Thursday, October 13, 2011

out of one's league

i'm a bit part player in the stock market. that means, i occasionally dabble in it & only with blue chip stocks because i don't know or haven't learned the twists & turns of a wily stock investor.

that also means i won't get extremely rich from a bull run. more importantly, i won't be impoverished with the downturn.

i'm cautious mainly because i'm using my own hard-earned money.

unlike the GLCs who are spending money as if it grows on trees. take Proton for example. remember they bought the italian motorcycle company MV Augusta in 2005 for 70m euros, then sold it off a year later, without producing a single bike, for a token sum of 1 euro? yes, FIVE ringgit! the irony is that the company that bought it for 1 euro reportedly sold part of it to BMW for a reported 93m euros, & the remainder to Harley-Davidson for 109m euros.

& it was reported today that proton may sell part of the loss-making Lotus. seems like nothing Proton touches turns to gold. other than benefitting the manufacturers & the downliners, i don't think Proton did justice to the motoring public by mass-producing affordable cars. it's only affordable because the other cars were slapped with high import/excise/sales taxes.

perhaps car manufacturing is out of our league. or, we should only let competent people manage & turn the company around, like how they did for Air Asia & SP Setia.

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