Caveat Emptor

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 prof...

Maybank Kim Eng recently made revisions to its Monthly Investment Plan.  This directly impacted my ongoing monthly DCA of the STI ETF. Essentially, to clear off the odd lots accumulated throughout the DCA, I will need to liquidate my odd lots before 31 Dec 19. I was hoping that the market recover to a normalised / inflated level before the end of this year so that I can liquidate a portion of that counter for a modest profit.  DCA of the STI ETF is designed for the know nothing investor whom does not wish to time the maket, but wish to gain diversified exposure to equities at a low cost. Essentially, it grants a diversified exposure of the 30 largest companies in Singapore with a skew towards financials. As long as you believe that Singapore will continue to grow and be prosperous over the long term, and the underlying companies will cement their hold in Asia and participate in the ASEAN growth story, it is relatively cheap compared to its future prospects. That wa...

Position Assessment and Career Assessment. This is not a post on investment analysis. But the tenets of objective and rational reasoning stands. When you enter the interview phase of a fresh job position, one will generally be positive about the future outlook of the industry and the organization as a whole. Due to the nature of Singapore politics and lack of union power, a job interview is generally a market maker's game. The negotiating power is much higher at the market maker (Company) rather than the market taker's (employee end). Most employees will employ a certain amount of qualitative scuttlebutt analysis to learn everything about the industry, company as well as quantitative metrics such as leave, medical benefits, dental, bonuses etc before negotiating and securing a position in that company. The grass always appears greener on the other side. There will always be a certain amount of expectations mismatch from an outsider compared to an insider. Every employee i...