A journey of thousand miles begins with a single step 千里之行，始于足下。

[chialc88]

感恩

[chialc88]

Although I was born into a middle-class family, I did not have a memorable childhood.
Unlike my brothers, I was not allowed to use hot water when I showered and 
hence, every morning, when I showered with cold water, I was reminded of the 
inequalities of life.


When I was sent overseas to study, I had to find work to support myself during the
long school holidays. While waiting for my ‘A’ level results, I traveled to Ayr, Scotland,
to work as a dishwasher in the Butlin’s Holiday camp. I worked there for three months 
and learnt the value of money. I was paid 36 pounds for 39 hours of work weekly, 
with lodging and food provided for. I also worked overtime as a security guard and 
pub assistant during the nights as the overtime pay was much better than the basic pay.

Most of what I earned was then used to pay for part of my school fees. 
When I entered university in Belfast, I tried to spend as little as I could.
I lived in a house with a very nice but eccentric elderly Irish lady who provided
free food and lodging to overseas students. 
Many students did not want to live in her house as it was very cluttered. 
However, as Mary was one of the nicest people anyone could ever meet,
I decided otherwise and stayed in her house for many years.

Mary made her money from the stock market. 
Not only did she provide me with food and shelter, she taught me the principles of investing.
Many of my investing principles today have been influenced by her. 
When she passed away many years ago, she left a huge fortune to charity. 
No one could have guessed that Mary was a multi-millionaire as she lived life very simply.

Life is full of twists and turns. 
If you find life tough or unfair, do not give up.
Fight on as your life can only get better. 
If I were to have been well-blessed during my childhood, I would not have learnt
the value of money early in my life and I would not have met up with Mary.
I would then not have the chance of learning how to invest successfully 
from a lady who started from nothing and amassed a fortune, 
yet lived very humbly and simply. 
Mary has influenced my life and those of you who see me in Orchard Road 
wearing an old T-shirt will know where that trait came from.

Yes, when I was younger, I too had been frustrated with life as
I felt that I had been unfairly treated. 
However, as I age,
I realise that life is a journey and the earlier one suffers,
the more likely that he will succeed in life.

Hence, having less earlier is having more later.

page 186 "Having less is having more"
Your First Million - Making it in stocks" There are 100 copies in NLB, go grab it!

Love Compassion

[chialc88]

OLDMAN: My Investing Journey

I think most of us were not born with silver spoons in our mouths. 
Hence, most of us started life as an investor with just $1,000 or less 
as initial capital. At least I did! When I began, I speculated a lot, as I 
too wanted to grow this initial sum as fast as possible. Yes, I went 
through the good times and the bad times and I lost most of what I 
made twice in my “investment” career. 
 
It was only later that I realised the foolishness of how I “invested” in 
the early years. I started with $1,000 and as the bull market was in 
full swing I grew this to $20,000 within two years, which made me 
think that I must be one hell of an investor. Well, the bear then came 
and took away most of my profits. 
 
If I looked back, what I did was to increase the size of my bets as I 
gained more money. Sooner or later, my luck will run out and when 
that happens, the size of my bets will be at its largest. Common sense 
will tell you that I was simply gambling and the way I was doing it 
was not very smart, as no crystal ball is needed to see what will 
happen if I continued gambling that way. 
 
Fortunately, when the market collapsed, I was still working as a 
doctor. Over the next few years, I started saving up capital to go into 
the market again – wiser but poorer from that initial episode. Since 
then, I learnt a lot more about investing, as well as about how 
industries develop and how companies are run. From practising 
medicine, I went on to join IBM. There, I rose from ground up to lead 
a regional division. Then, I headed a regional SME (small and 
medium-sized enterprise) and only after that did I have enough 
courage to start up ShareInvestor. 
 
In starting up ShareInvestor, I had to fund the company for over a 
year. During this period, I had no salary for the first time in my life. 
Believe me, the feeling was one-of-a-kind. Earning a salary provides 
a safety net, but all of a sudden, you do not have that safety net 
anymore. My wife was also not working and I had a daughter to 
support as well. 
 
To help stretch the capital that I had set aside, I started trading for a 
living. All I can say now is that when you have all these pressures of 
life and business, you cannot trade well. Your emotions will affect the 
way you trade. You are also more averse to risk because you really 
cannot afford to lose any part of your capital, even though you know 
that investing involves risk. 
 
It is with this background that I wish to share with you what I feel are 
the main requirements if you wish to invest for a living: 
 
1. Access to capital. If you don’t have enough capital, you will worry 
day and night how you are going to make enough and this will affect 
the way you trade or invest. I think most good full-time investors 
should be able to make at least 20% profit regardless of market 
conditions. Hence, if you need $100,000 a year to live on, you would 
need a starting capital of at least $500,000. 
 
Ignore the line you would get from margin accounts, as this is just one 
of the tools that you can use to get your 20% return on your capital. 
Ideally too, you would have been in the market for at least 10 years, 
as during this time you are likely to have gone through bull and bear 
markets. Only then would you be able to know if you can also make 
20% return during bear markets. It is fair to say too that in a bull 
market, seasoned investors usually make hundreds of percent gains. 
 
2. Ability & Foresight. Ability comes with experience not only in trading 
stocks but also in any other job. You need to know how businesses 
are run and ideally, you have ran businesses before. After all, the 
stock market is really about businesses and your view on them. If you 
want to invest successfully, you have to be able to delve into their 
future. The only way to do that is to know how businesses are run, 
the intricacies of each of the industries and how they affect one 
another. 
 
Running small businesses can be very different from running multi 
national corporations and ideally, you should have the experience of 
running both before you quit to become a full-time trader or investor. 
 
Knowledge of the industries is equally important, as different 
industries have different characteristics. With ability and experience, 
you are also able to control your emotions of fear and greed better.To 
develop foresight, an investor should have the experience of running 
successful and not so successful businesses. I think one of the reasons 
renowned investor Warren Buffett did so well in his investments is that 
he had a bad time trying to turn around his original business, so much 
so that in the end he sold it, but in the process he gleaned a lot of 
insight. 
 
To me, experience in business can only be gained by running one’s 
own business. Some time back, I was running a regional division for 
IBM andI thought that I had acquired all the skills for running a 
business when I left IBM. I was dead wrong. Running a division within 
a multi national company does not give one a full picture of what it 
takes to run a private enterprise. 
 
Believe me, one has another 90% to learn when one gets out into the 
‘real world’. Without being out in the ‘real business world’, one may 
not truly understand what it takes to run a successful private business. 
Without this understanding, one may not be able to identify issues 
that a business may face in the future. 
 
I see investing as the next step after entrepreneurship. But one needs 
to be an entrepreneur first to understand the issues that small and 
medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) face in the real world. After all, most 
of our investments are in real world SME companies and what we are 
trying to do is to identify the high flyers of the future. 
 
3. Passion for stocks. To invest successful, you have to sweat it out. 
An investor has to spend a lot of time researching the company that 
he wants to invest in. He scrutinises years of annual reports, talks to 
customers and suppliers, and keeps abreast of developments in the 
industry, while also keeping an eye on competitors in the business. 
That’s why investing is a full-time job that you can only do well if you 
are passionate about it and do for the fun of it, rather than strictly for 
the money. 
 
4. Understanding financial statements. This is where those trained in 
accountancy may have an upper hand. However, this ability is not 
that difficult to pick up. One of the first stops for any fundamental 
investor must surely be the annual report. Successful investors have 
an ability to read in between the lines of a financial statement, so 
much so that he can foresee many of the issues that may surface in 
the years ahead. Reading the notes in an annual report can 
sometimes give one a better picture than the headlines. 
 
5. Control of emotions. In general, we are not wired to be successful 
investors. We suffer from the emotions of greed, fear and wishful 
thinking. To succeed as an investor, one has to suppress these 
feelings, and yet be able to use his knowledge of these feelings to 
predict what the general investing public would do, so as to position 
himself accordingly. Successful traders and investors have full mastery 
of their emotions of greed, fear and wishful thinking. 
 
6. Patience. Too many investors seek immediate gratification from 
their investments. If they bought into a stock and it did not go up 
within a day or week ormonth, they are likely to switch stocks, 
thinking that they have made a bad investment. My best investments 
are those stocks I picked up during bear markets when no one wants 
them. I then sell them in a bull market when demand is best 
described as crazy. 
 
To be a successful investor, one has to have a long investment 
horizon measured in years.You may find it odd that I say nothing 
about the ability to identify and rate management integrity. This is 
because I find all CEOs such good sales people that I really cannot tell 
the difference just by talking to them. In fact, the better I know the 
CEOs, the more likely that I will be taken in by their personalities and 
charm. 
 
Many CEOs have asked me to manage some of their funds. My 
answer to all of them is NO. Although I may be successful as an 
investor, the traits required for managing other people’s money is very 
different from the skills that I have. 
 
When you start managing other people’s money, you can be overly 
cautious because the money is now not your own. Or you may be 
overly risky for the same reason that the money is now not your own. 
It really depends on your personality. 
 
When you are too cautious, you will tend to sell too early or buy too 
late. One way or the other, your timing on any investment will be 
affected by the additional baggage of having to take care of other 
people’s money. In the hierarchy of needs, money is very important 
to practically all of us. Relationships and friendships can be broken 
over money. Hence, as far aspossible, I like to keep money and 
relationships as far apart as possible. 
 
Moreover, if you consistently make over 20% a year, why manage a 
fund when you can borrow money for much less and make all the 
money for yourself? So, when my friends ask, I just let them know 
what stocks I am buying. Then, it is really up to them to do their own 
research and follow me if they wish. This way, I can invest the way I 
like, as I am still investing just my own money. My friends remain my 
friends, as I am not directly investing for them. 
 
Mixing money and friendship is a dangerous recipe. All of us have 
different personalities, circumstances and expectations. To be able to 
invest successfully, we have to be at one with ourselves. We must 
firstly understand ourselves. We must understand how we would 
respond in times of fear and greed. 
 
If we succumb to greed, we are more likely to hold our stocks forever, 
inthe hope that the stocks will continue to rise, even though most of 
us know that very few stocks will rise forever. 
 
For those of us who succumb to fear, it is most likely that we would 
be selling too early in any bull-run. We would take our profits 
prematurely, only to see our shares zooming into outer space and 
regret our decision to take profit too early. We must learn to 
overcome this element of fear by not taking profit on our fundamental 
stocks too early. In order not be too involved in the market, we 
should view our fundamental portfolio only once a week, instead of 
every minute. 
 
For those of us who are more easily swayed by both greed and fear, 
with hindsight we will realise that we often do so at the wrong time. 
When the stocks are near their peak, our greed holds us back from 
selling at the peak and we end up carrying the baby. On the other 
hand, when stocks crash, our fear takes over and deters us from 
buying, even though the share prices are at ridiculously low levels. 
 
To overcome our fear and greed, we need to put an investment 
system in place. For those of us who trade, this would mean putting a 
trading system in place. The systems that you use should be tailored 
specifically to your circumstances, expectations and the way you 
handle fear and greed. 
 
I have my own trading and investment systems, but they may not be 
applicable to you, given that your circumstances and expectations 
may be different. For me, I can park my money for a long time. 
However, I have high expectations for my investments and I want to 
multiply these. Hence, I am willing to take more risks. 
 
Moreover, as I have gone through over 20 years of investing, I am 
more able to control my fear and greed. All of us should develop our 
own styles of investing that fit our character. Yes, it is good to learn 
from others how they invest, but do bear in mind that everyone’s 
circumstances, expectations and ability to control fear and greed are 
different. 
 
Although I invest in only a handful of companies, I spend a lot of time 
covering at least 100 other companies. These are companies that may 
be close to fulfilling my investment criteria but I may have concerns 
with some aspects of their operations. I monitor these companies in 
the hope that some of these companies may have sorted out the 
issues that I am concerned with. 
 
Also, I monitor the stock prices of these companies as there may 
come a time when the market capitalisation of these companies are at 
such a discount that it offers me a good margin of safety such that I 
can overlook some of the minor issues of the company that I was 
concerned with. 
 
Mr Market is a strange creature as sometimes, a big seller may appear 
and the share price will be depressed. Once a big seller appears, a lot 
of small sellers will also appear and there will be an avalanche of sell 
orders which will drive the share price down. If one has not done this 
background work,it will not be easy to buy these shares when they 
keep falling. One needs a lot of confidence to buy when everyone else 
is selling. 
 
My confidence as an investor is because of the many hours of hard 
work that I put in before the opportunity arose. Without this amount 
of hardwork, I do not think I will have the courage to buy in a falling 
market. This is why when the market is quiet, I will spend my time 
doing all the necessary research and when the market is moving up or 
down, I will be ready to take advantage of what Mr Market offers. 
 
Investing is certainly not a stroll in the park. One has to put in a lot of 
hardwork in preparation for the opportunities that Mr Market throws at 
you. 
 
I was once at a broker’s office when he and his colleagues asked me 
about my portfolio. When I told them some of the shares that I was 
looking at, I could sense that they were wondering whether I would 
be selling if they were to buy those stocks. Such a reaction is not 
unusual, as everyone is sniffing for opportunities and no one expects a 
free lunch. 
 
For me, I am actually quite reluctant to shed light on the stocks I am 
looking at, as it becomes a burden to me if the shares do not perform. 
When I do mention a stock, it is not to encourage others to buy but 
really to find out what others think about the stock. Problem with us 
human beings is that we can be quite myopic in the way we see a 
certain stock. When we like it, we read what we want to read. 
 
Hearing the opinions of others will help moderate this myopic 
tendency.There are many folks who want me to manage their 
investments for them but my standard answer is, no thanks. 
Somehow, I feel more at ease managing my own money. If I lose 
money from my investments, I take it as part of investing. Nowadays 
even when I lose money, my pulse rate remains much the same, as I 
have already accepted the fact that investing means you will lose 
money at times. So long as you make money overall, you are fine. 
Telling your friend that you have lost some of their money is a totally 
different matter! 
 
Also, when someone rides an investment with me, I become extra 
cautious and often extra nervous as well. This does affect my gut feel 
and confidencein the stock. This is especially true if a close friend 
invested in the same stock. 
 
Investing is really about spending time researching stocks and shares, 
going through their fundamentals, technicals and annual reports 
many times over the years. 
This is very time consuming and is a very lonely occupation. 
But I have not found any shortcuts to making investments work for me. 
When it gets a bit too lonely, it is good to talk to fellow investors and
this is why,every now and then, you will see me in the stock forums. 
 
Glad that in the forum, we know each other only by our pseudonyms, 
as I think I would not be able to share so openly if I knew the other 
person too well. I find that in sharing, I too will benefit, as it is always 
good to hear other points of view.Investing is a lonely occupation and 
I am glad that there are these forums to make it less lonely than it 
was in the past. Nevertheless, it still means spending a lot of time 
alone poring through reports, figures, charts and postings. 
 
I think it is fair to say that the average lifespan for humans is around 
80 years, while retirement age is around 60 years old. This gives most 
of us an additional 20 years of life beyond retirement. If we are 
trained as a doctor or in any other profession, it is unlikely that we will 
continue practicing beyond the age of 60. 
 
Hence, it is good for all of us to be able to plan ahead and do 
something that we can continue doing for the rest of our lives. 
However, there are lots of things that we cannot do past the age of 
60. Physically many of us would have aged by then, but mentally I 
believe many of us will remain quite sharp. 
 
This is why I believe that investing is probably the one career that a 
person can practise right up to when one’s time is up. In fact, I believe 
that as we age we would have a lot more experience in business. As 
well as that, we should be able to control our emotions better with a 
lot more experience in life. 
 
Added together, that means we should become better investors with 
age. This is why I encourage all my friends, whether they are 
professionals or employees, to consider investing as a hobby while 
they are still working. 
 
Investing is an art that is refined with age, much like wine. One is 
bound to make many mistakes in his early investing days. So, the 
earlier one starts on this journey, the more likely he will become a 
better investor in later years. 
 
From page 200 of "Your First Million - Making it in Stocks"

Love Compassion

[chialc88]

感恩

[chialc88]

感恩

[chialc88]

感恩

[shareinvestor1]

congratulations!


++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Wed 2pm.
My phone rang and I noticed that it's an oversea call.

"LC?"
"Speaking, can I help you?"

"Yes. I'm from XX and I would like to engage you for a project in KL."
"Mmm, are you aware that I had left XX 2 weeks ago?"

"Yes. I am aware.  All expenses will be pay for, plus your PS charges too."
"ok. When should we start?"

"What about this Friday? meet in KL"
"Sure. BTW, who recommended me to you?"

"Your boss."

I am speechless.
As the saying goes, the rest is history.
Other than KL, I also kana projects from different country too.

Life is beautiful and I must quickly learn how to set up my company.

Love Compassion

[chialc88]

感恩

[HitandRun]

Chialcc88 san

Congratulations too! Incidentally, what kind of business are you in?

[chialc88]

感恩