100k. What would you do with it?

[ceevee369]

If being in Jimmy's situation again, for sure I would do the same. Respect.

Now, any NTD which can be saved will be kept dearly for lesser good times. Locked & stocked.
edit: the rest of the reply was not appropriate.

[sulavaca]

If you get a cash windfall of NT$100 000, what would you do with it to maximize your investment?

Purchase a physical gold ounce coin or bar, and put the rest in a gold/silver savings account (paper account)

[SillyWilly]

If you get a cash windfall of NT$100 000, what would you do with it to maximize your investment?

Purchase a physical gold ounce coin or bar, and put the rest in a gold/silver savings account (paper account)

Which banks offer this service? Any reputable ones? Thanks, would love to open one of those.

[lumka1]

If you get a cash windfall of NT$100 000, what would you do with it to maximize your investment?

Purchase a physical gold ounce coin or bar, and put the rest in a gold/silver savings account (paper account)

Which banks offer this service? Any reputable ones? Thanks, would love to open one of those.

Bank of Taiwan has a gold passbook trading account. They also have English online banking, it is a breeze to use and very good.

[archylgp]

If you get a cash windfall of NT$100 000, what would you do with it to maximize your investment?

Put it into savings towards a custom fender (~5k US).

[Tony the Tiger]

- Invest in a high yield blue chip stock. By high yield, I mean >10%. There are several such companies in Taiwan. I have been slowly accumulating "Nankang (Nangang) (Nangang) (Nangang) Rubber Tire Corp."(ticker:2101). At the current price, it's yielding an incredible 23%(mostly in the form of stock dividends).

That would be like "free" money. Would you mind showing a source for this?

Free money indeed. Sure, I'd be happy to.

In the U.S. dividends are paid in the form of cash on a quarterly basis. In Taiwan, it's different. Dividends are paid annually in the form of cash or stock, or a combination of both.

The ticker code for Nakang Rubber is 2101. To check the dividend amount for this year, you can go to the Taiwan Stock Exchange website. Go here, type in 2101, scroll to the bottom where it says "Annual dividends" and click on "by the shareholder's meeting".

The resulting pop-up shows you the dividend distribution details for this year and the previous years. Here you can see that they are paying a measly cash amount of 0.5nt per share this year. But look at the amount of stock dividends that they are distributing, "stock dividends from retains earnings" = 1.9, and "stock dividends from legal reserve capital surplus" = 0.3. 1.9 + 0.3 = 2.2, so total stock dividends = 2.2.

Now I bet you're asking, wtf does 2.2 mean?! Good question. It's a multiplier amount which determines how much stock you receive. In Taiwan, stocks are bought and sold in increments of a thousand, they call it 張, or "sheet". So 一張(1 sheet) = 1,000 shares. Going back to the multiplier of 2.2, that number means that for every 張(1000 shares) of stock you own, you'll get a stock dividend of 220 shares. An easier way to do it is to just take the multiplier and times it by 100, in this case it would be 2.2x100=220.

All this info can also be viewed and confirmed on the Taiwanese Yahoo Finance site.

Ok so now that we know the cash amount and the stock amount, we can start to calculate actual dollar figures(we need this to calculate the dividend yield). The closing price of '2101' on Friday was 42.45nt. Let's assume that we own 一張(1000 shares) of 2101:
- Cash dividend: 0.5 per share x 1000 = 500nt

- Stock dividend: We need to calculate the actual dollar amount of the dividend. 220 shares x 42.45 = 9,339nt

The total combined cash value of the cash dividend + stock dividend = 500 + 9,339 = 9,839nt

Now we can calculate the yield. First, we need to determine the value of every 1,000 shares. 1000 x 42.45 = 42,450nt. We plug that number into the denominator, and the numerator is the total value of the dividend which is 9,839nt. The dividend yield = 9839/42450 = 0.2317 = 23%. Free monies!

[lumka1]

- Invest in a high yield blue chip stock. By high yield, I mean >10%. There are several such companies in Taiwan. I have been slowly accumulating "Nankang (Nangang) (Nangang) (Nangang) (Nangang) Rubber Tire Corp."(ticker:2101). At the current price, it's yielding an incredible 23%(mostly in the form of stock dividends).

That would be like "free" money. Would you mind showing a source for this?

Free money indeed. Sure, I'd be happy to.

In the U.S. dividends are paid in the form of cash on a quarterly basis. In Taiwan, it's different. Dividends are paid annually in the form of cash or stock, or a combination of both.

The ticker code for Nakang Rubber is 2101. To check the dividend amount for this year, you can go to the Taiwan Stock Exchange website. Go here, type in 2101, scroll to the bottom where it says "Annual dividends" and click on "by the shareholder's meeting".

The resulting pop-up shows you the dividend distribution details for this year and the previous years. Here you can see that they are paying a measly cash amount of 0.5nt per share this year. But look at the amount of stock dividends that they are distributing, "stock dividends from retains earnings" = 1.9, and "stock dividends from legal reserve capital surplus" = 0.3. 1.9 + 0.3 = 2.2, so total stock dividends = 2.2.

Now I bet you're asking, wtf does 2.2 mean?! Good question. It's a multiplier amount which determines how much stock you receive. In Taiwan, stocks are bought and sold in increments of a thousand, they call it 張, or "sheet". So 一張(1 sheet) = 1,000 shares. Going back to the multiplier of 2.2, that number means that for every 張(1000 shares) of stock you own, you'll get a stock dividend of 220 shares. An easier way to do it is to just take the multiplier and times it by 10, in this case it would be 2.2x10=220.

All this info can also be viewed and confirmed on the Taiwanese Yahoo Finance site.

Ok so now that we know the cash amount and the stock amount, we can start to calculate actual dollar figures(we need this to calculate the dividend yield). The closing price of '2101' on Friday was 42.45nt. Let's assume that we own 一張(1000 shares) of 2101:
- Cash dividend: 0.5 per share x 1000 = 500nt

- Stock dividend: We need to calculate the actual dollar amount of the dividend. 220 shares x 42.45 = 9,339nt

The total combined cash value of the cash dividend + stock dividend = 500 + 9,339 = 9,839nt

Now we can calculate the yield. First, we need to determine the value of every 1,000 shares. 1000 x 42.45 = 42,450nt. We plug that number into the denominator, and the numerator is the total value of the dividend which is 9,839nt. The dividend yield = 9839/42450 = 0.2317 = 23%. Free monies!

[sulavaca]

If you get a cash windfall of NT$100 000, what would you do with it to maximize your investment?

Purchase a physical gold ounce coin or bar, and put the rest in a gold/silver savings account (paper account)

Which banks offer this service? Any reputable ones? Thanks, would love to open one of those.

Taiwan Bank and Mega Bank both offer paper gold savings account.
I have a Bullion Vault account, which is more accesible world wide, through the internet. I also offers a silver option, which Taiwan doesn't officially as there is no silver market here any more. Funny really as the old Taiwan dollar used to be pegged to silver. Hmm....wonder where all that silver went eh?

It's also worth noting that if you are on Taiwan and are an A.R.C. holder, then there are restrictions to you using any Taiwan gold account in your name if you leave after your visa expires. You must cancel all accounts before this happens, or you are going to have issues taking your money out later.

If you want physical, then I suggest you keep it at home. After all, most physical buyers such as myself, don't trust that the banks will be stable enough to warrant trusting them entirely with all our savings.

[Homey]

Commodities.

Simple equation. Population and demand rapidly rising all over the world and extremely fast in places like China where the growing consumer culture is expanding. The supply is quickly diminishing and the cost of extraction is rapidly rising. Rising demand, falling supply = simple equation.

Peak oil if it isn't here already is not far away. Copper, aluminum, gold, silver, steel, the softs, etc.. are all being consumed at an increasing pace while extraction is getting costlier and slower. There have already been many proven caches of resources that are not being extracted because it costs too much. It takes commodities to extract commodities so the rising prices have a rolling snowball effect. In the next 5-30 years we will all be adversely affected by the extreme rise in commodity prices. The only reliable hedge, and way to profit from this is by direct or semi-direct investment. We will see worldwide inflation like we've never seen. Just look at how much has gone up with the rise in oil over the last decade. Oil goes up and most everything else also rises because the cost of extraction, production and transport go up and this is passed on to consumers.

Even a raging bull market cannot overcome a fundamental supply/demand issue. Typically commodities and equities have a negative correlation, but I think over the next 30 years this will not be the case. People need to eat, need to travel to work, need electricity and the gadgets it powers and factories and businesses need to continue producing. Just in the last decade we've seen a huge rise in demand and prices. There is nothing that will stop this beyond a major virus/disease killing off millions of people.

The other tempting option would be to buy up some of these insanely cheap short sales and foreclosures in select US markets. People cannot afford to buy now and the rental market is going strong. Buy up a few condos/townhomes and rent them out. In many cases the mortgage is far cheaper than the rent that can be charged especially at these super low interest rates. Rinse and repeat and slowly build up a little real-estate portfolio that provides monthly income and can be sold for much more in 10-15 years when the housing market is creating its next bubble.

[SillyWilly]

- Invest in a high yield blue chip stock. By high yield, I mean >10%. There are several such companies in Taiwan. I have been slowly accumulating "Nankang (Nangang) (Nangang) (Nangang) (Nangang) Rubber Tire Corp."(ticker:2101). At the current price, it's yielding an incredible 23%(mostly in the form of stock dividends).

That would be like "free" money. Would you mind showing a source for this?

Free money indeed. Sure, I'd be happy to.

In the U.S. dividends are paid in the form of cash on a quarterly basis. In Taiwan, it's different. Dividends are paid annually in the form of cash or stock, or a combination of both.

The ticker code for Nakang Rubber is 2101. To check the dividend amount for this year, you can go to the Taiwan Stock Exchange website. Go here, type in 2101, scroll to the bottom where it says "Annual dividends" and click on "by the shareholder's meeting".

The resulting pop-up shows you the dividend distribution details for this year and the previous years. Here you can see that they are paying a measly cash amount of 0.5nt per share this year. But look at the amount of stock dividends that they are distributing, "stock dividends from retains earnings" = 1.9, and "stock dividends from legal reserve capital surplus" = 0.3. 1.9 + 0.3 = 2.2, so total stock dividends = 2.2.

Now I bet you're asking, wtf does 2.2 mean?! Good question. It's a multiplier amount which determines how much stock you receive. In Taiwan, stocks are bought and sold in increments of a thousand, they call it 張, or "sheet". So 一張(1 sheet) = 1,000 shares. Going back to the multiplier of 2.2, that number means that for every 張(1000 shares) of stock you own, you'll get a stock dividend of 220 shares. An easier way to do it is to just take the multiplier and times it by 10, in this case it would be 2.2x10=220.

All this info can also be viewed and confirmed on the Taiwanese Yahoo Finance site.

Ok so now that we know the cash amount and the stock amount, we can start to calculate actual dollar figures(we need this to calculate the dividend yield). The closing price of '2101' on Friday was 42.45nt. Let's assume that we own 一張(1000 shares) of 2101:
- Cash dividend: 0.5 per share x 1000 = 500nt

- Stock dividend: We need to calculate the actual dollar amount of the dividend. 220 shares x 42.45 = 9,339nt

The total combined cash value of the cash dividend + stock dividend = 500 + 9,339 = 9,839nt

Now we can calculate the yield. First, we need to determine the value of every 1,000 shares. 1000 x 42.45 = 42,450nt. We plug that number into the denominator, and the numerator is the total value of the dividend which is 9,839nt. The dividend yield = 9839/42450 = 0.2317 = 23%. Free monies!

I love your enthusiasm Tony , but are you 100% sure about the whole multiplier?

In a country where the bank deposit rate is <0.5% per year a 23% yield is not to be scoffed at. However, it raises the unavoidable question: Is it too good to be true?

Using the link for Yahoo Finance Taiwan you provided it appears as if the "stock dividend" is just a NTdollar amount per share and not a multiplier, like you implied and used in your calculations. The cash dividend + the stock dividend = Total, i.e. $0.5+$2.2=$2.7 per share.

If you do the arithmetic on the dividend yield ($2.7 dividend / $42.45 share price) you get a yield of 6.35%.

Now based on the little knowledge I have about Taiwanese companies, I thought this was a little more in line with my expectations so I did a little more research.

If you link to Google Finance http://www.google.com/finance?q=TPE:2101 for this company and scroll down to the news feed you'll see a link to "Nankang (Nangang) Rubber Tire Corp Ltd Announces FY 2011 Dividend Payment." It's item C on the news feed list. Here's the link: http://www.reuters.com/finance/stocks/2 ... le/2504178

According to Reuters "Nankang (Nangang) Rubber Tire Corp Ltd announced that it will pay cash dividends of NTD 360,223,418 (NTD 0.5 per share), distribute stock dividends worth NTD 1,368,848,980 (NTD 1.9 per share), and use additional paid-in capital to distribute NTD 216,134,050 (NTD 0.3 per share), to shareholders for fiscal year 2011."

For a total dividend of NTD 0.5 per share + NTD 1.9 per share + NTD 0.3 per share = NTD 2.7 per share.

This reconciles with the Yahoo Finance Taiwan link information perfectly. So unless the Yahoo Finance and Reuters information is wrong, the yield is in fact 6.35% (see above for calculation), and not your stated 23%. BTW, 6.36% is still an awesome return in Taiwan. With inflation at around 1%, you're getting a real return of 5.36%. Not bad, but certainly not "free" money either.