oliverphoenix2

A lot of people think that trading involves guessing/ knowing/predicting/having inside information about the price movement of an asset like a stock/bond/future/currency, and based on that traders will not have a better than 50% chance in the short term without inside info or psychic powers. For me (trading full time 15 years) it's about finding a strategy that gauges when something is cheap or expensive, buy low sell high. And whether something is cheap/expensive is defined by comparing it to something else! Gold is considered expensive when you compare it to wheat, iron ore, oil, silver etc. but is cheap when you compare it to enriched uranium, tritium, cut/polished diamonds etc. So to trade IBM stock for example you need to compare it to something that is fundamentally tied to the price of IBM (e.g. IBM option contracts), and because options are traded on different exchanges to stocks (often by different people, for different time periods), the two prices fluctuate relative to each other. It's these relative fluctuations that allow you to buy the cheap asset and at the same time sell the expensive one. It's called spread trading. You don't lose or make money from IBM going up or down in price because the option(s) value does the opposite and cancels it out. You make money from these fluctuations mean reverting back to in sync. """ You wait and watch for the prices to fluctuate out of sync. enough for you to profit from the reversion back.""" These fluctuations can happen on a daily basis or over longer periods depending on what you're trading. Often the shorter periodicity fluctuations will result in smaller gains but on a more frequent basis. No system is going to succeed 100% but that is not needed. If you are right 60% (or hopefully more) and you keep your trading costs down you can beat the 'market average' (SP 500 - @10% per year) with far less volatility i.e. no +30% drops caused by the likes of covid or the financial crises. Investing is generally considered a time based passive strategy - you would expect to make twice as much in 30 years as you would in 15 years and you would be quite happy to buy IBM at fair market value. Trading is a price based strategy - you buy and sell assets based on their price not where you think they will be weeks/years down the road and you would buy IBM when it is cheap (relative to something else) and not where you think it will be some time in the future.

Right now I have UK multi non o (ret) so I need to exit every 90 days and theoretically should not have problem with a border bounce. In November I flew Phuket-KLIA2-Phuket, had a mobile boarding pass on my phone and only a carry on bag. In the less strict years before covid I bounced KL without going through immigration at least twice from memory and entered Phuket on visa exempt entries with no problems (I had proof of onward flight/funds and as usual it was not asked for). These days there seems to be a lot more scrutinization. I don't know what the specific immigration requirements are regarding an entry stamp into another country before re entering Thailand but obviously if you go back to your home country you don't get a stamp and also for UK passport holders you don't get a stamp entering/leaving Hong Kong. Land borders may well have slightly different rules. The MDAC (Malaysia digital arrival card) I think is only required if you need to pass through Malaysia immigration. From UK.GOV website.....

''' I can't remember seeing a sign but I imagine there is one for 'departures'. ''' If you have your return flight boarding pass and 'no checked in luggage' follow the signs for international departures and you will get to the departure area without having to go through Malaysia immigration. If you have checked in luggage you'll have to go through immigration to pick it up and check it in for return flight and then through immigration again to leave.

''' You have no choice but to clear Immigration in KUL, you cannot just "turn around and come back". ''' You can transit Kuala Lumpur KLIA2 Air Asia without going through immigration and return to Thailand OK. I just did it in November (and pre covid). There is access to the upstairs departure area near the immigration arrival hall although it is a little obscure, I can't remember seeing a sign but I imagine there is one for 'departures'.

I've used Lebara for 4 yrs. While in Thailand you don't need to pay for a monthly plan if you're not making calls/texts. OTPs are free and to keep my sim active I send myself a text once every 3 months (49p), minimum topup is 5GBP. For the minimal cost I think it's smart thinking to keep a home country sim for things like banking OTPs.

" I have since placed a freeze/lock on every single credit/debit card that I have and will only unlock when I make a charge." Good advice. I have several debit cards and only load and unblock them when about to make a purchase (e.g. flight, hotel) - except wise which I keep a small amount for everyday purchases and usually only with googlepay. Also with wise you can set a daily spending limit (e.g. 100-200GBP) which is at least better than losing 800. A couple of years ago I had a UK starling bank account and a week after trying to buy an airasia flight online, multiple fraudulent attempts to make a variety of online purchases over a few minutes failed since there was only 5GBP in the account.

Multi entry - for what purpose, based on marriage or retirement? Retirement - sorry I didn't mention.

I applied for E-visa London non O ME (retirement) in August. For health insurance I simply uploaded a pic of a piece of paper with "not applicable" written on it - approved in 4 days. I also showed more than 10,000 GBP bank statement - not sure if that helped negate insurance requirements. I think the requirements for insurance might be remnants from the covid era that are no longer required.

Police check and medical form not needed for non O. Also health insurance not needed - I applied in August for ME non O London and simply uploaded pic of piece of paper stating "not applicable". E-visa approved after 4 days. Not sure about re entry permit.

If you have a UK sim card/number and a UK residential address, here's a post of someone opening a UK account from Thailand last year.

"From what has been said here, as long as I return by 29 June, I can get 60 more days? And 90 if I apply for an extension? That puts me to Sept 29(ish), which is longer than I was planning on staying anyway. " Correct - every time you re-enter before the visa expiration date you get 60 days permission of stay which you can extend 30 days.

I used to have a Starling account here in Thailand but switched to ChaseUK about 3 months ago whilst here. I don't have UK residential address but opened it using a UK mail forwarding address, passport, UK sim card and bank statement from another UK bank very easily online. With your UK address and UK phone number it should be straight forward. Chase works out better for me than Starling for 5+ reasons including the ability to have a savings account (can't with Starling), larger atm cash withdrawals, ability to check the exchange rate in the app before a transaction, 1% cashback promotion on all card/googlepay transactions for first 12 months and also Starling seemed to have a glitch sometimes that double charged for some overseas card transactions that then took 8 days to be reversed. Starling customer service seemed fine but never used Chases' so can't compare. Both Starling and Chase have zero foreign transaction/exchange fees and charge the same mastercard exchange rate. The Chase app works fine and can move money easily between Wise, Revolut and UK banks.

I have also been using the 4 Mbps for the last year (in Phuket) - occasionally hangs a little when streaming high resolution stuff. A few days ago the package expired and I tested a short 6 Mbps package and the speed is exactly the same for both in my location - around 3 Mbps on a number of different speedtest websites, (except Ookla which always gives way faster results for some reason - 50+ Mbps).

I have an AIS sim with unlimited data. I hotspot my laptop to it and use 80+ GBs/month - all works fine. From the AIS app you can select numerous monthly prepaid plans. Also they have a 6 month plan for BHT1400 which is much more cost effective than monthly!

Android - simply hold your finger on the app. icon for 2 seconds and the option to uninstall will appear which you then select.