What is sustainable investing and how is it different from ethical or socially responsible investing? -- What asset classes are covered by sustainable investing? -- What are some of the challenges and opportunities facing sustainable investing?

When reading financial statements from companies, it is important to look out for clever accounting and manipulation. While not all manipulation can be detected by looking at Income and Balance sheet, many manipulations can be detected through the trained eye. For this short article, I will mention about one "clever" accounting technique call the Phantom Profit through the use of LIFO Liquidation. The article can be read HERE (login required, for clients only).

Today, TM Asia Life launch a new product called TM Peace of Mind (CancerCare). The plan offers to pay out on diagnosis of an "early stage" cancer. The product summaries for male and female can be downloaded HERE and HERE respectively. Existing TM Asia Life customers can get 5% discount on the premium (throughout the premium term) and 10% of if purchase of the CancerCare is done concurrently with another TM Asia Life series policy. In my preliminary reading, I got a shock to notice that female pay 45% more than male! This is my commentary on this new product (login required, clients only): Read More

Topics for June 2009 available at http://www.wilfredling.com/clients as follows:

30-Jun-09 [Investments] My Brief Market Commentary June 2009
28-Jun-09 [Econs] Analysis of S'pore's GDP
28-Jun-09 [FSA] Capitalize Expenditure
27-Jun-09 [Investments] SGS available at ATM from 1 July 09!
25-Jun-09 [Investments] Terminations of Unit Trusts
25-Jun-09 [Insurance] No money no talk
24-Jun-09 [Insurance] Buy Term invest the Rest
23-Jun-09 [Investments] Structured products best bet for income, say IFAs
22-Jun-09 [Investments] Create Your Own Structured Deposit
22-Jun-09 [Investments] Structured Deposits are here again
22-Jun-09 [Insurance] Insurance Adviser selling free gifts
20-Jun-09 [Investments] Exotic Investments II
19-Jun-09 [Investments] Sources of profit for equities
18-Jun-09 [Investments] Investors Are Getting Killed In ETFs
17-Jun-09 [Investments] Exotic Investments
16-Jun-09 [Insurance] Fail to Declare Hypertension
14-Jun-09 [FSA] Adjustment from LIFO to FIFO
12-Jun-09 [Investments] Wealth Accumulation – isolation or totality?
9-Jun-09 [Insurance] Do not underestimate Pre-Existing Conditions
7-Jun-09 [Tax] Tax savings on double taxation on dividends on foreign investments
5-Jun-09 [Investments] Different time zone in ETFs
4-Jun-09 [Investments] Lesson learnt on Temasek's investment in Barclay
2-Jun-09 [Investments] Hot Funds Portfolio
1-Jun-09 [Insurance] "DIY Insurance" - safe or not?

In my field of work, I am very convinced that financial education is the only solution for anyone to gain financial independence. Despite clients engaging my services, the greatest handicap that I face is that the professional relationship I have with them is only as good as the “weakest” link in terms of financial education. This means that if my knowledge or competency in a particular subject is weak, I will do a bad job. It also means that if the clients’ knowledge and understanding is weak, I will also do a bad job as clients ultimately make their own decisions and thus their decisions are significantly influenced by their own knowledge and understanding. I shall not quote specific examples as it can be a sensitive issue. 

Hi all,  I was asked by a few persons why the bogging seems to have stopped. This is because I am making my new blog entries available for all fee-paying clients only. These are the reasons why:

Just to let everybody know that the magazine I wrote regularly has an online version. My articles can be downloaded from the online version by clicking this  HERE

If you are a parent and is concerned about the homosexuality being promoted in the school syllabus, you may want to take a look at this petition: HERE.

One month ago, I received a telephone call asking me to subscribe to their advertising services. They claimed that their portal has huge visitor hits and they also can help me place advertisements on Google and Yahoo. They did not realize that I am very familiar with internet advertisement and marketing. I asked them how much it cost – and they told me that for $100 per month, my advertisement will appear at the top for Google and Yahoo and on their own website. OK, I asked the lady so how the changing is like – is it based on cost per click (CPC) or cost per impression (CPI) ? She did not seem to understand me and said that their charges are flat and I get "unlimited" advertisement. Immediately I knew she was trying to deceive me. I scolded her for misrepresentation and not being transparent. It cannot be "unlimited" advertisement because there will be other advertisers. It is impossible for all advertisers’ advertisements to appear on the "top" of Google and Yahoo search simultaneously. Some kind of rotation is required. I needed to know how this done. In other words, I needed to know exactly what am I purchasing. So far, online advertisements costing are based on CPC and CPI. I’ve tried both before and I have been using Google’s Adwords for more than 1 year already. The lady never heard of Adword. What kind of salesperson this is? Misrepresentation and total ignorance about their industry’s practice. She did not even know what she was selling!

This is the same way many financial advisers sell their products. They don’t know what they are selling and the worse of all – their clients do not know what they are buying.