Caveat Emptor

Covid Scare and Cash Flow Gaming June is an eventful month on my personal front. Despite being fully vaccinated with booster shots via the Moderna vaccine, I was infected on 13 June (Monday the 13th) and was forced to WFH to clear some time sensitive assignments. Although I was fortunate to not suffer any long term side effects from the virus, it reawakened a sense of paranoia in me that my introverted nature may have led to me being underachieving on my personal life, and I will kick the bucket early before truly clearing off my bucket list. I decided to make a deliberate decision to be more outgoing after this covid scare, abiding by the motto to live < every week to do something foolish, something creative, and something generous>. I am attempting to explore outgoing hobbies outside work as well as the chance to meet more people. <Cash Flow 101> was a game created by Robert Kiyosaki, the infamous author of the book <Rich Dad Poor Dad> which book is an inspirational...

How inflation swindles the Equity Investor The equity markets continue to trend downward over the month of May. This is the one of the more sizable stock market downturn since I started investing, with the first one back at 2015-2016, the second at May 2020, and the third one which started around Jan 2021. As the valuation metrics has been extremely elevated in the US market on 2020, I believe this is a fairly healthy correction and I am not too concerned about the inflation / interest rate impacts on the companies I hold. As a bottom up investor, I believe this is one of those rare times that I can build up my positions in the higher quality companies at a more reasonable valuation, and I will try to consistently execute on my accumulation plan for the months ahead. Despite the stagflation, supply chain, and nuclear warfare worries, I still prefer an aggressive allocation to ownership stakes to a diversified portfolio of cash generative assets. As my workplace has fully transited back...

Multiverse of Madness This week of one of the most volatile period in the equity markets, as volatility spiked and market participants started their frantic selling. This week's market movements has shadows of the Mar2020 period whereby rapidly shifting market conditions resulted in billions of dollars being snapped away.  At this period of sharp volatility, the fundamentals focused investor can take comfort in the words of Benjamin Graham in (The Intelligent investor) and metaphors of Mr Market, as a (maniac depressive) person whom is merely there to deal with you. There are underlying companies and cash flows behind the stock and difference between price and value is what the investor benefit from. The inability of the investor to fight head-on against a massive all-powerful incorporeal being. And how your mindset towards dealing with it determines whom is the master and whom is the slave. If Benjamin Graham was born a millennial, he will have thought of the Marvel cinematic univ...

Dormammu, I've Come to Bargain The month of April is characterized by the Great Valuation reset. A lot of the highly priced growth stocks had their prices and multiples reset back to 2020 BC (Before Covid), and this is a particular painful period for newly minted investors. Certain speculative /highly priced growth stocks and managed funds / ETFs had their losses up to 50%++, and even the high flyer blue chip SandP companies (Netflix, Facebook) are not spared from this bloodbath. Although I did not average heavily into the more high priced growth stocks throughout the course of last two years, certain holdings I held like Coinbase and Paypal registered heavy unrealized losses despite having their long term fundamentals remain intact (in my biased opinion). Nonetheless, per the latest quarter earnings release from various companies, a lot of the growth from the pandemic lock-down has tapered off and there is no certainty if it will return. Specifically for Paypal, the CEO has guided...

 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....