Direct transfer from US USD to HKD in Hong Kong?
Or transfer US USD to USD in Hong Kong, then do the exchange?

What I found out is you are better off doing the second option.  Don't do any kind of money change when transferring, the rate is better if you exchange currencies at the target bank.  These are my findings from HSBC US to HSBC HK, USD to HKD conversion

Direct Deposit for HK Accounts

Setting up direct deposit is a bit more complex in Hong Kong. They will want the Bank Code, Branch Code, and account number of your account. Here's how to find these numbers in HSBC account statements, but should be applicable to other HK banks.

For HSBC, the bank code is 004. You will need to look up your bank code on the internet (this link was useful for me: http://www.sfaa.gov.hk/pdf/common/Form/tsfs/Bank%20Code%20List%20(as%20at%2029.1.2010).pdf )

For the branch code, check your bank statement. It should be the first 3 digits of your full account number.

Your account number will be the middle 6 digits of your bank statement.

To deposit into savings, the last 3 digits for Premier is 888 (PowerVantage is 833). I wanted to deposit into checking, so my last 3 digits was 001.

In total you should have:

3 digit Bank Code

3 digit Branch Code

6 digits for your account number

3 digit account type (001 Checking or 888/833 Savings)

Applying Game Theory to a Sunday Night return from Macau

Sunday nights around 11PM at the ferry terminal in Macau are chaotic, where you can see groups of people moving from gate to gate. At this time, there are ferries leaving every 15 minutes or so, and there are way more prospective passengers than available spaces on each boat. I arrived at the ferry at 11PM, but could only get a 2:30 AM ticket. Now what?

People who have tickets for the proper time have no problem getting on, but the ticket vendors allow you to use tickets purchased for later times on earlier ferries. To do this, you need to wait on their standby line. This allows them to fill up each ferry to capacity even when there are no-shows.

The problem is there's a magical cut off in the standby line after which no one gets on. As the time nears for the ferries departure, the inevitable late comers arrive and fill up seats on the ferry. Ticketholders are allowed to board right up till the scheduled time of departure (the ferry actually leaves around 5 minutes after the scheduled time). Only after the scheduled time are the hopefuls from the standby line allowed to board.

Some thoughts:

• Standby lines for the ferries soonest to depart are the longest.
• You can look into the waiting room for each of the gates to gauge how full they are... but they all get pretty full even 15 minutes before leaving (standing room only)
• There's no sure fire way to know how many standby spots are available, BUT I don't think you need to know this to have a good strategy.
• People on standby lines often have tickets for the next outbound ferry (I saw a fair amount of people holding the 1230 ticket on the 1215 standby line). If you know Cantonese you can try exchanging your ticket for theirs, as any future ticket is valid for the standby line. They lose nothing and you get a ticket for the next ferry.
  

From my experience, there's on average 10-20 standby spots available per ferry. This is a small number considering the standby lines can get to be 100 persons long or more. However, from my experience, most people do not know this (Game Theory's Nash Equilibrium doesn't exist at the ferry terminal). You can use this to your advantage.

The size of the standby lines dramatically decrease the further out the scheduled time to depart is. I've found that ferries 30 minutes ahead have decently short lines.

In looking for a standby line, I would look for any line that is dramatically shorter than the one immediately earlier than it. However, if this line still has 30 or more people, go ahead to the next line.

Investment Stuff - alpha, beta, sharpe ratio

The HSBC fund fact sheets have all these figures that I didn't know what they meant, so I did some googling and found out.

Alpha - The higher the better. A positive alpha means this fund outperformed the benchmark by that percentage (1 = 1 percent better). A negative number is bad.

Beta - measures volatility. The lower the better. A beta of 1 means this fund is as volatile as the market. Utilities and bonds have a low beta, tech stocks have a high beta.

Sharpe Ratio - higher the better, measuring risk adjusted performance. Wikipedia has a good example so I'll just plagiarize here:

"As a guide post, one could substitute in the longer term return of the S&P500 as 10%. Assume the risk-free return is 3.5%. And the average standard deviation of the S&P500 is about 16%. Doing the math, we get that the average, long-term Sharpe ratio of the US market is about 0.4 ((10%-3.5%)/16%). But we should note that if one were to calculate the ratio over, for example, three-year rolling periods, then the Sharpe ratio could vary dramatically."

So you should look for funds with at least a Sharpe Ratio of 0.4, if not more.

The ideal fund would have a high alpha, low beta, and a high sharpe ratio. In English that means you want a fund that outperforms its benchmark, has low volatility, and has a higher risk adjusted return than the S&P 500 (10%) as compared to 30 year Treasuries (3.5%).

Best way to automatically invest if using HSBC in HK

First, if you go to the branch and talk to a wealth manager, they will steer you towards their Wealthinvest Insurance plan, which blows.

Of course, what's not clear online is the 'early encashment charge' which is what they charge you if you withdraw before 10 years. During year 1, it's 50%, and it rapidly goes down (50%, 30%, 21%, 17%, 14%, 12%, 10%, 8%, 6%, and finally 0%), but it's definitely not flexible. Add on top the 2% fee/year you are paying for their platform, and you can quickly conclude that this is not a good plan.

The better plan (which they will steer you away from) is the Unit Trust Monthly Investment Plan. The reason they will use is that you will get charged 5% every time you buy a fund. Of course, they neglect to mention (and they tell me actually that you can't actually buy) their no fee funds with the UTMIP :

The 27 No Fee Unit Trusts available from HSBC HK as of 6/23/2011

The UTMIP plan can be stopped at anytime (I set mine to stop after 1 year automatically), has a 1000 HK minimum per fund, and if you buy the no fee funds there's no 5% fee. You only pay for the funds management fee (which is the same with Wealthinvest) and if you stop before the year is up there's another 1% charge.

This is a much, much better deal than the Wealthinvest plan. The Wealthinvest plan is only worth it if you love the 44 funds in the plan they are offering, and don't plan on touching it for 10 years, and like the idea of paying for some capital preservation insurance if you die (basically, if the amount of investments goes below your principal and you die within the 10 years, there's a death benefit that covers the difference, up to 500k USD).

I emailed my wealth manager a screenshot of my confirmation screen buying my no fee fund of choice using UTMIP, just to make sure he knows for sure that what his colleague was telling him was not true.

Just changed RMB

Went to the HSBC counter here in Tsuen Wan. The rate I got was 117.150.

According to google, the spot rate today is 116.695734.

So I paid about 4/10ths of a percent

Buying RMB

There's some things you should know if you are trying to buy RMB in Hong Kong.

Generally, you can only buy RMB with HKD. Any other currency you want to use to buy RMB must be converted to HKD first.

Then, there's a daily purchase limit of 20k RMB per day for HSBC (and BOC HK, and probably all other banks). Yes, there are restrictions even though the RMB account does not reside in China.

The rate you get if you buy RMB at HSBC isn't as good as the street money changers. The difference is negligble though - only a .1% difference last I checked (.874 from HSBC vs .875 from money changer). In total, it's a .6% charge from HSBC vs a .5% charge from street money changer compared to spot rate.

However, the main benefit to using a money changer is that they don't care about your identity, so you can change as much as you want at a time (provided they have the cash). This means you will be carrying cash though, so depending on your situation it may not be worth it.

Here are the 'indicative rates' from HSBC for today 3/15/10:

1 USD = 7.745993385 HKD from USD to HKD

1 CNY = 1.144 HKD from HKD to RMB (You get 874 RMB if you exchange 1000 HKD)

Here are the spot rates according to google for today 3/15/10:

1 USD = 7.75819265 HKD

1 RMB = 1.13651316 HKD (You get 875 RMB if you exchange 1000 HKD)