曾渊沧 Dr Chan Yan Chong

candy,
Happy New Year.
Thank you for your contributions.
Definitely I benefited from your recent posts.

Just keep the good stuff coming....

Love Compassion

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I think these courses just rehash what investment books are saying. And these books can borrow from NLB.
My assumption only since I never attend any of these courses.

mmm... may be ok for ...
...novice?

As for Dr Chan, he talks about current and future trends...
It's his analysis that I am keen...
and as usual, I benefited from his insight tremendously, just like how I benefited from VB forum.



A Life not Reflected is a Life not Worth Living.

Hi chia,

Happy New Year to you.

Thank you for the kind words, my mentor stated that accepting compliment helps to reinforce the learning journey.
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(01-01-2014, 11:44 AM)chialc88 Wrote: candy,
Happy New Year.
Thank you for your contributions.
Definitely I benefited from your recent posts.

Just keep the good stuff coming....

With so many schools of thought and investment strategies in the investment world,

it helps to pay coffee money (a few thousands bucks to rectify the frequent trading habit is peanut compared to humongous tuition fee to Mr Market) to access instant gongfu recipe from proven master.

I concur with chialc88's point on the insightful view of Dr Chan.

It's the ability to control the emotional psychology that differentiate the BIG Winners from mediocre investors.
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(01-01-2014, 12:41 PM)chialc88 Wrote: As for Dr Chan, he talks about current and future trends...
It's his analysis that I am keen...
and as usual, I benefited from his insight tremendously, just like how I benefited from VB forum.


A Life not Reflected is a Life not Worth Living.

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Candy,
Thousand bucks to attend a course.
My take:
If you are novice...hold the horse, better focus on your day job and spend your own time reading and trade (erh I meant investing) small small to gain some experience.

If you had been trading (again I meant investing) for a long time but not getting your expected return, then better spend more time and polish up your day job. Free then read more reading and reflect on your trades. Find your own unique investing style. (don't need to copy from guru)

If you had been successful in trading, then I strongly encourage you to pay $$$ to those guru. Trust me, they really need these $$$ than you do.
Just pay the money and see what these guru have to say.
Don't get me wrong.
I am not selling these courses.
I emphasize: only if you are very successful in stocks aka you had earn a lot of money from stock market, then just a few thousand is nothing to you...
then, do consider going for these courses... nothing to loss.
It will be very entertaining and refreshing too...



PS: I attended many different type of seminars (job related as well as on personal capacities), most of them are entertaining and refreshing (food aside, the speakers usually spend extra effort to motivate and make the session interesting and exciting)
Try it because it's fun!



A Life not Reflected is a Life not Worth Living.

Hi Chia,

Concur with your sound advice, especially on the novice investors.

However, most novice investors or rather traders think otherwise (I am a real life example).

... started with beginner's luck (100% gain in IPO, $1K bucks profit)
... thinking I possess the Midas touch (it was bull market in 1997)
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.... lost the luck and enormous capital evaporated (Dot com bubble, Red Chip scams)

... learn to be wiser (obediently reading investing related books & attended $1.8k investing course).

Quote:by musicwhiz, 11 May 20113
During every BULL MARKET, there will be a group of people who mistake a bull market for brains; and therefore feel that they have the Midas Touch - literally everything you touch turns to gold, stuff you buy goes up 20%-30% within a few months (or even weeks).

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This breeds a new batch of "geniuses" who probably feel that doing research and focusing on margin of safety is simply a waste of time.
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As other forumers have correctly observed, new investors who are minting it at the moment either have no concept of risk/reward, or are blissfully ignoring it and indulging in the moment.

===> As prudent investors, we should always Watch our DOWNSIDE and ensure we do NOT Overpay for Investments.

(01-01-2014, 10:31 PM)chialc88 Wrote: Candy,
Thousand bucks to attend a course.
My take:
1) If you are NOVICE...hold the horse, better focus on your day job and spend your own time reading and trade (erh I meant investing) small small to gain some experience.
[Image: jPmf5SLhR51JP.png]

Sometimes, it is easier to pinpoint investment mistakes with an independent party as some investors are in denial mode.
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(01-01-2014, 10:31 PM)chialc88 Wrote: 2) If you had been trading (again I meant investing) for a long time but not getting your expected return, then better spend more time and polish up your day job. Free then read more reading and reflect on your trades. Find your own unique investing style. (don't need to copy from guru)

3) If you had been successful in trading, then I strongly encourage you to pay $$$ to those guru. Trust me, they really need these $$$ than you do.
Just pay the money and see what these guru have to say.
Don't get me wrong.
I am not selling these courses.
I emphasize: only if you are very successful in stocks aka you had earn a lot of money from stock market, then just a few thousand is nothing to you...
then, do consider going for these courses... nothing to loss.
It will be very entertaining and refreshing too...



PS: I attended many different type of seminars (job related as well as on personal capacities), most of them are entertaining and refreshing (food aside, the speakers usually spend extra effort to motivate and make the session interesting and exciting)
Try it because it's fun!



A Life not Reflected is a Life not Worth Living.

Hi candy188,
No point wasting ur effort to persuade ppl to attend courses to better themselves.
Mostly ppl only want to take FOC advise, but need a scapegoat to blame when things go wrong.

Just sharing my devastating investing experience, I am not here to "persuade ppl to attend courses to better themselves", just stating that I am not so smart to discover the recipe through reading related investment books by myself.

There isn't a need to doubt others pure intention of sharing. How many people like to mention about their ugly investing past in public, I just want to caution others of the consequence of overconfidence.

Quote:Can we afford to make mistakes in investing?
Posted by Musicwhiz at 1:12 PM
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Mistakes in life are one aspect of life which no one likes to talk about, and perhaps the one thing you don’t know well about your friends (and even your loved one) as most people are embarrassed to admit their faults.

But it’s a fact of life that as human beings, we are fallible and less than perfect. We frequently make mistakes and it is a natural process of evolution that mankind learns from mistakes and avoid repeating them, or else repeats them to his own detriment. There is of course a saying that “History always repeats itself”, but in the world of investing, if history repeats itself too often with respect to mistakes, then one will end up a lot poorer.

The big question I have posed is: can we afford to make mistakes and yet come out better from the experience? How many mistakes are investors “allowed” to make before one is made significantly poorer, or significantly wiser? I think the answer to this depends on the nature and severity of the mistake made, and how much of one’s capital was staked on that particular investment in question. Giving a recent example of mine: my investment in Swiber turned out to be a mistake due to the way the Company was managing its cash flows and also to the fact that its debt levels were too high – but fortunately due to sufficient margin of safety I avoided losses and even managed to book a small gain when I divested my shares. So the idea here is to keep your losses small and manageable by adopting proper techniques to determine margin of safety, and never over-paying for any investment.

Making mistakes in investing is unavoidable, but it is the lessons we learn which are the most valuable. I personally feel that making a small number of minor mistakes is actually good for an investor as it tempers his ego, allows him to learn more about investing (as well as himself) and makes one more determined not to repeat the mistake. Of course, this is based on the assumption that one can be totally honest with oneself and admit that “it was my fault”, and not blame it on everything else like your broker, your friend who gave you the tip, the weather, Ben Bernanke and a host of other unrelated events. It is pretty easy to shift blame but ultimately one has to answer for one’s own actions as it is your money and no one else’s at stake here.

Another seldom mentioned aspect of making mistakes is the length of time required to recognize a mistake. For my Swiber investment, it took 2.5 years for me to fully appreciate the gravity of the situation and make a swift exit, but there is an opportunity cost attached to the time involved and one can argue that the money could have been deployed elsewhere to generate higher returns (on hindsight, of course). The fact that growth companies like Swiber do not give out dividends further compounds the problem of opportunity cost as there is nil return at all during the period of being a shareholder.

Even if an investment were to pay say 3% dividend yield but turn out to be a mistake, one can argue that one can easily achieve a 5% or more yield investing in a variety of blue chips which offer more safety and stability. But all this is paper talk until executed; so as an investor we must learn to balance such viewpoints against the practicality of getting such returns over an extended period of time, which brings me to my next point.

An investor cannot afford to make too many mistakes of a much longer duration, as arguably there are not many chances for him to be vested for 10-15 years and observe many business cycles before realizing he has made a mistake.

One’s life span is finite and full business cycles can last for 10-20 years; so one should avoid mistakes which only crystallize after a long period of time, during which the hapless investor either earns a paltry return or a very sub-par one (as compared to returns generated from an index fund, for example).

So, in such cases, I would advise that investors avoid making such mistakes but instead read more books and learn from Other People’s Mistakes instead ! By distilling their experience and knowledge, one can learn from them without committing the same cardinals sins and at the same time, saving oneself 10-15 years of anguish and mental stress due to an under-performing investment.

So the answer to the topic will be: yes we can afford to make small mistakes, which is good for our ego and temperament as it keeps us grounded and rooted in reality instead of getting carried away by exuberance;

but when it comes to major mistakes or those which take a long time to manifest, it is much better to learn from others’ instead of committing them yourself.

http://sgmusicwhiz.blogspot.sg/2009/09/c...es-in.html
The stunning investment results of the valuebuddies forumers definitely don't require the assistance of paid value investing course.
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(01-01-2014, 07:18 PM)candy188 Wrote: it helps to pay coffee money (a few thousands bucks to rectify the frequent trading habit is peanut compared to humongous tuition fee to Mr Market) to access instant gongfu recipe from proven master.

非也非也...

IMHO, there is no secret gongfu / instant success recipe. Anybody who has that mindset is merely treating the stock market like a casino. In any case, a true master won't have the time to teach students wor.....