armchairlawyer wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 3:05 pm
With the greatest of respect, I disagree with some of what you say.
I speak as someone who has made some terrible decisions in investment and some quite good ones.
My view is this. If you have some investable cash then you have to make some decisions, like it or not.
Even holding cash involves decisions - which currency, which bank (if any).
And there are times when you can do a lot better investing in other things, and there are times when it is better to hold a lot of cash.
Psychology is a big factor. We have investments we like or even love and we have ones we hate. We also have a strong aversion to losses, more powerful than our love of gains. The more we can recognise those psychological influences, the better we can control them. Also we need to control our political preferences.
Doing well in investment requires top notch macro analysis, and if you're investing in individual stocks, also top notch analysis of those companies.
It also requires constant monitoring of a portfolio to adjust positions and, at macro phase transitions, to make radical changes. You can't expect to find this info for free btw. But good quality analysis will pay for itself.
Nothing is for sure and you need to have a varied portfolio and have rules for maximum holdings of different asset types, basically the less volatile the asset type the more you can hold. It's basically a game of managing risk and maximising the potential for gains.

So, if you choose to hold your cash in USD in Cambodian banks, that involves risk like anything else. Risk of USD depreciation and risk of deposit-taker default, possibly also a risk of governmental sequestration (as happens fairly regularly in Argentina).
You have plenty of other choices. You can buy gold in Cambodia, and you can buy bitcoin and if you set up a brokerage account (which is easy to do) you can buy stocks from other countries, bonds from other countries, or commodities.
You don't need to fully understand bitcoin in order to know when it is likely to go up and likely to go down. You just need to understand what influences its price.

None of this would matter much if we were not presently in a period of quite extreme volatility and volatility means risk.
The USD has gone down 10% (in DXY terms) in the last six months and is poised to go down a lot more. Other currencies don't hold much appeal either, thus bitcoin and gold have done well. Bitcoin is also starting to attract institutional funds (maybe not Warren Buffet!) and that is pushing it rapidly higher. US growth and tech stocks are also doing well and so is most of EM (emerging markets) and commodities. So, personally I'm holding minimal cash atm. But it won't be long before the easy macro comparisons swing to very hard (about middle of 2021) and the whole thing will likely go into reverse, sell bitcoin, sell growth stocks, buy treasuries etc.

Getting 8% on a USD deposit is very good indeed and until recently I would say go for it with a sizeable proportion of your cash, although personally I would not ever hold more than 12% of investable funds in USD cash.

The risks vary between the different banks and MDIs here, I have written about that in previous threads. I agree that those paying the highest rates are not necessarily the riskiest. The most powerful safety factor is moral hazard because this can trump all other risk factors. Thus the bank analysts would say that the safest local banks and MDIs are those with high profile and high reputation foreign owners. Of the majors here, that leads you (in descending order) to CIMB, Maybank, ABA, Prasac, Hatha (this has Mitsubishi Bank behind it but they keep very quiet about it).

violet wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 2:37 am

Tootsfriend wrote: ↑Thu May 05, 2022 7:19 pm My recent experience with Finance companies in Cambodia. Mature female factory worker earning $250 a month, gets a loan of $6,000 from K,Kredit to buy into a multi level marketing scam selling cosmetics, skin whiting products etc. She cannot sell any, so goes to a new Korean Banking / Finance company that is making inroads in Cambodia. Asks for a $10,000 loan to pay off the previous lender. Repayments are $281 per month. This includes $3,000 in interest. .Acting as security for this is her 20 year old daughter, earning $200 per month and 18 year old daughter still going to school, no bank account , no money, no job.

So whats in it for the finance company, ????. Well they hold the title of the house and as no payments are made they can sell the house, probably at a low price, after all they only want their money and interest payments back. The Bank manager probably got his bonus for making the loan.

The loan and finance industry certainly need a big cleanup as there are so many of them it is impossible them all to survive unless they enter into unscrupulous one-sided deals .

That’s shocking. The sort of thing that can result in suicide in western countries.

Kammekor wrote: ↑Fri May 06, 2022 6:30 am

armchairlawyer wrote: ↑Sun Jan 03, 2021 3:05 pm
With the greatest of respect, I disagree with some of what you say.
I speak as someone who has made some terrible decisions in investment and some quite good ones.
My view is this. If you have some investable cash then you have to make some decisions, like it or not.
Even holding cash involves decisions - which currency, which bank (if any).
And there are times when you can do a lot better investing in other things, and there are times when it is better to hold a lot of cash.
Psychology is a big factor. We have investments we like or even love and we have ones we hate. We also have a strong aversion to losses, more powerful than our love of gains. The more we can recognise those psychological influences, the better we can control them. Also we need to control our political preferences.
Doing well in investment requires top notch macro analysis, and if you're investing in individual stocks, also top notch analysis of those companies.
It also requires constant monitoring of a portfolio to adjust positions and, at macro phase transitions, to make radical changes. You can't expect to find this info for free btw. But good quality analysis will pay for itself.
Nothing is for sure and you need to have a varied portfolio and have rules for maximum holdings of different asset types, basically the less volatile the asset type the more you can hold. It's basically a game of managing risk and maximising the potential for gains.

So, if you choose to hold your cash in USD in Cambodian banks, that involves risk like anything else. Risk of USD depreciation and risk of deposit-taker default, possibly also a risk of governmental sequestration (as happens fairly regularly in Argentina).
You have plenty of other choices. You can buy gold in Cambodia, and you can buy bitcoin and if you set up a brokerage account (which is easy to do) you can buy stocks from other countries, bonds from other countries, or commodities.
You don't need to fully understand bitcoin in order to know when it is likely to go up and likely to go down. You just need to understand what influences its price.

None of this would matter much if we were not presently in a period of quite extreme volatility and volatility means risk.
The USD has gone down 10% (in DXY terms) in the last six months and is poised to go down a lot more. Other currencies don't hold much appeal either, thus bitcoin and gold have done well. Bitcoin is also starting to attract institutional funds (maybe not Warren Buffet!) and that is pushing it rapidly higher. US growth and tech stocks are also doing well and so is most of EM (emerging markets) and commodities. So, personally I'm holding minimal cash atm. But it won't be long before the easy macro comparisons swing to very hard (about middle of 2021) and the whole thing will likely go into reverse, sell bitcoin, sell growth stocks, buy treasuries etc.

Getting 8% on a USD deposit is very good indeed and until recently I would say go for it with a sizeable proportion of your cash, although personally I would not ever hold more than 12% of investable funds in USD cash.

The risks vary between the different banks and MDIs here, I have written about that in previous threads. I agree that those paying the highest rates are not necessarily the riskiest. The most powerful safety factor is moral hazard because this can trump all other risk factors. Thus the bank analysts would say that the safest local banks and MDIs are those with high profile and high reputation foreign owners. Of the majors here, that leads you (in descending order) to CIMB, Maybank, ABA, Prasac, Hatha (this has Mitsubishi Bank behind it but they keep very quiet about it).

Just four months later, look where we are now....

Making predictions is extremely difficult.

Interesting times.

AndyKK wrote: ↑Sun May 15, 2022 10:14 am I recently paid off the debt, lone of my late partners sister, so she and the family were now debt free! 2 days later she took out another lone.