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Investing requires a lot of patience

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...

More about Market Timing

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...

Some thoughts about market timing

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...

Income investing in REIT

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.

Always Do Your Own Analysis

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 ...

Is Silver Price Lagging Behind Gold Price?

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 ...

Trading Plan For FY2010

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.