A Walk Down Memory Lane : 30 Years of Investing Lessons and Turning Points
It’s hard to believe it’s been 30 years since I first dipped my toes into the world of investing. As I look back at the journey from a curious secondary school student to where I am today, I realized that investing isn't just about spreadsheets and stock tickers; it’s a lifelong lesson in patience, discipline, and understanding human nature.
Humble Beginnings: The Grocery Shop "Library"
My interest in the markets didn't start in a fancy office; it started because of poverty. Growing up, my family was poor. We couldn't afford a daily newspaper, which back then was the only source of financial news. I remember walking over to my neighbour’s grocery shop every day just to read their copy of the papers. Back in the late 80s, things were very different. We didn't have sleek mobile apps or instant news notifications; we had physical newspapers, teletext, and a lot of patience. Looking back, those 30 years have been a long, winding road, a mix of exhilarating highs, some painful lows, and a whole lot of learning in between.
That was where I first "met" my mentor. I became a devoted reader of 冷眼 (冯时能), the former Editor-in-Chief of Nanyang Siang Pau. His articles on value investing were my foundation. He taught me that stocks weren't just gambling chips; they represented ownership in real businesses. This fascinated me. While my peers were interested in games, I was busy trying to understand how companies grew.
1996: The First Step and the 4D Lesson
By the time I entered university to study Economics and Investment, my passion was fully ignited. But it wasn't until I started working in 1996 that I finally had the capital to buy my first stock: Magnum Bhd.
There was a bit of irony in that choice. My father used to buy 4D (lottery) frequently and, like most people, lost a lot of money over the years. I figured that instead of giving the company money through betting, I would own the company and let them pay me dividends instead, getting back some money which my dad had lost to them 😊. Magnum Bhd was a "cash cow" with low debt and a solid business model. From there, I started building a portfolio of boring, reliable dividend payers: Public Bank, BJ Toto, Perlis Plantation (now PPB), Malayan Cement Bhd, and BAT Malaysia , Malaysian Mosaic, Melewar Group etc
When the Asian Financial Crisis hit in 1997/98, many panicked. But thanks to the teachings of "冷眼," I saw it as an opportunity ( 危机= Crisis+ Opportunity). I bought more when others were selling. This was my first real taste of "market cycles," and it allowed me to build my first "pot of gold" (第一桶金).
Navigating Bubbles and Changing Horizons
By the time the Dot-com bubble rolled around in 2000, I stayed away from the speculative tech frenzy. I didn't understand the valuations of companies with no earnings. Instead, I stayed with my "boring" banks and old-economy stocks. When the crash happened, I used the opportunity to accumulate more bank shares while the overall market sentiment was depressed.
A major turning point in my life came around 2007. My family and I decided to renounce our Malaysian citizenship and move to Singapore. Looking back, the timing was incredibly lucky. We sold our Malaysian stocks and our house in Johor Bahru in 2007, just before the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) hit.
When the subprime crisis caused the markets to melt down in 2008/09, I had a war chest of cash ready. I slowly moved my funds into the Singapore market, focusing heavily on REITs. Back then, property-related stocks were hated and badly hit. You could get blue-chip REITs like Suntec, Keppel REIT, Mapletree, and CapitaLand Commercial Trust with double-digit dividend yields. I was aggressive,I put about 80% of my portfolio into REITs and banks like DBS and OCBC, also SGX and Keppel Corp. Even when my portfolio was temporarily in the red, I didn't panic. I knew about "reversion to the mean." I knew the cycle would turn, and by 2011, the rebound was massive.
The HK Struggle and the Power of Patience
Fast forward to 2019/20, and I faced a new challenge. I started investing in the Hong Kong market right as the tech and property crackdowns began. For four consecutive years, the market dragged down my overall performance. At one point, my HK portfolio was down by nearly SGD -$270,000 ( including dividends).
It was a test of my conviction. I continued to double down on fundamental dividend plays: CNOOC, Ping An, Bank of China HK, PetroChina, CKH, CKI and CK Assets, etc. I even added more Tencent. While some didn't perform as expected, the recovery in 2024/25 proved the strategy right once again. Today, that portfolio has turned around, contributing to a total profit of over SGD +$810,000 (including dividends) with an XIRR of about 7.9%. It’s not "get-rich-quick" numbers, but it proves that every dog has its day if you wait long enough.
2023 Portfolio & Dividend Update ( A Rollercoaster Ride ) <Link?
Current Stance: The Retired Investor's Mindset
People often ask why I’m not in the US market right now. It’s not that I don't like US companies. I’ve owned Google, Nvidia, and Meta in the past. It’s simply about valuation. I find the current US market a bit rich for my blood. I’m happy to wait for the next cycle.
During the 2020 COVID crash, I was active, buying Shell when oil prices went negative, and adding to BHP and SG banks. However, because I am now retired, my approach has changed. I am more conservative. In previous crises, I had an active income (salary) to buffer my losses. Now, I depend on passive income, dividends and bond interest. I no longer "go all in" at the bottom; I keep a safety buffer because my risk appetite has naturally shifted.
The Reality Check: Investing Will Not Make You Super Rich
Let’s have a heart-to-heart about expectations. One of the biggest misconceptions spread by social media "gurus" today is that a few clever trades will turn a thousand dollars into a hundred million. For most of us, those not born with a silver spoon or a massive capital advantage, the reality is much more grounded. If you are starting from zero, diligent saving and steady investing will likely not make you "super-rich" in the private jet and mansion sense. However, and this is the important part, it can absolutely make you a millionaire and build a "small fortune" that changes your life forever.
When I started, I didn't have a large sum of money to play with. I had to be disciplined with my salary, saving every bit I could to deploy into the market. This path requires a "slow and steady" mindset. By being consistent over 30 years, you can reach a point where you have a few million dollars ( 非大富大貴,但能让人有小康之家）. While that doesn't put you on the Forbes list, it gives you something far more valuable: Options.
Wealth, to me, isn't about the ability to buy luxury goods; it’s about the Freedom to Choose. When your passive income from dividends and interest starts covering your expenses, the power dynamic in your life shifts. You can choose to pursue a passion that pays less but fulfills you more. You can choose to "FIRE" (Financial Independence, Retire Early), or perhaps just "FI" (Financial Independence) without the "RE." If you love your job, stay! But stay because you want to, not because you have to. That shift from "forced labor" to "voluntary contribution" is the ultimate win. Investing provides the cushion that allows you to say "no" to things that don't align with your values. It’s about buying back your time, one dividend check at a time.
Investing is Serious Business: Beyond the "Agar-Agar" Mindset
One thing I always tell my fellow investors is that while we can be casual in our conversation, we must be deadly serious with our capital. Too many people treat investing with an "agar-agar" (estimate) mindset. They happily announce that they are collecting a 7% dividend yield, but they completely ignore the fact that their capital has depreciated by 30-50%. If you lose more in share price than you gain in dividends, you aren't winning; you are just slowly withdrawing your own capital.
To truly know if you are succeeding, you must look at Total Return. This means tracking your performance using XIRR (which accounts for the timing of your cash flows) or CAGR. You need to know your numbers because the math doesn't lie. If you don't measure your performance, you are just "feeling" your way through the dark, and the market is very good at making you feel like a genius right before a fall.
I like to use a sports analogy here: Batting Average and Slugging Percentage. In a long-term portfolio, you will inevitably collect some "lemons", it’s simply impossible to be 100% right over 30 years. Your Batting Average is how often you pick a winner. But your Slugging Percentage is more important, it’s about how much you win when you are right versus how much you lose when you are wrong.
30 Years Portfolio XIRR : 14.7%
You can have a mediocre batting average (meaning you have several losers or "lemons"), but if your winners like DBS/ OCBC ,CICT, BoC HK, CNOOC or BHP/ SHELL are "home runs" that you’ve held for decades, your slugging percentage will carry the portfolio.
Don't obsess over being perfect; obsess over the math of the total return. Ensure your winners are allowed to run and your losers don't sink the ship. Investing is a serious craft, treat it like a business, track your data, learned from your mistakes and let the total return be your ultimate scorecard.
The Unbreakable Law: Reversion to the Mean
If there is one "holy grail" I’ve clung to over the last 30 years, it’s the concept of Reversion to the Mean. In simple terms, it means that while the market can get irrationally exuberant or depressingly gloomy, it eventually returns to its long-term average. Prices act like a rubber band; the further they are stretched away from the fundamental value, the harder they eventually snap back.
Throughout my journey, from the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis to the 2008 GFC and the recent HK market slump, I’ve seen this play out repeatedly. When I was buying blue chip REIT or OCBC/ Keppel during the subprime crisis, my portfolio was bleeding red. It felt like the world was ending. But my confidence didn't come from a crystal ball; it came from knowing that blood-red markets are an anomaly. High yields and low P/E ratios are "stretched" states that cannot last forever. Eventually, the cycle turns, greed replaces fear, and prices revert to their historical norms.
Understanding this cycle is what allows me to stay calm. When the HK market was down for four consecutive years, many called it "uninvestable." To me, that was just the rubber band being stretched to its limit. By continuing to collect dividends from CNOOC and BoC HK, I was simply waiting for the inevitable snapback. You don't need to predict the future; you just need to recognise when the present is an extreme outlier. Every "dog" market has its day because the mean is a powerful magnet that no asset class can escape forever.
Mastering the Inner Game: Behavioral Finance and Mental Models
After nearly three decades, I’ve realised that the most dangerous person in my investment journey isn't a crooked CEO or a bearish analyst, but it’s me. Investing is 20% head knowledge and 80% behavior. This is where Behavioural Finance comes in. Most investors fail not because they can’t read a balance sheet, but because they are victims of their own psychological biases.
I spent a lot of time studying mental models to combat these "bugs" in the human brain. One of the most common is Loss Aversion, the tendency to feel the pain of a loss twice as strongly as the joy of a gain. This is why people panic-sell at the bottom. Another is Confirmation Bias, where we only seek out news that supports the stocks we already own. By being aware of these, I can step back and ask: "Am I buying this because it’s a good business, or because I’m afraid of missing out (FOMO)?"
I like to use the "Margin of Safety" model as a mental filter. It’s not just about the price; it’s a psychological buffer. If I buy a stock like JMH or DBS at a significant discount to its intrinsic value, I am accounting for the fact that I might be wrong. As Sun Tzu said, "Know yourself and know your enemy." In the market, the "enemy" is the collective madness of the crowd, but the "self" is the one you must master first. Using frameworks like Charlie Munger’s "Inversion", i.e., thinking about how an investment could fail rather than how it will succeed, has saved me from more traps than any technical indicator ever could. If you can control your temperament, you have already beaten 90% of the participants in the market.
The Lonely Path: The Art of Being a Contrarian
Being a contrarian is one of the most intellectually rewarding parts of my investment philosophy, but let’s be honest: it is also the loneliest. In the world of investing, the "crowd" provides a sense of security. When everyone is buying the latest tech high-flyers or talking about the same "sure-win" stock at a gathering, it feels safe to join in. To be a contrarian is to deliberately walk in the opposite direction. It means buying when the headlines are screaming "Collapse! Crash! Crisis!" and staying quiet when everyone else is celebrating.
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My experience with Banks during the Asian Financial Crisis, REITs during the GFC and more recently with the Hong Kong market has taught me that the biggest rewards are found where others are afraid to look. When I was accumulating SG REIT, Banks, or CNOOC/BoC HK while prices were cratering, the consensus was that I was catching a falling knife. You have to develop a thick skin; you have to be okay with being "wrong" for a long time before the market proves you right.
However, being a contrarian isn't just about being stubborn. It requires deep patience and the humility to admit that the crowd isn't always wrong. Of course,some stocks are cheap for a reason; they are "value traps" that never recover or revert to the mean because their business model is fundamentally broken. The trick is to distinguish between a temporary setback in a solid business and a permanent decline. It’s a high-conviction game where you trust your own research over the collective noise. The path is solitary and often filled with doubt, but if you have the stomach for it, the eventual "payday" when the market finally wakes up is what truly builds significant wealth.
Advice for Young Investors
I’m not coming at you as some "guru" with a secret formula. I’m just someone who has stayed in the game long enough to see the cycles repeat themselves. If I could sit down with my younger self or any new investor today, here is what I’d say:
* Start Early: Compounding is a slow-cooker, not a microwave. Give it time to work.
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I like to attach this chart to my blog whenever I publish a post about dividends or a portfolio update. It is not meant to show the total amount of dividends I have collected, but rather to highlight the trend of starting early and the power of compounding. My dividends were only a few hundred Malaysia $ per quarter at the beginning, and they increased gradually over the years through dividend reinvestment and additional capital contributions. As the Malay proverb says, “sedikit sedikit, lama-lama jadi bukit.”
* Understand the Cycle: Markets overextend, and markets crash. Everything eventually reverts to the mean. Don't get too high during the peaks or too low during the troughs. Regression to the mean is something I talk about often. Markets go up and down around a long-term trend line. When prices are far above the line, I get cautious; when way below, more comfortable adding.
* Build an emergency fund first. 6-12 months' expenses in cash or fixed deposit before heavy investing. Nothing worse than being forced to sell stocks at the bottom because there is no buffer.
*Use CPF wisely. OA investments can grow faster than 2.5% interest, but don't overdo it; keep some liquidity. SA for retirement is good at 4-5%.
*Focus on income over quick capital gains. Salary + side hustle + dividends = multiple streams. As you age, passive income becomes more valuable.
Don't compare with others. Social media shows winners, not losers or the average. My portfolio grew slowly but steadily—no overnight riches.
*Mistakes are tuition fees. You will make them. Note down why, review yearly. I still do portfolio review every quarter or year—see what worked, what didn't.
* The Waiting is Where the Money is: As Charlie Munger said, the big money isn't in the buying or selling, but in the waiting.
* Know Yourself: Sun Tzu said, "Know yourself and know your enemy, and you will win a hundred battles." In investing, your biggest enemy is your own bias and emotion. Study behavioural finance as much as you study financial figures.
To the young investors reading this: you have one asset that I have less of every day, "Time". The power of compounding is real, but it needs time to work its magic. Don't wait until you have "enough" money to start. Start with what you have. Even if it's just a few hundred dollars a month in an STI ETF or a robo-advisor, the habit of regular investing is more important than the initial amount.
Also, don't get distracted by the "noise." Today, you are bombarded with information like YT or TikTok "experts," Reddit threads, and 24-hours news cycles. Most of it is just noise. Focus on the fundamentals.
Walking The Dog vs Stock Market Cycle <link>
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Key Lessons for Long-Term Value Investors:
1. Short-Term Volatility vs. Long-Term Growth:
The dog (stock market) is often erratic and unpredictable in the short term, moving ahead of or lagging behind the man (economy). This reflects how stock prices can overreact to news, emotions, or speculation, leading to bubbles or crashes.
However, over the long term, the dog always returns to the man. Similarly, the stock market tends to reflect the underlying fundamentals of the economy over time. This is the principle of **reversion to the mean**.
2. Focus on the Man, Not the Dog:
As a long-term investor, your focus should be on the man (the economy or intrinsic value) rather than the dog (short-term market movements). Trying to predict the dog's every move is futile and often leads to poor investment decisions.
Instead, concentrate on identifying companies with strong fundamentals, competitive advantages, and sustainable growth potential. These are the "men" that will continue moving forward over time.
3. Patience is Key:
The analogy emphasizes the importance of patience. The dog may wander far from the man, but it will eventually return. Similarly, the stock market may deviate significantly from its intrinsic value, but over time, it will revert to the mean.
For value investors, this means staying disciplined and not being swayed by short-term market fluctuations. If you've done your homework and invested in high-quality assets, time will reward you.
4. Market Inefficiencies Create Opportunities:
The dog's erratic behavior creates opportunities for savvy investors. When the market (dog) is far behind the economy (man), it may be a good time to buy undervalued stocks. Conversely, when the market is far ahead, it may be a sign to exercise caution or sell overvalued assets.
This aligns with the value investing principle of buying when there's a margin of safety and selling when prices exceed intrinsic value.
5. The Economy Drives the Market in the Long Run:
While the stock market can diverge from the economy in the short term, it is ultimately tethered to it. Economic growth, productivity, and innovation drive long-term market returns.
As a long-term investor, you should have confidence in the resilience and growth potential of the economy, even if the market experiences temporary setbacks.
Final Thoughts
After 30 years, I’ve learned that the market is a transfer mechanism from the impatient to the patient. You don't need to be a genius; you just need to have a strong stomach, a sound strategy, and the discipline to stick to it when things look grim.
My journey from reading newspapers in a neighbour's shop to living off dividends has been long, but it was worth every step. Focus on the fundamentals, keep your cash flow strong, and let time do the heavy lifting.
My journey hasn't been perfect. I’ve made mistakes, and I will make mistakes again in future. I’ve missed out on some "multi-baggers," and I’ve had my fair share of sleepless nights during market crashes. I lost big in two Hospitality REITs during COVID-19 because of overconfidence and ignorance, or "chasing Yield" instead of looking at their fundamentals. But I stayed the course.
If you take away anything from my experience, let it be this: Be patient, stay curious, and always keep your feet on the ground. The market will go up and down, but if you own quality and stay disciplined, time will almost always be on your side. After all these years, my approach hasn't changed much. It's boring to some people, but it suits me. I believe in buying good companies that pay consistent dividends, holding them for a very long time, reinvesting the dividends when possible, and letting compounding do the work. I don't try to time the market or pick the next big thing. Time in the market beats timing the market: cliché but true from my experience.
The journey taught me that investing is more about behaviour than intelligence, controlling greed and fear, sticking to the plan, and accepting market cycles. 30 years in, I still enjoy checking announcements, updating the spreadsheet, and seeing dividend credits in. It's become a habit, almost a hobby. Not everyone needs to do this; some prefer index funds, property, or business. The most important thing is to have your own system, at least for me, this way fits.
Till Next Update....
Cheers !
STE
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