Note from Saabana

Zai and Joe acknowledgement about only a handful of us have the time
to put their thoughts and memories into words are true. There are
reasons or maybe excuses. For me.., just a plain excuse-damn lazy to
punch a few keys on my notebook. Currently, everyday I feel like
doing one thing only- lying flat on my back against the sandy sand
near my home with a sun shade over my head and a tall glass of ice
lemon tea beside me.

Anyhow..I am now staying put in Kuala Terengganu or to be precise in
Rusila(near Tuan Guru Uztaz Abd. Hadi Mosque) since my other half is
posted in KT late last year. Once or twice a month I do drop to KL.
Rusila is about 12 KM from KT and 2 KM from Marang. From Marang we can
hop to Pulau Kapas. Now is almost squid jigging (Mencadat Sotong)
season down here. If any of you are interested to do such activity
just ring a bell to me.

Going through the emails…Tahir experienced with poor English language
command by the young generation intrigue me and I could relate some
of my experiences.

After college, I was attached to one of the GLC. It was more of
corporate banking or merchant banking (now refer as investment
banking) type of works that involved a lot of reports and working
papers submission to MOF, EPU and PNB. Most of the reports were in
English but sometime the ministers preferred in B. Melayu. Trying to
translate Finance/Investment terminology from English to B. Melayu
was a struggle for us since DBP at that time do not have any
dictionary on it.(Tahir should know about this).

Communicating in English on finance subject to non finance
professional is also a hassle. I remembered back in mid-1980’s, where
our local finance industry was still at infant stage, I was assigned
to schedule/arrange loan syndication for Perak Hanjong Cement- a
joint-venture between Perak SEDC and Hanjoong Cement of Korea. The
loan was guaranteed by Malaysian government and Korea’s Export and
Import Bank. Putting the finance terms into a binding legal piece of
paper, involved days of arguing between the lawyers and the finance
people. So much so that we all have to be confined for 3 days/nights
in KL Hilton Then we have the next stage, arguing with the translators
because it had to be translated into Korean language.

Now days, DBP has a dictionary for finance terms of English to Malay
and vice-versa. But finance industry is evolving, just refer to the
recent financial tsunami of the big financial institutions in New York
and London, about 10-15 years ago such finance term as
collateralised debt obligations (CDO) and subrime lending does not
exist. Now in finance we have a term/jargon that refers modern
finance as financial engineering. Maybe they like to be called
engineers..sorry Zai, Ghaffar, Othman and those qualified engineers up
there.

In late 1980’s I did part-time lecturing in UKM and ITM. In UKM I
taught portfolio management for actuarial science students and luckily
those students are chosen group and one bright group of students. I
taught in rojak languages-English and B. Melayu since some of the
investment jargons are difficult to translate into B. Melayu and sound
weird in B. Melayu…if you all get time in your hands just peruse
through such words for example NPV, IRR, payback period, the discount
rate, Accounting rate of return, weighted return, account payable
turnover ratio..and all those accounting ratio..oh..this is just a
few…let see the new modern finance we have jargon such as call and put
with collar, butterfly and vanilla call and put…..and derivatives and
swaps.

In ITM my students are from Diploma in Investment Analysis course (ITM
discontinued the course in 1990’s). In investment analysis there are
two branches of studies-one is fundamental which refer to perusing the
account books looking for P/E ratio, book value etc..ala Warren Buffet
and the other one is the technical analysis.

I have to tackle explaining technical analysis(TA) to those students.
For the benefits of us all, technical analysis is considered a voodoo
branch of investment analysis but finance academicians since it seek
to predict future market movement based on previous or past action of
market/prices. TA is not fully recognized by finance scholars who are
still embedded in efficient market theory(EMH) developed by Professor
Eugene Fama of the University of Chicago. Traders either small or big
(retails and institutions) at least utilized a simple TA indicators.

For example, in business section of our mainstream newspapers there
are charts of Bursa Saham KLCI using candlesticks with moving average.
Charts, candlesticks, moving averages are indicators of TA. And
unfortunately, until now DBP does not publish any dictionary for TA
terms in B. Melayu.

English terms in TA is just a plain English terms but to translate it
directly and literally into B. Melayu will sound a bit dry and funny.
To bore some of you with a TA indicator definition I attach a
write-of of price pattern-Head and Shoulder Pattern that did occurred
currently on KLCI.

Try translating it literally into B. Melayu !!
They are three basic term for the pattern.
Head-kepala
Shoulder-bahu
Neckline- garis leher

Translate it literally will be “pola kepala dan bahu” for head and
shoulders pattern and let see this sentences ”Go short (sell) when
the currency pair goes below the neckline” which can be literally
translated as membuat pendek(jualan) sekiranya pasangan matawang
bergerak kebawah garis leher.

I guess we all face the similar problems in our works. Just imagine
for the younger generation trying to decipher the words and meaning of
a technical paper.

Last and not least..Congrat to Prof Ghizan, and to Datok Redza, I will
try to make it for the charity dinner and the phone number of Bro.
Rahman in KT you forwarded to me, I lost it because someone stole my
h/p.

C’est la Vie
Have fun….God bless you all..

P/s. Maybe I will posted some pictures of the Rusila beach later.

TQ....saabana