your money comes from. So Google must display the ads which are relevant to your site content. By this way, people who view your blog are also likely to click the ads. Google uses machine algorithm to determine what your blogs are talking about. Please note it is a machine. So the keywords in your content are very important. They help Adsense to choose ads. You can imagine some keywords likely to worth more.

Try to write different type of blog. If you are interested only in FOREX, only those ads about FOREX would get displayed. Frankly speaking, this kind of sites is not suitable for Adsense. Change your blog settings to archive each passage. So every blog will signal to Adsense to display different ads. New ads tend to give you more money because they find new opportunities in your site.

It is no wonder that a lot of people make money by writing books on Adsense. Simply by sharing their experience on Adsense, they earn much money.

Exchange Traded Fund

Many big companies died throughout the history. While the index like Dow Jones is still there, like a man still in his young age. That's the charm of a fund that tracks the index. An index tracking fund gives you confident that it is safe while it has potential to appreciate over years.

Here in Singapore we have only one "Exchange Traded Fund" that tracks STI. The fund buys in STI component stocks in appropriate weight. It makes best effort to track the STI. In my opinion, it outperformed the STI since its incubation in 2002. For example, the STI on 13/01/06 was 2405 while the Net Value per unit of STI-ETF was $24.87.

The exchange traded fund has another pro than normal fund: its liquidity. It can be traded on any day that SGX opens for share trading. Normal fund will be redeemable only twice per month.

Sense of Adsense

Google Adsense has a good reason to call itself "sense", because it is targeting the advertisement basing on the hosting page content. If your page is talking about foreign exchange, it then chooses the FX ads to display on your page. Similarly, if your new post talks about share market, the ads will be stocks.

I found a truth: after I wrote a new post on my blog, the Adsense trended to accumulate more points to my Adsense account. I guess it is because that each new post causes Adsense to choose new ads to display on my page. The new ads usually worth more. By this mechanism, bloggers are encouraged to post more often.

Though it is enough good, I feel the Google Adsense is lacking presense to companies outside U.S. The ads almost come from U.S. companies. So they are less attractive to the users of Asian countries. The ads get less clicks.

Unit share market of SGX

Everybody knows that there is a unit-share market in SGX, where you can buy and sell in numbers of 1 share. The board market requires in lots of 1000 shares otherwise indicated. However, most brokers need you call them to place orders in unit-share market. These offline orders' minimal commission is $30.

Here I wish to tell you there is an online trading system provided by POEMS. You can place orders in unit-share market by yourself. And the minimal charge is only $10!

For those small investors who want to INVEST in blue chips instead of TRADE on blue chip warrants, this trading tool is the best one.

Last suggestion: don't trade those penny stocks on unit-share market. Those penny stocks lack enough liquidity. Yesterday I sold NeraTel at 42 cents, while it is trading at 48 cents on broad market.