With the recent scandal of Madoff, it signals that the more people there are managing one's money, the higher the risk there is. Remember the lawyer who ran away with the clients money? So, in conclusion, the above shows when one uses fund managers, they decrease their returns and increase their risk.But if one is really clueless about investing, then just go for exchange traded funds, like for example STI ETF or Lyxor where your investment just tracks the index but fees are way less. Yeah it kinda sucks that fees still have to be paid for someone just to copy and track the index, but its the lesser of 2 evils.
Read what the Old Fogey Warren Buffet has to say about fund managers in general.
Important: The objective of the articles in this blog is to set you thinking about the company before you invest your hard-earned money. Do not invest solely based on this article. Unlike House or Instituitional Analysts who have to maintain relations with corporations due to investment banking relations, generating commissions,e.t.c, SGDividends say things as it is, factually. Unlike Analyst who have to be "uptight" and "cheem", we make it simplified and cheapskate. -The Vigilante Investor, SGDividends Team
Apologies for the harsh remarks but Beefy Barber is our friend even though he bullies us at times.
So, really, dear investors who invested in this counter, keep your eyes peeled on any news on this. BUT, we being extremely irritating, persistent, bo liao and totally curious decided that it shan't end like that. We decided to take a look at Maple Tree Logistics which is another sort of industrial Reit. And..TAaaa DAaaaa.... 
So can islamic financing save the day for Cambridge? ( Hmm we seem to remember some article back that Islamic financing may not be immune to the credit crisis too?........Just can't find it..) 
data today. Shit man. Some of our investments SUCK after seeing what she crunched. Anyway, what emerged is so simple to understand but its just that we have been too absorbed into the world of sexy valuation names, such as Sum of Total Parts (SOTP) valuation, Cash Conversion cycle, DCF, PEG ratio e.t.c. . Not that they are useless of cos. What we think and reasoned is that before these ratios are used, the utmost prerequisite is that the investment has to be generating a positive operational cash flow consistently first before one
"owed" by the customers to be paid say in 6 months time. What if the customers default? This sales revenue is then not realised but still recorded as net income previously. Similarly, net income is often contaminated with depreciation expense which is non-cash but purely an accounting concept. So if a company is generating a boatload of cash but if it is capital intensive, then net income will be seen as very little. To clear all this fluff, including management's easy manipulation of net income, one has therefore to look at the Cash from Operations. Or to be more conservative, Free Cash Flow from Operations from a reasonable amount of time period, say 4-5 years or more.( Deducting Capital Exp. from Cash from Operations.)
So, we decided to look at Singapore Press Holdings. Recently, 2 analysts have been stating a BUY call for this counter, including a consensus recommendation calling for a near buy. Its easy to agree with them. Straits Times Newspaper, Business Times everywhere and they should be recession proof, right. Let's look at their data. ( You can find the data at 
Wondering why their revenue have been increasing so remarkably but their net income seem to be going no-where, and their Cash from Operations is bobbing up and down the water. Their FCF seem to have the longest breath, staying submerged, only coming up for some fresh air in year 2004. Come to think of it. Does SPH really have an investment moat? It's great they came up with STOMP , Digital Newspaper ...but...is that enough?
Whenever the Beefy Barber wants us to help him, we notice his biceps start bulging slightly. Barber wanted to know if Macquarie Infrastructure is a good buy as the price has dropped from an all time high of $1.23 to $0.295. He also mentioned about the very high dividends yield of about 24.5% (based on dividends of 7.25cents on market price of $0.295). But he is confused, he says. Lately, instituitions such as Capital Group has been reducing their stake from 7.0159 % To 6.9547 % . Macquarie has been reducing from 11.08 % To 10.71 %. BUT Directors such as Lee Suet Fern and Heng Chiang Meng are buying up shares. So what's up? We decided to go together to the Macquarie Seminar on 4 Dec 2008 to learn more. Frankly, we came out non the wiser. What was mentioned is exactly what has been announced on the SGX website and we won't elaborate more. We remembered only the speaker saying that the Catalyst of the plunge was due to Hedge funds who dumped around 10% late last year and Lehman's collaspe and something of a conservative estimate that the dividends will be expected to be 6 cents next year ( 20.3% dividend yield) and that once corporate debt has been repaid, MIIF will start to increase dividends again and that there is going to be a change of depreciation method from a straight line method to a units of production method for Hua Nan Expressway. Hiyah...don't understand the Australian Dudes slang!!!
Anyway, as the Barber was more interested in the dividends, which is the meat of this investment, we decided to compile a chart, showing the Distributions of each of the underlying compared with the risk ( gearing) of each of this business. We reasoned that this would be helpful to Barber as any collaspe of any one of the businesses will mean no distributions from that business and therefore a reduction in dividends. 
Please note that the distributions used above in the chart is based on operational dividends, excluding special, one -off ones. As can be seen from the diagram above, if Miao Li or Hua Nan were to collaspe, since their distribution contribution is so minute there should not be a material impact to the dividends received. (assuming fees and charges remain the same),especially Miao Li with the highest gearing.CAC and MEIF is quite risky and their distributions to MIIF is quite substantial.
Cash = $17,428,000 (ABOVE) 
From above, it is stated that 69.68% represents 359,731,154 shares. This means the number of shares outstanding for Singapore Food is 516,261,702 (100%)
It's a little comfort to know that they do not charge performance fees that quarter ( from beginning of year 2008 to 31 March 2008), given that they have unrealized loss. But isn't it such a great business to have, lose money, i don't get bonus(Performance fee), win money, i get bonus(Performance fee). All in all, portfolio profit or loss...i still get money(Management fees), only how much money (fees) i get.
Since we were looking at these 2 companies, we decided to look at some other ratios just out of curiosity again ( since it is so simple to do, so why not?), and it had nothing to do with which coffee tasted better.