TheFinance.sg » La Papillion

Results announcement calender

La Papillion — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 02:00:00 +0000

Here’s the result announcement for this month. I’ll be paying attention to a few counters that are announcing their full year results. I wonder whether this is the thing that keeps STI awake these days and wondering what will become of STI when the excitement dies off.

The swan song of local bloggers

La Papillion — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 03:32:00 +0000

As the market transforms back and fro into a beast that is neither a bull or a bear (perhaps it had always been a hybrid chimera of sort – a bull with bear head for instance), I noticed that more and more old timer bloggers are slowly exiting the blogging scene. I say that with a tinge of heartache, because some of them had been blogging together with me since I started circa 2006 period, right near the peak of the bull market. 6 years had since passed, with each of them patiently and industrially churning out articles after articles, sometimes to an unappreciative crowd of anonymous users, and hopefully not blogging just to yourself.

I guess there’s a time and tide for everything. As we grow older, a lot of activities will exact their demands on our energy and time. Suddenly passions that you once had might have gone …

How I read (almost) 52 books a year

La Papillion — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:06:00 +0000

Since a lot of readers commented that they had only been reading 1-2 books max in a year, I thought it’ll be a good time to share what I did to read that many books. First of all, let me add that in my opinion, reading many books is not as important as reading the right books. I rather read less books but books that are important and crucial to your mental well-being, than to say, reading many many books that are just trashy. But it’s the law of diminishing returns that really makes it harder and harder to find those books that bring the right amount of inspiration and motivation to pump your hand in the air and gave a mental shout of victory. The best books are books that told you what you know internally already, in a way and mannerisms that makes it so easy for you to absorb. …

Reflection on 2011

La Papillion — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 04:02:00 +0000

After doing my end of month accounting for the Dec 2011 and thus wrap up my financial year 2011, I realised that a lot of my networth was wiped out. Okay, everyone’s definition of networth is different, so here’s mine – it’s defined as all my assets (includes cash, marked to market investment portfolio, whole life insurance cash value, mmf and cpf) but excludes my residential property. I also didn’t include debts that I owed to the hdb because of the property. I think you can roughly say that’s my investible networth since most of it is cash that I can utilize at short notice. I know you can’t use cpf anytime you want, but then again, I don’t have much of it anyway, so it doesn’t matter significantly.

With this kind of definition, I realised that my networth is whacked down to around 2008, way before I had started any kind …

Making mistakes

La Papillion — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 06:30:00 +0000

I made a couple of mistakes these few weeks as I shifted over to my new home. Most of them happened in the kitchen, because that’s the part of the home that I had least experience in. In school, we make mistakes when doing tutorials. In work, we make mistakes in handling people and other more technical stuff. At home, what kind of mistakes can I make?

Well, I’m going to list it out:

1. As I was sweeping stuff into my dustpan, I moved it over to the rubbish chute (which is inside my home) to clear it. But without concentrating on what I’m doing, I didn’t grip the brush hard enough, as a result, the whole brush fell into the chute, all the way down to the bottom. It’s so silly that when I told my wife about it, we all laugh at the kind of clumsiness we …

Taking on full responsibility

La Papillion — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 10:39:00 +0000

The recent mrt episodes in Singapore highlighted a couple of bias that can be equally applicable in the investment/trading mentality. I saw some report saying that since the CEO had been in the company, the company had grew its profit from xxx to yyy per annum. This implied that the CEO is responsible for creating the profits. But when the spate of incidents causing the train to breakdown happened, there’s no report saying that the CEO is responsible for it. I mean, why is it so easy to attribute good things to the CEO but not the bad things?

Will that happen to people who invests or trades too? I guess so. When the stocks that you bought went up, it was a good call or a good investment decision. You picked a stock that ran up, so you are good. But when the call turns sour, you start blaming the …

Choosing quality over quantity

La Papillion — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 02:00:00 +0000

As I get older and hopefully more mature, I realised that if I have to choose between quantity and quality, I’ll go for quality these days. It’s not always like that. There was a time that I thought more is good. For example, having more of a cheaper share is better than having less of a better one. Or eating more lousy food in buffet is better than eating less but higher quality ones. There are many many such examples where I can quote you that lets you see how I chose quantity over quality. Hopefully I will reduce such nonsense from now on.

Specifically, here are the areas that I would need to rewire my thinking regarding the choice of quantity vs quality:

1. I’ve always had a target to read 1 book a week. Initially that target was set so that I can read more. I remember the …

Hill Harper’s "The Wealth Cure"

La Papillion — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 02:00:00 +0000

If you’re looking for prescribed, step by step ways to kick start a healthy relationship with money and wealth, then Hill Harper’s “The Weath Cure” is not your type of book. Initially when I read the book, I found it rather strange because of the way the book is structured. There are 5 big parts to the book, which each part having a couple of smaller chapters that is related to the parts. But here’s the thing – I don’t see the relation at all. Perhaps I had been to used to seeing other financial related books that are usually more straightfoward. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it’s just different.

Halfway through reading the book, I realised that this is a chicken-soup-for-the-soul kind of book. Each of the smaller chapters are actually stories written in the point of view of the author himself. I thought it’s a very refreshing …

Positive mindset vs possibility mindset

La Papillion — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 02:00:00 +0000

I was reading this book by Dr. Robert Anthony “How to make the impossible possible”, when I discovered that the author actually differentiate between positive mindset and possibility mindset . We know the usual positive thinking – if we think positive, then the outcome can also be positive. This is opposed to thinking negatively about a situation. But I’ve always wondered about the limitations of having a positive mindset and the book addresses exactly that problem.

I thought that if I think hard enough, will things really happen? For example, if I ‘will’ a book to move, will it really do so, even if I’m ultra positive about it? To the majority who don’t have special powers, I guess the book is going to stay there. So there is a limitations to how much positive thinking can do to us. It’s like if you never study hard for your exams, no …

Am I certified to trade?

La Papillion — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 15:24:00 +0000

As I logged into my poems account, I saw this screen asking me to do a test. I think it’s the new ruling that is going to take effect on 1st Jan 2012. If you do not satisfy certain criteria, you’ll be asked to take a test to determine whether you know what you are doing. If you fail, you won’t be able to buy (though you can sell your existing holdings, from what I read from the site). I don’t know who the ruling is trying to protect – the advisors or the consumers. Anyway, it seems that I do not have to take the test since I had made more than 6 trades with regards to shares. I can’t do CFD or unit trust myself though, until I take the test, that is.

Anyway, I would like to take the test and see if I ‘know’ my stuff …

The joys of working from home

La Papillion — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 07:21:00 +0000

As I was starting work in my new flat, I realized that there’s a few things that I liked about this arrangement. As I was slacking now after my student left, I realized how fortunate I am to be able to finish work and still be at home. I cherish this feeling and felt an immediate sense of satisfaction. On reflection, I think that working home allows me to :

a. Multitask things with regards to my personal and work life. For example, I could be in between doing household chores and having tuition at the same time. Of course I don’t do it while teaching, but I do it during the lull moments like when the student is doing work. These kind of stuff are important to me as a time saver because in the past, I had to work outside and come home and settle my personal stuff. …

Cbox outing @ Beng Hiang

La Papillion — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 07:13:00 +0000

Bullythebear had a lunch outing on Sat 26th Nov 2011. It had been quite some time where we had a gathering with the guys/gals from the cbox community. Anyway, thanks to Neophyte who initiated it and passed the baton over to me to handle the rest of the logistic. Not to forget sfry who sponsored the lunch though we had never met. It was always the kindness that we experienced from strangers that we will always remember deep in our hearts. Had a great time that day from ‘our’ restaurant Beng Hiang at Amoy street.

Here’s all the dishes, in chronological order. Sorry for the first dish, I forgot to take pictures until we’re deep into the dish, haha!

Are you expecting to see people’s faces here? Nah, I’m too smart for this. Anyway, it’s a unwritten rule that no pictures of faces are taken during the outing. Interesting to …

Starting a new friendship with an old friend

La Papillion — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:18:00 +0000

Today I went to Sitex (the computer exhibition at expo) with a new friend. Rather, he was an old ‘new’ friend because I’ve known him for many years but perhaps this time round, I really treated him like a friend. Kind of sad, but I’ll always say it’s better this way then never. You will never know the unintended consequences when you sow a seed into the universe. In my case, the seed is me getting a flat, renovating it and eventually moving out of my current home into it to live another sort of life. The known consequences are the drain into my financial resources, and of course the time and effort needed to ready the flat into a livable and homely place for me to start a family. The unintended consequence of this seed is that I started to know a friend all over again. Unintended is not necessarily bad, …

Probate and letter of administration

My reshuffled priority in life

La Papillion — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:09:00 +0000

I realized as I sat in my new home, that setting up a home is financially draining yet at the same time is very satisfying. As the furniture slowly trickles in and your house transforms into your home, with all the little imperfections that you will come to appreciate and all the weird corners that you can stand on to view the home that nobody knows but you, an immense sense of fulfillment fills me up. A place that you can truly call your own is such a powerful feeling to have. I think the feeling would be multiplied many times if the next month is the last month that I have to pay the mortgage loans.

Is it worth so much money? I think, so far, it’s a resounding yes. Except for a few parts that I think could be further improved (I realized quite early in this renovation …

The joys of working from home

The last few ticks of my to-do lists

La Papillion — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:10:00 +0000

Finally finished the bulk of my work year! The rest of my work schedule are just some ‘stragglers’ from the graduating batch and maybe a few students for the preparation in the next academic year. I always said that I’ve never worked so hard before in the previous years, but I’ve to say that again this year too. Now that the bulk of it is over, I can finish settling some issues in my personal life.

1. Need to settle my housing once and for all and get ready to move in. This housing project had been dragging on for ages, perhaps starting around June/July and lasted until now. I really have no time to put my energy and effort into it, but no excuses now. I’m hoping to move in towards the end of the month. I’ve still got a few things to settle, mainly just the buying of …

Adult quitting

La Papillion — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 04:46:00 +0000

When kids quit, they just stomp their feet and leave the game. The quitting is physical and mental at the same time. When we’re adults, we can no longer quit physically because we either need the job or we can’t afford to sour the relationship. So adults quit mentally. They would just stay in droning mode and do what is just needed in order not to quit physically, but their mind had already been switched off. They would do what is needed just to get the job (barely) done, but don’t expect too much out of it.

I wonder how many people had adult-quitted at least some aspects of their lives? Perhaps most likely it’s their jobs that they had quitted mentally. It’s not necessarily a bad thing actually. When you can’t find a job that fulfills you but you still needed to pay the bills that comes at the …

Tech hack for android

La Papillion — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 16:32:00 +0000

I’m so glad I found the ultimate technological hack for android phones. Some of you may be aware that amazon had this new amazon app store, supposedly to cater for their new kindle fire tablet so that people can shop for apps through their site. They have this wonderful way to promote their amazon app store by giving free apps on a daily basis. Here’s a list of full apps (not the lite version) that had been given away. I came to know of this when I was about to buy a fully paid version of officesuite pro, after trying it for a couple of weeks. I really need to access my spreadsheet on my phone effortlessly, so I thought getting a paid app is great for this specific purpose.

Unfortunately, the free apps is only applicable for US, not for other countries including Singapore. I searched around and came …

Investing in your life goals

La Papillion — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:46:00 +0000

It’s important to align your energy to fulfill your life goals. That’s the only way to lead a purposeful and fulfilling life, isn’t it? Why do you want to work so hard to buy things that you don’t care to impress people whom you don’t like? Once you recognize that doing certain things are not aligned to your life goals, then stop and prioritize your resources. Resources, like time and money (especially time), are limited, so we really have to think hard on where to expend it to achieve the maximum happiness and satisfaction.

People usually gawk when I told them how much I’ve spent on my housing. It starts from my parents, to my in-laws (I think they haven’t yet know the extent of my renovation costs) and to my friends. But there’s nothing that really satisfy me than to see a very homely property that I can call my own. In my …