Thais kick-off AFF Championship with 5-0 win over Brunei
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2022
Thailand’s national football team thumped Brunei 5-0 on Tuesday to win their opening match in the 2022 AFF Championship at Kuala Lumpur Stadium in the Malaysian capital.
Bordin Phala and Teerasil Dangda each scored once, while Peeradol Chamrasamee scored twice. Putera Yunos of Brunei was credited with a goal for Thailand after scoring against his own team.
Head coach Alexandré “Mano” Pölking said that he was satisfied with the performance in the first match of the championship, saying the Thai team kept possession of the ball for most of the game and created many scoring opportunities.
Captain Theerathon Bunmathan said that the game was difficult because it was the first match of the competition. He praised Brunei’s goalkeeper for stopping several chances.
He said fans should be proud that his team won three points and scored five goals and vowed they would do its best in the next match.
General manager Nualphan Lamsam said the team will receive a reward of 5 million baht if they reach the semi-finals.
Thailand will face the Philippines on Monday at 7.30pm at Thammasat Stadium in Pathum Thani.
Argentina’s team abandon bus for helicopter at celebration parade
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2022
Reuters
Millions of ecstatic Argentines flooded onto the streets of Buenos Aires to cheer the country’s World Cup-winning soccer squad led by Lionel Messi on Tuesday with the heaving crowd bringing the open-top bus parade to a standstill and forcing players to get on a helicopter to keep on with the celebrations.
The players were unable to reach the central Obelisco monument as planned due to security concerns because of the size of the crowd, estimated by local media at four million people. They were transferred from their parade bus to helicopters.
Images captured by Reuters showed people all over the city, including those waiting around the Obelisco and on surrounding highways trying to catch a glimpse of their returning champions.
Roads started to clear after the players were airlifted out, with some people left disappointed not to see the team.
The Argentine capital has been in party mode since the dramatic victory over France in Sunday’s final in Qatar, which has helped mask economic woes in the South American nation battling one of the world’s highest inflation rates.
Millions had already congregated in downtown Buenos Aires, with major roads shut down for the parade. People held up banners of Messi and late icon Diego Maradona, played instruments or climbed lamp-posts or bus stops.
The government made Tuesday a national holiday to allow fans to celebrate the win.
Crowd of 100,000 awaits Argentina’s World Cup winners in Buenos Aires city centre
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2022
THE NATION
Thousands of ecstatic fans gathered in the Argentine capital on Tuesday (December 20) ahead of a parade to celebrate the World Cup winning team.
Local media estimated that there were already more than 100,000 people waiting for the players at the iconic Obelisk pillar by mid-morning, with more crowds joining from streets on all sides.
The Argentine capital has been in party mode since their dramatic victory over France in Sunday’s (December 18) final in Qatar, which gave the country its first World Cup win since Diego Maradona hoisted the trophy 36 years ago.
The players are expected to spend a few hours at the Argentine Football Association facilities near the airport before heading at noon to the huge Obelisk monument in the centre of town.
Argentina beat France 4-2 on penalties after a scintillating 3-3 draw, with Messi scoring twice and France’s Kylian Mbappe netting three times.
Messi, 35, said the final would be his last match in the World Cup, though he intends to play a few more games for the national side.
Argentina fans are seen ahead of the victory parade
General view as a Argentina fan kisses a replica trophy ahead of the victory paradeArgentina fans are seen ahead of the victory paradeFans gather outside of the Association of Argentinian Football Headquarters ahead of the team arrival
ArgentinaLionel Messi with the trophy during the team
World Cup winner Lionel Messi on Tuesday (December 20) posted pictures of himself in bed with the famous golden trophy.
Argentina’s squad arrived at Ezeiza International Airport, on the outskirts of capital Buenos Aires, in the early hours of Tuesday (December 20).
The team were led from the plane by captain Messi, who scored twice on the way to Argentina beating France on penalties in Sunday’s final in Qatar, labelled by many experts as the best ever World Cup final.
Messi posted three pictures of himself in bed with the trophy on his Instagram account.
The traditional roast Christmas dinner could have nearly a quarter of a million pieces of microplastic in it, according to researchers at the University of Portsmouth.
Do you know how much plastic is really in your Christmas dinner?
Researchers in England tried to find out
by cooking two different roast chicken dinners.
One with all the ingredients wrapped in plastic packaging
and the other with no plastic packaging at all.
‘’We found seven times more microplastics in the wrapped dinner than the non-wrapped dinner.”
Dr Fay Couceiro is an environmental pollution researcher at the University of Portsmouth.
“So we found about 55,000 particles in the non-wrapped dinner and about 230,000 in the wrapped dinner.’’
She says eating a similar plastic packaged meal every day for a year, would see you consume approximately 10 grammes of plastic.
”That’s equivalent to two plastic bags a year.”
Couceiro also says food is usually analyzed raw for microplastics under laboratory conditions
but this study looked at what was actually on your plate after the food had been cooked in a normal kitchen.
“Unfortunately there’s no such thing as microplastic-free food now I think. That’s because there’s so many microplastics in the air and in the soil. So as we’re speaking now there are likely to be some microplastics that are falling on here, onto the food that we’ll be eating.’’
Global plastic production is projected to double within 20 years,
while the amount of plastic waste flowing into the world’s oceans is forecast to triple in the same period.
Couceiro says there are actually higher concentrations of microplastics in our soils than in our oceans.
“I have heard people say ‘I don’t have to worry about microplastics. I don’t eat fish’ and that always worries me slightly that there’s that misunderstanding, that disconnect. Microplastics are everywhere. If you’re eating anything and drinking anything, you will be ingesting a certain number of microplastics.”
Microplastics have been found in our blood, gut and various organs…
but experts have not yet been able to say what, if any, harm it is doing to us.
“We don’t want to scare people with this. There are microplastics everywhere and we don’t know what the impacts are on human health but it’s a sensible suggestion to try to reduce them as much as possible to avert any possible negative impacts going forward. There are simple ways, as you can see from this study, we can reduce the types of plastic we have in our packaging and we can start to think about it going forward in the farming community about how we reduce the amount of plastic there too.”
Liberator Securities has released its app for commission-free stock trading and plans to fully launch the service on January 3, the company said.
The app is available for both iOS and Android devices. It allows users to trade on the SET and the Thailand Futures Exchange without any commission on trades, and will add gold and currency trading in the second quarter of 2023.
The company said the app makes trading more convenient as it saves users from having to visit branches.
“We believe that technology will facilitate the next generation of securities companies to fully operate on digital channels,” it said on its website, adding that the transition will reduce costs.
Investors can also get news and gain knowledge from updates and chats through the company’s website and social media channels.
The Securities and Exchange Commission gave the green light in March for News Network Corp to establish Liberator Securities.
Liberator charges a fee of 200 baht to open an account.
As 2022 draws to a close, it’s time to look ahead to what’s next for the IT monitoring industry. Here are some key forecasts from Paessler, the monitoring experts for IT infrastructures and networks, for the IT landscape in 2023:
Digitalization will continue to create new responsibilities for IT
Whether it is in factory floors, hospitals, energy sources or data centres, previously analogue devices and systems that were isolated from the IT world are now generating data compatible with digital systems, expanding the limits to which we can analyze and interpret data.
While industries are clamouring to address all the challenges that have come up with the rising convergence of IT and OT (operational technology), it is also equally important to consider the monitoring of the ecosystem. A major challenge here is to bring these multiple metrics and their different monitoring systems into a single view. There will be an increased focus on IT monitoring tools that will enable organizations to keep track of the changes in the ecosystem and provide a consolidated view of the data collected, simplifying the data analysis and decision-making process. As we stretch the limits of IT/OT convergence, we will need solutions that can monitor these devices and infrastructures.
Monitoring solutions will keep playing a vital role in the data centre sector
As multinationals continue to relocate their data centres to Southeast Asia (SEA), there is little doubt that the region has become a hotspot for data centre investment. In the second half of this year, Singapore’s government lifted its moratorium on data centre construction. With the Satu Data Indonesia (SDI) 2022-2024 action plan, the Indonesian government is also focusing on expanding the implementation of data structures such as data centres. While the Thailand data centre market is expected to reach US$1.03 billion by 2027.
With data centres – and the subsequent infrastructure and devices that are often spread over multiple geographic locations – comes the challenge of monitoring them. Because data centres have become an essential infrastructure for organizations across various industries, their failure means that businesses are often left inoperable. In order to ensure efficient operation, it has become paramount to keep a constant eye on the various technical equipment, operational facilities, and security, which will minimize data centre downtime. As the data centre sector continues to play a major role in multiple industries and across the SEA region, so will the monitoring solutions.
Remote monitoring from the cloud will be on the rise – but need differentiation
Today, organizations are increasingly turning to the cloud with 76% of Asia Pacific businesses planning to increase their cloud services in the next 12 months. An important aspect of cloud migration is strengthening cloud-first strategies by ensuring that various applications and IT processes can be incorporated into a cloud computing environment.
Additionally, monitoring services being offered from the cloud are increasing. And this is applicable to monitoring cloud-based components such as websites, cloud services, and cloud-based applications. When it comes to on-premises monitoring, the monitoring solutions from the cloud may face some issues as they are depending on a superfast and reliable internet connection to avoid false monitoring results due to time lags in data transmission. It’s important to take this into account and organizations will need to go with the right mix of cloud-based and on-prem monitoring tools.
A renewed focus on improving security in the IoT environment
Given the significant rise in data breaches, ransomware attacks, and other cyber-attacks on various industries across the world, it really is no surprise that businesses across the globe are turning their attention to further strengthening their cybersecurity initiatives and strategies. However, one noticeable gap in all of this is the Internet of things (IoT) security gap.
The rapid growth of adoption and capabilities of IoT technology has skyrocketed over the past few years. By 2025, IoT spending in the Asia Pacific is predicted to reach US$437 billion. Any device that is connected to the internet is susceptible to some form of cyberattack. Apart from the fact that IoT devices inherently have very little built-in security, and that patch management can be difficult because of their physical nature, the interconnectedness of these devices, and the subsequent complex environments, pose grave security threats across the network.
Monitoring is a vital part of every security strategy, ensuring that all classic security tools like firewalls, unusual detection systems or privileged access management (PAM)-tools work flawlessly. But especially in the IoT world, monitoring has another important task. Suitable monitoring solutions can ensure physical security by integrating door-locking systems, security cameras, smoke detectors or temperature sensors into central monitoring. And businesses will look at taking these facets into consideration, going forward.
Distributed Architecture will continue to become the new normal
With concepts of hybrid working, remote offices and working from home becoming common, organizations are storing data in the cloud instead of having centralized data infrastructures, thereby moving toward networks using Software as A Service (SAAS) and Software-Defined WAN (SDWAN). With distributed architectures gaining prominence, it is critical to have the right distributed monitoring strategy in place that can be effective. Given this scenario, there will be a high demand for solutions which will provide organizations with a unified monitoring overview of multiple IT infrastructures providing benefits such as an end-user view of network performance, troubleshooting, simplifying transition to the cloud and reducing bandwidth requirements.
InnovestX reveals investment strategies for 2023 with SET Index targeted at 1,750 points
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2022
InnovestX believes that economic activity will continue to deteriorate in 2023 due to a gradual increase in interest rates, which increases the likelihood of a recession in developed countries such as the United States and Europe. The company anticipates that the Federal Reserve will slash interest rates in 2023 as demand is expected to decline, resulting in a dollar depreciation.
This will boost emerging markets such as the Thai stock exchange, which is anticipated to profit from capital inflows. In addition, the Thai economy is still on the path to recovery from domestic consumption with economic stimulus measures as a supporting factor, as well as positive expectations for China’s reopening in 2Q23. However, InnovestX is cautious about economic growth and earnings prospects in 2023, as well as rising risks to financial stability. The company suggests investing in top equities in 1Q23 which will gain from China’s reopening and the reviving Thai economy, namely AOT, BBL, BCP, CPALL, and MINT.
Innovest X Securities Co., Ltd. Research Group Managing Director Sukit Udomsirikul, said that during the transition period between 2022 and 2023, the world economy will exhibit three traits. To begin with, global economic growth will slow down dramatically, and the economies of developed and emerging markets will evolve differently, with the former potentially experiencing severe stagflation or at least a moderate recession. However, there is less likelihood of a severe recession in EM economies, but growth will decelerate. Second, global inflation is predicted to peak, especially in the US and EM nations, and to decline from a high base in 2023 as global demand decreases as a result of the economic slowdown. Third, Asian countries, including Thailand, are expected to continue raising their own interest rates, which means that the policy interest rate is already too high to accommodate heating inflation. Accordingly, we forecast a fundamentally driven SET Index of 1,750 points for the first quarter of 2023, with significant buying points in the zone of 1,500-1,600.
Thai markets will react favorably to China’s policy easing in 2Q23, when it is anticipated that the country will reopen because Chinese tourists account for the majority of Thailand’s tourism income and help drive net foreign inflows. Due to the ongoing energy crises and stricter monetary policy, the Eurozone will face stagflation in 2023, with economic activity declining. It is expected that inflation will continue to be over the target rate throughout 2022 and 2023. Inflationary pressures in the Eurozone, however, are likely to rise at a faster rate than previously anticipated. Exports, investments, and government expenditures will all likely slowdown in 2023, dragging down the Thai economy relative to 2022. There will be some cushioning from the worldwide economic recession thanks to the strong performance of the tourism, service, and domestic consumption sectors.
Thailand’s GDP growth will peak in the first quarter, at roughly 4%, before decelerating in the second half of the year and ending almost at 2% in 4Q23 due to 3 main reasons. First, exports will decrease as the global economy slows even further in the second half of the year. Second, while private consumption will play a significant role in propelling the economy forward, other factors like private investment and government spending will decline, both for consumption and investment. This is because the worldwide economic downturn and the slow pace of government projects’ disbursement. Third, it is projected that the tourism sector will be a major engine of economic growth, with between 21 to 25 million foreign tourists visiting Thailand, the majority of whom will remain on short haul rather than long-haul trips, generating less revenue for the nation.
Investment strategy: Under the pressure of prolonged tight financial conditions in 1Q23, risks associated with global recession, declining earnings, and financial stability are growing. The economy is still showing indications of slowing down. However, given the robustness of the U.S. economy and greater risk aversion, the dollar will continue to appreciate before reaching its top. By the end of 1Q23 to the beginning of 2Q23, the economy will likely have stabilized. In light of China’s reopening and robust domestic demands, we see opportunities to increase our position. InnovestX recommends stocks with healthy balance sheets and cash flow, profiting from China’s reopening, with increasing and recovering earnings and high growth potential. AOT, BBL, BCP, CPALL, and MINT are the top picks for 1Q23.
Summary of investment issues of individual stocks:
AOT: It is anticipated that the company will gain from China’s reopening and government tourism incentives, which will fuel domestic market growth. In 2023, the company’s earnings outlook will experience a significant turnaround.
BBL: With a planned rate hike from 1.25% to 2% in 2023, the Thai economy is poised to resume its recovery. The banking industry stands to gain from a declining US dollar because of the resulting changes in capital flows.
BCP: With the reopening of China’s markets, an uptick in demand is anticipated, which is projected to drive up commodity prices. Furthermore, it is a passive company which pays out solid dividends, both of which assist in cushioning the blow of market fluctuations.
CPALL: Domestic consumption will expand at a rate far above market predictions. Sales will continue to improve thanks to government economic stimulus measures, and the company will see more growth during the 2023 election.
MINT: The company is anticipated benefitting from China’s reopening, reduced energy costs in Europe, and a rebounding food market, aided by government economic stimulus initiatives. In addition, MINT’s stock valuation is 15-20% below those of its peers.
Avani Sukhumvit Bangkok welcomes leading Filipino film crew and cast
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2022
Branded Content
Bangkok, December 21, 2022: Ms. Chidchanok Pasinpong (centre), a general manager of Avani Sukhumvit Bangkok, welcomes the Filipino film crew, which includes the winner of the best director award from the Cannes Film Festival and “Feast” film director Mr. Brillante Mendoza (left) and actor Mr. Roger Vincent Rillon (right).
Avani Sukhumvit Bangkok is proud to be one of the official hotel sponsors for international film actor and film crews that attend the 15th World Film Festival of Bangkok.
Samsung to focus on immersive marketing, catering to Gen MZ
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2022
Nongluck Ajanapanya
Thai Samsung Electronics (TSE) is planning a more intense and immersive marketing campaign aimed at Generation MZ starting next year, TSE’s corporate marketing director Paramee Thongcharoen said on Tuesday.
In an exclusive interview, Paramee said that three out four people in the Asia Pacific by 2025 would be Gen MZ. The acronym stands for Generation Y or Millennial (1981-1996) and Generation Z (born after 1996).
She believes that as Gen MZ will constitute the majority of the population, they will tend to set new social trends. They have the purchasing power to purchase a wide range of products and are willing to pay more for brands that support their life goals.
Marketing campaigns from now on should focus on them, she believes.
However, the most difficult aspect of communicating with this generation is that their tastes change quickly and constantly. So, Samsung must accelerate to keep up with the changes, Paramee noted.
According to Samsung’s research, Gen MZ will value brands that can provide innovative technology with unique design to improve their overall well-being and restore a sense of freedom, energy, and excitement.
Meanwhile, Generation MZ is not afraid to express their views on social, political, and environmental issues. Therefore, they will gravitate towards brands that are proactive and supportive of their position.
Furthermore, because Gen MZ values self-expression, they prefer to buy items that can be personalised and customised. Besides, they are loyal to the brand that consistently gives something positive back to society, such as sustainability, the environment, or work-life innovation.
Paramee said that considering the characteristics of Gen MZ, Samsung’s marketing plans must be more immersive so that the group can engage with and experience Samsung’s products.
She cited several Samsung marketing campaigns that were a huge success this year, including Flexperience, the largest event for Gen MZ at Siam Square in downtown Bangkok, Samsung’s young sports talents empowering female amateur tennis players, and Samsung Innovative Camp.
“Samsung will continue to do things like this next year, but bigger and better,” she said. “We are also in discussions with our partners to improve the efficiency of the campaigns.”
Furthermore, Samsung has promised to invest in their human capital with several supportive programme and working environment that meet the need of the Gen MZ workforce as well.
Paramee said the company would continue to improve their real-time tracking and monitoring system in order to get feedback from Gen MZ and adapt the plan to best suit them, as well as eliminate plans that will not be effective.
Argentina fans are seen ahead of the victory parade
General view as a Argentina fan kisses a replica trophy ahead of the victory parade
Argentina fans are seen ahead of the victory parade
Fans gather outside of the Association of Argentinian Football Headquarters ahead of the team arrival
Messi wakes up with World Cup trophy in his bed
SootinClaimon.Com 