STE's Stocks Investing Journey

Since the start of 2018, the stock market has experienced higher levels of volatility than we’ve seen before. The result has been in many headlines or news highlighting the downfall of a strong market and how much the market cap has been wiped out in such a short period of time. It’s left many people wondering if this is normal and healthy, or a sign of worse things to come ? For me, it is normal for the markets to experience a short-term drop in prices, typically followed by a long-term advance. Those are the facts. The complexity of available financial products is contributing to this unusual volatility. In recent years, the financial services industry innovates by creating new and complex products such as Options/ Future / CFD / DLC that track everything from market volatility to price speculative. These leverage products/derivatives  give “ investors or gambler “ entirely new ways to “trade or gamble” on the market. I am sure the market will tend to be more vol...

According to Warren Buffett "Investing is not a game where the guy with a 160 IQ beats the guy with a 130 IQ" and what Buffett says about what is necessary for investing successfully: Temperament is also important. Independent thinking, emotional stability, and a keen understanding of both human and institutional behaviour is vital to long-term investment success. I’ve seen a lot of very smart people who have lacked these virtues. Also, investing is simple, but not easy. It requires independent thinking and emotional intelligence more than IQ . When markets are tumbling and fall like no tomorrow, IQ is not going to help you to stay away from selling and buy even more at most bargaining prices.

image credit Izquotes.com Is time to calculate our dividend income for 1 st Qtr 2018 as the financial result for most of the company should have been announced by this time. The market has gone through like a “ roller coaster “ ride in 1 st Qtr 2008 where it was down by almost 10% at one point and rebounded subsequently. As I mentioned in my early blog post ( here ), even with correction of 10-20% from the current high in the US market, I would consider it still as “ expensive or rich in valuation “ and normal correction in any market cycles.

  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 )

<Image credit: to cnbc.com> With the increasing usage of the internet as the main platform of social media for us to communicate and as the source of news replacing traditional printed media, corporate and government starts to pay more attention to the problems and consequence of  “ fake news “ and its impact on society at large.

DJ falls more than 1000 points !! STI sinks more than 100 points !! Nikkei 225 plunges more than 1000 points . You will see such a news headline on every major financial news portal in the last 2 days. Well, finally the long-awaited market correction is here and is quite normal to have a market correction of -5 to -15% in any market cycle especially when we have experienced such long bull market since GFC in 2008. We must always remember that market is about “ psychology “ and full of “euphoria and panic “ from time to time…

i mage credit to investinghaven.com Buffett once said: “When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they’re the first thing I open and read. I always learn something.” What can we learn from the latest memo from him ( you may read the full memo here )? In his latest memo, he touched on the topic of “ market volatility” and “Pro-Risk behaviour” . According to him, although most of the valuations seem to point to high and overvalue scenario in major stock markets the “unacceptability of low returns on cash & Treasuries / Bonds couple with the attitude of “ FOMO “, continue to push the market indexes to higher high. Every week, we could hear or see the news of the market reaching a new record high, again and again.