Wonderful day I had!! Met my friend, Zhan Xi who came back from China to settle some personal stuff. Its been abour 6 months since I met up with him, and I still remember that we has Muthu Curry Fish Head together the last time we met. :)

It is then that I know the names of the 5 olympic mascots for 2008 in Beijing. "Bei Bei", "Jing Jing", "Huan Huan", "Ying Ying" , "Ning Ning", and it represents "Beijing huan ying ning" which means "Beijing welcomes all of you". The moment I heard it....... No comments!!

So today we had dinner at my favourite ramen store in Marina Square, and discovered that he is into investing, stocks and shares to be precise. Moreover, he said that he made quite a bit from trading (haha, my china inside info...).

Moral of the story: Networking is of utmost importance in biz and investing, especially if I am venturing into China. It is said that when one goes to China, it is best to bring wisdom there than money, because of the lack of transparency and regulation in certain parts of China. Even my dentist who venture into China learnt his lesson from failing in his franchising biz.

For investing, besides the fundamentals and technicals, I think its good to have some inside info to support my buys :)

Humans are selfish by nature. True or False?

I say its true, I know a lot of people who read this blog will rebutt it, saying I'm pessimitic about life yada yada... Yep, let me show you examples to verify this.

In work, a lot of people will definitely cover their ass 1st before reaching out to others. Who do otherwise? I don't think so. Will one actually help others out 1st before settling their own stuff? One may argue that I should know how to prioritize blah blah blah, but what if I know I have enough time to do my stuff and help others in their work? I believe that there will definitely be a little guy speaking to you softly.... "Mind my own business 1st before minding others, I can't take care of yourself then I wanna care for others? People won't appreciate my help I extend my hand to help them" Or worst still " They never care for me, why should I do that to them?

My point here is, how many people out there really exhibit the value of "Contribution before recognition", how many people will expect something out of the person he/she helped? How many people helped out because they themselves can get some benefit out of it? Win-Win situation? That's BULLSHIT, BigWin-SmallWin Situation that is.

Just realised something that I have not discover about my work in California Fitness, my main objective of my job as a dragger.... that is to 'drag' or invite guests from the public to take a tour of our clubhouse. Did it specify by any method? Nope. I realized that I am not the one who decides whether if my guests sign a membership or not, its the fitness consultants' job. If he can't close the deal, he sucks.

I realized that ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN after a presentation is done, nobody goes out with an inkling that ' oh today i walking around novena, a guy will approach me to go for a tour in a gym, then i will join', absolutely no one!! SO why help them to 'fortune tell'? Just throw them in!!!

2nd day of the new week and something good happened to me!! I was actually given a tutorial slot that I can't commit due to work commitments, then alas!! I checked my mail today and realised that some kind soul actually stepped forward to swap his/her place in the tutorial with me.... Though I don't know who the person is, I must really thank him/her for this!!

Some thoughts on retirement planning.... 1st question you may have: "Andy, you are 21 yrs old, isn't it a tad bit too early to plan for retirement? Its like so many years away!!" Okay, I'm intending to retire at a 'ripe old' age of 43, that will make about 22 years more to plan for it. Still far? I personally don't think so. Lets do some maths, assuming I live till 95, after retirement I will spend another 52 years chasing my dreams. In addition, I want at least $5k/month after I retire($60k/year in 2007 dollars). Plug in a conservative 2% inflation... to retire at 40, I will need........ $4.82 million SGD. Now assuming that interest is negligible, divided by 19 years, I need to save $18270.67/month!! Now, as an NUS student, is that possible??

If I invested in unit trusts, stocks and shares and other financial instruments, I assume I reaped a conservative 12% per annum, I need to save $2243/month, what a big difference it makes!! And I can firmly say that, $2000 a month is darn right achievable. I don't think I need to say how much 1 more year of procrestination of retirement planning will do to your funds in the end.

That's not all, what about wedding expenses, car, housing, family and all other expenses?? The $ sign is all-present around. Just some information from my Gym buddy, Kwek. He just wedded, and the expense are as shown:
1. Wedding dinner ($650/table * 60tables): $39,000
2. Photography, car rental, other expenses: $10,000
3. New 5-room flat (Tampines) : $35,000
4. Renovation, furnitures : $15,000
Total : $99,000

Hence, there are 2 main advantages to start planning early.
1. The effect of compounding will work wonders for one over a super long timeframe
2. Compounding effect will be undermine if the money invested is put in low yield instruments like endowments, time deposits. The idea of starting early gives one time to let your money work harder than you through higher yield instruments.

Hello again, im SOOO happy that I have been disciplined to start posting regularly, and I truly enjoy every moment of it (except for the technical side). Alright, I'm gonna continue what I have learned the previous night, from the Wealth Mentorship Session at AKLTG.

I will be writing on sector rotation and something thats alien to me (still very alien though), Japanese Candlesticks.

For sector rotation, I have to be frank that I don't really know a lot, and the idea is still very novel to me (however seasoned investors sees otherwise...). In US context, sectors are what made up to become an economy. Some sectors are, Financial, Healthcare, Housing, Energy etc. So, funds flow into different sectors at different phases in the economic cycle, hence though an economy is registering -ve GDP, certain sectors may reap +ve returns. For example, right now in US, the financial sector is in the boom, however it may be ending soon. Next up will most probably be the healthcare plan sector. From what I know, in US, hospitals actually have the authority to reject treating patients if they don't have medical insurance (Luckily I'm in Singapore :) ) hence the need for insurance coverage is always needed. Thus the healthcare plan sector will be the next to experience the boom. To verify this, we can go to finance.google.com to check it out. Under 'Sector Summary', Google actually have all the sectors' performance and key developments.

For Japanese Candlesticks, it is still a mystery to me. I have heard stories that some traders trade only using Japanese Candlesticks, not relying on financial reports or any forms of technical indicators. Personally, I'm still facing challenges differentiating the 2 diff color candlesticks. Different formations can will result in different movements of the stock, and accuracy can be high til as high as 90%!!! Well I shan't bore readers with the details and the names behind different formations. They can be seen at patterntrader.proboards106.com, Conrad's explanations are far better than mine.

Hey hey!! Just reached home from a wonderful and absolutely jam-packed session in stocks investment. Finally got to see Conrad's prowess in stock investment, and its really awesome to learn how to trade from him.

Just a little background about him, Conrad had just been hired by Adam Khoo to be his investment strategist, and co-speaker in Wealth Academy on the investing module. Well, he is someone I really admire, trading in stocks was never his cup of tea until he was left with no choice but to take on the path of a trader.... Conrad declared bankruptcy 5 years back due to his business failures. He actually put himself on the line and learn how to trade, and in a few years time, he traded himself out of bankruptcy, currently earning US$5000 to US$7000 a month purely just from trading at home!!! He actually have a website which he updates daily before the US market opens and after it closes, and all I can say that he is really downright accurate at giving projections!! Just in case you all want to know his website, http://patterntrader.proboards106.com

Really really learnt a lot from tonight's session, that I will be blogging about in sequels. Give me time to digest all the knowledge!!

Talked to Victor, my financial planner today about investment stuff, and realized that there is really too much information about investment instruments to finish absorbing and understanding. Probably its because of different schools of investing philosophies, like the value investing-kind from Warren Buffet, different opinions about dollar cost averaging and investing 1 lump sum.

Something that I have learned today and my thoughts about it. Since my little knowledge about unit trust investing, I can say that I have truly felt the impact of using dollar-cost averaging and investing lump sums in different phases. For $$-cost averaging, it is said that it takes away the investor's greatness weakness : emotions. I like to see the market as being controlled by human emotions, and they tend to overreact to good or bad news. So dollar-cost averaging (DCA) eliminates that part. By setting aside a fixed amount of money every month and investing it at regular intervals, the investor don't have to care if the market is in a boom or bust. Hence, this technique will allow one to buy more units when the fund price is down, less when the price is high.

However, I personally feel that this method only works if and only if, the fund is in a long-term upward trend. Think about it, if the fund price is tanking every month for say, 3 years due to recession or mismanagement by the fund manager, will DCA work? You are buying a fund that has its price tanking all the time, it is highly unlikely that you will make a profit when you sell them at the end of 3 years. Another point is, DCA requires little supervision, just pumping money in every month, isn't that what your fund house or financial planner wants!!! So when bad things happen, you don't even know!! How many people actually forget what happened in 2000 when the tech bubble bursted, will DCA help out at that time? NOOO!!

Well, I have done a bit of both to see for myself what really works. Investing in phases will require experience and maybe (in my view) timing the market. Though many investors, including Warren Buffet, said that one who times the market will always lose out in the end. History has supported that this is usually true. I don't really know how to explain it myself. Will get back to it later.

I recently realized that the best part of the chicken is neither the chicken breast nor the drumstick, nor the wings BUT the chicken tail part. Got this tip from my adviser, Victor from Alpha Financial. I sampled it, and its true!! The chicken tail is nowhere near the chicken backside, and the bones are soft enough to be eaten combined with the tenderness of the chicken meat. Whoa!! Shiok shiok. Besides that, I heard from the vendor that only older generations know this secret... haha, now I know it....

1st week of school is over me (Fri is my off day)! Its back to work again for me, back to California Fitness, to earn my living and for survival ( talk about harsh reality...) Sometimes, I asked myself why I have to do this.... Successful people say to find the work that one is most passionate about, thus working will be like playing, because one really enjoys doing it. Then in the midst, the dough will evantually follow.

However, my question is: "How many of us(especially Singaporeans) really found something we enjoy doing as our work?" I would say about 3%? An example is Adam Khoo, a self-made millionaire at the tender age of 27 (now 31), he made his millions from coaching seminars, public speaking and training, something that he throughly enjoys. But how many of us really think that way? I believe people will say that things like hobbies can't earn one a living. THAT IS SOOO WRONG!! Someone once told me "If you're treating your work as a hobby, you will only earn hobby money, only when you treat it as your heart & soul, as a business, then you will start to make REAL money". Now isn't that the usual case, people treating their job only as a form of passing time, not really working hard, slacking around waiting for time to fly by, and wait for the paycheque to arrive at the end of the month?

I think that is the main reason why most people don't get the recognition or promotion they think they deserve. Doing the mininum will get you nowhere!! Funny that I now realized that only those who spoil the market are the ones that are really successful.... because they are committed to do the things that normal people aren't willing to!!

The reasons why I work when I'm studying? Besides earning money, I wanna start to accumilate wealth and money way before my peers start to. I wanna do a biz during my studies and make money from it. I wanna do the same things as my peers BUT I have more money in my bank account. Anymore? Think I will stop here for the moment... Hehe

Long time since I have posted, kinda made me feel guilty.... So much time, yet did not accomplish any meaningful things... like studying, blogging, starting up my internet marketing biz. Darn!! Enough of procrestination and excuses!! It's really time to put myself on the line!!

2nd day of school, a new beginning, a fresh start for me to pia again!!! Haha... did not really think of anything productive to blog about....

Promise to blog more often!! ( at least 1 post every 2 days)