• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

TraderGav.com

Gav's trading blog - Perseverance, Consistency, Confidence

  • Home
  • Start Here
    • Back to Basics of Trading
    • Resource For Traders – The Best Tools for Traders
    • Learn Trading Articles
    • Sierra Chart Resource
  • Blog
    • Blog Posts
    • Other learning resource
    • Dummy Collection
    • Harmonic setups
  • About Me

Life

Charities feel the Subprime pain

by Gav Leave a Comment

MORE than 100 local councils, charities, churches, hospitals and nursing homes across Australia are sitting on a $2 billion black hole after buying subprime investments structured by Wall Street banks during the bull market but which are now potentially worthless.

A document leaked to BusinessDay revealed that Lehman Brothers is managing tens of millions of dollars in funds for Victoria’s community, education and health sectors, much of it invested in high-risk financial instruments now potentially worthless.
……
BusinessDay has identified more than 150 government, private and charitable institutions that bought complex financial instruments such as collateralised debt obligations (CDOs). There have been few buyers for CDOs and similar structured finance products since the subprime meltdown this time last year that sent global financial markets into a tailspin.

The $2 billion in investments identified by BusinessDay pertains only to funds under Lehman Brothers management. Lehman acquired boutique local bank Grange Securities two years ago and Grange had been the biggest player in the CDO market, having undertaken a strategy of selling the product to local government, charity and semi-government agencies.

As Lehman was acting as “agent” to most of its council and charitable clients, it not only sold the products, it also managed them for clients, and in some cases “churned” the CDO portfolios by 200%, 300% and 500%.

In other words, the bank bought and sold the products between its clients and earned commissions on the sales, according to sources close to the councils.

Full article/crap here

Interesting game played by Lehman, but that’s not the point. Sorry, but pardon me, communities, charities invested in high-risk financial instruments?  High-risk instrument, pardon me? Charities?

Filed Under: Life, news Tagged With: Links, news

What’s wrong with these people? ‘Westerners’

by Gav Leave a Comment

I don’t normally post non-trading stuff here. But recent reports , particularly in Australian medias are just so annoying. Full of craps.

More ceremony fakes unearthed

Stephen Hutcheon | August 15, 2008 – 12:08PM

The Olympic opening ceremony featured faked fireworks, a fake singer who lip synced to another girl’s voice and now it appears that the children appearing in costumes representing China’s 55 minority groups were also fakes.

Full bullshit here

The only fact  is, western medias, yes, Australian, you are one of them, trying their extremely best to dig everything, anything bad, negative about China, about Beijing Olympics.

The fact is, China presents one of the greatest opening ceremony ever and great games, great people to the world. That’s the whole point. Look at the opening ceremony, the effort, the hard work, and the performance, it is almost second to nothing. I’ve almost forgotten about other Olympics, Atlanta? Sydney? how about you? Oh Yes, I still love the Barcelona opening, that’s awesome.

Man, you are missing the point, you are blind.

I am sorry, but Trader Gav feels really pissed by these reports.

Filed Under: Life, Links, news Tagged With: Links, news

Bad coffee exits

by Gav 5 Comments

Starbucks pulled out from Australia by closing 61 of 84 stores.

In the case of one American coffee giant, globalisation deserved to fail. Starbucks makes really bad coffee.

Starbucks is almost entirely pulling out of Australia — closing 61 of its 84 stores. In Melbourne, just five of the 16 stores are tipped to remain.

when Starbucks came to Australia to bring coffee and the cafe culture to the masses, it found that we already had it. Particularly in Melbourne, we have better coffee and more relaxing cafes than anything that Starbucks brought with it.

If Starbucks can teach us anything, it is that in the global marketplace, turning up to compete just isn’t enough. You have to be really good.

Full article here

My point here is, Starbucks makes really bad coffee. At least , in Melbourne, I don’t find any reason to buy my coffee from Starbucks.

Filed Under: Life, news Tagged With: Australia, coffee

Back from vacation..

by Gav Leave a Comment

Yup, I am back from sunny Malaysia to the freezing Melbourne. It was an enjoyable trip. I did nothing but staying at home, enjoying the moments with my family. It is always good to be at home.

On the trading front, It has been almost a month since my last trade. I have no open position at the moment. I am looking/waiting for the opportunity to go Long with AUDUSD. Well, the key word is ‘Waiting’. …

On a side note, an idiot is stealing my blog posts intentionally. Yup, he sets up a new domain, a new website, just to display everything I write on TraderGav.com. I am not going to link or tell you the name of the site. In case you are reading this post, but not on TraderGav.com, you know you are at the wrong place.

Filed Under: Life, Trading Journal

Off for vacation

by Gav Leave a Comment

I am leaving Melbourne to Malaysia for a 2-week vacation. Yup, I am going home. Time to get some proper, delicious Malaysian food! 🙂

[photopress:batupahat.gif,full,1]

Filed Under: Life, Trading Journal Tagged With: vacation

Burnt-out

by Gav Leave a Comment

Now, I realize, I am burnt out. Never thought of this would ever happen to me. Thanks to Tom for pointing out this to me :).. I have been non stop working in my current JOB in Australia since the second day I landed on this country last June. Moving into different teams, working with different managers. Brilliant ones, crappy ones, useless ones.(Yeah, anniversary is coming…), the best is the f*cking weekend work roaster..I gotta be ‘on-called’ on weekends. WTF. Who said working in Australia is relaxed? I will slap on your face. The amount of work is  not ridiculous, but working in a messy project, poor management, and with some poorly skilled people is tough.

I often joke with my pals that we am working like a prostitute. we perform and finish the job professionally, nobody will even says ‘Thank you’, they pay us, and go away. But, if we are not in condition to ‘perform’, we are kicked on the stomach or slapped on the face. Yeah, we are a bunch of professional, high paid prostitute in IT industry.

I am working for money. I’d never denied it. This shitty job pays me reasonably, to my own standard, though.

I resumed my trading around4 months ago. So far, I am pretty happy with my performance. I would say, it is just because, I am really doing something I love to do. Whatever, but trading full time is still not a consideration now.

OK, the fact is, I am burnt out now. Sleep 5 hours on average everyday. Waking up before 6am everyday without assistance of alarm clock, even on weekends. I just can’t sleep well. I need to do something. I would not say trading is stressing me up. Not at all. My long term readers know I am not day trading. I am trading large time frame, with minimal monitoring required. The work? might be, but not totally. I guess, I am pushing myself a little over to achieve my own financial goals. Am I ? No idea.

I am planning to take a break soon, and I need to. By the way, Trader Gav is still kicking ass in currency trading. 😆

Believe it or not. I actually feel better after writing this post.

Filed Under: Life Tagged With: rambling

  • « Go to Previous Page
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Page 3
  • Page 4
  • Page 5
  • Interim pages omitted …
  • Page 7
  • Go to Next Page »

Primary Sidebar

Best Tools For Traders

Recommend FX Charting

Footer

Recommended FX Charting

Recommended Training

FXSAnalytics
Price Action Course for Professionals

Copyright © 2025 · Affiliate Disclosure · Privacy

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok