Caveat Emptor

The intelligent investor is one of the first books I have read on investing theory, outside of conventional EMH finance academia. This book is just as captivating the last time I revisited this book as compared to the first time. The ideas behind it are timeless and relevant regardless of bear markets and bull markets. The Net Net approach is one of the first screens I adopted for SG market (only chews made the cut). After reading Ben Graham biography and quotes at the later part of his life and cross referencing with other sources, I realized the limitations of net net approach to investing, like the existence of accounting fraud and need for wide diversification, value traps and need for active efforts in liquidation especially for cash burning companies. The improvement of technology in screening and retrieval tools as well as more widespread investing knowledge made the opportunities of strict formula based value investing increasingly exhausted. Peter Lynch, Joel Greenblatt a...

I recently attended a talk at thomson toastmasters which is conducting a MBTI workshop. For those whom are unfamiliar with MBTI, it is a popular personality test used by companies to screen for the personality profiles for their candidates. It is regarded well enough to be placed into academia although the reliability of its methodology and results is often criticised. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers–Briggs_Type_Indicator https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test Personally, I have taken the test and find it to be pretty descriptive of my thinking and behavioral traits. However, the speaker presents a differing point to it. Granted, he is not a professional speaker or an well grounded expert in this particular field, but he provided plenty of food of thought regarding how MBTI should be used. ESTJ : extraversion (E), sensing (S), thinking (T), judgment (J) INFP : introversion (I), intuition (N), feeling (F), perception (P) A lot of people focus on the Int...

Sources http://sillyinvestor.blogspot.sg/2017/10/random-thoughts-some-uses-of-mental.html https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/singapore/fewer-marriages-more-divorces-in-2016-singstat-9040550 http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2016ar/2016ar.pdf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_vows https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_control https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion Chasing the dream Dream girl vs dream stock Humans are programmed with genetic shortcuts that set them up for success in the dating market, but failure in the financial markets. Behavioural bias. 1) Confirmation bias - You believe in only information that supports your view and ignore the others Chasing a girl vs chasing a stock. Women can be very complicated. As a single guy I get a lot of relationship advice. When she say no you think she say yes. Perseverance is the key to success. When the fundamentals ...

It is that time of the year whereby people start reflecting what they have done for the past year, and their investing journey. Due to my usage of dual brokers (poems and maybank) and the inability to automatically track dividends and transaction costs via excel, I scoured the blogs of investment bloggers and came across sgxcafe, a nifty tool to track transaction costs and dividend yield all in one convenient package. My capital gain in the short run is not stellar for this year as expected for a long term buy and hold strategy.This is to be expected. There is always a sinking feeling when your portfolio is in the red rather in in the black, but the dividend gain and the winners managed to cover for the short term losers and I still made a consolation prize profit. At least I kept myself from actively buying and selling and incur more transaction costs, which will effectively had eroded the meagre earnings I made. Thank god I am not a fund manager! I would have lost my job for failin...