Almost Like Falling in Love

If you have seen the Broadway play, "Brigadoon" or its film version, you will remember the haunting melody of the song "Almost Like Falling in Love."

Here is the rendition of that song by the legendary Nat King Cole.

Enjoy.

TASCO-Growing Demand for the stock

TASCO is a logistics enterprise. Incorporated in 1974, it was listed on the Man Board of Bursa KL in December 2007. It is a subsidiary of Nippon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, a global Fortune 500 company. TASco has more than 30 branches in Malaysia and employs about 1,000 people. Its services covers air, sea and land transportation. It serves as a one stop logistics centre to handle both domestic and international shipments for the customers.

Let us look at some of its published indices.

Revenue for TASCO has been impressive except for small dips in 2003,2005,2007 and 2009.

Similarly, PATAMI slid in the years 2003,2004,2007 and 2009, with the interleaving years posting good profits particularly 2010.

I am not too sure what numbers TASCO has for 2011 until the AGM in June.In fact, we can say that TASCO's performance could be the early warning system of the international economy and also the domestic economy, for better or worse.

For now, the price of the stock is getting some support.

Today, it ended up another 6 sen to RM1.84 on an improving volume of 314,000 shares traded.

Just Fancy That!

The storm that enveloped Curtin University after it awarded a Doctorate to the wife of the Prime Minister of Malaysia has taken an interesting turn.

The University has now suspended posting on is Facebook to avoid further untoward comments.

What I found laughable in an entry on an internet paper was this comment about awarding a doctorate to.....

This is great! Thank you for tickling my funnybone!

TASCO-Another Dividend Sanctuary

Assuming you are a fundamentalist; and you are looking for some good dividends with some upside in capital gains,TASCO can be an even bet.

Let us look at the trend of the share prices of this Japanese-based logistic company for the last year or so.

The lowest price was in the mid RM1.30's. It moved steadily up towards the RM1.40s and RM1.50s before spiking up 14 sen to RM1.60 on 31 March 2011 on a huge volume of 1.147 million shares. Subsequently, it slid back in the RM1.40-RM 1.50 level in June and July.

In August, there was again a mini spike raising the price to RM1.73. Then, it went south. The nadir price of RM1.36 was reached in September. By November,buying interest came back once more with the price inching back to the RM1.60 level.

In January 2012,prices steadied and by early February began moving upwards again touching the RM1.70-RM1.75 level by 15 February.

Buying volume has been steady and there seems to be no rush to sell as sellers sell into strength.

Let us look at the price movement.

The last dividend paid was an effective 8%. At the current price of RM1.73, you would need to pay RM1,730 for one lot of this share.So, the nominal return is RM80.00 annually. The same amount of return at a bank savings rate at 0.2 is only RM3.46. The differential return of RM80.00 is 23 times more than what you get from a savings account return.

Tasco paid a dividend of an effective 6.25% in 2009.

Tasco closed up 5 sen to a new high of RM1.78 this evening. Volume was fair at 1,460 lots of 100 units.

We will look at the potential and vagaries of this company in another post.

A Lovely Number from the Movie,"The Jilted"

Maybe when you were a young man, you tend to feel more emotional. We adore beauty especially in actresses. And so was it when I first saw beautiful Tan Lan Hua starring in her first movie role in that tear-jerker," The Jilted".

I saw the show one evening at the Capitol Theatre in Malacca.I can bet my bottom ringgit, no one came out of the cinema without shedding tears. It was really sad, very sad. Even my hanky was soaking wet!

I remembered the movie fondly, particularly some of the songs.

This is a clip of the romantic lovers in a beautiful song setting before tragedy struck in the movie.

The song is called "I'm By Your Side".

Lovely number.

Odd Lot Trading: The Buyer's Trap

I never felt cowered or even cheated when I first faced this situation.

I was then trading odd-lots in DRB-Hicom through my remisier. My remisier contacted me shortly after I gave the order to buy. She told me only one unit of the share was sold to me out of the number of shares I ordered. This put me into a fix as what could I do with one share. I needed more. So, I had no choice but to take the seller at his price which was at least 50 sen higher. It did not really have much effect in the absolute sense to me as I was buying only a small number of units.

I am now on my own doing e-trading; keying in my own quotes. As such, I could see the way the stock has been traded on this odd-lot counter with the seller having the upper hand to manipulate the price of the share.

When the market opened,I put in a competitive bid for BIMB. My bid was RM2.17 while the seller's bid was RM2.83. The next time I looked at my trade pending status,I saw only one share was matched. This went on until the market break off for lunch.If I do not buy any more shares of this counter; I will be saddled with RM28 as brokerage charge, RM1 for stamp duty and a couple of sens for clearing fees. This will make this one share,one of the most expensive to date.

I had to get out of this trap. So, I placed a small number of units to be priced at RM2.83-the seller's price. To my consternation,some seller gave their shares to me at RM2.50. That saved me some money- about 30 sen more for each unit.

Then, I took a buy position ahead of the bargain-hunting herd at RM2.19. Again this seller gave me one unit at RM2.19; hoping I will buy all that I wanted at RM2.83.

For me, I thought that he will give in to me at the dying minutes of the day if he is desperate to unload, as he would have to pay high brokerage for such a small trade if he didn't. Strangely, he did not budge. Apparently,if he had sold the same counter on the main board, he need not pay much brokerage when he trades additionally on the odd-lot counter for the same share. That must be the explanation for his reluctance to surrender to the buyer's price.

For me, my quick thinking has saved the day and I did not have to pay a higher price for the shares bought. This was my sense of consolation.

So, if you are trading on the odd lot counter, beware of this trap that sellers set up to bait you to buy their shares at their bidding prices!

Cash Call from RCE

Will it be Worth Buying the RCPS?

Looks like this could be a year of cash calls.

Eye-balling many unaudited results announced lately, most seems to be on the downslide in terms of profits.

This year, we have already been informed that BJFoods is asking for additional capital due possibly to their foray into Indonesia and the need for more operating capital for running the newly acquired Starbucks franchise.

So, what is RCE asking for?

There is a bonus issue of 1:2 as well as an issue of redeemable convertible non-cumulative preference shares (RCPS) of 10 sen each, on the basis of two RCPS for every five shares held after the proposed bonus issue.

The exercise is undertaken to repay bank borrowings, working capital-related purposes and to reward its shareholders.

Total gross proceeds from the RCPS rights from the exercise is estimated to be RM178.39mil to RM182.10mil dependent on the going price of RCE after the bonus issue.

The current price of RCE is 54 sen. With the bonus issue, the possible price of each RCE share will be about 32 to 33 sen ex-all.