Tuesday, July 30, 2013

The social cost of reits

Reits are hot hot hot. With the low interest rate environment, where investors are looking for a place to park their money to beat inflation, the yield of reits is indeed alluring. I've invested in them and they had made a fair share of profit for me. But because I've also went to the other side of the equation, I realized that there's a huge social cost in reits being so hot. As reits are public company, they owe it to the shareholders to increase DPU year after year. That way, the managers of the reits can also get more performance fees. But...

A new journey begins

While having a shower, I was mentally calculating the kind of money that I can save, given my 'new' circumstances now. 'New' because it had actually been a while - 2 yrs to be exact - that I had my own cosy hdb flat, I'm married and I've a pre-owned car. Realistically, these two things would add up to the expenses that I spend on a monthly basis, so it also goes to say that I would find it more difficult to save the magic 4.2k per month. Why 4.2k per month? Because 4.2k x 12 will add up nearly to 50k - that challenge that I set myself seemingly...

Friday, July 12, 2013

Antifragile

I've not done a book review in ages, believing that one should read a book in order to derive a personal experience that the book can only impart to he who reads it. Every reader will get something different. So, this is not a book review. This is my personal experience with this book by Nicholas Nassim Taleb, one of my favourite philosopher-finance writer. It's called Antifragile: Things that gain from disorder. It's not the easiest book to read,...

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Being comfortable with who you are

As I get older in age, hopefully more mature in thinking, I realized that I'm more and more comfortable with being myself. When I was younger, there's a lot of insecurities because there's a lot of people that you feel that you ought to model after and ought to follow, maybe sometimes also to lead. I think I was young and likely impressionable, so whoever is successful in whatever ways, I would like to model after him or her. As a result of such imprinting in my earlier years, I've a mish-mash of characteristics that I think is good for me in...