STE's Stocks Investing Journey

 Yes !! we are all market timer , to some extent. Listen to below video from Prof Aswath Damodaran on how he explains investors using asset allocation to time the market, without we realizing it sometimes. We fully understand that nobody can exactly predict the stock’s price movement but that doesn’t stop many from trying to do so, continuously and relentlessly, on a daily basis a.k.a day trading for stocks. We also knew that “ time in the market “ is important base on the long term “ compounding effect” and we don’t try to guess when the stock’s price is at its lowest or its highest point, basically we buy base on fundamental. So what makes you think that we are all market timer?     Market Timing - Dreaming The Impossible Dream?   < By Prof. Aswath Damodaran>                                         ...

image credit to cnbc.com Is it possible to Mimic Warren Buffett's Investment Returns? Every investment manager (or even retail investors like you and me) admires Warren Buffett’s investment returns. But i s it possible to copy Warren Buffett's investment strategy?   W hile most of us desire Buffett’s results and try to mimic his investment approach by reading books written about him and attending courses that try to emulate his strategies. Can we really mimic his investment returns?  The answer is of course  NO.

One of my readers ask me what am I doing since the market has gone down by more than -10% from early May, am I buying or selling? My answer is "No", I don’t do any major adjustment on my portfolio, except nimble a little bit here and there with the dividend I received. Basically, my war-chest remained the same in term of percentage in my portfolio. For me, I don’t think it is compelling for me to do major adjustment on my portfolio at this point of time, although the STI Index has corrected by more than -10% , but it sits just at long term mean level.

  I have written about the “ The Power of Dividend “ ( here ) and shared my view on the importance of dividend throughout my investment journey.  I try to visualize it through the chart as below which I published every quarter in my portfolio and dividend update. image credit to thepeopleofasia.com As I am not really good in doing analysis on financial detail for companies or trying to identify the next FANG s type of exponential growth companies, my investment philosophy is quite simple that buying those company with strong fundamental (a clean balance-sheet with fewer debts ) and have dividend pay-out regularly. Of course , buying at right timing especially during a crisis will give you a boost in your ROI but one need to take note also on the importance of diversification as well. ( More reading on My Investment Strategy –Part 1 ! Time & Timing – here )

There was an article about the importance of “ Market Timing vs Time in The Market “ by Mr Goh Eng Yeow , Senior Correspondent, The Straits Times on 20 th Aug and you may find the detail as below : Beating the investment pros at their game This is a never-ending argument or debate on which is more important ie Timing or Time In the Market , and from most of the articles you read, you may find that most of them are more inclined towards “Time in the Market “ rather than Timing the Market.

As investor who has gone through many business and market cycles in the past 19 years of investing, Yes! I still made a  terrible mistake and succumbed to our own biases in trying to time the market. Although we still can feel some ripples effect from US Presidential Election from time to time but I think its impact on the stock market has mostly subsided, as we could see that Dow Jones Index rebounded strongly after that and keep trading at record high recently.

The market always moves in Cycle image credit to livejapan.com There are numerous versions of views and ideas developed by various market pundits and investors on market cycles, including Robert Precher’s Elliot Wave Theory, Harry Dent’s long-wave theories and Ray Dalio’s debt cycle theories . The cycles could be as long as “ Kondratiev waves ” ( 45-60 years ) or  shorter as  “ Kitchin cycle “ ( 3-5 years ). These cycles are closely tied with large-scale economic business cycles and have an important impact on investment, financial, cash flow and personal retirement planning.