There are generally two types of price increases. The first is by taking up the price of the product. Another common way is to reduce pack sizes or quality while keeping the selling prices the same.

Today, the government adopted the latter approach when hiking up the price of petrol. Read the whole article here. The petrol that I have been pumping at RM1.80 per litre has been upgraded to premium and is now priced at RM2.05 per litre. A lower grade petrol is now priced at RM1.80.

Today, when I arrive at the petrol station, the pump was still showing RM1.80 per litre. The receipt showed I have bought the lower quality petrol. However, I don’t quit feel the pain in my wallet. What a smart way to deceive the consumers.

According to this article, Kuala Lumpur (KL) is one of the cheapest places to live in. Unfortunately, employees in KL are also among the poorly paid in the world.

Is it possible for someone to earn high income and yet live in cheap cities? I think it’s possible. Take for example employees in Switzerland. This article identified employees in Switzerland as having one of the highest net wages in the world. These people could work, save and invest their money for…. say 15 years. Then they could retire and fly off to KL or Manila and live there. They would still earn income from their investments and live like a king in KL or Manila.

Hmmm…

Today I attended my very first AGM. I got to experience first hand how it feels like being a shareholder. It’s a very good exposure for me. I was given some door gifts. We were served light refreshments before and after the AGM.

By my count, there were no more than 30 shareholders plus proxies who attended the AGM. Not many questions were asked during the AGM. And the resolutions were passed fairly quickly. The management did give some good answers to the questions asked. But overall, the quality of the questions asked were somewhat poor. I wish next year there will be a shareholder activist in the AGM.

After the AGM, I had the chance to talked to a few other shareholders and the Directors. The time spent talking with the Directors were great. I was able to learn more about the company in less than one hour than I had in the last few weeks searching for information about the company.

A reader asked me how am I earning a good side income?

Back in early 2009, I listed out my “Goals” for the year 2009. And sitting at number 6 is “Side income of RM10,000/mth by Oct 2009.”

My side income comes from Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising on expired domains and also selling of text links. After the Chinese New Year …. starting in February 2009, I could see a drop in my PPC income. Advertisers were cutting budgets. Advertisers were also reluctant to renew their buying of text links on most of my websites. As a result, my side income took a plunge. Currently, my side income average about RM1,000 a month.

Looking back, there were a few months between July 2008 to September 2008 whereby I was earning more than RM3,000 from my side income. And at that time I was so tempted to quit my job and go full time building on my side income. Luckily for me I was patient enough to adopt a wait and see approach. And now I am glad I did not quit my job back then.

I have now turned to offering Search Engine Optimization (SEO) services to add another income stream for myself. Currently I am optimizing the keyword “Top MBA Malaysia” for a local education institute. This niche industry is competitive as well. However, I do see an opportunity for me to build a business out of SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing).

My goals are clear and I just have to find ways to overcome these obstacles to reach my goals.

The KLCI shed 1.6% today. Haven’t seen such a huge drop for a while. Shanghai shed almost 6%. Has fear and panic crept back into the market? Reminds me of “the cycle of market emotions” I’ve read about in the July 2009 newsletter by HSBC.

What goes up, must come down. What goes down, must come up.

Be like Warren Buffett. Be greedy when people become fearful. And sell when people become greedy. This is the smart way to invest. Making buy sell decisions based on logic.

But instead of this common sense way, people usually get caught up in the market emotions. When everybody is greedy, they become greedy as welland usually end up buying overpriced assets. When everybody panic and sell, they become panicky too and sell at a distressed price, usually undervalued.

In summary, we have to look at the market and see what everybody else are doing. And sometimes it may be more profitable to bet against the herd.