Expensive Trading Courses

I’m going to share with you on what I think about paid trading courses. I haven’t been to one but I’ve read and heard quite a bit of these courses.

There’s a variety of courses out there offering all sorts of things. Some may be relevant to you and some may not be relevant.

First thing you need to know is whether they are teaching you on how to become a trader (i.e. teach you about the market and help you develop your own trading system) or are you paying to for their trading system. If the course is offering the latter, I think your money is worth spent someplace else. Why? Think about this. If the trading system is so good, why would the person sell it to somebody else? Why not keep the “holy grail” themselves and use it to make truckloads of dough? Remember, trading is hard. Persistance and hardwork is key. Taking shortcuts and being spoon-fed are recipes for disaster.

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Beginning your Investment/Trading Knowledge Journey

Stepping into a new territory can be daunting for most people, including myself. This is especially true when I first started my investment/trading journey. The big question of “Where do I start?” comes to mind. I’ll share with you on how I actually started.

Well, where do we start? The first thing you need to do is to know yourself. You need to ask yourself a few questions like:

1. What is your risk tolerance level? Are you a low-risk, medium-risk, or a high-risk investor/trader.

2. What are you interested in? To trade or to invest?

3. What is your time-frame? Are you investing/trading for the long-term or do you need your money back in the next couple of months.

4. Do you have a full-time job or other commitments? If yes, how much time can you commit to your investment/trading venture?

5. What sort of products do you want to be involved with? Properties, shares, derivatives, bonds, mutual funds?

Knowing yourself is imperative to know where to begin learning about investing/trading.

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ASB : Amanah Saham Bumiputera

In Malaysia, ASB (short of Amanah Saham Bumiputera) is one of the hottest unit trust products in Malaysia. People like ASB because of the product’s ease of understanding and ease of getting your money in and getting your money out. The returns on average are fairly alright. Way over any fixed deposit rates in Malaysia. ASB is one of the products offered by PNB (short for Permodalan Nasional Berhad), a Malaysian Asset Management company.

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Oh, how unethical!

While in Australia, it is unfortunate for me to come across two unethical companies. Unethical not in a sense of what they do for business but rather techniques that they use to “get” business.

One company runs a gym and another is a telecommunication company. I’m not going to name these companies however.

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Investing & Trading. What’s the difference?

People, including myself, get quite frustrated when they get bombarded with different financial terms and theories. In fact, the frustration is enough to deter some people from the investment world altogether. In this post, I’ll try to explain the difference between two key terms of the investment world. They are, investing and trading.

These two might be dealing with the same financial products but they are actually very different. Different meaning and different techniques employed. Let’s talk in the context of shares/stocks where you’ll have share investors and share traders.

Share investors generally buy shares in order to keep them for the long-term. Usually, investors plan to keep the shares that they own for the long-term of 12 months or more. They do this for the capital growth and for the dividend payments. In other words, they employ the buy and hold strategy. The most famous share investor that I can think of is Warren Buffett.

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Property Investing Seminar

I attended a weekend seminar on the 27th and 28th of October. It was about Property Investing. The seminar ran from 9 am till 5 pm on both days. What happened was, one of the wealth magazines in Australia gathered a number of presenters and each of them gets to talk for 1 hour on a number of topics.

What do I think about the seminar? Well, it wasn’t too bad. Of course, every presenters not only wanted to “present”, but also they wanted to sell their products. Guess how much some of the packages actually cost? One package cost about AUD5000. Yup, 5 big ones.

I learned quite a lot from the seminar. Though there were those few presenters who were the not-so-good presenters and presented some “not-so-good” things. Each talk only touched the surface of the topic but it was actually quite informative. There were two presentations that I really didn’t like. The first one was talking about low-cost housing and another one was talking about renovating your investment properties. The presentation on low-cost housing, was in my opinion, quite misleading. I thought of interjecting, but nah, didn’t want to create a scene. The other guy on renovation, I think more than half of the time, he was talking about some useless things. Instead of talking about renovation, he talked about why is it good to be rich and why we need to be rich. I got quite annoyed with him. I didn’t pay 80 bucks to listen to him rambling about what I already know! Also, there were times when things were becoming a bit redundant. Quite a number of the presenters were talking about the same thing. Same info being repeated over and over again.

However, there were a few that I really enjoyed. They were about property contracts, property options, and the final talk which was about tax.

The cost of attending was AUD80.00. A pretty good investment considering you’re getting all the information under one roof.

The next time these magazines organise these kind of seminars, attend them. 80 bucks is not much to fork out, to get a feel of what’s out there.

CFD Trading/Share Trading : Setting Stop Loss

This is a continuation of my previous entry on CFD Trading. Please take note that CFD trading is similar with share trading. So, posts about CFD Trading is relevant for share traders as well. In the entry, I said trading plan is paramount to survive in CFD Trading. A good trading plan always has a strategy on how to set stop loss(es).

First of all, what is a Stop Loss. Stop Loss is a sell order that you place below the price that you buy the CFD/Share for(for long positions) so that if the price falls to that level, you’re automatically out of the market. Before I go in any further, let me warn you that you should not get into a CFD/Share position without first figuring out where your stop loss should be. In other words, no stop loss, no trade!

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Quote(s)

Something relevant to the pursuant of financial freedom. Don’t know who said this. Some said Warren Buffett but google-ing it led me to somebody else.

“If you think the cost of education is expensive, think about the cost of ignorance.”

The Most Expensive Char Kuey Teow

The most expensive Char Kuey Teow I’ve ever eaten. AUD9.50 or in Malaysian Ringgit, MYR28.50. It’s absolutely delish though. :)

If you ever come down to Brisbane, go to Satay Club Noodle House in Charlotte Street. Kind of expensive, but it’s all worth it. If my dad or my mom reads this, I’m dead. Takpe lah ma, sekali sekala je.

By the way, delightful things deserve bigger pictures don’t you agree? ;)

When can I consider myself financially free? Part 1

Everybody knows that it’s great when comes the time when we don’t have to worry about money anymore. Everybody agrees that being financially free is awesome. One key question though. When can you consider yourself financially free? The answer to this question depends on the individual.

For some, 4,000 dollars per month is sufficient. Some would need 100,000 dollars every month. It really is up to the person.

To start your journey towards financial freedom, I believe that the fundamental question you need to answer first is “how much is enough?”

How do you solve this question? Firstly, project yourself to the future. In what sort of life do you see yourself in? Then work out a rough budget. Some questions to answer:

1.Think about where do you want to live. Will you be renting or buying.
2.How many children do you want. What is your plan for your children’s education.
3.How many times per year would you like to go for your holidays. 4.How often are you going to replace your car.
5.Think about other expenses as well: Food, Bills, Insurances, and etc.
6.Allowances for you and your family to just go out and splurge.

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Paris, je t’aime (Film)

Had another movie-watching session tonight. This time it’s Paris, je t’aime. Tell you what, I’m definitely adding this one to my list of all-time favourites. Bear in mind though, this movie might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but still, I love it.

Paris, je t’aime is a compilation of 18 short stories directed by 21 different directors set in 18 arrondissements (municipals) in Paris. The theme? Hmm… surprise surprise… Love. Each story will make you fall in love with Paris again.

Here’s one of my favourite dialogues from the movie:

Man: Can I rub your feet
Woman: Why do you want to rub my feet?
Man: Because you feet hurts.
Woman: They do?
Man: You ran all night in my dreams.

All in all, Paris, je t’aime is a must-watch. I give it 5 out 5 stars.

Blood Diamond (Film)

Watched this movie yesterday on DVD. One of the best movies released this year if you ask me.

The story revolves around the civil war in Sierra Leone and how diamonds were used illegally to fund their war efforts. Shows how greed can be a huge factor in the destruction of mankind.

I thought that the movie potrayed what happened in Sierra Leone pretty well (not that I have any experience with with Sierra Leone’s conflict).

What I learned from this movie: When buying diamonds, always insists on getting conflict-free diamonds :)

Go and watch it if you have the chance. I give the movie 4 out of 5 stars.

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.com)

Inflation? What Inflation?

Investing your money is a rational thing to do. I’m sure most people will only look into how much returns can that investment vehicle provide them. One reality that people often overlooked is the effect of inflation.

What is inflation? Inflation is the increase of money supply in the economy without the increase of supply in goods and services which generally results into the increase of general price level. In other words, at what rate will the price increase annually. Take Malaysia for example. Right now, the inflation rate is around 2% if I’m not mistaken. What that means is that if a price of a good is RM100 this year, then next year it’ll increase to RM102.

As I have said before, when it comes to making investment decisions, inflation must be taken into account. The purchasing power of RM100 today is not the same as next year’s.

Generally, when you subtract inflation from the expected return of investments, you will get the real return.

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You’re a disgrace to Malaysia!

A number of weeks ago, my attention was drawn to a certain individual who goes by the pseudonym NameWee. As you all might have known by now, he is the chap who created the controversial video on YouTube, ridiculing Malaysia’s national anthem, Negaraku. I’ve included the video on top.

What was he thinking? Alright, point taken, he’s angry because he was not treated fairly, but is it fair to degrade something that others hold dearly? I’m sure he would be pissed if somebody else had posted another video reciprocating his acts and make fun of him and his beliefs.

His statements came out in the newspapers after that, stating he loves his country very much and it was all joke. Joke? You have got to be kidding me! Look, a person who humiliates his own nation to the world does not love his country. That’s that. Come on, would you ridicule your own mother who you love, on YouTube, and say it was all a joke and you love her a lot? Give me a break. This goes to every Malaysians, not just NameWee.

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An Interesting Day at Uni

This week is the final week of lectures before SWOTVAC [Study Without Teachers Vacation (I didn't know the meaning of this acronym right until the beginning of my second year!!) ] . After 1 week of SWOTVAC, I’ll be having my final exams. Anyway, enough about that, let’s get back to today. Something interesting happened to one of my lectures. Before that, let me tell you that Mr. D (can’t mention real names of course!) is our usual lecturer. He’s a bit of a drone…. or in other words, BORING… But today, we had a replacement lecturer. I thought, woohoo! However, turns out, Mrs. J (the replacement lecturer) is actually the queen of drones… She went on and on and on and on reading from the lecture slides and guess what? She added notes to the on-screen slides using the felt-tip pen feature on Powerpoint… using her mouse! Guess how slow that must have been! After half way through the lecture, every single soul, including myself, was waiting for our long-awaited 5-minute break, which to our dismay, never came! Then a student got up, gathered all his stuff and went off. Guess what happened after that. Yup, one by one got up and left the hall. The never-ending-door-slamming was Mozart to my ears. The cool thing was, I think half of the class ditched the lecture, and I swear I thought the lecturer was about to burst into tears. Haha.

Alrighty then, till next post..

P.S. I stayed till the end ;)