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Showing posts from 2010

Life and How to Survive It - a NTU Convocation Address

"I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It's a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband. My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me. On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable. Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife. And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when

Saying "no"

Not trying to be a disagreeable person here, but I have come to realize how a big "no" done properly can be such a day-saver. Bottom line is - there is no way to keep pleasing people, because you will just be repeatedly being taken for granted. Saying a big and firm "no" in the appropriate situation to friends, customers or even your bosses need some guts and practice, I admit. Perhaps even some negotiation skills has to come into play. Don't go "erm, I think...", "but..." or "Let me consider...", because hesitation would just let the negotiation drags. So when is the 'right' situation you may ask? It may differ from cases to cases, but as long as you have valid reason(s) and you know you have the rights to do so, draw in that deep breath and say - NO. Now I have almost mastered the art of doing "no" with an super serious (possibly stern) look and flat tone. Brilliant. ***

Leading a life of quiet desperations

"Most men live lives of quiet desperation."  This is a quote from Henry David Thoreau  - saw it at the end of a book I recently read called "Earn more, Stress less". And I find rather intriguing.  The meaning of 'quiet desperation' can be interpreted as bottling up the feelings of desperation and dissatisfaction . Someone also suggested that it could be describing people who just wanna follow the flow and fit into the society, they might be too polite to complain and too busy to think about it much. I am sure there are many of us out there who fits the bill, including myself. How many of us dare to voice out our dissatisfactions to, for example, our superior or kin of seniority? How many of us are brave enough to pursue our dreams without being handcuffed by reality?  How many of us are leading the kind of life we want and working to change it (if it isn't)?  How many of us are truly living life for ourselves? Then I ponder the answers to this questi

Techinical charting tips

Drawing trendline from right to left may give a more relevant prediction of support / resistance Bullish reversal bar (dip but close at high) after several periods of falling prices --> buying opportunity Bearish reversal bar (dip and close at low) after rising trend --> time to close long position 3 black crows (blue candles) consecutively --> bad sign Reference: Trading for Dummies

Useful ratios - debt and profit

Debt ratios Current ratio = Current assets / Current liabilities *Look for current ratio close to the industry average Quick ratio = (Current asset - Inventory) / Current liabilities Profit ratio Gross margin ratio (indicates efficiency at making profit) = Gross profit / Net sales

Technical indicators for selling

Short-term traders would use MACD as a guide for change in trend direction. Buy signals when the MACD crosses above signal line, sell signals when MACD crosses below signal line. Using stoch indicator, sell when stoch goes above 80 indicating an overbought condition Spotting price gap that is significantly lower accompanied by high trading volume (spelling trouble ahead) Setting a target price for minimizing loses can be done with a few methods using stock charts: Simply setting a stop loss at 10% loss from current price or adopt the trailing stop-loss strategy as your stock price goes up Exit if the stock price falls back below the resistance level after breaking through resistance - which gives smaller financial risk but prone to whipsaws (getting out of a potentially winning trade too soon) Exit if the price falls below the mid-point of the trading range - gives a higher risk but less prone to whipsaws ***

STI on the climb

STI is climbing. It closed at 3190 today. BUT why is my only blue-chip Comfort Delgro showing a blue candle? I really can't figured out what's wrong with it. I know I have bought it at an overprice. It is a mistake. If only I had been more patient... Looking on the bright side, it is still some way from analyst's target value. I guess one problem is that the company has too many competitors, further research needs to be done. Hindsight analysis - it was the operating cost / oil price causing the down price of the share. Oceanus and MIIF is showing gains. Good signs. It was a good tightening of the bollinger bands for MIIF. =) Let's observe if STI can climb past the 3300 mark. ***

Summary notes on investing with CPF money

CPF monies are allocated into 3 sections - Ordinary account (where you can use the money for properties, study loan etc), Special account (for retirement) and Medisave account (for hospitalisation expenses and medical insurance) Refer here for the allocation rate Current interest rate: OA 2.50%, SA & MA 4%, Retirement account 4% See rates You can only invest if you have more than $20,000 in your Ordinary Account or more than $40,000 in your Special Account *Note that the first $60,000 in your combined CPF account earns an extra 1% interest Instruments that you can invest in are: bonds, treasury bills, annuities, fixed deposits, endowment policies, equities, unit trusts, investment-linked insurance and ETF. CPFIS-OA and CPFIS-SA instruments are different, read more Charges are applicable for the various instruments you invest in. Read more . For more details, please refer to the CPF website under my links section. *** Before you make any investment or fixed deposit arrangement, weig

Advice from the guru and lessons learnt

In the Money Week (TV show on Channel 8), the stocks guru Mr Hu Li Yang mentioned that if a stock you chose drops while overall stocks in the market are rising, that would imply your stock is 'sick' and you should be alarmed by this signal. I do not agree with all of his statements, one of which is about buying up and selling down. If the statement he made above is true then I have to re-look at two of my stocks, which failed to break their resistances since I bought many months back, despite the market doing better than then. I should know better than to buy on gut instinct and reading some optimistic posts about the company. I regretted not following my gut instinct that time about Genting SP when it dropped to 0.80+ the commentaries were all against it rating it's support at 0.60. Suddenly it emerged as a multi-bagger stock. I wondered if any guru would have guess it can hit a whooping $2. After a period of over-chase, it's price is finally cooling off - closed to

6 of Asia's most expensive homes

Skyscraper for a home? See this link http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/none/6-asias-most-expensive-houses-820027 Now, which is the one you aspire to live in the most if you have that kind of money? These homes seem more like museums to me really. Find them too extravagant to be called homes... well, maybe not for these billionaires who are overflowing with monies in their banks. For somebody like me who have been staying in a small Singapore flat all my life, it's hard to imagine how living in HUGE spaces like those would feel like. Shiok or not? Would people lose their way in there? Do they truely qualify as cozy and comfy? To me, I would think that living with a warm close-knitted family in any decent housing would very much suffice as cozy and comfy. =)

My mobile phone plan

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I probably have one of the most economical phone plan around - Starhub 3G Power Now 160 (don't think it's available for subscription anymore) and am quite happy with it. The basic charge is $20 prior to GST, and it includes 160 minutes talk time that can be rolled over monthly, 500 free SMS, free incoming voice calls on weekend and recently I discovered that Data usage within Gee! is FREE. Woohoot!  I only discovered that after I started logging on to MSN via mobile and the bill indicated that the data usage are uncharged. I tried to find which are the websites that fall within Gee! and which are those that fall outside Gee! (charged) but couldn't find any useful information on the Starhub website. Does anybody know? Hmm maybe I would call up to check with them. Since my contract is ending next year, I am contemplating whether I should get the all-famous iphone. That would mean I have to give up this plan and get a 30 over dollars monthly iphone plan. Alternatively, is to g

Wise quotes series - I

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"The line separating investment and speculation , which is never bright and clear, becomes blurred still further when most market participants have recently enjoyed triumphs. Nothing sedates rationality like large doses of effortless money. After a heady experience of that kind, normally sensible people drift into behavior akin to that of Cinderella at the ball. They know that overstaying the festivities -- that is, continuing to speculate in companies that have gigantic valuations relative to the cash they are likely to generate in the future -- will eventually bring on pumpkins and mice. But they nevertheless hate to miss a single minute of what is one helluva party. Therefore, the giddy participants all plan to leave just seconds before midnigh t. There's a problem, though: They are dancing in a room in which the clocks have no hands ." - Berkshire Hathaway 2000 Chairman's Letter *** "The key to investing is not assessing how much an industry i

Be an INVESTOR and not a GAMBLER

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Some tips I have gathered from the book ' Techinical Analysis Demystified ': Do not be influenced by other's views, make independent decisions If the market cannot move up on good news, sell fast. If the market cannot move down on bad news, buy fast. It takes patience to wait for trends to be established or to wait for the correct setup to enter. You must have a precise entry level and reason for entering. Jumping in for dear that you'll miss out is not a good enough reason to buy. Knowledge of human nature: Market hate to sell at even numbers. Keep stop orders just short of round whole number as well. -- Here are some advice from Createwealth8888 : To not GAMBLE in the stock market, you can do one or more of these Leave your capital invested and focus on collecting stock dividends and likely over a long period of time you will finally recover all your capital plus more. Periodically recover your capital plus some capital gains and re-invest when stock ma

Bear trend continues - The Euro (PIG) crisis

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The Euro crisis has caused another wave of dip in STI. Watch out for the next support level at 2650 points (BT). With the World Cup kicking in, it is believed that STI will continue to fall in the wane market conditions... Source: The Business Times May 22 2010 ***

Bidding websites - big business in small world

Speaking of innovative business, gimmicks aside, the Online Bidding business looks like a lucrative business which worked almost like the casino concept. It plays on basic human elements like competition, luck & gamble and the evil of all evils - GREED. If cleverly designed with a user-friendly interface less bug issues, it would work perfectly as a money machine. The blog-shops that I have been so intrigued with seemed to have paled much in comparison. For one, many shoppers still prefer to buy clothes at boutiques where they can try the clothes all they want, feel the textiles and check for imperfections before drawing out the wallets. (I tried purchaing a dress online once during a blog-shop sales. Although the workmanship is not up to mark and some alterations has got to be made, I can't complain much for a $15.00 buy can I? Purchase-smart is the key.) Just to clarify, online bidding businesses I am talking about here is not ebay or yaHoo auction because those serve mainly

Cash flow quadrant

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I came across this quadrant from Wealth Buch's blog. The simplest being E, which is the one that I am in now. Hardest being B i think. S would be something like taking up a tuition job or being a hawker... I is what i aimed to be in my free time and the reason on why I started this blog. Someday I shall borrow Robert Kiyosaki's book. --- STI went below it's break point of 3000, probably due to the volcanic hit. MIIF just dropped below 0.50, if it dropped to 0.47 or less i will take in some lots. It is currently trading slightly below the previous support level. Stoch is at its lowest, RSI weak. ***

Scrutinizing SG stock market

I have been lazy for the past year. Investing has always been on my mind but I am too lazy to get an account, and didn't bother to do any research nor studying... that is why I am lamenting every time I see a new peak in STI... I think I always 'man ren yi pai'. haiz. Just started going into TA for the past few days. Wasn't as difficult as I thought. In fact it seemed quite interesting. Stoch, RSI, MFI, MA, Bollinger bands, SAR blah blah... tools that I never thought of using previously. I have been just stupidly looking at volume which is not that informative, it's just like looking at the tip of an iceberg. I still need to learn more about support and resistant and how to pin-point them. I predict that current STI will continue to climb to hit above 3000. In '07 it almost hit 4000. Now it's still a time of fluctuations. About parabolic SAR The parabolic SAR is a fairly good tool for traders looking for a strategic method of gauging a stock's dir

Start of working life, start of new blog journey

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Looking back at my 9 months of professional training, it feels like a movie's flashback. There were times of pain (from long hours of standing and walking and stocking goods), stress (when we need to meet documents and project deadlines), fun (through my various rotations) and sense of achievement (when my group won the project presentation and how i survived delivering it in the auditorium for the first time). Now that I have started work, it has been almost a year since I graduated, it is very different from training period - I would liken it to a boulder off my shoulder, despite having small loads thrown to me along the way. The learning journey now is fully dependent on self , with nobody to push me at the back anymore. Work everyday is very routine, except on days when i get scheduled to work overtime out of my usual work place. It is not too bad in spite of the travel as I am quite happy with my current benefits and pay. I can foresee myself staying on (at least through th

Disclaimer:

The contents of this blog are author's personal opinions and do not constitute advice to hold, buy or sell any securities, commodities or assets mentioned. I do not guarantee the accuracy and reliability of any information provided, and shall not be liable for any losses incurred from reading my posts or using the materials herein. This blog may contain affiliate links to external sites.