20% Guaranteed Return through GOLD ?

Have you ever heard of an investment with Guaranteed Return 20% ?  Well, this particular one is from The Gold Guaranteed . . . what do you think the catch is ?

1. You Buy Bullion Gold from TGG ( The Gold Guaranteed )
2. You keep the gold
3. You sign a 3-months-contract with TGG
4. TGG pays you 1.7% every month
5. At the end of 3 months, you can choose to 
1. renew the contract for another 3 months or
2. sell the gold back to TGG how much you have paid for ( ie. your Capital ) 

• To renew the contract, you have to pay the additional cost if the gold price has gone up
• Like wise if the gold price has gone down, you get paid extra and also gets to renew the contract

For example, at end of August . . .

1. You pay $22,500 for a 100g bullion and signed the 2 pages contract
2. You get paid $382.50 monthly for the next 3 months ( 22,500 x 1.7% )
3. 3 months later, 100g gold price goes up to $23,500.
4. You paid an extra $1,000 and renew the contract
5. You get paid $399.50 monthly for the next 3 months ( 23,500 x 1.7% )
6. another 3 months later, 100g gold price goes down to $21,500.
7. You get paid $2,000 and renew the contract
8. You get paid $365.50 monthly for the next 3 months ( 21,500 x 1.7% )
9. another 3 months later, 100g gold price goes back to $22,500.
10. You paid $1,000 and renew the contract
11. You get paid $382.50 monthly for the next 3 months ( 22,500 x 1.7% )
12. when the contract ends, you sell it to TGG and get back $22,500

Month	paid	get back
1	$22,500	$383
2		$383
3		$383
4	$1,000	$400
5		$400
6		$400
7	-$2,000	$366
8		$366
9		$366
10	$1,000	$383
11		$383
12		$383
		$4,590

Summary

Maximum Capital : $ 23,500

Total Return : $4,590

Rough Return : ~20%

All this happens while you are keeping your own bullion gold with you until you sell it back to TGG.

How does this sound to you ?  What could be the catch if any at all ?

What other strategies you may apply assuming this is a genuine deal ?

Malaysia Lowest Stock Brokerage Fee

MPlus Online and ECMmoney offers the lowest brokerage fee @ 0.08% for cash upfront account.  MPlus offers even lower rate @ 0.05% if you have more than 30k balance.

Follows by Hong Leong, Jupiter Online, OSK 88  who offers 0.1%

source

I have been using Jupiter but I am paying 0.45%.  I forgot why I pay so much, perhaps its because I am an Elite member who obtain extra trading info !?  My effective fee cost is actually 0.6% and below.

I tried to switch to CIMB but not successful due to their systems are not easy to use.  I stay with Jupiter mainly because I can trade from my android phone.

Have you used any of above brokers ?  Are they good ?

How Corrupted are we ?

Below table shows how corrupted a country is perceived to be.   The smaller the number is the more corrupted the country is.  For example, North Korea, Russia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Philippines are perceived to be corrupted while New Zealand, Singapore, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan are perceived to be "clean".

Malaysia is somewhere in the middle comparable to Soudi Arabia, South Africa and Italy.

source : wiki

earn Money with Money

Read this from Alan Tan's facebook, seems very meaningful to me.  So sharing here with you all ...

By Alan Tan

One day, an old man and his assistant arrived at a farming village. The old man gathered all the villagers and told them that he is in the business of buying and selling monkeys and that the reason why he has come to their village is becoz there is a forest next to that village which is infested with lots of monkeys. He told the villagers he would pay $10 for every monkey they bring him.



So some of the villagers started to stop work on their farms to go into the forest to catch monkeys. They brought their monkeys to the old man and true enough, he paid them $10 for every monkey. Words spread and not long after, more and more of the villagers stopped working on their farms to go into the forest to catch monkeys. And they were all paid $10 for every monkey they delivered to the old man.

Becoz more villagers were now monkey hunters, it became more and more difficult to catch monkeys as their numbers started to dwindle. The supply of monkeys started to come down. So the old man gathered all the villagers and told them he would pay $20 for every monkey they bring him. Wow! That sounds great and the villagers started to drum up the beat to look deeper into the forest and higher into the trees to look for more monkeys. And they were paid $20 for every monkey they caught and everyone was happy.

As more and more villagers turned monkey hunters, the monkey population in that forest started to dwindle very significantly and it became increasingly difficult to catch even one monkey a day. As such, the villagers started to return to their farms to work.

Once again, the old man gathered all the villagers and told them that as he is running out of time and he needed more monkeys, he would up the stakes and pay $50 for every monkey delivered to him. He also told the villagers that as he has to leave the village for a few days to attend to some business in town, they can deliver the monkeys to his assistant and his assistant has been instructed to pay $50 for every monkey caught.

The villagers got all excited and went deep into the forest to look for monkeys but by this time, there were no monkeys to be found. The villagers approached the assistant and told him the $50 offer is wonderful but the monkeys were simply not there.

That assistant then said to the villagers......"I know there are very few monkeys left in the forest. But here in my cages, I have thousands of monkeys. Tell you what...why not you buy these monkeys from me at $35 each. Then when the old man comes back, you can sell your monkeys to him for $50 and make $15 each."

Wow! That sounds like a great idea...the villagers thought. So they bought as many monkeys as they could from the assistant at $35 each.

After that day, the villagers never saw the old man or his assistant again

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What do you take away from this story ?