A little reflection

These days I hardly look at the market. I remember when I started, I keep staring at the prices, as if by some eye power, I can change the prices of the stocks that I owned. These days, it's just a waste of time.


I suppose as I get more mature and hopefully wiser, my feelings and emotions are kept more constant. There are a lot of things that require my time and presence, and I certainly do not want to spend my life staring at numbers jumping on the screen. It's such a far cry when I first started (on the wrong foot obviously) in the market by trading with warrants. It requires so much time and effort, with my emotion going up and down according to the ups and downs of the ticker. It's very stressful, not to mention distracting, when you have a job to do as well.


I think going forward, I would reduce the time spent on looking at the watchlist. I foresee that I can only get more busy in my work, thus more of my stocks holding had been changed to hold more dividends. Basically I intend to hold more dividend yielding stocks, such as reits and the standard 'defensive' fare, and leave a few bullets here and there to either buy more upon crisis, or trade when I see the opportunities. Unlike in the past, I completely realise that the trading game is not for me, and that is after having experimented with it for myself. I also realised that I cannot be those steadfast investor as well, because it would have completely bore me to dig deep into the statements to find out the business.


I think the self realisation of what you can do and what you cannot do is important, because that will shape your style of investing/trading. To find out the viscosity of honey,  you cannot look at a static jar of honey. You must tilt the jar to one side to find out the dynamic properties of honey. Likewise, you cannot know your risk appetite by filling out some questionnaire, you have to try it out for yourself in the market.

You cannot discover the dynamic properties of honey by staring at it statically

My main income has been, will be, and will always be my main job. Knowing this, I think I would not spend so much time searching the ocean for that one multi-bagger stock that will yield me tremendous profits. Neither will I stare at the ticker all day just to get the perfect entry and exit. I simply do not have the time for such things. I realised that a day will come that I cannot work anymore, I would have to rely on secondary sources of income, and that will have to be from my investments. That will be my second line of defence. I think I would focus on building up a nice passive income to prepare for that eventuality.


It's very different when I first started out because I shun dividend yielding counters, thinking that I'm still young and I should aim for capital appreciation. I can afford to lose blah blah...how foolish of me and nobody told me so. Still, without the past me, there will not be the present me.


May fortune smile on you in the market.