Investing

"All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there." Charlie Munger If there were only one concept that Charlie Munger were known for (as if that were possible) it is perhaps his concept of inversion - solving problems backwards by identifying and avoiding what would cause failure. If you excuse the crudeness, his abovementioned quote is a major example of this concept of inversion. How do you live? It is not possible to identify and/or prescribe to anoth

There is a misconception that you have to read voraciously and hungrily forever to get to the stage where you are able to be an investor. Who has the time? Who has the willingness to devote all their downtime to a second job? A Masters of Business Administration (MBA) for example, suggest that 2 whole years need to be dedicated to learning about business, before one is able to even start to do well in the same. This is notwithstanding that adults have to continue to feed the

"Relationships are another thing that compound, becoming stronger over time if we keep investing in win-win dynamics. Imagine a network of nodes that connect to each other at random. The likelihood of any given node receiving an additional connection is proportional to the number of connections it already has. Through randomness, a small number of nodes will end up receiving most of the connections—a phenomenon called preferential attachment. Preferential attachment is a type

We are encouraged to pay heed to what other people say. We are encouraged to be moudable, shapeable and to be adaptable to the winds. Let life tell us, teach us what is important in the world. Let life mould, shape and help us adapt. Nobody has all the answers, and there may well be shortcuts or answers provided by other people to our predicament, if we would just be open to the possibilities provided by other people. All Well and True This advice holds true, to some extent

Starting out, every aspiring investor may simply want to make money. That is perhaps why so many people end up trading (hour-by-hour or day-to-day), caring only about a capital gain or a bonus dividend return. A handful out of many will actually consider longer term investing, and even then the emphasis is on understanding how their capital can gain or lose without a short period of time? (After all, people have to eat, obtain a car, and pay for the mortage or rental to the

Everyday in the news we hear about the rise and rise of artificial intelligence - is a powerful computer or AI subscription all that we need nowadays to get rich? Historical Data Peter Bevelin had argued that as human beings, we would be wrong to rely exclusively on the reasonings and thinkings of a computer. In the infamous pre-2000 chess matchups between Gary Kasparov and the artificial intelligence, Deep Blue, it appeared that man may have had met its match in the game of

Glitz, glamour, trends and fads - if you're going to invest, you want to be the life of the party and the talk of the town with your selections. After all, growth goes onwards and upwards, if you choose the right business (technology). If you're going to do something, do it extraordinarily well? Do something hip, contemporary and something that is in the news all the time - something that you want to wake up for every single day. The popular belief is that the investing publi

There is a belief that you need to know the entire economic big picture system before succeeding in investing. People go into fancy thoughts about headwinds and tailwinds, and total addressable markets. Some say there is some truth on how that can affect a company's fundamentals. Others go so far as to say that nothing could be further from the truth. Such economics is not sales, revenue, or bottom line. Now, or in the future. If there is no economics big picture to under

It is true that investing has no hard and fast rules. There are no sure bets in investing, no clear answers, and no absolutes. The ability to invest comes from experience and a lot of wisdom and learnings. That is probably unhelpful - if there are no hard and fast rules to cling to, how can one get into the practice of investing, and do well in it? Atul Gawande If there are any pointers towards the right answer, however, the abovenamed author wrote a book on how to try to st

There is a belief that you should respond to and take advantage of every twist and turn that the market gives you. Traders are thought to be rational and their decisions are thought to be in response to quality information provided by the management and board of directors to the investing public at large. The typical question against this belief is the question against what is commonly known as the efficient market hypothesis. In the said hypothesis, the belief is that every

The money is promising and inflation is running through the roof - you want to get going with investing! What better way to get going than to take action! As they say: rule number one: don't lose money rule number two: don't forget rule number one. Sherlock Indeed, one of the recommendations by a popular author by the name of Peter Bevelin, is that we study the techniques of the reknowned fictional detective by the name of Sherlock Holmes. As introduced and illustrated colou

Confucius said that real knowledge is knowing the extent of one’s ignorance. Aristotle and Socrates said the same thing. Is it a skill that can be taught or learned? It probably can, if you have enough of a stake riding on the outcome. Some people are extraordinarily good at knowing the limits of their knowledge, because they have to be. Think of somebody who’s been a professional tightrope walker for 20 years—and has survived. He couldn’t survive as a tightrope walker for 20

"Every morning, millions of Malaysians wake up surrounded by invisible fortunes; companies that generate 10x, 50x, even 100x returns for investors. Yet most people have no idea these wealth machines even exist. Meet Encik Rahman, a civil engineer in Kuala Lumpur. His day is about to reveal a secret: the greatest investment opportunities aren't always the ones with flashy logos or celebrity endorsements. They're hiding in plain sight, powering every moment of Malaysian life

Author John Huo in the Malaysian number one book bestseller, Malaysian Multibaggers, gives a blueprint for finding companies that delivered 10x-100x Returns on Bursa. He writes about the "genetic code" of a 100-bagger, and states that if you can find a company that has all four of these genes, you have found your "durian tree sapling". Indeed, it is a content heavy book that is rife with potential about succeeding on Bursa Malaysia, and particularly in the growth stocks (and

"Embracing “I’m not sure” is difficult. We are trained in school that saying “I don’t know” is a bad thing. Not knowing in school is considered a failure of learning. Write “I don’t know” as an answer on a test and your answer will be marked wrong. Duke, Annie. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts (pp. 26-27). Penguin Publishing Group." Annie Duke argues that life (and investing) is a lot more akin to poker than it is to chess. Chess, r

"The Battle of Long Island was a disaster for George Washington’s army. His ten thousand troops were crushed by the British and its four-hundred-ship fleet. But it could have been so much worse. It could have been the end of the Revolutionary War. All the British had to do was sail up the East River and Washington’s cornered troops would have been wiped out. But it never happened, because the wind wasn’t blowing in the right direction and sailing up the river became impossibl

Come war, oil supply shocks or a change in hegemony in the global economy, the belief is the Government is capable of and will take care of you. Inflation, interest rate, money supply, credit supply and even food on the table will all be taken care off to perfection by the Government of the day? Indeed, there are people who may even believe that water finds its level - that wealth will be redistributed from the rich to the poor! More taxes will be paid by the rich, and that

One of the frustrations of investing from this part of the world is the seeming emphasis on investing in the USA, a jurisdiction which is extremely liquid and therefore easy to enter and exit as an investor. Most investors invest in this faraway jurisdiction that they may or may not understand. For the average person on the street, they may not have seen or experienced life in the this country half way across the world. Is there any way that you can support local industries,

It's still holiday season for some people, I know. Hari Raya, for some people, is pretty much now. Its an occasion for some to go on an excursion. An outing. Or spend some time away from home. Attention goes towards the loved ones. Or friends and family. Who wants to read a book? In other words, we're a quarter of the way into the year and some feel they already need a deserved break. There is no time to read about new literature. The Education of a Value Investor Of all t

It's still holiday season for some people. Hari Raya, for example, is around the corner. Its an occasion for some to go on an excursion. An outing. Or spend some time away from home. Attention goes towards the loved ones. Or friends and family. Who wants to read a book? In other words, we're a quarter of the way into the year and some feel they already need a deserved break. There is no time to read about new literature. Warren Buffett's Ground Rules Of all the possibiliti