Good Investing Lessons

Here is a quick review of the Singapore stock market. The STI index showed that a double bottom pattern has form. This signals potential uptrend for the general stock market under SGX. While the STI generally lacks S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial, NASQAD, it had finally emerge from the doom and start showing some signs of life. Below is a weekly chart of STI index. Why has the Singapore stock market lagging behind the US market? Even though the region had a better control of the Covid-19 situation except Indonesia and Philippines, the regional stock market had not perform as good as the American counter part. Can we say that the US market is over bought? The answer is not so easy. There are a lot of differences in the composition of the companies. The Tech sector which is a big part of US market has been doing extremely well during this pandemic.  

This is an article that I read on 26th September 2012. It has been over a year now and I suddenly remembered. I'd posted this last year with some other predictions from CNBC etc. During then, I was very fascinated listening to these experts. They are so confident and so logical. I always admire their ability to "read" the market and manage hundreds of millions of dollars of other people's money. So of them managed billions of dollars. Then I thought what if they ever go wrong? Won't they lose a lot of money? So, I think it would have been interesting to remember what they said and then we verify later. On 26th September, the S&P 500 index closed at 1433.32. One year went on and it went up another 19% from there. Below is S&P 500 over last one and a half year. As we can see, the market has still been a bull. Over the one year period, the S&P 500 index did correct itself. However, it was a

Some interesting articles about investing in current climate: Should you be scared now? http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/09/26/should-the-dows-down-streak-scare-you.aspx CNBC: Greece Trumps China - http://www.cnbc.com/id/49179175?__source=yahoo|headline|quote|text|&par=yahoo http://www.cnbc.com/id/49183818 - Beware of coming 25% correction Let's keep these news and monitor what happens a year later.

Some very fundamental rules that I have not be able to keep with: 1. Diversify and invest Thinly across Diversify your stock portfolio over a basket of 30 over different counters across at least 5 different sectors. Warren Buffet said Diversification is only for those people who does not know what they are doing. Let's fact it. You are not an expert. Risking too much on any stock investment is a recipe for disaster, even for the sophisticated stock market investor. Keeping your individual share investments small keeps your capital pot safe and lowers the stress that can make investing unpleasant. Once you have 30 stocks you can grow the scale of each investment, but until that day stay small.  2. Take your time and do your research Never invest your money on a share tip. Stock investing is a skill you build up over time and with improvement your returns will grow. Share tips are empty investments and many unsavoury types try and lure you into investments with bad ...

There is a lot of talk about Spanish sovereign debts recently. I came across a research paper which I think is very useful for me and wish to share it here. This is taken from www.fundsupermart.com, an online fund broker where you can purchase funds form various fund managers. This portal provides some research and comparisons and it is essentially a self service portal. From the chart provided, we can see that there is a problem for Spain to service their debts for the next 4-5 years if the debts are not re-structured. With this kind of risk, no sane investors would want to risk their money to buy Spanish bonds. They can only turn to European central bank for bail out. The blue arrow is a fictitious line I draw assuming re-structuring is going to happen. Essentially, they have to move the payment of capitals into next 5-20 years to be affordable. In addition to that, they can't make additional loans. This is just taking a very simplistic view of the situation. To have that hap...

Have you experienced buying stocks when the market has just made major advances or the counter has just moved up higher? Only to face the selling down the next couple of days? Well that must be a lot of of regrets there. Well, the consolation is that you are not alone. I frequently made the same mistake - huh, talking about not making the same mistake twice. This is one monster inside of me that is so difficult to kill. So often, I had forgotten about the commonsense of waiting for market to pull back before entering. This kind of emotion arose from a mixture of fear and greed. Greed in wanting to chase the profit and fear is worrying that the price may go beyond comfortable purchase level. On the hindsight, this is so silly. Pure silliness and nothing else. How many times you have read in the book about where to enter and when to exit. All the theory sounded so simple and logical. But, when at the thick of things, the price movement in the market can be so powerful and dominating ov...

There has been talks about end year rally during the earlier parts of this year. Particularly in February to March period when the market was suffering from 'temporary' set back. During that time, even though the European Debt crisis were looming, the Asian economy was still booming. However, as the time passes, the European Debt crisis becomes more apparent. Countries were finding it more and more difficult to cover up. More facts emerge and picture became clearer. The earlier investor pull back and market began the down trend again. In such time, we will invariably turn to tools that we think will help us to foresee such events. This is where macro economic theory comes in. However, for traders who are not well read on such topics, they want to use some thing faster and easier. Then, Technical Analysis comes into play. Using technology, TA can be very fast and handy. Here is a classic example of using TA: http://www.etfguide.com/research/705/8/The-Chart-That-Trumps-Anal...

After many years of struggling, in the end, I realise that identifying trends is still the most important skill in chart reading. Various indicators are mostly trying to catch small turns in the price directions. Since charts are based on historical data, the information we can get from the charts are mostly lagging. Using charts to catch immediate changes in price direction is quite difficult. However, for long term trading or investing, I think charts are more useful in telling us the future movement in prices. Certainly, for longer term investing, the market fundamental is still the major deciding force. Reading the chart helps us know where we are relative to the overall position. That in turn gives indication of when to buy and sell. Many gurus advised us not to time the market. Certainly, that is fine if we consider 25 years ago when we have time and if we could set aside say $100K or more and we invest based on pure fundamentals, we would probably be sitting on $millions. That...

There is a good article about investing in REITs. There is the link: http://www.propwise.sg/how-to-invest-in-singapore-reits/ What should you take note of when investing in REITs? 1. Composition of REIT assets - Retail Malls, Hotels, Industrial, Residential, Logistic etc. 2. Geographic diversification and currency risk- Political, Natural disasters etc. 3. Growth of Dividend Per Unit (DPU) - How well they manage 4. Spread over 10 year Government Bond yield - Risk vs Yield comparison 5. Gearing -Leverage - ability to face financial crisis This is one way to invest for income. Depending on your risk adversity, you can make your choices.

I would like to share a great article that I had just read with all investors. Many gurus, seasoned investors always warn new investors to do their own analysis and research. Reading and referencing other people's work is fine, but, one must always know his own position and do complete analysis. As in the case of people who blindly follow Warren Buffett into Goldman Sachs and General Electrics in the 2008 crisis. Taken to Task: The Cult of Warren Buffett By Aaron Task | Daily Ticker – 9 hours ago Bank of America stock jumped over 9% Thursday on news that Warren Buffett is making a $5 billion investment in the bank. But, at $7.65, the stock closed more than a $1 below its high of the session and BofA shares were falling anew Friday morning, trading as low as $7.45 before stabilizing... ....... ....... ....... Moreover, investors who've followed Buffett into investments like Goldman Sachs and GE got burned, assuming they adhered to Buffett's dictum about ...

You probably had been hearing a lot about this. I kept hearing this from seminars and some investment gurus. So, I decided to do a simple research and analysis. Here is what I had come up with: The table below shows the Price Ratio of Gold/Silver and the 5-YR Simple Moving Average. To see better, plot a chart to see how the ratios moves over the years. I'd plotted using annual and its 5 period simple moving average. This chart showed that the average price ratio advanced over the years. However, recent 10 years, there seems to be some fluctuations. In fact, it seems that silver price had advanced more aggressively than gold price resulting in a drop of the price ratio. I don't know what the experts based on. If silver price were to advance more than gold, it will bring the ratio even lower near to the ratio 20 years ago. However, if you based on recent 10 years, silver price has to retreat or gold price has to advance in order to go back to the average. Even though the current ...

Here is my plan for Trading in 2010: Q1 2010 Research Work: Jan-2010: Identify Counters that can be used for short-mid term trading using RSMA method. Doing Back Testing to list out counters that works for last 3-5 years. Identify "new counters" that potentially can use RSMA short term trading method. Live Trading: Using the results obtained and testing the trading using Money Management Method. Trading sizing: Risk per trade: Total Risk: Trading Log: Standard Log To be Kept with Excel Spreadsheet.

I started investing in stock market about 20 years ago. Initially subscribing to IPOs. I had not have luck with IPOs. All of them ended with money losing deal, even though I held on to them for a few years. So, I concluded that the IPOs in Singapore market is over priced. Then I started to read analyst reports on stocks and invest in companies (typically blue chips). Not much profit but good dividends during the good years. Then, came the financial crises. I went on to buy blue chip companies during crises and I held them over the years and sold of a about 120% gain over 5 years on average. Due to some distraction, I stayed away from the market during this crisis and missed the opportunity to buy during the lows. Recently (few months ago), I had been doing some stock trading and currency trading using technical analysis method for more than a year. So far, I had tried many different technical analysis using different indicators (Moving averages, MACD, RMO, Fibonacci, Stochastics, RSI e...

Trading Rules Using Combinations of RSMA, Stochastics, RMO, MACD Mid Term Trend Following Entry Strategy 1 RSMA Buy Signal - enter on next day or day after (latest), skip if missed 2 Stochastic at Oversold and turning up crossing 25 3 MACD has gone down into negative territory 4 If N (Turtle True Range) exits 10% of closing price, do not Entry Exit Strategy 1 Stop Loss at 1.5~2.5 ATR or N (Turtle True Range) below entry and less than 10% 2 First Stop Loss point stay for at least 4 weeks before adjusting 3 Adjust Stop Loss point upon next RSMA Buy Signal (if trade is correct) Trade Sizing 1 Maximum Risk per Trade = $900 2 Maximum Total Risk = $9,000

I was watching the interview with Georege Soros by Google CEO and this sentence from George Soros and I was captured by this sentence. I think what he wanted to say was people don't make decision using information alone. When they make decisions, a lot of other things come in to interfere with the decision making. These things include emotions like fear, greed etc. Apart from that, people's anchoring causes them to be bias towards certain choices. In trading, it is very important to make sure we make decisions based on facts instead of emotions or intuitions. It is important that we do not let our emotions blind us the facts in front of us.

Risk Measurement (N) The trade size is determined by measuring the volatility using the Average True Range (N). Where N is the largest absolute value among the following: The distance from today’s high to today’s low The distance from yesterday’s close to today’s high The distance from yesterday’s close to today’s low Using Simple Moving Average of 15 sessions (SMA15) to determine the value. Setting Stops There are 2 ways in which we can set stops. One is to use 2N as guide to set stops. That means, for a stock where price is $8 and if N = $0.50, then, the stop will be $1.00 below the entry point. This is quite a large percentage of the entry price which will potentially resulting in large draw down. That may cause some sleeps. The second method is to use arbitrary support level and place 2 bits below the support. This method may result in too small stop and frequent stop out or the support may be too low that it may cause too much risk. I have come up with another method where you use...

It was better to risk taking many small losses than to risk missing one large profit. In order for this to work, you must have a trading edge. Without which, you are taking unnecessary risk. Trading is like gambling. You want to know your edge first. You need to calculate your edge for every trading decision you make, because you can’t make “bets” if you don’t know your edge. It’s not about the frequency of how correct you are; it’s about the magnitude of how correct you are. For winning edge to happen, the expectancy of the trades must be positive: E = (PW x AW) - (PL x AL) Where: E = Expectation or Edge PW = Winning Percent AW = Average Winner PL = Losing Percent AL = Average Loser

"You shouldn’t care about how you got to the current state but rather about what you should do now. A trader who trades differentially because of swings in confidence is focusing on his or her own past rather than on current realities." - Bill Eckhardt. Key trading rule: Forget how you got here! Do not let your emotion affect you. If you keep thinking about how you got to your current state, your emotion will affect your decision making. For example, if you are sitting on the paper gain of 10%, you emotion may want to urge you to take profit even though the current market trend is still at your advantage. On the other hand, if you are sitting on a paper loss of 10%, your internal urge is to ask yourself to hold on to it hoping that it will turn around even when the trend clearly tells you that it will continue. Eckhardt clarified, “What this means is that once an initiation is made, it should not matter at all to subsequent decisions what the initiation price was.” It is impo...

Recently, I had missed out the opportunities to make a few thousand dollars due to impatience. In each of the 4 cases, I sold out just before the break out because the counters refused to move while I was holding over a week. That cost me to missed out over $6,000 of profits. I noticed that I had unfounded fear of tying down my capital and not being able to fully utilizing my capital for additional gains. However, the true fact is that I have 75% of my capital sititng there and waiting. So, there is no compelling reasons to sell my existing positions since they had not breached the stop loss point. This is an important lesson to learn. Be patient and committed. Trade with more conviction then trying to hit-and-run. Quote Eckhardt did not want the Turtles to worry about linear decreases in their accounts. The slightest exponential curve from a big trend would eventually surpass the steepest linear curve they saw while losing. Discipline, money management, and patience were the only way...

Here are some trading systems that can be used for trend following trading: ATR Channel Breakout : A volatility channel system that uses ATR as the volatility measure. Bollinger Breakout : A volatility channel system that uses the standard deviation as the volatility measure. Donchian Trend : A breakout system with a trend filter. Donchian Trend with Time Exit : A breakout system with a trend filter and a time-based exit. Dual Moving Average : A system that buys and sells when a faster moving average crosses over a slower moving average. Unlike the other systems, this system is always in the market, either long or short. Triple Moving Average : A system that buys and sells when a faster moving average crosses over a slower moving average but only in the direction of the major trend defined by a very slow-moving average.