Singapore Finance CEO on How to Survive Choppy Global Markets
Welcome to the Singapore Edition newsletter. Each week we bring you insights into one of Asia's most dynamic economies. If you haven't yet, please sign up here.
It's been a wild ride in the markets, as our special issue captured on Monday. With the tariff-induced turmoil continuing to rock assets from stocks to currencies, wealth reporter Yoojung Lee asked SingCapital's CEO how investors in Asia should respond, while Ishika Mookerjee looks at the week's winners and losers. Meanwhile, Low De Wei shines a light on a billionaire Tesla whale's S$100 million shophouse hotel.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
23 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How Musk's Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly Happened in Front of Our Eyes
For all the time he spent in the Oval Office, the richest man in the world is foreign born, and one thing he can never do is sit at the Resolute Desk as the elected most powerful man in the world. But Elon Musk was able to buy his way into becoming the 'First Buddy' and for a time he was able to bond his ultimate wealth with President Donald Trump's ultimate power. Trump allowed Musk to take a chainsaw to federal agencies with the promise he would cut trillions in federal spending. Trump believed Musk could do it and hereby make room for the big tax cuts that are the primary goal of the president's 'Big, Beautiful Bill.' Trump promises the BBB and a host of tariffs will lead to a 'golden age' protected by a 'Golden Dome' run from an Oval Office newly adorned with gold leaf. In this bonding of money and power, Musk declared his affection for Trump as a teenager might, via social media. In his instance, on a platform he bought for $44 billion in 2022, changing the name from Twitter to X. 'I love @realDonaldTrump as much as a straight man can love another man,' Musk posted in February. Musk often brought along the toddler son he also named X to the Oval Office. The boy picked his nose during one visit and wiped the result on the Resolute Desk. The famously germaphobic Trump was seemingly so enthralled with Musk's money and online sway that he said nothing and simply had the desk refinished. But however successful Musk had been as a businessman, he fell far short with his Department of Government Efficiency, which the whole country came to know as DOGE., His young minions created maximum chaos while achieving a small fraction of the promised savings, often ignoring the law as they did it and then falsely reporting the results. Decent and devoted civil servants who had devoted their working lives to serving the public were dismissed as useless bureaucrats by DOGE goons with nicknames like 'Big Balls.' As Musk's association with such reckless cruelty impacted Tesla's business, Trump sought to boost it by displaying a Cyber Truck and a red Model S Tesla outside the White House. Trump said he was buying the Model S because he liked the color. The car stood in the White House parking lot as Tesla investors clamored for Musk to return to his business. DOGE continued to fall short on the promised savings. And that made it more difficult for Trump to justify the cost of the BBB. If Trump and Musk had discussions about his departure, they were private. Trump held a sendoff ceremony in the Oval Office last Friday. Musk had a black eye that he explained away by saying his young son had hit him. He looked tense, but it seemed that might have been the result of a news report about his suspected drug use At one point, Musk looked around the freshly gilded office he would never be able to occupy despite his billions of dollars and millions of followers on X. 'The Oval Office finally has the majesty that it deserves, thanks to the president,' he said. Trump presented Musk with a golden key to the White House, where he can never reside. Both men said nice things about each other. 'One of the greatest business leaders and innovators the world has ever produced,' Trump said. 'Elon's service to America has been without comparison in modern history.' Musk pledged, 'The DOGE teams will only get stronger over time.' But as a full blown narcissist, Musk could not just let it end so far short of success. He had to show his power by smashing something. On Tuesday, Musk took the first step toward what would become a break-up in front of millions. Musk had said nothing negative about the BBB at the White House farewell and there had been no significant changes to it since them. But he now denounced it on X as 'a disgusting abomination.' 'I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore,' he wrote, now calling the BBB 'this massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill.' 'Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong,' he added 'You know it.' He subsequently vowed to 'fire' any legislators who supported it. Remarkably, the equally narcissistic Trump did not immediately respond, and it seemed he may have remained under the spell of Musk's money and online clout. But on Thursday, during a televised Oval Office meeting with new German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump allowed that he was 'very disappointed in Elon.' 'Elon's upset because we took the [electric vehicle] mandate and–you know, which was a lot of money for electric vehicles,' Trump then said.'He only developed a problem when he found out I would cut the EV mandate,' Musk must have been watching. 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,' Musk wrote on X. 'Such ingratitude.' The two major world figures kept posting when they could have just gotten on the phone. They instead played it out so it was read live by millions who comprised an intended audience. 'Time to drop the really big bomb: @realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public,' Musk wrote. 'Have a nice day, DJT!' What was most distressing about this deliberately public dispute between the world's richest man and its most powerful was that neither seemed more emotionally mature than your basic junior high student. However it goes from there, Trump will be out of power on January 20, 2029. Musk may or may not still be the world's richest man; Tesla stock fell by 13 percent during Thursday's exchange. But however much money he wins or loses, he will never have for even a minute the power an elected president has for four years. He may be able to briefly buy a president, but he cannot become one.
Yahoo
25 minutes ago
- Yahoo
President Trump threatens Elon Musk's billions in government contracts as alliance craters
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump threatened to end billions of dollars of federal contracts with Elon Musk's companies on June 5 after the alliance between Trump and the world's richest man blew up in spectacular fashion. Trump brought up Musk's federal contracts in a post on Truth Social after the two men hurled personal attacks as Musk, a former top Trump advisor, tries to build momentum to defeat the president's tax and policy bill. "The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts," Trump said in a post on his social media platform. "I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it!" In a separate post, Trump said he asked Musk to stop working at the White House. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO spent the past four months leading the administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which set out to slash government bloat and eliminate waste, fraud and abuse. "Elon was 'wearing thin,'" Trump said. "I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!" Musk's various companies have benefited from billions of dollars in U.S. government contracts over the past two decades, including SpaceX through its relationships with the Department of Defense and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In all, Musk and his businesses have received at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies and tax credits, often at critical moments, a Washington Post analysis found, helping seed the growth that has made him the world's richest person. Musk responded to Trump's threat over government contracts by saying SpaceX will decommission its Dragon spacecraft, which the company describes as "capable of carrying up to 7 passengers to and from Earth orbit, and beyond." "In light of the President's statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately," Musk said on X. SpaceX provides launch services to the Pentagon, including the launch of classified satellites and other payloads. CEO Gwynne Shotwell has said the company has about $22 billion in government contracts, according to Reuters. The vast majority of that, about $15 billion, is derived from NASA. Musk's companies also have benefited from his relationship with Trump and his administration. Reuters reported last month that Musk's DOGE team was expanding its use of his artificial intelligence chatbot Grok in the U.S. federal government to analyze data. And it reported in April that SpaceX and two partners have emerged as front-runners to win a crucial part of Trump's "Golden Dome" missile defense shield, six people familiar with the matter said. As far back as 2008, as the new CEO of a cash-strapped Tesla, Musk secured a low-interest loan from the Energy Department, two people directly involved with the process told The Washington Post. The president's attacks came after Trump told reporters earlier that he was "very disappointed" with Musk and signaled his close relationship with the former top White House adviser was over as he publicly addressed Musk's efforts to kill his so-called "big, beautiful bill. Musk quickly fired back with several attacks, including saying that Trump wouldn't have won a second term were it not for the quarter of a billion dollars in campaign cash he pumped into his 2024 campaign. "Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate," Musk said in a post on X, the social media company he owns. "Such gratitude. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: President Trump threatens Elon Musk's billions in government contracts
CNN
27 minutes ago
- CNN
The entirely predictable Trump-Musk divorce threatens Musk's business empire
Elon Musk's decision to go all in on Donald Trump never made much sense. His scorched-earth approach to breaking up with Trump is even harder to square. As a close Trump ally, Musk's actions inevitably affected Tesla – the biggest piece of his business empire and the maker of one of the most visible and expensive items that Americans can purchase: electric vehicles. First, Musk turned off Tesla's core customers, Democrats on the coasts, by pouring money and using his influence to help Trump return to the White House. Then he took a chainsaw to the federal workforce. Trump confirmed their relationship has soured, with Musk repeatedly blasting the president's sweeping domestic agenda bill in recent days and a public fight on social media on Thursday. Now, Musk's war of words with the president risk turning off the same Trump voters who may have considered buying a Tesla until this week. Not only that, but Tesla's ambitions for self-driving vehicles require government approval, something that no longer looks like a sure thing amid the Musk-Trump feud. Other Musk businesses like SpaceX are built on government contracts – contracts that Trump wasted no time threatening on Thursday. The past 12 months – with Musk marrying himself to the polarizing Trump brand and then breaking up with him – look like a textbook example of what a CEO should not do, especially a consumer-facing CEO. 'It's a bit of a head-scratcher that Musk is going so rogue-negative towards Trump so quickly. It's a potentially very hazardous path,' Dan Ives, a senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities and a longtime Tesla bull, told CNN in a phone interview on Thursday. The Musk-Trump break-up, playing out on the billionaires' respective social media platforms, was both entirely predictable and shocking nonetheless. After Musk blasted Trump's policy bill as a 'disgusting abomination' earlier this week, Trump suggested Musk has 'Trump derangement syndrome.' Musk responded by undercutting Trump's political prowess, saying: 'Without me, Trump would have lost the election.' As two of the world's most powerful people continued to trade public barbs, Tesla shares dropped lower and lower. Tesla shares (TSLA) plummeted 14% on Thursday as the bromance between Trump and Musk imploded in front of the entire world. The selloff erased about $152 billion from Tesla's market value and $34 billion off Musk's net worth, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Tesla shareholders are dismayed on multiple levels. First, Musk taking on the president so publicly could further shrink the car maker's customer base by angering Trump backers. 'You could end up alienating both sides of the aisle in the course of just a few months. When you're a consumer-facing company, that's the opposite of what you want to do,' Ives said. Secondly, Tesla relies on the federal government for tax credits and for approval of its controversial full-self driving technology, a green light that investors had been hoping for after the election. Neuralink, Musk's brain chip startup, is also reliant on FDA approval. Bigger picture, the Trump administration will help set the regulatory landscape for autonomous vehicles, not to mention artificial intelligence and other Musk priorities. And the president has not been shy about flexing the power of the federal government to hurt his opponents. 'You want Trump nice in the sandbox. You don't want Trump on your bad side,' Ives said. Bill George, an executive fellow at the Harvard Business School and former CEO of health tech company Medtronic, described the recent feud as a 'brutal breakup.' 'Never go to war with the president of the United States,' he said. 'There's going to be a lot of collateral damage to your business.' Trump threatened on Thursday to go after Musk's business empire. 'The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,' Trump posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. 'I was always surprised that Biden didn't do it! SpaceX, Musk's privately held space company, relies heavily on federal contracts, especially from NASA. SpaceX's Starlink satellite internet recently won business from the Federal Aviation Administration to help the agency upgrade networks used to manage US airspace. Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, founder of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, said the lesson is not about CEOs taking political positions. 'The lesson here is that there is no honor among thieves. These are two mob bosses that have had a parting of ways. And now they are going to take each other down,' Sonnenfeld told CNN. Harvard Business School's George noted that Musk and Trump had been acting like 'best bros' just days earlier. 'The lesson here is that you can either work in government or run your business,' George said. 'But you can't do both.'
