Amazing annual report

I've never been more impressed by an annual report than this.The chairman and the management believes that a good annual report is one that teaches the owners of the company how to interpret the results. And boy, they did enlighten me! They mentioned that for a good analytical review of a business, the balance sheet classifications and other non-profit number indicators should not be an 'art and science' to understand - it must be easily interpreted....

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HSBC 1 yr chart

HSBC chart --------------------------- Added a new company to my portfolio today, can you spot it...

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Of bonds, yields, stocks and PE

I was inspired by Mike's posting on the stock vs bond deal to do a little more research on my own. From what I can gather, the chart below seems to be the latest updated yields for treasury bill/bonds by SG govt (I'm not sure!)Quite pathetic right? I'm not sure if I can find any bond yield longer than 20 years old, because the website where I got the data didn't have such an option for me to choose. It seems like the 20 year bond gives us a yield...

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Time waits for no man

Another week passed...Seems like the older you get, the faster time passes. Anybody who experienced this phenomenon? I was walking home from work today and I felt a sense of urgency to do what needs to be done before time slips through my palm like sand. Time and tide waits for no man, so hurry up and do what you need to do. Prioritize your most important tasks first so that they will be done first ...

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CSC and YN contract wins

No wonder CSC and YN suddenly revived from inactivity.There are two announcements related to these two companies:1. Yongnam and KTC secured a S$81.4 million contract for Marina Bay Sands IR to design, supply, install and remove temporary decking, steeling waling, strutting and excavation works. This is a 70% (YN) - 30% KTC joint venture for the South podium at the IR. They stated that this contract needs to work 24/7 basis to deliver the objectives within a tight timeline. nuffnang_bid_sing = "6ab2c870667e6fd25a550454f47307af";2. CSC won a contract...

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Charts for CSC and YN

Charts for CSC and Yongnam - for my own reference.-------------------------Singpost will be posting their fourth quarter results for the financial year ending 31st March 2008 on 30th April, 2008, after the close of tradin...

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Are you a fighter, a mage or a fighter-mage?

I was talking to dream and musicwhiz last night when the idea of using Dungeons&Dragons (D&D) as an analogy to the two streams of thought for investing/trading was discussed. I did some research on found that, well, not only does D&D analogy applies to investing/trading, it also applies to web development. I got most of my information from the site, which I think all in IT should at least read it - it's damn interesting!FightersDescription:Not...

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Important realisation

Buffettology is really a good book. I think I'm going to get this book for sure, as I think I'll re-read 12 times. I made an important realisation when I'm a quarter into the book. This realisation is handy to quickly get a rough value of a business entity that sounds promising. First of all, I need to assume 2 things:1. When I buy shares of a company, I am a partial owner of the business entity, hence I'm entitled to get a part of the earnings generated by the entity. Hence, EPS (earnings per share) of the company is also my earnings, though...

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Books came over!!

I'm extremely delighted today :)First of all, I've been hunting for Philip A.Fisher "Common stocks and Uncommon profits" for some time already. I've chanced upon it a few weeks ago, only to go back home in disappointment because the book cannot be borrowed due to some technical problems. But this time, I found it nestling between the shelves. It's a bit old, but I'm too happy to find it to care much :)The second thing is that the 2 books that I've been waiting was mailed over to me today! I've been waiting for the free copies of the books after...

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Monopoly rules - Milind Lee

Monopoly Rules by Milind Lee was a book that I completed reading last week. I didn't have time to publish what I thought about this book last week, so this is a bit long overdue.In a nutshell, I think this book is very interesting. The author talks about the wrong focus on SCA (sustainable competitive advantage) whereas they should first focus on whether their business have a monopoly. Let me explain. Monopoly, according to the book, isn't exactly the definition that text books gave. To state it simply,Monopoly is an ownable space for a useful...

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New new new

Here's the screenshot of the old bullythebear website:Here's how the screenshot of the newer bullythebear website looks like:Personally while the older one will be missed sorely by me (and some others too!), this new one should be the new phoenix that the ashes of the old one had turned into. The background is a brownish-black colour. What I liked about the new one is the colour scheme. The red/orange combination signifies confidence and power.I...

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A new look!

I've outgrown the older template.It's time for a new template. This must be the 3rd time that I changed a new template and it could only get better and better. I still remembered that my very first one was from the standard classic template from blogger itself. Not very inspiring at all.After some time, I switched to a new (and now old) one, with 2 columns. Not too long ago, I configured it to work with 3 columns. In the process, I learnt lots of html codes myself. No doubt, it's rudimentary, but I think I can still do the standard editing and...

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Successful Value Investing in Asia - Tony Measor

I've not done a book review for some time, but this book that I read beckons me to review it, so that I can share with more people and also that I can remember the lessons taught.This book that I'm talking about is: Successful Value Investing in Asia - 10 timeless principles by Tony Measor. To be frank, I saw this book from major bookstores before but I rubbished it away. Perhaps in the past I saw this book with a different light than what I saw now. When I finished reading it yesterday, I was wowed by the sensible insights of the author who wrote...

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Mozzies attack!

What's the difference between a fly and a mosquito? A mosquito can fly but a fly cannot mosquito! A pretty lame joke from my student. But it didn't mask the fact that it's not durian season, it's dengue season now!I can always tell because somehow, these irritating blood suckers will fall in on the mirror of my bathroom every morning. When in season, they will also fall in after every few hours and I would have to clear them every now and then!Don't tell me to call NEA or ENV or what nought. They came they went, and they educate and they checked....

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Civil engineering vs value investing

Oh my, how time flies...Friday already and another week gone by. As KK would have said, only left XXXX weeks more to go :)I realised I didn't blog much this week, so since I have both the energy and the time to do it now, I shall try to post some thoughts that are in my mind. It's about margin of safety.I did civil engineering before, so the concept of margin of safety isn't new to me, except that it wasn't known in the engineering jargon as margin of safety - it's called factor of safety. Different words, same meaning. Thus, you can imagine that...

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