Dan, Life Holdings has updated his blog on September’s status

Hello,

Here is what’s been happening behind scenes this month.

The best outcome for this month is at breakeven and even that needs a few more days of work to be accomplished. I had a really bad week at Betfair this month. After a good start I ended up losing 8 daily Betfair ‘allowances’ (1 allowance is around 1%) within a matter of days during the second week of September. Our Betfair account has limits set on it, so I cannot lose or transfer more then x amount in one week. This is good for safety and money management reasons. I just never thought it would harm my work because I never reached it before. After I hit my losing limit for the week, Betfair kicked in and baned me for a full week, which is exactly what happened. The ban was lifted a few days ago, of course I am back at work.

Performance for September: 0% and we have to wait a few more days until I officially confirm we’re at 0%.

Status of payments

Withdrawal requests and profit payments for the month of August have not been completed. My plan to process payments has been delayed because of my losing week and 1 week ban. Payments will begin very soon - I will update weekly with our status, we are very close now. After the first large payments are settled, smaller payments will be dealt with very fast.

Regards,
Dan

I am in touch with Dan for the past 6 sleepless weeks on the withdrawals, so rest assure this will be taken care of as fast as we can.

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Watch out this space as I’ll be updating with whatever information I have from him a year or so ago on FX-Experts once I reach home.

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This is brought to you by SwapGold.com

Short and sweet. Be aware of them.

• Don’t slack on security. Always keep all security softwares updated.
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If users can keep to these basic tips, they should have a good experience using e-currencies.

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Currently they’re running a promotion of swapping between E-bullion and E-gold at no rates. Note that this is not any kind of advertorial as I have been their customer for a pretty long time, they really do provide excellent and fast exchange service.

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As I haven’t stepped onto Bulgaria’s soil to look and maybe even understand how is it looking, there are tonnes of available resources on the internet on how the outlook is looking and will it be viable for our real estate development project.

Most facts summarized from Wikipedia. These are the factors we should be taking into consideration should we be investing in the country.

Location:

Republic of Bulgaria lies in the southeastern Europe, with Romania to the north, Serbia to the west and Greece and Turkey to the south.

Economy:

A member of the European Union since 2007, Bulgaria has a rapidly growing, technhologically developed economy. The country boasts the second highest standard of living in Southeastern Europe in terms of GDP per capita. Inflation is well under control; unemployment stands lower than the average for the European Union and is steadily declining. Due to this positive economic profile, Bulgaria is expected to join the Eurozone in 2011, after having spent 3 years in ERM II, the entry for which is currently scheduled for early 2008. In comparison, the majority of EU member states, which are currently struggling with the Eurozone criteria, are expected to join the single currency union later than 2011.

Transport:

Bulgaria occupies a unique and strategically important geographic location. Since ancient times, the country has served as a major crossroad between Europe, Asia and Africa. Five of the ten Trans-European corridors run through its territory. The total length of the roads is 102,016 km of which 93,855 km are paved and 416 km are motorways. Several motorways are planned, under construction or partially built: Trakiya motorway, Hemus motorway, Cherno More motorway, Struma motorway, Maritza motorway and Lyulin motorway. Other motorways are planned but their final track is yet to be decided. They include a link between the capital Sofia and Vidin, a link between the Struma and Trakiya motorways south of Rila Mountain, a link between Rousse and Veliko Tarnovo, and the Sofia ringroad. Many roads have been recently reconstructed. The length of railways is 6,500 km of which more than 60% are electrified. There is a €360,000,000 project for the modernization and electrification of the Plovdiv-Kapitan Andreevo railway.

Air transportation has developed relatively comprehensively (Very important for tourism). There are formally six international airports at Sofia, Burgas, Varna, Plovdiv, Rousse and Gorna Oryahovitsa. Massive investment plans exist for the first three. There are important domestic airports in Vidin, Pleven, Silistra, Targovishte, Stara Zagora, Kardzhali, Haskovo and Sliven. After the fall of communism in 1989, most of them are not used as the importance of domestic flights declined. There are many military airports and agricultural airfields. 128 of the 213 airports in Bulgaria are paved. The ports of Varna and Burgas are by far the most important and have the largest turnover. Other than Burgas, Sozopol, Nesebar and Pomorie are big fishing ports. The largest ports on the Danube River are Rousse and Lom which serves the capital. There is well organised public transport in the cities and in many smaller towns. There are buses, trolleys (in about 20 cities) and trams (in Sofia). The Sofia Metro in the capital is to have three lines with total length of about 48 km and 52 stations, but only a section is currently completed.

Demographics

According to the 2001 census,[28] Bulgaria’s population consists mainly of ethnic Bulgarian (83.9%), with two sizable minorities, Turks (9.4%) and Roma (4.7%). Of the remaining 2.0%, 0.9% comprises some 40 smaller minorities, the most numerous of which are the Russians, Armenians, Vlachs, Jews, Crimean Tatars, ethnic Macedonians and Karakachans. 1.1% of the population did not declare their ethnicity in the latest census in 2001.

84.8% of the population speak Bulgarian as their mother-tongue. Bulgarian, a member of the Slavic language group, remains the only official language, but other languages (such as Turkish and Romany) are spoken corresponding closely to ethnic breakdown.

The country’s Roma population is estimated at between 400,000 and 800,000.[2]

Most Bulgarians (82.6%) belong, at least nominally, to the Bulgarian Orthodox Church, the national Eastern Orthodox church. Other religious denominations include Islam (12.2%), various Protestant denominations (0.8%), Roman Catholicism (0.5%), with other denominations, atheists and undeclared numbering ca. 4.1%.

In the recent years Bulgaria has had one of the slowest population growth-rates in the world. Growth has been negative since the early 1990s,[29] due to the economic collapse and high emigration. In 1988 the population was 8,859,000 people, and in 2001 7,950,000. Now Bulgaria suffers a heavy demographic crisis [citation needed].Bulgaria’s fertility rate is currently 1.4 child per woman as of 2007 and is going to reach 1.7 by the end of 2050.Replacements revel fertility rate is needed to reach 2.2 to continue the natural increase in the nation. (Simply showing signs of a developing country, where locals tend to look more seriously on personal financial situation before having babies)

Culture

Bulgaria is well-known for its rich folklore, distinctive traditional music, rituals and tales (Strong plus point for tourism), but the country’s contribution to humanity also continued in the nineteenth and twentieth century, when individuals such as John Atanasoff - born in USA with Bulgarian origin, regarded as the father of the digital computer, a number of noted opera singers (Nicolai Ghiaurov, Boris Christoff, Raina Kabaivanska, Ghena Dimitrova), Anna Veleva, and successful artists (Christo Javacheff, Pascin, Vladimir Dimitrov) popularized the culture of Bulgaria abroad.

Tourism

In winter, Samokov, Borovets, Bansko and Pamporovo become well-attended ski-resorts. There are summer resorts on the Black Sea at Sozopol, Nessebur, Golden Sands, Sunny Beach, Sveti Vlas, Albena, Saints Constantine and Helena and many others. Spa resorts such as Bankya, Hisarya, Sandanski, Velingrad, Varshets and many others are popular all over the year. Bulgaria is becoming an attractive destination because of the quality of the resorts and prices below those found in Western Europe.

Bulgaria has enjoyed a substantial growth in income from international tourism over the past decade. Beach resorts are popular with tourists from Germany, Russia, Scandinavia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. The ski resorts are a favourite destination for British and Irish tourists.

Bulgaria now attracts close to 5 million visitors yearly (One of the most important factor here)[citation needed] Tourism in Bulgaria makes a major contribution towards Bulgaria’s annual economic growth of 6%-6.5%.

Another source is from Oxford Business Group, which highlights Bulgaria’s aging population problem, as well as most of the views on economy, tourism and future. This is an excellent read.

Economy

Bulgaria’s economy is in good shape – 2006 marked the ninth successive year of growth since the 1996-1997 financial crash. Consumption and GDP are growing; investment, both foreign and overseas, is breaking records, thanks, in part, to EU accession; unemployment levels, though still high in relative terms, are falling; and imports and exports are continuing to increase at a robust rate. The industrial sector, which includes construction, was lauded as one of the main factors behind this success story, with annual growth of 8.3% in 2005 and 2006, while tourism is another soaring sector. Challenges remain though – inflation is still high, 6.5% year on year at the end of 2006, and the current account deficit stood at a record 3.88bn euros in 2006, representing around 16% of GDP, up from 2.43bn euros in 2005. To the future, Bulgaria’s policymakers will have to negotiate the balance between caution and growth. Meanwhile there is debate over when Bulgaria will join the Eurozone – estimates differ between 2010 and 2012. The chapter includes interviews with Rumen Ovcharov, former Minister of Economy and Energy; Stoyan Stalev, President, Invest Bulgaria Agency; and Michael Deppler, Director, European Department, IMF.

BANKING is also an important factor here when we’re considering them for investment.

The Bulgarian banking market is coming of age, as the country’s banks, predominantly owned by foreign players, mature and almost 100% banking penetration is reached. Although this will lead to deceleration, the injection of EU funds to various sectors will require co-financing from banks, keeping the sector in rude health. Meanwhile the Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) has lifted nearly all of its credit growth restrictions, meaning the sector now operates under pure market forces. The country’s 32 banks enjoyed total assets of 21.5bn euros at the end of 2006, double the figure from just three years earlier. And while the majority are in foreign hands following the programme of privatisations over the past few years, the few remaining domestics are fighting fit. Take, for example, Bulgarian First Investment Bank, the country’s fifth largest by assets, which raised 90.6m euros in May 2007 through an initial public offering, which was six times oversubscribed. To the future, retail banking looks set to remain the main driver of growth, with mortgage finance and leasing also blossoming. Thanks to the EU, small business and corporate clients should enjoy more favourable financing terms. Meanwhile by the end of 2008 Bulgarian banks are set to comply with Basel II regulations. Nearly all of the larger banks are close to compliance, but smaller banks will need to up their capital or could be forced to seek mergers with larger banks. Ivan Iskrov, Governor, Bulgarian National Bank provides a viewpoint.

CONSTRUCTION AND REAL ESTATE

Although Bulgaria’s construction sector is thriving, the pace of growth in the industry, which has seen rapid expansion over the past decade, is slowing, due to rising materials and labour costs squeezing margins across the board. In response to this, some developers are looking to high-end developments, rather than adopting the traditionally more typical, erecting four walls and a roof and waiting for the money to pour in approach. Indeed, analysts predict that projects like Residential Park Sofia, a suburban development of kept grounds, on-site security and recreational facilities, are the way forward and that constructors are going to have to woo buyers with extras. The number of foreigners purchasing property in Bulgaria – a robust market, accounting for 29% of real estate sales in 2006 – is also expected to slow (Something we do have to factor in when it comes to sales of the projects)

To continue attracting overseas buyers, developers are looking towards the country’s mountainous regions. In terms of retail development, shops- and consumers- are moving out of the city centres and into suburban malls. It’s not all doom and gloom for the downtown areas though, as space there is still attractive to high-end retailers. Indeed, even with the advent of the Mall of Sofia, there is not enough room on Sofia’s main shopping street, Vitosha Boulevard, for all the big name retailers hoping to grab space there. Some office space is also moving out to the suburbs, as the city centre becomes over-subscribed and Business Park Sofia, on the outskirts of the city, has attracted companies such as Ericsson. Perhaps the best news for constructors though comes in the shape of 2.2bn euros in EU funds pledged to improve the country’s road transport system. Another promising segment is Bulgaria’s developing logistics infrastructure – for example, a huge logistics centre is being constructed outside Varna, near the Black Sea (This is the area we are looking at for the projects)

And How do Overseas investors look at Bulgaria’s Estate Future?

This is quoted from Property.bg, which is a realtor site from Bulgaria and might be bias, nevertheless a good read.

Almost 40% of potential overseas investors would invest in emerging markets, followed by beach destinations (19%) and existing markets (15%) according to a poll by The Homebuyer Show.

This indicates that people want to make the most from their money by investing in areas that provide long-term growth and high capital gains, such as the Eastern European countries of Bulgaria and Slovakia.

In fact, over 25% of the people polled are buying a property overseas for long-term capital gains, with the intention of using it as a holiday home coming in second (21%) and short-term holiday lets third (20%).

The poll also revealed that over 50% of people believed that if an area is a budget airline destination, this increases its appeal and investment potential.

Other catalysts for an area’s investment potential are if it is a member of the EU (22.41%), if there are new facilities (10.34%), and if there is an international event, for example the Athens Olympics, (5.17%) or extensive media coverage (5.17%)

Nick Clark, Managing Director of The Homebuyer Show, said: “Buying a property overseas is becoming a lot easier, with many of our exhibitors looking after the entire procedure from initial visit to signing the contract.

“An entire section of the show is dedicated to buying homes abroad, ranging from traditional markets such as Spain, Florida, France, Greece and Italy, to emerging markets such as Bulgaria and Shanghai.”

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Swiss Cash has swindled a cool 35 RM million dollars, that amounts to 10.2 Million USD. Thanks to makila for sharing.

Official source from Malaysian National News Agency

RM35 Mln Swisscash Monies Ordered To Be Returned To Malaysia

– BERNAMA

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Fact is that the fate of HYIPs are getting dimmer, autosurfs gets mulled harder with nothing left to prove. Tramael bites the dust after 12 months of Non-stop robot paying action, with the admin Ipsens admiting that it was a ponzi after all.

Tramael is dead because I’ve set robots to pay out as they always were: ASAP.
After membership started to grow over a certain number, selling credits and hosting were unable to support such a membership alone.
At that point Tramael descended to semi-ponzy.
It was paying out from earnings and cash balance.

After 11 and half months of flawless payment records, robots stopped to do theirs job as they hadn’t any more money to work with.

This caused Tramael’s doom.

So don’t place your hard earned money into Surfs, Manual Surfs or Autosurfs, whatever they call it, they don’t work now, and will never work in the future

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Still remember the defiant Rod from Udachu? Here’s a way to say goodbye. Source from a fantastic yahoo group that I have been with for 1 year or more.

Dear Udachufund Members,

It is with great pain that I am compelled to write this email to all of you. As you know, I have been the administrator of the Udachufund for quite a long time. I have made plenty of friends along the wayand most of you are on a first name basis with me. I have alwaystried to respond to your questions, comments, etc. in a timely manner. I think my record speaks for itself.

I am not exactly sure what is happening these days with theUdachufund, except the obvious. The fund has been closed since May of this year and refunds were promised starting June first. We all know that has not happened and unfortunately, this is out of my control because I did not handle any of the placement of the funds for investment.

As of the end of this month, the Udachufund Boquete office will be closed. I cannot continue to operate an office on my own budget and I think all of you would agree that I should not have to. When the office closes, I will be resigning as the administrator of the Udachufund. I am not sure who will be taking over in my place, but you may try to email udachu@gmail. com and ask whoever answers that email. Good Luck! I am sorry to say that even I do not get an answer anymore from that email address.

I am in possession of the hard drives from the Udachufund computers and all of the e-gold and or bank records. They are in a safe place and multiple backups have been made.

I will be more than happy to share them with the proper authorities to recover any funds if possible. I guess the bottom line for all of you to know (and I think you know this already) I was only following the orders from the CFO of the Udachufund. My main job was to accept funds from e-gold or bank wires and send them on to the CFO for placement into the investments that he saw fit. I was also responsible for sending out monthly statements and processing withdrawals. As many of you know I accomplished this in a timely manner when I received the funds from the investment proceeds. I had no say in how the funds were invested.

Most of you that joined the fund were through referrals. I want to apologize to all members for not seeing this unfold sooner. To the members that reside in Boquete, Panama, you all know me and where I live. I will be more than happy to discuss any legal actions that you would like to take against the Udachufund and will as I said earlier be more than happy to share whatever information I have to help you in any way.

I want you to all know that there are at least two groups of individuals that will be taking legal action against the Udachufund. I am not sure if this will be in the form of a class action suit or not. If it is, I will certainly email everyone with the instructions that they need to follow. I have great hopes that the funds will be recovered and people will be refunded sometime in the future.

Along with the rest of you, I have also lost funds which I invested in the Udachufund which is evident on the Udachufund database for the authorities to inspect. We will all see how this plays out.

The emails addresses such as admin, refunds, etc. for udachufnd.com will expire shortly. I have created a new email address boquetetom@yahoo. com for anyone that would like to comment on this email or has a question for me. I promise to respond to all emails as all of you know I have in the past.

Again, I am very sorry to have to write this email to all of you, but from my point of view, I thought you should all know what is going on. I truly wish I had better news for all of you. It has been a pleasure to serve all of you for the last two years. I am sorry to say that this seems to have turned into a mini Enron, but I hope it eventually will turn out OK.

There is one last point that I would like to make and that is that most of you know that I was only the administrator for the Udachufund. I do not have any information on Udachuinvest or any other program associated with Udachu. Sorry.

I wish you all the best.

Tom Brockman
Ex Udachufund Administration

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lol. I’m not sure if anyone remembers Golden Rocks and the Pola Brothers, but apparently jfnoble in HYIPDiscussion has announced on the return of Golden Rocks 2 from Mike Pola.

You can check out their new blog at Golden Rocks 2 and their new forum at http://goldenrocks2.freeforums.org/.

Chances of Goldenrocks coming back is close to none. But for entertainment sake, Go Pola Go!

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We’ve brought this up in our mailing list a few times to gather some statistics.

Illiyan and I were discussing on the possibility venture between us on Bulgaria land development. A little brief introduction on Illiyan,

More About The Main Man

A 25 year old Bulgarian who has connections and contacts in the estate development field, and has a few small land development projects running on his own with his core partners, one is a developer who is in this business since 1997.

This Isn’t New, Discussion Has Been Ongoing For the Past 2 Months..

I have sent everyone who has registered with our Aweber mailing list on the possible venture with a pdf link for a project on buying a piece of land to develop a complex to gather some feedbacks and opinions. The outlook of the support is pretty positive as long as a few guidelines are being monitored closely.

Sharonsopinion, my confidante and partner in Nobs, Mbongwe from HYWD, Stjin and Steven, two familiar faces from ISFC brought up really difficult questions for Illiyan which he answered me satisfactory to show his experience in this field.

Points that our community readers brought out which should be taken note on:

1. Be as transparent as possible from the start of raising the funds, to acquiring of the land and development. Follow up closely till the sales of unit and distribution of Returns on Investment (ROI)
2. More market research to be done on the outlook of Bulgaria’s economy
3. Check with the local government on the acquiring of land areas (Legitimacy issue)
4. Realistic returns (Real estate busiiness returns are generally high, with a minimal of 50 - 60% per project basis and can go as high as 80 - 100%)
5. Consultation of lawyers on the raising of funds whether it will be illegal for such projects (Remember NSFG?)
6. Affordable minimum sum entry
7. Terms of distribution with regards to Returns on Investments (ROI)

Why This Arena To Raise Funds?

We’ve seen HYIPs like Solid Investment, Troy Bank and more conning huge sums of money from our HYI arena amounting to millions. With such capacity, Illiyan and I both believe that we can introduce a legit entity for building a investment community to grow our money for the long run.

Before I agree on the partnership, I’ll be flying over to Bulgaria to check out the plots of land that are available for sale, see the developers and work with Illiyan on the details of how he wants the company to be run. Over the next few blog entries, I will be introducing Bulgaria, with more statistics on how the economy is running and why is it a growing spot among tourists (especially the UK residents).

The Team?

If partnership is formed, I will be involve this with a few core persons that you are familiar with as well, so this will not be a one man show that protects the investors fund on interest.

Our good friend from HYWD, Mbongwe is based in Bulgaria, and Sharon who has been involved in a real estate program (I’m proud of her) will be looking out for me and Illiyan on the interest of the investors.

If everything is good and agreeable, this will be the First Nobs Invest Project. The first one of many more to come.

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Marcos, there’s still time, if you see this, get back to my email, else everything will be released to the public.
Our database got crapped up after trying to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress. Guess everything has to be tested properly before doing any upgrades in the near future.
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