Five Cents Ten Cents

Panzer is no Warren Buffet, as some Channelnewsasia Market Talk forummer commented, there are a lot of Warren Bluffets around, people who make predictions about equity prices going up or down depending on whether they are taking a long or short view of the market.

What Panzer realises from investing his own monies since 2003 till date is that the returns on cash have been quite poor especially in the last 2 years or so.

Interest rates are so low that local banks are giving 0.1% or so for savings deposits. What this means is that your money when left in the bank is actually depreciating in purchasing power when inflation is minimally 1-2% annually. It was as high as 5-6% last year prior to the global financial crisis that wiped out much of equity values as well as destroyed economic activity throughout the entire world. Continue reading Panzer’s Equity Portfolio as at 20 Nov 2009

It’s that time of year again when Christmas decorations are being put up in malls all across Singapore. People look forward to a “white Christmas” although Singapore has no snow but lots of rain towards the end of the year.

Besides spending on Christmas gifts, feasts and other treats, a custom that Panzer likes to do is to take stock of his financial performance from being the fund manager of Panzer’s Net-worth cum daughter’s colleague tuition fund. Continue reading Panzer’s 2009 Interim Results Announcement

Flickr image "Chesire Cat" by fofurasfelinas

One of the areas that I encountered in my career as an auditor is this animal know as CAATS. It’s not the meow-meow animal we all know and love but CAATs is an acronym to refer to Computer-assisted audit techiques or audit tools. Continue reading Not-so-secret Diary of a CPA: (Part VI) CAATs other other beasts

When you are investing or trading in equities, you are playing against both institutional investors as well as retail investors and they come in all shapes and sizes. The interesting thing about monitoring stock forums such as Channelnewsasia Market Talk forum is to see for yourself the tangible manifestation of GREED and FEAR in the various threads started and contributed by the investors, punters and other people in the forum.

I’ve decided to do a wordle word cloud to show a snapshow of what the forummers are posting today 1 Nov 2009.

Not too surprising that the key words for today are that there will be a selldown on Monday on STI because Dow Jones Industrial Average lost about 2.5% or 200+ points on Friday.

Be well and prosper.

Flickr image "River flow" by Britanglishman

Following my post about “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience“, I begin to see how important our own perceptions play in determining if we are happy or not under all circumstances.

One of the benefits of trading in stocks and shares is that it forces you to confront your naked fear and greed whenever you are about to buy or sell shares. Nothing strips away how good/bad you are at stock trading (or investing) then looking at your profits and losses incurred on the trade.

You feel happy when you’ve made the right call and you feel terrible if you’ve lost money and even worse if the loss is realised.

It is from this experiences that I realise financial freedom by itself will not make me happy. It is how I make use of the financial freedom status to create for myself an optimal flow experience in all aspects of my life. Even the euphoria of trading wins fade after a while and I look out for the next “high” from jeeping/panging an equity position. Continue reading Flow: More Thoughts on Optimal Experience