BULLy the BEAR

The title says it all. Do not be obsessed over financial freedom. Financial freedom is for the future, but in order to have a future, you need to have a present. What if one day, your present situation changes, would the financial freedom that you have in the future still be meaningful? For example, you planned nicely for a nice retirement at age 45 with a cash flow matching your expenses, but suddenly your life situation changes - your spouse left you, you lost control of your limbs etc - would the financial freedom that you crave for in the past still meaningful? I doubt so.

I realised, by living with my wife, that we have different ways of looking at things. She could fuss over details that I wouldn't bat my eyelids over. Or I could crunch over the numbers before buying things while she just looks at the colours available. I think that's the thing that makes us, as a couple, interesting. It would never do to have two person who are too similar. Wouldn't it be boring? Of course, we cannot be too 'interesting', otherwise we would argue at everything and anything and living together would be near impossible. I see this differences as being complimentary opposite.



I guess in the market, the two camps of TA (technical analysis) and FA (fundamental analysis) works the same too. They are different; they see different things and do different things. You can even say they are opposite, but I think they are complementary to each other. One just have to look at how successful AK applies his knowledge of both to his positions to know that it can be done. I guess each camp can learn a little from the other, if you keep your mind open and receptive to new ideas. It's really like two blind men trying to figure out how an elephant feels like by touching different parts of it - you are really only seeing one perspective of the bigger picture.



I think I did a post on this topic before. It's found here. Must be getting old and naggy.

Throughout the entirety of this week and last, I was trying to sell of a good part of my portfolio. I sold off all my aims before the run up and all my sabana and all my lippomall. Don't be alarmed by the word 'all' - it means different things to different people. I sold all because the amount that I had in it is not big in the first place, so it is senseless to try to earn that extra few dollars by staggering it into multiple sell batches.



As to seller's remorse, I believe it no longer plagues me. I conclude that it is essentially an emotional problem, you know, the twin forces of greed and fear. These days, I'm more emotionless regarding the market. Que sera sera, whatever will be will be, isn't that what the folk songs of old taught us so?



So what's the rationale for selling? It's just an old nagging feeling that something isn't right. I get more bearish as the market goes further up and gets more excited as it goes further down. I think that's the right kind of feeling to have, if you think about it. I can rationalise further by going into charts and all, but essentially that is just the carrots and potatoes that are served with the roast chicken. The main reason is that I don't feel good putting that much money into the market at this moment in time (I'm above 100% invested  - don't ask - before I sold off, if that's even possible). I think around 50 to 70% invested is more proper for me. But don't follow me, because if I change direction, I'm not liable to inform you and if the market rises up further, you're silly to blame it on me.



Do I always act on feelings? I think not always. But recently, I do. Newbies are not entitled to having feelings about the market, so maybe I shouldn't do that. But what am I? No longer a newbie? Or a newbie pretending not to be one? Nah, who cares....

Here's the result announcement for this month. I'll be paying attention to a few counters that are announcing their full year results. I wonder whether this is the thing that keeps STI awake these days and wondering what will become of STI when the excitement dies off.

As the market transforms back and fro into a beast that is neither a bull or a bear (perhaps it had always been a hybrid chimera of sort - a bull with bear head for instance), I noticed that more and more old timer bloggers are slowly exiting the blogging scene. I say that with a tinge of heartache, because some of them had been blogging together with me since I started circa 2006 period, right near the peak of the bull market. 6 years had since passed, with each of them patiently and industrially churning out articles after articles, sometimes to an unappreciative crowd of anonymous users, and hopefully not blogging just to yourself.


I guess there's a time and tide for everything. As we grow older, a lot of activities will exact their demands on our energy and time. Suddenly passions that you once had might have gone uninteresting and unloved with the passing of time, but that's only natural, since new activities might also interest you more and you would willingly devote more of your resources on them. Like the market that we, the small group of local financial bloggers, discuss, poke at and debate relentlessly, the blog that we had painstakingly nurtured also has its own bearish and bullish cycles.


I'll try to keep this blog for as long as possible, but I do not guarantee a full premium cbox features in the future as these premium features requires me to pay for your enjoyment. But as avid readers and followers of this blog can see, I've reduced tremendously the amount of blog posts here because I simply cannot muster the energy and patience to blog about another market related stuff. I felt that I've done that and covered that many times in the blog's illustrious (hopefully) 6 years since 2006, so it's just a rehash and churning of stale ideas.


Walk with me, blog articles by articles, and we shall see where this road will lead us.

Since a lot of readers commented that they had only been reading 1-2 books max in a year, I thought it'll be a good time to share what I did to read that many books. First of all, let me add that in my opinion, reading many books is not as important as reading the right books. I rather read less books but books that are important and crucial to your mental well-being, than to say, reading many many books that are just trashy. But it's the law of diminishing returns that really makes it harder and harder to find those books that bring the right amount of inspiration and motivation to pump your hand in the air and gave a mental shout of victory. The best books are books that told you what you know internally already, in a way and mannerisms that makes it so easy for you to absorb. If I can read a handful of such books in a year, I think it'll be a great literary adventure for that year.



I read a lot more after I wanted to have a more disciplined approach towards it. In the past, I only read like less than 5 books in a year. I thought there is something wrong with this because there are so many things - wisdom and experiences - captured in books, written by people who had lived entirely different lives, that if I didn't know about them, I couldn't be living a full life, so to speak. It's a very good habit, I'll say. Things that I never though I knew, I actually knew. Besides being able to talk about almost anything, I find it useful in my work when I can relate certain facts or story and weave them into my lesson plans when teaching.

These days, I'm more likely to hold a ebook reader than a physical book

Anyway, here's how to squeeze more time and have some spare time to read:


1. I never watch tv. In fact, I don't even have a tv at home now, a fact that I'm proud of (despite the many cries by relatives and friends for me to go get a tv). I watch things from my computer though, because firstly I can skip by all the advertisements that a show usually will be splattered with, intermittently every 15 mins or so. I used the spare time to read instead. Roughly I can save around 2-3 hours like that to spend on reading.



2. I read while commuting. Though I don't bring my gigantic kindle dx around with me when I travel, I either have a physical book with me or an ebook saved in my handphone for idle time that pops out occasionally. I make it a point to always have something that I want to read in my bag (or handphone) so that when I'm commuting or when friends I'm meeting are late, I can whip it out to spend the time. Since I've reduced the amount of time that I spent travelling now, I read in between classes while waiting for students to come. I think I can save around 1 hr per day reading by doing this.



3. I always read before going to bed. Minimum of 30 mins or until a suitable stopping point in the book. It had been a habit since a long time, so besides calming me down to ready my mind to go to rest, it also serve as a routine that brings me to sleep. If I don't do it, I might even have problem sleeping! I think everyone needs to prepare for bed by doing things that will relax their body, so that when they actually go about sleeping, their mind will not be so alert and restless. This bedtime reading will allow me to spend a minimum of 30 mins to 2 hours reading.


So, in total, I think I can do about a minimum of 3 hours of reading time per day on average. Of course, there are other hobbies that I would do occasionally if I'm not reading, like guitar and playing computer games. But I think spreading between these few hobbies that I have, it's not too hard to be able to read an average sized book (around 2-3 cm thick) in a week.


Try it, you might find how easy it catches on!

(I'm off for a trip on 21st Jan, will be back on 26th Jan)

After doing my end of month accounting for the Dec 2011 and thus wrap up my financial year 2011, I realised that a lot of my networth was wiped out. Okay, everyone's definition of networth is different, so here's mine - it's defined as all my assets (includes cash, marked to market investment portfolio, whole life insurance cash value, mmf  and cpf) but excludes my residential property. I also didn't include debts that I owed to the hdb because of the property. I think you can roughly say that's my investible networth since most of it is cash that I can utilize at short notice. I know you can't use cpf anytime you want, but then again, I don't have much of it anyway, so it doesn't matter significantly.



With this kind of definition, I realised that my networth is whacked down to around 2008, way before I had started any kind of disciplined savings. I had never had so little money in my savings account; the last time being just right after I had graduated from university. Wow, what a journey that I had in 2010/2011 right? But I had never had so much satisfaction and fun, so it's all worth it.



I realised that I had to begin from scratch again, working hard, savings hard and building up that excess money that I can hoard away for maybe another life's big bombs to hit me again. Sometimes I wondered if I had spend way more than I can handle. But the deed is done, so there's only one way to go and that's forward. I guess it's back to the 50k per year savings target. I'm really trying hard to double that savings but I think realistically, it's not going to happen this year 2012. There's simply no way to save more than I can afford to do so without sacrificing my current standard of living, so I'll have to do it by upping my income level. That's the challenge isn't it? I think if I can manage to save up 50k this year without including my mortgage payment, it'll be quite a feat already. That's technically 60-70k in total. Gulp.


So what had I set out to do in 2011?


1. Save 50k. Okay, that's old story, been there done that. Even though halfway along the year, I had to start paying mortgage for my flat, so the 50k includes all the mortgage payment too (I don't have much cpf, as mentioned earlier, so all of it is through cash)


2. Read 52 books a year. Nope, didn't manage to do that but I came quite close at 50 books. Here's the books that I read in 2011. Most of it is fiction, not some financial books that I've been gorging on since 2006. I realised that fiction taught me a lot on how to be human being. I haven't been reading so much fiction since my primary school day. PRIMARY SCHOOL - can you believe that? My brains must be super lopsided, haha!

You can see that I'm a loyal reader. If I like a particular author, I tend to 'cheong' all his/her books.

3. Set up and finish up the house. Okay, that's mostly done too. I still haven't got my bedside table and a tv. Yes, most people who came up to my house will definitely remark on the fact that I don't have any tv at home. I just don't see how a tv will fit into my life, so that's quite a low priority in my waiting list of things to buy.



In retrospect, I think 2011 had been a fulfilling year. It's a year that I had spent more than I had ever done in my life. It's a year that my friendship with my parents had just begun. It's a year that I had experienced a lot of new things (like cooking and maintaining the home, buying furniture, supervising renovation etc). It is certainly a year that is a big milestone in my life