Love What You Do

Came across this article online: http://www.businessinsider.sg/people-who-love-their-jobs-get-richer-2015-8/. It basically talks about how rich people generally do what they enjoy for a living and that's what this post is going to be about

Where is the Bottom?

It looks like the market may not be over with the fall and I may not have missed the boat (refer to post here) Is there still a chance for the market to fall to a new low?

Should We Avoid Our Biases?

This is just something that I've been thinking about: Should we avoid our biases? I guess this applies as much to investing as it does in real life so I'm going to share some of my thoughts on it. It's sort of an extension from Biases to Look Out For When Investing

VICOM

This seems to be quite a popular company among some other financial bloggers, so I'll be doing some analysis on it as well. Background: VICOM, a subsidiary of ComfortDelgro, provides inspection and testing services for vehicles and is one of the 3 companies that run LTA authorized inspection centres, so if you're a car owner, you may be familiar with the company

The Stock Market and its Strange Ways

This is going to be a short post. I've been thinking about the stock market dropping on Friday, not just for Singapore, but for Japan and the US as well. It doesn't make much sense, people were looking forward to the rates remaining near zero and it did happen, yet there seems to be a negative response.

The interest rate staying near zero, which is the lowest it could possibly go before people are starting to be paid for borrowing money which doesn't make any sense at all, would be positive for the stock market. Low interest rates, low risk-free rate and so higher prices for shares.

The only possible thing is that the Fed is expressing some caution over the uncertain global economic and financial issues, but these are things that have been present for a while already. It just seems so strange that the market has been hoping for something yet drops when it actually occurs

Building A Watchlist

Side note: Anyone read the front page of the Business section of Straits Times yesterday? I find some of their price targets quite interesting (I've written on some of the shares before), I may take a closer look at them if I have more time this weekend.

As you know, I haven't been investing for a long time so not much experience with many of the companies or shares in the market, but I would like to share how I built up my watchlist of around 10 companies which I follow.

Tricks to Avoid when Shopping

There are many tricks that companies use to encourage us to shop more and to spend more. Maybe it's time that we should start learning about some of these tricks and trying to spot them on our next shopping trip.

Did I Miss the Boat?

The stock market seems to have gotten back on its feet, or maybe this is just a temporary blip up before the real crash begins, this only time will tell, but I'm going to do some reflections on my actions during this current drop.

Is Investing Like Shopping? (Part 2)

Wasn’t intending to do a second part of this, but after doing the first post, I had some more ideas on how investing is like shopping, so decided to have this new post on it. While reading through the old post, I also noticed that there were some points that I brought out in the intro which I didn’t elaborate on, so I’ll be doing so here as well.

Having the Right Mindset to Invest

My blog just reached 3 months old, can't believe it's been so long since I've started blogging. 87 published posts as well, I feel like this is a good way for me to store my own thoughts for future reference as well, while being able to get comments and feedback from readers through comments and emails, thank you for supporting this blog. Anyway, back to the post.......

Yes, I agree that investing is able to help us achieve good returns on our invested capital in the long run, which many investment bloggers (including myself) point to encourage people to invest. And it's also true that investing gives us good opportunities to have a share in the growth of the companies that we have selected and when selected well can generate amazing returns that can far outweigh those that we can get from a standard bank fixed deposit. But I don't think that we should just keep on investing our money just for the sake of keeping ourselves vested (for whatever reasons we may have) and should instead ensure that we have to right mindset and idea about investing before we even start a new investment.

Raffles Medical

This is one company that seems to have fared better than the rest of the market last month, but then again its share price has been quite volatile lately so it may be something a bit too early to say. But in any case, I'm going to take a look at this company and see if it looks like a good investment.

Biases to Look Out for When Investing

I find it interesting how we can be affected by own personal biases during investing. Most of these biases have been observed in studies, yet most of us are still not aware that we suffer from them and believe that we are objective in our view and analysis of our investment, which can be a very costly mistake.

Thoughts on Diversification

I was thinking about whether it is better for us to diversify our portfolio across many different shares, maybe through indexing or is it better for us to pick individual companies that we think will outperform the markets. The conclusion that I was able to reach was that it is better for people who have more time and a bigger risk appetite to buy individual companies while others who are working or maybe even in retirement, should try and diversify our risk.

Thoughts on Gold

The value of gold can be quite a contentious issue, some people may view gold as the only true store of value, which unlike fiat currencies, has a limited supply and has fixed value. I take the other stand that gold is a speculative investment and NOT a safe haven for your money.

Some Thoughts on the Election

As we come up to Polling Day this Friday, I thought that I should just share my thoughts on the election. I've been hearing arguments from both PAP and opposition supporters, but I'm more of a fence sitter at the moment and as the different parties bring up their own individual issues, I try to evaluate them as objectively as possible, but of course, we will look at them depending on our own circumstances.

Buy and Hold

I shared this link on the blog's Facebook page a few days ago, but thought I should share it here as well as some of my thoughts on it as well: The Most Successful Investors Leave Their Money Alone (The article is on Business Insider but the info is from SigFig)

Investing vs Speculating

There's a fine line that we have to thread between investing and speculating, so I think that's important to know on roughly which side of the line we are staying on. As we have come to know, investing is something that brings about good returns in the long run while speculating focuses on short-term gains and bears a much higher risk of losing principle. Anyway, so in this post I'll be covering the differences between the two.

Mr. Market's Mood Swings

Woke up to see the Dow down more than 1.5% last night. This doesn't seem out of the normal as it's been happening a few times in the past month. The reason seems perplexing though, the jobs data released in the US is positive with unemployment at a low since April 2008, back to the most recent recession.

Thoughts on Singapore Stock Market this Week

To start off this post, I would like t wish all teachers a happy Teachers' Day. While we may always get along with all of my teachers and there are some that we really can't stand, but we should thank them for the effort that they have put in :),

The market doesn't seem too happy about it though, it's declined for another week, with only one bright spot yesterday. It's been relatively quiet compared to last week, but there are some news floating around that we should be paying some attention to.

(Image source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_market)

Some Ideas from Henry Ford

A while back I was reading Henry Ford's autobiography, My Life and Work, as well as another one of his books, Today and Tomorrow. I find them good reads that I would recommend to you (still haven't had time to put them under the Interesting Reads page of the blog). The ideas in this book aren't just nice for reading and for aspiring entrepreneurs, but I think that they actually represent qualities of good companies that we should be looking out for and I think that there are points that are similar with Philip Fisher's "Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits", which I've did a post on at Growth Investing vs Value Investing. I'll be covering some of the key ideas which I have found useful and interesting

(Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_ford_1919.jpg)

Organizing Thoughts

I think it's good for us to take time to organize our thoughts once in a while, particularly useful before we make an decision to invest in a company, a bond, etc. Anyway, I've found writing these blog posts a good platform for me to articulate my thoughts on the companies and investment instruments and actually start to really analyze my decisions. So, for this post, I hope to be able to convince you that this is a good way to go for you before you make investments.

(Image source: https://pixabay.com/en/module-share-items-organization-68955/)