Friday 30 September 2011

Recap: book

Recently, started to refresh the books which I read before.

First REcap!

"An investment operation is one which, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and an adequate return."

Who wrote the above?
In addition, it consists equally of three elements:
  1. You must thoroughly analyze a company, and the soundness of its underlying businesses, before you buy its stock.
  2. You must deliberately protect yourself against serious losses.
  3. You must aspire to "adequate", not extraordinary, performance.
So who wrote the above? guess?

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Economic news?

Remember this news?
http://opposethetrend.blogspot.com/2011/09/good-news-bull.html

What about this?
Remember that yesterday and last friday, STI was in red?

What about today?



So is market going up or down?

I guess many people are thinking of bull or bear or sideway everyday?

But do you really have control over these?

Is there a simple formula news A + news B - bad news C = market up?

NO!

It is too complex. Even the so called economic experts or guru couldn't get it right.

It is impossible for layman like us to get it right?

Since you cannot control the market, cannot control the news, what can you do?

CONTROL YOUR OWN PORTFOLIO AND YOUR MONEY!
Place yourself in a way that suit you and could take advantage of both the up and down.

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Money, Time, Freedom, Health

Money, Time, Freedom, Health

The items above are interrelated.

When you are young, you have health, limited or lots of freedom (depends on parents), no money (sometimes parents give you lots of money to replace their time with you, thus depends on parents too).

When you just started work, you wish to have more money so that you can have the freedom to do what you want, generally you have good health. Thus you work very hard for money and have to sacrifice health and time.

When you start to grows older and older, you will have more and more money, but your health starts to deteriorate. In addition, in general, the higher the earned income you got as an employee, the greater the responsbility you have and the less time you have.

By the time, you earned a lot and retired, you may not have good health to enjoy the lots of money in your bank. One day, just leave with regrets in life - why didn't you spend more time with families as well as do more things you like, instead spend too much time to pursue money?

Life is ironic, isn't it?

The moral of the story is: Strike a balance so that you will not regret when you die in future.

Monday 19 September 2011

Kungfu panda inner strength revealed !

http://singaporeanstocksinvestor.blogspot.com/2011/09/120k-annual-passive-income-from-s-reits.html

I guess his internal strength is level 7-8, assuming level 10 is ??? (this exclude 50% cash that he has). Guess how much ??? is.

I target to hit level 3-4 in few years time!!! Good luck to me!

What is your inner strength?

Pls see previous post.

http://opposethetrend.blogspot.com/2011/08/kungfu-andor-inner-strength.html

Thursday 15 September 2011

Good news? Bull?

http://www.businessinsider.com/breaking-ecb-and-fed-announce-new-liquidity-measures-markets-surging-2011-9

5 September 2011 - ECB announces additional US dollar liquidity-providing operations over year-end 


The Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB) has decided, in coordination with the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and the Swiss National Bank, to conduct three US dollar liquidity-providing operations with a maturity of approximately three months covering the end of the year. These operations will be conducted in addition to the ongoing weekly seven-day operations announced on 10 May 2010. The schedule for these additional operations is as follows:
Tender date Settlement date Maturity date
12 October 2011 13 October 2011 5 January 2012
9 November 2011 10 November 2011 2 February 2012
7 December 2011 8 December 2011 1 March 2012
These will all take the form of repurchase operations against eligible collateral and will be carried out as fixed rate tender procedures with full allotment.
 ______________________________________________________________

Repo is short for repurchase agreement. Those who deal in government securities use repos as a form of overnight borrowing. A dealer or other holder of government securities (usually T-bills) sells the securities to a lender and agrees to repurchase them at an agreed future date at an agreed price. They are usually very short-term, from overnight to 30 days or more. This short-term maturity and government backing means repos provide lenders with extremely low risk.

Saturday 10 September 2011

Dream!

When I was in secondary, I started to dream of this and this:



I saw other people have it, thus I also want it - My older brother and sister and other friends own the thing in first picture. (wait did I say owned it? Technically it should be own it with loans.)

When I first graduated from university, I still dream of the above. I want to work hard to earn and own it.

I saw many of my friends own the thing in the first picture. But what puzzle me is how did they manage to own it? where did they get so much $$$ to buy it in the first place? (At time time, I was noob. I did not know that they owned it with debt that kills a large portion of their pay.)  Nevertheless, that time I was jealous and hope that one day I can own it too!

However, around 2 years ago till today. I did not dream of above anymore even though my friends now own more than the first picture, they own the thing in the picture below and they complain to me that it eats up all of their cpf and their take home pay. Some even told me that they scare of losing job and have to work hard to secure their jobs for 30 years or even longer. But is there really job security nowaday?

Today, I only own the thing below with little debts. (maybe 1/3 or 1/4 of what their owed banks for the above nice thing.)


Look old and sluggish right?

I may seems to be cheapo to my friends, but....

I know that half of my monthly cpf can cover the monthly installment. (for your info, my pay is not high. In fact much lower than peers.) Although I don't have the so called luxury, but I am happy and content because I know that I can clear the above debts in at most 10 years using both mine and my wife's cpf if I want to or I can clear it immediately with all the cash and cpf both of us have currently. In addition, I do not need to be a slave to my job but I still want a job because i need $$$ to play with Mr Markets for the rest of my life :)

I forgot to mention. For my transport, I have this:

By the way, do you know what is BMW?

In future, I will aim for the second picture which I posted earlier but not for my stay :)
So ultimately, one day I will own something which my friend owned when they first grad but at much later date.


 __________________________________________________________________________

End of story. So what is the moral of the story? I can think of a few. Please feel free to add on.
  1. Be content with what you have
  2. Plan your finance well. Others may looks glamorous in front of you, but you don't know what happen at the end of month when the bills are in. A debt free person is a happy person. A galmorous person may not be
  3. Delay gratification helps
  4. Have a dream
  5. Know the difference between wants and needs
  6. Live within your means

Snowskin Mooncake!!

Been sharing on my financial journey throughout my blogging journey, I decided to share something else. Hope my reader dont throw rotten eggs at me!

I bought most of my ingredients from redman. 

This is the 2nd receipt which I tried yesterday.
White lotus paste (just buy the ready made) 
130g kao fen
160 icing sugar
1tbs shortening
2tsp milk

(1) Make the Lotus paste into balls a day ago before start making the skin

(2) Mix the kao fen, icing sugar, shortening, milk around an hour before making. Put in fridge for around 20 min. Take out and this is what you get.

(3) Scoop 1tbs of the skin

(4) Roll the skin flat and put the lotus in the middle of the skin

(5) Wrap it up and make it into a ball


(6) Put the ball into the mould and press hard. Hit the mould to somewhere hard a few times to get the mooncake out.

(7) Final product. Put in fridge and enjoy an hour later

Sunday 4 September 2011

Portfolio - August 2011

2 Sept 2011

Portfolio 1 (self)

Status: Given volality of market, might add more if price of watchlist hit. 
Movement: No selling/buying of stocks, divy for sabana, LMIR, CMA.

Stock 84.55%
  • Sabana
  • LippoMaple(might sell to take profit off table if hit target)
  • Healthway (selling half mode to recycle capital)
  • Capitalmall Asia
Investable Cash (exclude emergency fund + daily fund) 16.45%
Equity XIRR(13th May 2011 to date): -32.25%


Portfolio 2 (Joint)

Status: Waiting for good opportunity
Movement: Sold cache and bought kingsmen. divy from cache and kingsmen   

Stock 9.98%
  • Kingsmen
Investable Cash(exclude emergency fund) 90.02%
Equity XIRR(13th May 2011 to date): 43.82%

Saturday 3 September 2011

Some wise words...