Sunday, March 20, 2011

Prediction for Libya

e Unfortunately the world shows signs of chaos in the 1st quarter of 2011.  Food price is uprising, Japan met major disasters, and middle east is in the process of major change.

Civil war in Libya turns to international intervention this weekend.  For most things in this world, things never turns out to be what people expected or feared.  This is my pessimistic prediction to what is going to happen in Libya in the next 3 months.

1. Gadhafi will try to negotiate, even trying to split the country with the rebels.  But West, especially France will not agree, and they will simply try to help the rebels to get rid of Gadhafi.

2. Gadhafi’s allies and rebels will keep fighting on the ground, with no side can achieve decisive win.

3. There will be some minor lose of western jets, but they will control the air.

4. West will decide to put ground troops in Libya, probably lead by France again, most likely land from the sea to take over all the port cities, likely in May. 

5. Gadhafi will try guerilla war style in the cities if western ground troops try to take over them, and effect will be devastation to the cities and infrastructure.

6. More than 1000 civilians will die and many more will suffer.  In the short term for the next 3 months at least, the intervention will cause more damage to civilians than good.

7. Oil production and output will likely turn into complete stoppage in Gadhafi’s control area.  While rebels controlled oil production will begin to function again, and begin to sell to Europe again, likely happen before May. 

8. In June, Gadhafi’s force looks like will face major defeat, but some thing will happen in this chaotic middle east that might turn to his advantage.  Maybe another civil war inside the region? Just Murphy’s law, everything that can go wrong will go wrong.

Anyway, I’ll pray to all of the people who suffers and hopefully it will turn peace after 3 months.

Just saw the news, Gadhafi will cease file, let’s see what France is going to do and what rebel is going to do…



Update on 8/21/2011:
Looks like Rebel win after 5 months... Finally some good news.

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Pay by phone system for Vancouver Parking

Pay by phone system that can be used in Vancouver.  I don’t think this works with private parking lot though, so be careful.

http://vancouver.ca/engsvcs/parking/paybyphone.htm

http://www.verrus.com/verrus/index.aspx

 

Some Vancouver’s parking ticket rules and news:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/11/04/bc-vancouver-parking-tickets-adjudicators.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2010/01/18/bc-paybyphoneglitch.html

 

And an extra link: Toronto parking ticket cancellation guide:

http://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2010/cc/bgrd/backgroundfile-31301.pdf

A free Tax reporting software in Canada

I've been using studio tax from http://www.studiotax.com/ to report Canadian tax annually for 3 years now. It works and pretty simple to use from my point of view. Certainly it still have room to improve, such as the following:
1. adding right click menu for easier access
2. remember my investment lost in the past year and carry it over year by year when importing
3. having investment data input wizard.
4. Easier inputing for income in foreign country

I hope they can see this blog some day and make improvement. As I still love to use their software.

Saturday, March 5, 2011

How to get your kindle 3 to show Chinese characters natively Kindle3显示中文乱码问题

For simplified Chinese, type the following:
1. ;debugOn
2. ~changeLocale zh-CN
restart kindle (menu-setting, menu-restart)
3. ;debugOff

For Traditional chinese, type the following:
1. ;debugOn
2. ~changeLocale zh-TW
restart kindle (menu-setting, menu-restart)
3. ;debugOff

Friday, March 4, 2011

I finally did a wrong call trying to time the market. Oh, well

 

For the last few days, I tried to time the market by trading ETF almost daily.  And Finally I made a mistake on 03/02/2011… :(  And that’s a mistake I can prevent if I follow my own trend, oh, well…

This is what I did:

 

Assume Cash before Action Symbol Name vol unit price trading cost Plus/Minus Assume Cash after
22-Feb 6000 buy TYP DIREXION DLY TECH BEAR 3X 300 19.688 29 -5935.55 64.45
24-Feb 64.45 sell TYP DIREXION DLY TECH BEAR 3X 300 20.62 29 6157.03 6221.48
24-Feb 6221.48 buy TYH DIREXION DLY TECH BULL 3X 100 50.74 29 -5103 1118.48
25-Feb 1118.48 sell TYH DIREXION DLY TECH BEAR 3X 100 52.811 29 5252.04 6370.52
28-Feb 6370.52 buy TYP DIREXION DLY TECH BEAR 3X 300 19.909 29 -6001.7 368.82
1-Mar 368.82 sell TYP DIREXION DLY TECH BEAR 3X 300 20.84 29 6223.02 6591.84
2-Mar 6591.84 buy EDZ DIREXION E/M BEAR 3X-NEW 300 21.789 29 -6565.7 26.14
<-- bad!!! Market price on 3/4 8:30am: 20.67, lost close to 400 dollars here