To him whom you love to hate and hate to love

It hadn’t always been a smooth relationship. When I was young, I respected him as I would to any adult, especially one who so crucially shaped Singapore the way it is today. Back then, he was still the Prime Minister of Singapore and I remembered fondly the crowds that stood up and cheered loudly for him whenever he arrived on national day parade every year. I must be one of the last batches of people who had him as the Prime Minister of Singapore before he handed it to the next. Like a teenager, I went through a period of rebelliousness....

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Algorithm to find the Chinese horoscope sign of any year

After learning about modulo function, I finally have an elegant algorithm to find out the Chinese horoscope sign based on the year of input. It came from an innocent enough question from facebook - what's the value of m+n, such that 2012^m and 2012^n has the same last 3 digits, if m and n are integers are m is greater than m? I did a bit of exploring and found out the answer by doing it through excel. Then I discovered the modulo function, and...

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My Two Rolex

I never wanted to have a Rolex. But today I realised that I have not just one, but two! Two Rolex right in front of me and I didn't know! A Rolex watch is a status symbol, a hallmark of those who had arrived. But I think I'll never ever buy one. I prefer my time pieces to be digital, so that time telling is precise. I also need my time pieces to have a stop watch, water resistant, have night light and able to tell the date accurately. I'm...

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Book review - The Singapore Permanent Portfolio by Alvin Chow

Alvin from BigFatPurse is very kind to pass me a copy of his newest book, The Singapore Permanent Portfolio. I've always wanted to know more about the Permanent portfolio, so this comes as a godsend. Why is it named the permanent portfolio? I think I'll answer that question at the end of this post. The permanent portfolio is an investment idea that comes from US in the 70s, but the idea is that you hold 4 different types of assets in equal...

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SMART expo

SMART expo had been around organizing events and seminars for quite a while. This March is their 38th one running in the series. The event is free and it's good if you're interested or want to find out more about investing in properties around the region or if you want to know more about investing/trading in the stock market and achieving financial freedom. The list of speakers include Ken Chee, Dato Eric Cheng, Conrad Alvin Lim, Vina Ip from Property...

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FREE Jim Rogers seminar

I know some of you are fans of Jim Rogers, so here's a lobang you can't miss. To those who don't know who he is, here's a quick description of him. He is a astute investor who is quite unlike others. He is a top down kind of investor who bets on big macro trends in the economy, unlike some other gurus who go from bottom up. He had said before that commodities will be the thing to look out for in the near future and even thinks that being a farmer...

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The 3 Wishes

Saw AK's post, and decided to write a short story on it after AK's posting of a picture composition in his facebook. So here goes: --------------------------------- One day, AK went to a mee pok stall for dinner. When he drove there, he spotted a car park, but unfortunately a BMW arrived at the same time and parked before him. The BMW is so huge - it occupied more than the space demarcated. AK told the driver of the BMW to shift it a little...

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Unactionable advise

Things should be made simpler, but not to such an extent that a big part of the meaning is lost. We often hear of market truism like the following: 1. Buy low, sell high 2. Don't lose your capital 3. Diversify diversify diversify and many many more. I'm sure if we look hard enough, we can find contradicting truism that runs contrary to an existing one. With regards to the above 3 truism, I can think of the following contradicting ones: 1....

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Wishing for rain to come

In this very hot and humid weather, we all wished for rain to come. We already had our umbrellas and raincoats packed ready just for that rainy day. Even our hearts wished to see rainy days. Conversations go from "Hello, good morning" to "Bloody weather so hot, when is it raining?". Below are some of the conversations that I took note: "Oh, it had been sooo long since it had last rained, so a rain should be coming soon. Mark my words!" "The...

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Old posts made new: Multiple brokerage platforms

When market crashes, you thought that you can be nimble and sell your stocks if you’re in the wrong side of a trade. But have you encountered situations where your brokerage platform failed on you? I looked through my 2007 posts and realized that I posted about it before. It’s found here: 1. The sky is falling 2. SPECIAL DAY – TAKE NOTE 3. DAMN U DBS 4. Finally logged on to DBS Back then, I only had one brokerage platform which is under DBS...

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Old posts made new: Warrants Trading

I'm starting a new series in my blog, called "Old posts made new". I know, the name is quite lame and I'm not in a creative mood to come up with fancy name now. In this series, I'll look back at some of the past articles I've posted in my site and compare to see if it still stands true now. Most importantly, I'll share some of the psychology behind my thinking in the past and contrast against that of now. I hope that in this series, I can reflect...

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The recipe

85 grams butter, 175 grams sugar and 120 grams of flour, 3 large eggs, 200 degrees – bakes into 1 delicious cake 2 cups water, 3 cups sugar and 1.5 tbsp of yeast, 6 cups flour, 175 degrees – kneads you a warm loaf of bread 250 grams butter, 140 grams sugar and 300 grams of flour, 1 egg yolk, 180 degrees – one motherful tray of cookies 8 hours sleep, 3 square meals, and 2.5 litres of water, 1 brisk walk,...

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Of men and women

If you go to any shopping mall, you will notice how the goods in the men's department and ladies' department are arranged in different manner. 1. The items in men's department are packed in nice boxes. Shirts are sold in transparent packages and neatly arranged in colour, size and cutting. If you know what you are looking for, you can swoop in and get the right package, pay for it and it's yours. 2. For the ladies' department, you'll seldom...

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Hurray for redundancy

I saw B's post on market valuation here and I thought he did a good job to remind people about not investing when market valuation is high. I'm here to warn about another thing - that disasters does not strike alone. Usually we're well equipped to handle one big disaster in our life, but we're seldom well equipped to handle 2 or more in quick successive hits. We talk about employing our war chest and how when the market is crashing, we'll swoop...

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