Thursday, June 19, 2008

The Bull Hunter – Dan Denning

This book is very meaningful to me. I remember in 2006, me and a friend just went over to DBS building there to just open a DBS Vickers account together (but not joint). After some time, my friend bought this same book and passed it to me for reading. I browsed a bit and realized that this book is not ‘locally contexted’ and hence dismissed it, saying that it’s not suitable for Singapore.



Who would have guessed that years later, in 2008, I was actually looking around in library for this book? I read and found out big my folly is. The book was written back in 2004 but the prediction and forecast are uncannily accurate. It detailed, among other things:

1. The dollar crisis of America
2. Sub prime crisis
3. Rise of China and India (esp China)
4. Rise in commodities like oil, gold, metals, soyabean, corns

I found it amusingly when the guy predicted that oil will one day rise to USD 100 per barrel. You can guess how much the price of oil overshot this forecast by now.

That was back in 2006, when I’m still new and ready to stand in front of a bear charging at me and thought it was a bull. Atlas, even if I had read that book back then, I doubt I would have the maturity and experience in me to really treat this book as it is. That’s life – cest la vie. But life is to be lived forward and understood backwards, so there’s no point regretting not reading the book when fate had thrown it to me earlier.

I particularly liked his insights into China and India. His general rule when investing in emerging markets will be this: Buy the biggest financial, energy/resource, telecommunications companies in these areas and you pretty much had the biggest growth area. I totally agree with him. Looking at china mobile, singtel looks a tad insignificant. M1 or Starhub must be like how Singapore looks like when one is looking at the world map of telecommunications.

The author recommended ETF as a cost efficient and safe way to invest, though he also mentioned that if one is savvy enough, individual stock picking can also be done. The key point here is that bull markets occur somewhere, one just have to open one’s eyes for opportunities. Just like when one place is daylight, another place falls into darkness, bull and bear market will chase each other till kingdom come. The important question when facing a bear market is this – are you investing in the right asset class?

An excellent book, this one is for me. It had truly come one full circle back in the days when I first came to know of the book in 2006.

8 comments :

Paul said...

heya bully the bear, :)

nice to see you put up this post on the book. I've read it too and wrote a little summary abt it in my blog too http://readingmaterials.blogspot.com/2007/09/bull-hunter.html.

One big reason why i picked up the book to read was to see whether it was accurate, since as you mentioned that it was written in 2004. Indeed, i found it pretty zhun too!

la papillion said...

Hi pau,

Posted a comment on your blog :P

I think it's uncannily accurate :)

Sgbluechip said...

Hi la papillion, enjoyed your book reflections!

Anyway, 2 books I would like to recommend is Mind Set! by John Naisbitt and The oil factor by Stephen Leeb. They also offer predictions of the future. In fact Leeb was also spot on with regards to current oil prices!

la papillion said...

Hi sgbluechip,

Thks for your visit :)

I'll keep a lookout for these two books when I see them in the library. John Naisbitt is a name I found very familiar... Thks for the recommendation :)

Financial Journalist said...

I had read this book about 3 months ago, then I found out that I've actually been reading the author's newsletter for 2 years already.

I think you can subscribe for their free newsletter here: http://www.dailyreckoning.com.au/subscribe-dr/

Anonymous said...

i skim thru a few months back, but only the summary hahahaha ... as I was only looking for focus during this difficult & volatile period.

i think jim rogers made similar prediction as well too, but he is geared more to commodities & china (he traveled very extensively around china)

oil bubble, according to Soros, was due to several underlying factors: 1. fundamentals 2. oil subsidy in certain countries like china 3. Weak dollars 4. Speculations

la papillion said...

Hi brendan,

Yup, the author did mention about the newsletter. He even provided a website (which I forgot).

Thks for it anyway :)

la papillion said...

Hi durio,

Yup, you're right. Jim rogers is exceptionally bullish on china. He's staying in Singapore and made his daughter study Chinese too.

Talk about making a personal stake on his views..