A glut of new capacity in will force Asian airlines to ply some less profitable routes

From Star Online: Business
23rd Jan 2013

SINGAPORE: Low-cost South-East Asian airlines risk jeopardising their margins by buying too many planes too quickly, an influential aviation banker said.

Across the region, discount carriers have placed orders over the past two years for at least US$50bil worth of aircraft, taking new Boeing and Airbus jets to serve dozens of fresh routes and replace their fleets. They are betting the region's expanding middle class will demand more and more frequent air travel for years to come.

Many of those carriers were making the wrong decisions by trying to grow market share without anticipating pressure on profit margins, DVB Bank SE's Bertrand Grabowski, who heads the German bank's aviation and land transport finance divisions, told Reuters in an interview.

Saft on wealth - Buffet and the rest of us

From The Edge Malaysia
Written by Reuters
27 Aug 2012

Aug 23 (Reuters): I don't know how to put this but ... Warren Buffett is awesome, and you and me, we almost certainly are not.

A new study aiming to get at the source of the legendary investor's outperformance demonstrates that his approach, which turned a dollar in 1976 into $1,500 today, is relatively simple: Use modest, cheap leverage to buy high-quality, cheap and safe shares.

Two of gold price's three legs looks wobbly

From The Edge Malaysia
By Clyde Russell, Reuters
22 Aug 2012

IF you want to know why the gold price has stagnated in the past few months, look no further than the World Gold Council's latest report that shows demand is at its lowest in more than two years.

In fact, so rapid has been the decline in gold demand since last year's record price in September that if there is a surprise, it's that the price has held up as well as it has.

Since the start of the second quarter, gold hasn't been above US$1,680 (RM5,260.92) an ounce, but it also hasn't dropped any lower than US$1,527 and the current price around US$1,603 is around the mid-point of its recent range.