Musings about Life and Investments

This is a very good write up by The Hooi Ling. She is now the manager of Inclusif Value Fund and a friend that I respect very much. Technical and Fundamental analysis Go Together Like Horse and Carriage My friends call me a “technical analyst”. It is half the truth. Fundamentals tell you what the upside or downside is. You don’t buy a stock at 3x price to book, 100x PE and 50x EV / EBITDA when the chart is a “BUY”. Especially when the business is undergoing disruption. I will look at the technical for a SHORT and ignore the BUY signals. Technical analysis determine when to buy or sell. It usually cannot determine the % upside / downside nor can it tell you the list of stocks to buy or sell. This list of stocks come from fundamental analysis. Downside is Limited But US and Trade Wars Present Conundrum From the table below, we can gather that 1.2 to 1.5x price to tangible book value, and 1.0 to 1.4x price to book is likely the bottom of MSCI Asia Pacific. 1.2 / 1.0 P

I finally passed the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst after two years. It's taken me a lot of effort as I'm not naturally good at exams. I'm good at applying knowledge to practical uses, but just not strategic enough to pass exams. I feel very empowered and game to do an EMBA with an Ivy League some day, even appear as a guest lecturer in top universities about how I analyse stocks using fundamental and technical analysis. Some day, I could even appear in Ted Talks. I'm good at real estate investments. Every property I touched in Singapore has gone En Bloc or has the potential to. My IRR is over 30 - 40% for real estate. In UK, I achieved 15 to 20% IRR from rental alone. With refinance and taking out my cash, my IRR can be over 50 - 10%. I used to manage stocks for my friends / relatives years ago and achieved 15% IRR. I timed it well this time, recommending to short from March 2018 and now the shorts are up 30 - 40% in 10 months. Lots of knowledge and e

economists make the worst investors Economists make the worst investors. I've been an economist in the past. Forecasting is often difficult because the further you try to forecast, the less accurate it is. To make things worse, economic growth often have no bearing on stock performance. This is because stocks are a forecasting machine. When growth is at the highest, the only way is down, stocks already predict a slowdown nine months down the line.  I believe in statistics, measuring investor flows. If 2018 is a bad year for global equities, especially for the EM, then 2019 will be a fantastic year. The odds are very high that this will happen. The best performing asset class in one year will often not continue to be the best the next. There are exceptions of course, but generally, the theory of mean reversion of valuations applies.  If an asset were to be undervalued due to a sell down, chances are value investors will buy. Price will find a support and eventu