Dividends are the opiates of the capitalist masses.
Dividends are the opiates of the capitalist masses.
I went to Chris (Tree of Prosperity) investment talk co hosted by Dr Wealth on a weekday. Being a frequent visitor to investment talks, I was hesitant to evaluate the formidable eastern heretic in this blog and challenge his views considering his formidable intellect. Nonetheless, I was impressed by the clarity of his thought process and thought it deserves a blog post on its own. To engage the Troll Warlord in a investment performance fight is clearly beyond my ability and I shall simply summarize the best parts of his introductory talk and lessons I learnt.
Key observations
1) Robert D Arnott and Clifford S Asness looks awfully similar to the required readings for my Investment courses in my University days. It will be doing the speaker a terrible injustice to divulge more on his investment methodology influences considering the hard work put in. Nonetheless, academic and quantitative rigor is something that is profoundly lacking in most of the investment methodologies popularized in the multiple investment blogs. One of the most important points shared by Chris is that a severe recession (50% - 60% drops) did not last more than 2 years for the past 50 years and market sentiment timing works provided you have sufficient holding power.
2) Holding an investment course is more towards operating a business rather than a quantitative lecture. Chris is incredibly shrewd in combining his toastmaster speech devices (power of 3, metaphorical examples), voting devices to obtain feedback from the crowd, and relatable presentation materials with personal anecdote to create a compelling narrative to resonate with the people. From a toastmasters perspective, it is clearly a genius speaker presenting his finest work and worth the time and effort just to sit in and see a master in action.
3) To praise in specific and criticize in category.
Chris employs auto exclusion (screening out) of the non committed participants. Unlike some of the investment talks which used investment hype, glamorous vacations and lifestyles, greed, quick to get rich schemes to trick the gullible and desperate for a fast route to riches, Chris deliberately screen out the lemons through the scheduling and materials of his talk and frankly informed the audience to not sign up for his course if they are simply looking for stock tips and not put in hard work. Considering the commission driven nature of the investment education industry, it is a rare sight to see a businessman turning away business even if the students are of sub-optimal quality.
From another perspective, Chris employs the skin in the game narrative whereby he carefully employs position sizing (portion of his net worth) to build a leveraged portfolio to prove his commitment to his thesis. Hindsight analysis and price charts can be easily combined by the presenter to manipulate the audience, but broker and CDP statements are harder. His due diligence is screening out lemon investors is probably the most underrated part in his investment methodology as he has to bite the bullet when things go south.
Due to his slant in quantitative screening, his students are employed to ensure there is sufficient qualitative rigor (through debates in his investment masterclass) to ensure that the underlying business of the stocks / REIT chosen is sound, and not drowned out by quantitative pornography. IMHO, joining a rigorous investment community could prevent me from engaging in closed feedback loop and falling into choice supportive bias.
4) Focusing on the circle of competence. I severely underestimated Chris profound understanding of leverage and the back-testing he has done on his portfolio to ensure that he will not blow up. The intelligent investor, Peter Lynch, the essays I wrote on LTCM as well as the Berkshire pair has repeatedly cautioned on the use of leverage to the point that I literally take it as gospel. However from a quantitative standpoint, sufficient leverage do indeed boost the time required to attain financial freedom provided you can stick religiously to the quantitative plan.
It will be fair to say that I am a womanly and cowardly investor. It takes nerves of steel to be completely unaffected by market fluctuations and just stick to the plan without making adjustments as market conditions worsen. Once I deploy leverage, I am wary that I will be addicted to the superior performance it may bring until I make eventual mistakes and blow myself up. Irrational fear and lack of self discipline is probably what was holding me back, for better or for worse.
5) The troll warlord's provision of relationship advice might be questionable, but his knowledge of personal finance and cash flow management is formidable. In his route to financial freedom, he quantitatively optimizes his top-line (Work based revenue), build up skills to engage in side hustles, actively engage in the top up from CPF OA to SA, research for attractive multiplier accounts to maximize interest income.
From a bottom line perspective to manage expenditure, there was active steps taken to steer away from debt and credit cards unless they can be utilized as an avenue to improve his net worth. His Cai Peng strategy is hard to follow but the attention towards appropriate insurance and mortgage / will planning is well thought out.
I went to Chris (Tree of Prosperity) investment talk co hosted by Dr Wealth on a weekday. Being a frequent visitor to investment talks, I was hesitant to evaluate the formidable eastern heretic in this blog and challenge his views considering his formidable intellect. Nonetheless, I was impressed by the clarity of his thought process and thought it deserves a blog post on its own. To engage the Troll Warlord in a investment performance fight is clearly beyond my ability and I shall simply summarize the best parts of his introductory talk and lessons I learnt.
Key observations
1) Robert D Arnott and Clifford S Asness looks awfully similar to the required readings for my Investment courses in my University days. It will be doing the speaker a terrible injustice to divulge more on his investment methodology influences considering the hard work put in. Nonetheless, academic and quantitative rigor is something that is profoundly lacking in most of the investment methodologies popularized in the multiple investment blogs. One of the most important points shared by Chris is that a severe recession (50% - 60% drops) did not last more than 2 years for the past 50 years and market sentiment timing works provided you have sufficient holding power.
2) Holding an investment course is more towards operating a business rather than a quantitative lecture. Chris is incredibly shrewd in combining his toastmaster speech devices (power of 3, metaphorical examples), voting devices to obtain feedback from the crowd, and relatable presentation materials with personal anecdote to create a compelling narrative to resonate with the people. From a toastmasters perspective, it is clearly a genius speaker presenting his finest work and worth the time and effort just to sit in and see a master in action.
3) To praise in specific and criticize in category.
Chris employs auto exclusion (screening out) of the non committed participants. Unlike some of the investment talks which used investment hype, glamorous vacations and lifestyles, greed, quick to get rich schemes to trick the gullible and desperate for a fast route to riches, Chris deliberately screen out the lemons through the scheduling and materials of his talk and frankly informed the audience to not sign up for his course if they are simply looking for stock tips and not put in hard work. Considering the commission driven nature of the investment education industry, it is a rare sight to see a businessman turning away business even if the students are of sub-optimal quality.
From another perspective, Chris employs the skin in the game narrative whereby he carefully employs position sizing (portion of his net worth) to build a leveraged portfolio to prove his commitment to his thesis. Hindsight analysis and price charts can be easily combined by the presenter to manipulate the audience, but broker and CDP statements are harder. His due diligence is screening out lemon investors is probably the most underrated part in his investment methodology as he has to bite the bullet when things go south.
Due to his slant in quantitative screening, his students are employed to ensure there is sufficient qualitative rigor (through debates in his investment masterclass) to ensure that the underlying business of the stocks / REIT chosen is sound, and not drowned out by quantitative pornography. IMHO, joining a rigorous investment community could prevent me from engaging in closed feedback loop and falling into choice supportive bias.
4) Focusing on the circle of competence. I severely underestimated Chris profound understanding of leverage and the back-testing he has done on his portfolio to ensure that he will not blow up. The intelligent investor, Peter Lynch, the essays I wrote on LTCM as well as the Berkshire pair has repeatedly cautioned on the use of leverage to the point that I literally take it as gospel. However from a quantitative standpoint, sufficient leverage do indeed boost the time required to attain financial freedom provided you can stick religiously to the quantitative plan.
Dividends are the opiates of the capitalist masses.
Leverage is heroin for those craving a quick fix.It will be fair to say that I am a womanly and cowardly investor. It takes nerves of steel to be completely unaffected by market fluctuations and just stick to the plan without making adjustments as market conditions worsen. Once I deploy leverage, I am wary that I will be addicted to the superior performance it may bring until I make eventual mistakes and blow myself up. Irrational fear and lack of self discipline is probably what was holding me back, for better or for worse.
5) The troll warlord's provision of relationship advice might be questionable, but his knowledge of personal finance and cash flow management is formidable. In his route to financial freedom, he quantitatively optimizes his top-line (Work based revenue), build up skills to engage in side hustles, actively engage in the top up from CPF OA to SA, research for attractive multiplier accounts to maximize interest income.
From a bottom line perspective to manage expenditure, there was active steps taken to steer away from debt and credit cards unless they can be utilized as an avenue to improve his net worth. His Cai Peng strategy is hard to follow but the attention towards appropriate insurance and mortgage / will planning is well thought out.
To conclude this wall of text,
This is an unsolicited and non commissioned review of the talk I attended. I have no monetary benefit to be gained from this review and any investor planning on signing up for his talk is free to engage Dr Wealth directly. I also have no skin in the game as I did not proceed to sign up for his course, due to heightened personal financial commitments, and deploying my war-chest into discounted equities.
Nonetheless, the careful use of leverage in conjunction with the investor temperament is a noteworthy point to explore, and participation in a rigorous investment community will most likely be the selling point for me, should I proceed to sign up for the course in the future. It is a fruitful day and I personally benefited from the lessons and experiences he shared.
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