STE's Stocks Investing Journey

image credit to mymoneyblog.com We all know well that the market is efficient (most of the time) and much active management fund outperform because of “luck “ and not skill.  You may find out more about this topic in my previous blog on    Success in Investing: Skill or Luck?  ( here ).   As most of the investment professional think, it is hard to admit that luck plays as significant a role as skill in their investment success. That's not to say skill is unimportant but betting on continued success doesn't work well in investing as in other fields.

  Personal Cash Flow Management I have seen many blogs have written about monitoring the expenses and some blogger's recommendation of apps which could monitor our expenses in detail. Frankly, I didn’t monitor my expenses in such manner and for me “ agak-agak ”  know how much I spent monthly on those fix items and some major items yearly such as holidays & staycations, insurance , home appliance ( like recently changing my TV and refrigerator after using it for many years ), no tax since no active income etc…

First of all , allow me to quote below from a legendary investor ( some may call him great speculators and some may not agree with that as the way he took his own life in 1940 ) : Jesse Livermore “ The game of speculation is the most uniformly fascinating game in the world. But it is not a game for the stupid , the mentally lazy, the man of inferior emotion balance or for the get-rich quick adventurer. They will die poor .” **remark: I don’t think the "stupid" is a proper word there as the “smart” investors also fail in most of investing or speculating ( like the famous case of LTCM - click ). I have two books about Jesse Livermore, one is " How To Trade in Stocks " written shortly before his death in 1940. How to Trade Stocks offered traders their first account of his famously tight-lipped operator's trading system. Another one is " Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin LeFevre written in 1923. The book continues to be the most so...

Image Credit to: Sgfinance.sg Many articles have been written on SRS Account and it’s pro and con. You may find a few good blogs and summary as below : SUPPLEMENTARY RETIREMENT SCHEME (‘SRS’) ACCOUNT from HeartlandbOY  ( here ) Is the Supplementary Retirement Scheme a Waste of Your Time and Money? From Money$mart.sg ( here ) Why it makes sense to contribute to the SRS account (to a certain extent) from money digest.sg ( here ) While some may not agree on useful or merit of contributing money into SRS account on reason for “long lock-in “ period and others. Why I Am Not Too Keen On The Supplementary Retirement Scheme from My 15 Hour Work Week ( here) And of course the famous AK on his blog on “ How AK uses his SRS money and why? “ ( here )

MAS Urges Households To Stay Financially Prudent Much been written about “Housing choice vs Retirement comfort “, another types of Cs in our financial planning. Life is full of “choices “, one may choose to “stay single or marry “, to “have kids or be DINKs “, to “climb the corporate ladder or be a freelancer”, to “save more or spend more “, to “save or invest “, to “buy health insurance or take the risk ( bo chap)”……and the list goes on. “In particular, households should consider their housing choices carefully, as retirement adequacy could be compromised should households overstretch their finances to purchase more expensive housing.” Source: “Stay prudent, be cautious with property purchases, MAS tells Singaporeans”  

Is Privatization Good for Investors? You may find two articles/news of privatization in today’s The Business Time ( one is Auric Pacific and the other is Healthway Medical ) which is quite rare and one might be pondering why so many privatization is going on recently in Singapore’s business context. If you may recall, from SMRT, NOL, Sim Lian, OSIM, CM Pacific, Select Group, Super Group, Biosensors, Eu Yan Sang, Tiger Airways, Lantrovision, Interplex, Otto Marine, etc,,,, and on the pipeline are ARA Asset Management, Vard Holding.

If you are investing in S-Reit as income investors, you will surely have heard this REIT before which is in the limelight and take centre stage in recent investing news. No introduction required for this hot topic, with many highlighted issues such as decreasing DPU, NAV, Occupancy rate, NPI etc … which translated to below : image credit to yahoo.finance.com With above chart, easily, some investors might be sitting with a capital loss of more than 50% with such a price trend.

  These are two of my favourite books : In 2004, James Surowiecki ( an American Journalist ) published a book called “ The Wisdom of Crowds “ which talked about the aggregation of information in the group , resulting in decisions that often better than it could have been made by any single member of the group. The Wisdom of Crowds is generally traced back to an observation by Charles Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton in 1907. Galton pointed out that the average of all the entries in a ‘guess the weight of the ox’ competition at a country fair was amazingly accurate – beating not only most of the individual guesses but also those of alleged cattle experts. This is the essence of the wisdom of crowds: their average judgement converges on the right solution.

image credit to zaobao.com.sg You may notice a very long queue at the bank today while people are queuing to deposit their money into the bank, the reason being today is the day of "   立春 "     in Chinese customs ... Well, believe it or not, it represents " ceaseless of income " throughout the year and also, to invite good luck, peoples always wear in red, orange, yellow or gold colour during this day. What exactly is " 立春"?