A Newbie Guide to Investing

[pianist]

a newbie question - is it appropriate and prudent for a company to capitalise the construction costs of a company's investment property?

[CityFarmer]

a newbie question - is it appropriate and prudent for a company to capitalise the construction costs of a company's investment property?

IMO, for investment property under development, it is a common practice to cap the building cost.

Example SPH cap the Seletar Mall building cost into the book.

[pianist]

IMO, for investment property under development, it is a common practice to cap the building cost.

Example SPH cap the Seletar Mall building cost into the book.

i see thanks for the reply

[beginnerinvestorz]

Hello fellow investors,

I just turned 20 this year, graduated from Polytechnic and awaiting enlistment now. I am very keen to learn and start investing after reading on a book introduced by a friend called Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki, and attended the free 2 hours Value Investing Seminar conducted by 8Investment.

However, I was slightly stunned by the price of the course and thus hoping if any senior investors here could advice me on whether the course is actually worth the price, as well as the course provided by Mind Kinesis - Value Investing Program by Cayden Chang/Sean Seah?

Also, if you find those courses not worth taking up, would you mind sharing your reason(s) and provide me other sources of learning investment from scratch.. and relevant to Singapore's stock market? I am absolutely clueless about the world of investment but I am very keen to learn and would appreciate if anybody would share some tips with me.

Thanks!

[Musicwhiz]

Hello fellow investors,

I just turned 20 this year, graduated from Polytechnic and awaiting enlistment now. I am very keen to learn and start investing after reading on a book introduced by a friend called Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki, and attended the free 2 hours Value Investing Seminar conducted by 8Investment.

However, I was slightly stunned by the price of the course and thus hoping if any senior investors here could advice me on whether the course is actually worth the price, as well as the course provided by Mind Kinesis - Value Investing Program by Cayden Chang/Sean Seah?

Also, if you find those courses not worth taking up, would you mind sharing your reason(s) and provide me other sources of learning investment from scratch.. and relevant to Singapore's stock market? I am absolutely clueless about the world of investment but I am very keen to learn and would appreciate if anybody would share some tips with me.

Thanks!

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Glad to know there are more and more young men such as yourself who are interested to learn more about investing and personal finance. I guess it is good that Kiyosaki is helping to spread this message though there are certain aspects of him which I would rather not comment on. As for value investing courses, I had attended the free 2-hour session organized by MIP but did not find it to be particularly useful or that it would add additional value to what I already know. And yes, it is very expensive – for me I choose to buy some good books on the subject and can save about 95% of the course fee haha.

Most of my knowledge was obtained through extensive reading of value investing literature, and also through interactions on this forum and learning from other astute investors. It helps to have some knowledge in accounting (I am trained in accounting) to be able to read and interpret financial statements. But the most important part is to have the right emotional make-up and psychology for investing – there are well-documented cases of people who were too smart for their own good and imploded as a result of either hubris or over-confidence.

[hkl]

I know a much better place where you can learn the same stuff at a better price. Just as there are a lot of people who can't wait to charge you sky high fees to learn a few tricks in investing, there are also a lot of generous (and wise) people in this world who do it for free. I have visited some of these introductory talks before and I quickly realized that they have nothing special which I cannot find in a book or two. The purpose of these talks is make you believe that there is some secret sauce to learning investing in stocks and property, hence making the price tag of a few thousand dollars worth it. There isn't any such secret sauce, the secret has long been revealed starting with "The Intelligent Investor".

The place is at NLB - National Library Board... There's a thread in this forum for some recommended readings I think.

Its rare that NLB does not have something I want, at the most I just pay $1.55 and wait a couple of weeks.

Hello fellow investors,

I just turned 20 this year, graduated from Polytechnic and awaiting enlistment now. I am very keen to learn and start investing after reading on a book introduced by a friend called Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki, and attended the free 2 hours Value Investing Seminar conducted by 8Investment.

However, I was slightly stunned by the price of the course and thus hoping if any senior investors here could advice me on whether the course is actually worth the price, as well as the course provided by Mind Kinesis - Value Investing Program by Cayden Chang/Sean Seah?

Also, if you find those courses not worth taking up, would you mind sharing your reason(s) and provide me other sources of learning investment from scratch.. and relevant to Singapore's stock market? I am absolutely clueless about the world of investment but I am very keen to learn and would appreciate if anybody would share some tips with me.

Thanks!

[smallcaps]

Hello fellow investors,

I just turned 20 this year, graduated from Polytechnic and awaiting enlistment now. I am very keen to learn and start investing after reading on a book introduced by a friend called Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki, and attended the free 2 hours Value Investing Seminar conducted by 8Investment.

However, I was slightly stunned by the price of the course and thus hoping if any senior investors here could advice me on whether the course is actually worth the price, as well as the course provided by Mind Kinesis - Value Investing Program by Cayden Chang/Sean Seah?

Also, if you find those courses not worth taking up, would you mind sharing your reason(s) and provide me other sources of learning investment from scratch.. and relevant to Singapore's stock market? I am absolutely clueless about the world of investment but I am very keen to learn and would appreciate if anybody would share some tips with me.

Thanks!

It helped in my experience to read, think, practice, reflect and then keep repeating. These value based books are recommended:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Intelligent_Investor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_Analysis_(book)
- u can skip the bond/prefernce parts if only interested in common stock

[d.o.g.]

Hello fellow investors,

I just turned 20 this year, graduated from Polytechnic and awaiting enlistment now. I am very keen to learn and start investing after reading on a book introduced by a friend called Rich Dad Poor Dad - Robert Kiyosaki, and attended the free 2 hours Value Investing Seminar conducted by 8Investment.

However, I was slightly stunned by the price of the course and thus hoping if any senior investors here could advice me on whether the course is actually worth the price, as well as the course provided by Mind Kinesis - Value Investing Program by Cayden Chang/Sean Seah?

Also, if you find those courses not worth taking up, would you mind sharing your reason(s) and provide me other sources of learning investment from scratch.. and relevant to Singapore's stock market? I am absolutely clueless about the world of investment but I am very keen to learn and would appreciate if anybody would share some tips with me.

Thanks!

Rich Dad Poor Dad is one of the worst books on money and investing I have ever had the misfortune to waste my time and money on. And the quality of the paperback is so poor I cannot even use it for toilet paper, so it's a total write-off. Kiyosaki has long since been exposed as a fraud:

http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html

If you want to learn about investing, learn from the best - Warren Buffett. Who did Warren learn from? Benjamin Graham and Philip Fisher. So read the writings of these 3 investing legends. If you can understand and apply their ideas, you will not do poorly, and it is possible that you may do very well indeed.

Buffett's writings:
Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters
The Essays of Warren Buffett (a compilation of the same letters by Lawrence Cunningham)

Graham's writings:
The Intelligent Investor (a must-read for everyone)
Security Analysis (for professionals)

Fisher's writings:
Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits

As for the investment courses, are they run by investors with easily verified track records? That should give you a clue as to whether the speakers/trainers actually know how to invest. People who are successful investors don't normally waste their time running courses - they make far more money using their time to invest. If they teach at all, it is usually for free, to help other people. Anyone who charges meaningful fees is probably making a living from teaching, not investing.

I would suggest reading The Intelligent Investor as a first step. No less than Warren Buffett himself has endorsed it. After that, learn accounting (either in a school setting or on your own) so that you can understand financial statements.

By the way, don't expect to get rich from investing. Investing can compound money to many times its original sum, but if you start with a very small sum it's not going to matter much. To get money for investing you'll need a job that pays enough that you can put aside money to invest. So first concentrate on increasing your earning power before you think about investing.

1. Work hard to increase your income
2. Save harder to increase your savings
3. Invest wisely to increase your net worth.

Note the sequence. Investing is not a substitute for your job - unless you are actually a fund manager.

The list of people who got rich off investing alone is depressingly short, and even the guy at the top of it, Warren Buffett, made his fortune first from business (he was a hedge fund manager and earned fees from his clients). Buffett put $100 into his partnership when he started. When he wound it up he had $25m. That money came from fees, not from merely compounding $100.

In contrast, the rich list is dominated by businessmen. So if you want to get rich, go into business. Investing alone will not make you rich unless you invest money for others, in which case your income is not from your own investments but from the fees you charge.

[sgd]

As D.O.G says investing will not make you rich. many will try, the very good ones make enough to cover expenses fewer than that actually strike it rich. You can see from statistics there's only one warren buffet one fisher or one soros out of so many thousands investors.

Like mining gold in the olden days many thousands flock to a remote place to try their luck all hope to strike it rich risking robbers wild animals endure back breaking work but very very few really walk away rich.

but there are other ways to strike it rich, the smart ones who made big money did it from the gold miners by charging steep prices for things that miners need like provision store, brothels, doctors and banks or gold middlemen (market makers) who bought and sold the gold at prices in their favor. So the miners did all the hard work only to have to fritter it all away.

Is a little bit like stock market, think of the banks the stock stock brokers, lawyers news services like thomson reuters, or investment booklet like shareinvestment they are not investing in the market but they are making money from it or from the people investing in the market

[KopiKat]

By the way, don't expect to get rich from investing. Investing can compound money to many times its original sum, but if you start with a very small sum it's not going to matter much. To get money for investing you'll need a job that pays enough that you can put aside money to invest. So first concentrate on increasing your earning power before you think about investing.

1. Work hard to increase your income
2. Save harder to increase your savings
3. Invest wisely to increase your net worth.

Note the sequence. Investing is not a substitute for your job - unless you are actually a fund manager.

At the beginning of the journey, yes. But, if you have been doing (1) to (3) with some success, esp. on (3), for at least 10 years, wouldn't it be possible to see some glimmer of hope of Investing being a substitute for your job? Isn't this what many in this forum is trying to achieve or had achieved?

The list of people who got rich off investing alone is depressingly short, and even the guy at the top of it, Warren Buffett, made his fortune first from business (he was a hedge fund manager and earned fees from his clients). Buffett put $100 into his partnership when he started. When he wound it up he had $25m. That money came from fees, not from merely compounding $100.

In contrast, the rich list is dominated by businessmen. So if you want to get rich, go into business. Investing alone will not make you rich unless you invest money for others, in which case your income is not from your own investments but from the fees you charge.

If your definition of rich is being in the Forbes list, I fully agree with you. But, it's not impossible to do your (1) to (3) and compound oneself to the millions. I believe there's more than a handful of such individuals here (even if exclude the businessman ones who'd started with higher Capital). I understand from the grapevine that there's even a closed group of such individuals from this forum...But then again, let's not don't put too much weight on grapevine info...

Sorry... perhaps I'm letting the Bull get into my head again...