Nguyen Giang, owner of The Way Coffee, completed the procedure to open an account at SSI Hanoi Branch after hearing that the HCM CIty Stock Exchange (HOSE) was planning to increase the required minimum trading lot from 100 shares to 1,000 shares.

The reason behind the plan, as explained by Le Hai Tra, HOSE’s CEO, was to ease the overload.

However, this was not good news for many investors, including Giang. Because of Covid-19, he no longer can work as an outbound tour guide, which he did for 10 years.

In 2020, he opened a street coffee shop. However, the third Covid-19 outbreak once again affected his business. Giang then decided to make financial investments as he has confidence in the bright prospects of the stock market.

However, the calculations of the investor may fail because of HOSE’s tentative policy.

If the tentative policy takes effect, Giang will have to spend VND100 million at least for every purchase transaction of VIC (Vingroup), VJC (Vietjet), VCB (Vietcombank) and VNM (Vinamilk).

If buying SAB (Sabeco), he would have to spend VND180 million at least, and ifor VCF (Vinacafe Bien Hoa), he would have to spend VND240 million.

These are very large amounts of money compared with Giang’s investment plan.

However, Tra said the policy, once applied, would bring benefits. It would not only help ease congestion thanks to the reduction of 40-50 percent in number of transactions, but would also better protect small investors.

Nguyen Duy Hung, president of SSI, also commented that this is the best choice for now to maintain the system’s operation.

However, many experts and securities companies don’t share the same view. They have warned that the policy isn’t in line with stock market development and discriminates against small and big investors.

“The plan is unreasonable. It will affect many private investors and be contrary to international practice,” the brokerage director of a HCM City-based securities company said.

The decision to raise the required minimum trading lot from 10 shares to 100 shares in the past once put difficulties for many investors as they could not sell shares. However, the decision was still acceptable because every transaction had value of between several millions of dong to tens of millions of dong only.

But this will be diiferent if the minimum trading lot is raised to 1,000 shares.

V. Ha

Back in 1986 I made a film for the BBC science series Tomorrow’s World about a remarkable new class of drugs called statins.

Studies had shown that statins could cut people’s risk of heart disease by lowering their cholesterol levels. It was all very exciting.

Thirty-five years on and statins are now one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the UK, with around eight million people, including me, taking them daily.

Yet they continue to be dogged by controversy and fear of side-effects.

Last year, for example, there were claims that statins might increase your risk of dying from Covid-19. Studies had shown that people admitted to intensive care tended to have lower levels of cholesterol, so there was a fear that taking cholesterol-lowering drugs might make you more vulnerable.

Well, like so many health scares, this one turned out to be baseless. In fact, there is now mounting evidence that taking statins may actually protect you against dying from Covid.

In a new study, published a couple of weeks ago, doctors from Columbia University in the U.S. compared the fate of 648 Covid patients who were taking statins when admitted to hospital with a matched group who were not. It turned out that the patients on statins were 50 per cent less likely to die from Covid.

This is probably because, as well as reducing cholesterol, statins have a powerful anti-inflammatory effect. One of the reasons why people become seriously ill with Covid is that their immune systems over-react to the virus, causing inflammation that damages the blood vessels, lungs, heart and brain.

So it makes sense that taking statins would help. Indeed, one of the things the researchers found was that patients taking statins had lower levels of C-reactive protein, a marker of inflammation.

Trials are currently under way to see if giving patients statins when they’re admitted to hospital with Covid really does save lives. I’m betting it will.

There is further good news for statin-users in the form of two other studies looking at commonly reported side-effects, including muscle aches.

These showed that most people are just as likely to get side-effects when taking dummy pills as when taking the real pills. It’s partly down to the ‘nocebo’ effect — you’re told that you might experience side-effects and so you do.

In a cleverly designed study published last month in the British Medical Journal, researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine recruited 200 patients who had recently stopped taking statins due to side-effects.

The patients were given identical bottles containing identical-looking pills. Half the bottles contained statins and half dummy pills. The patients, who had no idea which was which, were asked to take the pills for a year.

They were also asked, every day, to score their reactions to the pills on a smartphone. The conclusion of the experiment was that side-effects were no more common in people taking statins than those taking the dummy pills.

An almost identical study, published in November by researchers from Imperial College London, came to very similar conclusions. They found that 90 per cent of symptoms reported by patients taking statins were also present when they took dummy pills.

Now, no one is suggesting that people who report pain are making it up, or that statins never have serious side-effects (such as kidney failure) — they do, but they are rare. The British Heart Foundation says severe side-effects occur in less than 0.1 per cent of cases.

The fact that muscle ache is so common in people taking statins (or dummy pills) is partly because they’re at an age where aches and pains become more common.

And there’s also the nocebo effect. I’ve been taking statins for more than five years — not because I have high cholesterol, but as a preventative because of a family history of heart problems (my dad died from heart failure).

I’ve never experienced side-effects, although I sympathise with those who do. But I’ve also seen the nocebo effect in action and it is surprisingly powerful.

For one experiment I was involved in, we asked volunteers to put their hand into a bucket of ice-cold water and see how long they could keep it there. This is a safe and ethical way to induce pain, as it’s not dangerous.

Our volunteers were then given what they were told were ‘powerful painkillers’ (actually dummy pills) and warned of potential side-effects such as nausea and dizziness, before they then repeated the cold-water challenge.

This time, most of them, believing in the power of our dummy painkillers, were able to last significantly longer. But a couple dropped out soon after taking the pills, complaining of nausea and dizziness. The nocebo effect in action. So how can you tell if your side-effects are caused by statins?

Ask yourself: did my symptoms begin immediately after taking the drug? And is the muscle pain just on one side of the body?

If you have an immediate onset of symptoms, this is more likely to be a nocebo effect. It normally takes weeks for a real drug to build up in the body and cause trouble.

And pain on only one side of your body is more likely to be a muscle strain.

If you do experience side-effects, talk to your doctor, who may recommend trying a lower dose or a different brand, rather than just giving them up.

Exercise is vital but it won’t help you lose weight

Rates of childhood obesity continue to soar, with around a third of all ten-year-olds in Britain now overweight or obese. This is tragic because if you’re overweight as a child, you’re far more likely to have problems as an adult. But which is the main culprit: junk food or too little exercise?

The rather surprising answer has emerged in a new study. Researchers from Baylor University in Waco, Texas, compared the activity levels and diets of rural children in Ecuador with those in nearby towns.

They found that while the rural children were far more active, they didn’t burn any more calories. They were considerably slimmer because they ate far less junk food.

While it’s vital to keep active whatever your age — as it’s proven to keep you happy and healthy — research suggests you’re extremely unlikely to lose weight through exercise alone, partly because the more exercise you do, the more efficient your body becomes.

One consolation, if you’re sedentary and take up running, is that for a while at least, you’ll be burning more calories per mile than your super-fit neighbour!

So THAT’S why your dog gets in a spin on walks

I go for a run or walk with our dog, Tari, every morning.

One of her more frustrating habits is that after a couple of minutes, when we reach the edge of our local wood, she stops, paces, sniffs, spins around and finally does her business in the middle of the path, which I then have to clear up.

But why does she spin around? It turns out she’s probably using sensors in the back of her eyes to detect the earth’s magnetic field, so she can orient her body along a north-south axis.

We know dogs do this thanks to exhaustive research by scientists at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany, who decided to study the poop habits of more than 700 dogs.

The researches found that dogs prefer to defecate with their head pointing north and their bottoms south, or vice versa.

One theory is that it’s a vestige from their past — when pack animals are hunting it is useful to have a magnetic sense to keep the pack heading in the same direction. As for humans, there is some evidence that we have a magnetic sense, too, but as yet none to show that it affects our preferred direction for sitting on the loo.

In the meantime, I guess I’ll just have to put up with Tari’s morning shuffle. At least I know that if we ever get lost, all I have to do is wait for her to have a poo, and then I’ll know in which direction to head for home.

Greece’s tourism minister has said Britons hoping for a summer holiday in the country can start booking as it prioritises giving the COVID vaccine to the inhabitants of around 40 small islands.

The islands, which each have a population of less than 1,000 people, include Halki near Rhodes, Kastellorizo off the Turkish coast, Meganisi in the Ionian Sea and Kythira in the Peloponnese peninsula, according to the Daily Telegraph.

Larger destinations such as Mykonos, Santorini and Corfu will be targeted once Greece’s tiniest islands have been vaccinated, the newspaper said.

However, UK government has said the earliest date people from England can travel abroad for a holiday is 17 May – that is provided the four tests for easing lockdown are met.

Follow live COVID-19 updates from the UK and around the world

Greek tourism minister Harry Theoharis told the Telegraph: “If you’re going to send a medical team to an island with a small population, it makes sense to vaccinate not just the elderly and vulnerable, but everyone.

“We’re vaccinating everyone on islands that have a population of less than 1,000 inhabitants.”

Elderly people and the most vulnerable have been the first to be offered the COVID-19 vaccine in Greece, with Mr Theoharis telling the Telegraph it is now “a priority to vaccinate the tourist islands”.

“We want to vaccinate people working in the tourism sector, from hotel staff and waiters to tourist guides and drivers,” he added.

Mr Theoharis did not state when the vaccine rollout on the islands would be completed, saying the pace of progress “depends on how many vaccines we receive in a couple of months’ time”.

He added that Britons wanting to enter Greece this summer will need one of the following: a certificate showing they have been vaccinated; proof that they have antibodies against the virus; or a test to show they are negative.

Mr Theoharis told the Telegraph that Greece would “try to make it as smooth and hassle-free as possible”, adding: “They can book flights and start choosing the places where they want to go.”

More than one million people in Greece have received the first jab of a coronavirus vaccine, with 356,000 people having had both doses, out of a population of 11 million people.

The number of coronavirus cases is still high in Greece, with 2,702 new infections recorded on Wednesday – a record daily figure so far this year.

Greece has eased restrictions for vaccinated Israelis and is discussing a similar arrangement with the UK.

The UK government is set to discuss with the EU the bloc’s proposals to create a vaccine passport that could allow people to travel more freely in time for the summer holidays.

The EU-wide “digital green pass” would provide proof a person has been vaccinated, as well as test results for those not yet inoculated and information on recovery for people who have had COVID-19.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the proposals for the pass, which will “respect data protection, security and privacy”, will be set out this month.

Compared to the UK, the EU’s rollout of coronavirus vaccines has been slow.

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EU leaders agreed last month to work on vaccine certificates, with southern European countries including Spain and Greece pushing to unlock tourism this summer.

However, a number of nations say before that, it needs to be established that vaccinated people cannot transmit COVID-19 to others.

Some countries, such as France and Belgium, have also expressed concern that easing travel only for inoculated people would be unfair.

MORE than 17,000 earthquakes have been recorded in the south-west of Iceland, in the Reykjanes Peninsula, during the past week.

People living in the area have been advised to be extra careful due to dangers of landslides and rockfall.

Many of the larger earthquakes have even been felt in Iceland’s capital city, Reykjavik (where over half of the population lives), which lies only 27km away.

This has led to heightened concerns about the effects of even larger earthquakes and also of a possible eruption from the Krýsuvík volcanic system in the area.

South-west Iceland has a track record of centuries of calm, which we know can be broken by turbulent periods of intense earthquake activity accompanied by volcanic eruptions.

It looks like we are entering the next turbulent period.

The most recent earthquake swarm is in fact the latest in a period of significantly heightened seismic activity that started over a year ago.

The shaking of the Earth is the most obvious manifestation of the release of huge amounts of energy.

But magma has also been quietly accumulating nearer to the surface – and when this happens there is increased likelihood of the surface breaking and the volcanoes erupting.

On March 3, concern rose sharply as a type of earthquake activity characteristic of the movement of magma was detected, indicating that an eruption might be imminent.

The Civil Defence and other authorities have held press conferences, closed roads and heightened visual surveillance of the area above the potential eruption site.

Of course, magma may move in the crust and then stop, but it is always wisest to plan for an eruption and then to scale back if nothing happens.

Huge uncertainties

The problem is that the last time south-west of Iceland experienced such a turbulent period of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions was in the 1300s – when there was no equipment to monitor seismic activity.

There were also far fewer people around, which means that we don’t really know what signals there were before eruptions occurred. So there are huge uncertainties.

However, Iceland has a world-leading network for monitoring seismic and volcanic unrest, and an excellent track record of anticipating eruptions and of maintaining the safety of its population.

So if an eruption did happen, chances are all will be well.

An eruption in this area will be nothing like the highly disruptive explosive eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in 2010, or the much larger explosive but much less disruptive explosive eruption of Grímsvötn in 2011.

Eruptions in south-west Iceland are of a fluid rock type called basalt. This results in slow-moving streams of lava fed from gently exploding craters and cones.

In Iceland these are warmly called “tourist eruptions” as they are relatively safe and predictable, and offer the opportunity for many hundreds of people to witness a magical natural spectacle – the creation of new land.

In the past, tourists have flocked to Iceland to witness such eruptions, but at present there is a five-day quarantine period for tourists entering Iceland due to the pandemic.

At the current area of unrest, there are no nearby habitations – it is reassuringly remote.

Lava streams flowing away from the area are very unlikely to damage any property on predicted pathways, but if the lava makes its way to the sea, it will cut off a few roads.

International impact?

The biggest concern internationally about a volcanic eruption in Iceland is disruption to air travel.

Not only can winds carry ash clouds swiftly towards western Europe (as we saw with the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in 2010), but ash clouds can get high into the atmosphere and into the stratosphere where commercial airlines travel across the busy Atlantic flight corridors.

But the volcanoes in south-west Iceland tend not to produce much ash, and so the risk to disruption of international air travel is considered very small.

Should an eruption start, flights would be halted automatically at the Keflavík international airport, which is only 22km away, until a fuller evaluation has been carried out.

The wind direction has a major effect here, and given that the prevailing wind is from a westerly direction and Keflavík sits on the western side of this south-west peninsular, winds would be expected to carry any ash away from Keflavík.

The crucial effect of wind direction was highlighted beautifully in 2010 when Keflavík airport remained open while airports across Western Europe were closed for weeks.

While current COVID-19 restrictions on entering Iceland will prevent hordes of tourists from traveling to see a potential eruption, there will be plenty of Icelanders traveling to observe it.

They have a quirky saying in Iceland “whilst in most countries people usually run away from volcanic eruptions, in Iceland we usually run towards them”.

This article was originally written for The Conversation by Dr Dave McGarvie, Volcanologist at Lancaster University.

In other news, an incredible satellite image captured the erupting Krakatoa volcano spewing debris into the air last year.

It recently emerged that prehistoric humans survived a volcanic super-eruption 70,000 years ago that triggered a ten-year winter.

And, a deep sea volcano blast created a new Pacific island last November.

Are you concerned about volcanic eruptions? Let us know in the comments!

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UK inflation doubled to 0.6% in December but the price of food fell.

This is up from the 0.3% level of Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation recorded in November .

Analysts at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) say increased clothing and transport costs over Christmas were the main reasons behind the rise.

The price of clothing was up by 0.1%, while transport increased by 1.5%.

Clothing usually falls in December thanks to Boxing Day sales but most discounts were online-only this year due to non-essential shops being shut in large areas of England .

Brits also saw the usual inflated train and bus prices over Christmas.

Demand for toys, computer games and consoles pushed up inflation as well.

But the price of food, mainly meat and vegetables, fell by 0.6% in the same period.

Petrol prices rose 1.5p per litre to 114.1p per litre, and diesel prices rose by 1.4p per litre to 118.8p per litre

Analysts from Reuters had expected inflation to rise to 0.5%.

CPI has been below the Bank of England’s 2% target since mid-2019 and the coronavirus pandemic has pushed it close to zero.

The latest figures come as economists fear the UK could be on the verge of a double-dip recession .

A double-dip recession is when the economy shrinks, briefly recovers, and then contracts again.

The economy shrank 2.6% in November following the second national lockdown in England, ending six months of growth after gross domestic product (GDP) increased by 0.6% in October .

Jonathan Athow, deputy national statistician at the Office for National Statistics (ONS), said: “Clothing prices put upward pressure on inflation in December, despite some evidence of continued discounting.

“Transport costs, including air, sea and coach fares, as well as petrol prices, rose as some travel restrictions eased during parts of the month.

“These were partially offset by falling food prices, most notably for vegetables and meat.”

Laith Khalaf, financial analyst at AJ Bell, said: “It’s prudent not to draw too many conclusions from consumer price measures right now, because levels of economic activity are so deeply distorted.

“While inflation looks well contained, there is increasing concern it could start to be a problem once social restrictions are lifted, as a wave of pent up consumer demand is unleashed.

“Central bank stimulus, helicopter money from the government, and high levels of cash savings built up during lockdown all support the thesis that the inflation genie may pop out of the bottle in the coming year.”

We’ve rounded up how to protect your finances from a double-dip recession .

Before the latest lockdown restrictions were introduced, the economy was expected to grow in the first quarter of 2021 .

But rising cases of coronavirus and a new mitant strain forced the government to act to save the NHS.