Caveat Emptor

 War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means - Carl von Clausewitz, On War The headlines of March has been concentrated on the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. What was expected to be a clean sweep and quick invasion by political commentators had an unexpected twist of events. The endless hordes of Russian tanks are being effectively pushed back by the Ukraine defenders, geographical and logistical impediments, and advanced antitank weaponry supplied by NATO/US. This dragged out the invasion which transited to become a stalemate. Supply chains and ammunition lines continued to flow from NATO and US supply chains, and the intelligence and advanced weapons / drones provided by the western powers allowed Ukraine from incurring catastrophic losses and allowed them to disrupt the supply chains of the invaders effectively.  Battles are won by men and wars are won by logistics. It is incredible how conventional warfare (train logistics and tan...

  Clash of the E-commerce Models - Six Billion Shoppers VS Bezonomics One of the most insightful analysis I have came across this month is from the above books written by the below authors in the eCommerce space. Porter Erisman (author of Six Billion Shoppers) is a insightful analyst as he had worked in Alibaba from 2000 to 2008, joining the company as it moved out of Jack Ma's apartment and started ramping its business up amidst the strong challengers like Ebay and Amazon. Brian Dumaine is a journalist and editor of Fortune magazine, and a fanboy of Amazon which followed the interviews of Amazon managers from its roots to what it is doing today. As most analysis on eCommerce is from top down TAM and GMV growth projections and not the bottom up business analysis, I find these publications has value insights to understand the bottom up micro-advantages of the Amazon business model VS the Chinese Alibaba model. One crucial insight is that the business models are continually evolving....

  Review of January The advent of the year of the Tiger  has been a mauling for stock and crypto investors as volatility spiked up. The inflation worries impacted the high valuation of stocks in Dec. The Federal Reserve signalling of the tapering of QE and the intent to increase interest rates to control inflation in Jan sent a rude awakening to investors whom focus at the narratives instead of the financial numbers, and sent a hit among the technology and growth labeled stocks. The various surprises of the earnings releases in Feb led to huge adjustments in the valuations of the winners in the Covid season. And now, the potential breakout of war between US and Russia over the independence of Ukraine led to sour sentiment especially if armed conflict breaks out between 2 nuclear powers. From a discounted cash flow perspective, the terminal cash flows / multiples of the companies with cash flows well into the future (growth orientated companies) will be more uncertain with the ...

Added TWR breakdown by market performance as my portfolio ventured outside SG Quantitative Measures Beta = 1.06, VaR = 12.60% Expected Shortfall = 19.57% TWR = 38.69%, XIRR = 7.90% End of Year review 2021 is an eventful year marked by huge market volatility in all asset classes. The surge in interest of retail trading / investment in US markets brought markets to speculative highs in loss making zero / minimal  revenue companies, and the announcing of the interest rate tapering brought stocks to more attractive valuations at year end. Momentum stocks / shitcoins / China crackdowns took turns dominating the headlines as the financial media (similar to Facebook) is incentivized to optimise for clicks and hype and not about solid fundamental changes in the underlying asset. A lot of unusual speculative quirks happened in the financial markets which forced me to reassess my basic assumptions about conventional financial wisdom.  Some memorable events that surfaced this year are i)...