Speculating on the GBP and the Euro ..

I wonder if it's a good idea to buy the GBP and the Euro from now since it looks as if these 2 currencies are going down with respect to the MYR. Some 2 years ago, I remember that the GBP and the Euro were worth RM 6.99 and RM 5.01 respectively. Now, they are worth RM 4.98 and RM 4.50. The GBP falls down faster than the Euro, although by my reckoning, it's the Euro that should fall the faster since at least 3 Euro countries are experiencing huge deficits that affect the 2 main Euro countries such as Germany and France. There are news that speculators are attacking the Euro or are they ?

In terms of the MYR, the GBP has gone down by nearly 30% and the Euro by 10%. If my forecast is any good, the GBP should go down even further, to as low as RM 4.50 and and the Euro to RM 4.00 by mid 2010 before they rise again. It's a good bet to start physically buying the GBP and the Euro and hoard them until they rise again.

Update 06/04/2010: While the GBP is hovering between RM 4.9 t0 RM 5.0, the Euro is facing a fall to the latest today which RM 4.32. The Euro's loss is 20 % while the GBP's is 30 % compared to their peak values.

Money first, your well being is not important ...

I still believe that the medical doctor's first priority is to make as much money out of a patient as possible and if the patient gets well then its well and good. If not, then the doctor will try his level best to prolong the treatment so that the patient becomes a source of income for him. This is true particularly if the doctor is a private doctor whose sources of income are entirely from the patients, unlike government doctors whose sources of income are from salaries.

If the doctor works in a private hospital such as SJMC, Tawakkal, and so on, he would prefer that, for a minor sickness, you be bedded in the hospital so that by the end of the day you are forced to cough out more money than you planned, in contrast to a government doctor who, for a major sickness, prefer that you stay out of the hospital and be treated as an outpatient. This is a sad situation in this country.

I have noticed that most of them are lazy and unskillful preferring to let the patient diagnose what ails the patient rather than diagnosing it himself. Then the doctor usually goes through the rigmarole of taking your blood pressure and pulse count, followed by using the stethoscope, and telling you what you already know before prescribing what medicine you should take - which are usually ineffective.

Another trick that a doctor in a private hospital likes to do is to help his comrade. Take for example that, say, one day you go to the hospital for a heart problem. After being with the heart doctor for awhile, he would recommend you to see his comrade, say a dietician, who, after some consultation, reckons that your heart problem is somehow linked to what you eat. Then after consulting with the dietician, the dietician would say that your problem is linked to a nervous disorder and he recommends that you see a neuro-specialist. The neuro-specialist noticed that you could be diabetic and he quickly suggests that you go and see a diabetes specialist. By the end of the day, you wind up consulting 4 specialists and pay hefty consultation fees. Each doctor will have his own lab tests and prescriptions and before the day is out, you left the hospital paying a lot of money when your real intent was to consult the heart doctor.

I should have used cards ...

As a corollary to what I previously posted, whenever I am overseas, my expenses are usually equally borne by my credit card and the country's local currency. This is because, exchange rates in cash are always favourable than when I used the cards. I notice this state of affairs has been existing since the 1990s. Because of this, for the recent trip to London and Paris, I was determined to use cash for all my expenses in GBP or Euro where applicable and to avoid paying for my expenses via credit cards unless absolutely necessary.

But not lately however. After I got back home after my very recent trip to London and Paris, I was pleasantly surprised to note that, for the few items that I purchased through the credit card and for part of the hotel expenses mistakenly paid via credit card, the exchange rates were favourable to me. As and example, at home my Ringgit was exchanged at RM 5.50 to the GBP, but for some items purchased in London, the rate was RM 5.33 to the GBP. The difference was considerable particularly when I expected that when using the card, the exchange rate tended to be marked-up above RM 5.50 by the card's banker.

Had I known this, I should have used the cards to pay for my expenses in London and Paris.

[Among the money changers around, the ones that offer the best rates are located in the Mid Valley area. Not only that, the spread between the Buy and Sell is small compared to those from the money changers in Subang Jaya, Damansara and KL].

At last , the Ringgit has improved ...

I have been condemning the Ringgit for some time now because it seems to me that this Malaysian currency has, for a very long time, been weakening against most major currencies. But since sometime from 2009, I have seen it improving against the GBP and the Euro. Why it matters to me is that I am planning to visit England and possibly Europe again in the summer after being there in February 2010. A strong Ringgit vis-a-vis the GBP and Euro means that my money can go a little bit farther than in 2007 when I was in Europe and England. Then, it cost me RM 6.99 to buy one pound and RM 5.01 to buy one Euro.

Today, the scenario has changed. It takes RM 5.01 to buy one GBP and RM 4.55 to buy one Euro. There's a further likelyhood that it cost me much less for one GBP and one Euro in the coming months. News has it that the troubles in England, economic and political, have much to do with the weakening of the GBP against the USD (and by extension, the MYR since its pegged to the USD). As for the Euro, the cause is due to unmanageable debts of Greece, Portugal and Spain (all Euro countries) that run in the billions of Euro. To their misfortunes, these profligate countries cannot get anyone to bail them out.

An affair to remember ...

I was in London for some two weeks on a holiday. It wasn't much of a holiday for me as for my wife and grandson who had never been to London. Why I chose the month of February, the peak of the winter season in Europe, was because my grandson had about three weeks left on his college holidays and that somehow he had to go somewhere, preferably England, for his holidays. If there had been no such restriction, I would certainly go to London in the summer when everything would be pleasantly warm.

I didn't mind the cold so much as the rain that came in little unending drops and the cold wind that came in gusts when turning a corner. It had been 1-4 degree C throughout the two weeks. Apart from little fluffs floating in Camden town, I did not see any snow at all, though my grandson was lucky enough to see it in Oxford Street when he was out walking with his grandma.

But this is not the subject of my title. Rather, it's about John Terry's "affair" that was splashed in the London tabloids such as the the Star, the Sun, the Evening Standard and many more. Describing the close relationship between John Terry and the ex-girlfriend of Wayne Bridge an affair was stretching a bit too far. By my book, it's not an affair at all since the girl wasn't married to Bridge and she was more at fault by spreading her legs to Terry who was simply exercising his privilege as any man would when a beautiful girl open herself up for a bit of fun. Given the same opportunity, even the Archbishop of Canterbury would drop his frock to screw Bridge's girlfriend.

And to think that this little incident had indirectly involved Capello, England fans, and could affect England's chance of winning the World Cup !