When You Have Nothing To Do???

Do this!

Walking your path, your way!

Absolutely free and easy!

Some prefer to join walking group or form walking buddies.

Uncle8888's ex boss who has retired last year also found his walking buddy to walk on every Tuesday morning.

Read? Walk the talk : NParks 36km Coast-to-Coast trail (1)

Not Just Financial Independence. Build Sustainable Retirement Income For Life!!! (3)

Read? Not Just Financial Independence. Build Sustainable Retirement Income For Life!!! (2)


2.5 years have passed without earned income from full-time employment; and the cash flow is still healthy without any asset draw-down to supplement household expenses!

So there is no urgency to deploy war chest for more investment income to fund household expenses!

Know enough, Know your yield, Know your risk (Ha ha Know Your Yield , Know Your Risk)

Walk the talk : NParks 36km Coast-to-Coast trail (1)

Read? Walking the NParks 36km Coast-to-Coast trail: Worth the effort?

Read? Nothing to do. Go for walk lor!

Hmm.. after walking for a while; it looks familiar. Basically; the trail connects selected paths of Park connectors. Last time; he was jogging these paths; but this time he is walking. :-)

$5 Beef noodle lunch at Beauty World

Still constructing new path along the route for this walking trail.

Counting The Cost Of University Education at SUTD (12)

Read? Counting The Cost Of University Education at SUTD (11)

Few more months to burn cash instead of generating dividend income!

It looks like total spending will be below the original budget of $100K

H1 2019 : No Money Down 6.7% Yield From Stock Portfolio

No Money Down!

6.7% yield YTD!


Own money just rotting and earning low interests!

Pre and Post Retirement From Your Full Time Employment

Read? 1 in 2 Singapore residents feels stressed out by the thought of doing nothing: Survey

This is how Uncle8888 sees it after retiring from his full-time job since 30 Sep 2016.

This is somehow like ...

Pre-retirement from full-time employment ..


He is spending his time, energy, and effort to empty his glass every workdays and the next workday it get almost full again and repeat all over again.

Sigh!

Still half empty nearing the end of workday is damn stressful! 

Sianz!

Looking forward to financial independence and then can choose to retire!

Post-retirement from full-time employment ..

Each passing day; he is just trying to fill up his glass to half-full and there is no reason to fully fill up the glass. Stressful??? Of course not if you can fill up half full! Good enough!

GST Vouchers Coming Soon

Hmm .. total of $600 is good for 10 months worth of unlimited monthly travel on public transport in Singapore and up to JB Central and Larkin terminal. 

Happy traveler across the island of Singapore for 10 months! 

Buy and Hold – Hardest Strategy Ever???

Read? Buy and Hold – Hardest Strategy Ever

Read? When a Giant Gain Causes Pain (4)

Let Uncle8888 add on ...

He has been through buy and hold era  before and has done BOTH!

Most retail buy and hold "forever" due to either sunk cost or freehold and then they became either immune or insensitive. They either consume dividends as Panadols or Golden Eggs or already wrote off long ago.

SGX (3)

Read? SGX (2)

Right to follow Left before going to test the Peak???

No Astrea Bonds For Me. Why?

Uncle8888 doesn't need for more fixed income coming from bonds as interests from his CPF is already like bonds. 

If CPF gone, Temasek and GIC should have gone well ahead of CPF.


He still haven't give up the idea of finding the next batch of Geese that lay golden eggs in the next STI market crash. But, the wait is far too long. Sianz!


After Point X, when they become freehold Geese laying golden eggs. Shiok through the spine!


Average annual yield on investment cost

Kep Corp: 37% over 18 years

Semcorp Ind : 27% over 17 years

DBS : 11% over 16 years

The Last Few STI Big Bear Market

Bear market STI low

28 Dec 1987, STI : 823

  4 Sep 1998, STI :  800,    10.7 years

  9 Mar 2009, STI : 1,457, 10.5 years

 21 Jun 2019, STI : 3,321, 10.3 years (Still Bullish)


So this time is different???

More Good Years???

SGX (2)

Read? SGX

Rising with the Tide???

Time to take profit for Round 2???

SGX

Monday, 26 September 2016

Read? SGX : Bought @ $7.46


Taking Panadols for so long!

Next STI Market Crash In 202X??? This Time Will Be Different For Me.

The best investing mentor is Mr. Market himself. He will teach us what to do and what NOT to do in future market cycles. Good and bad investment lessons are learnt over market cycles.

If you haven't been through at least market cycles. Be humble!

Whatever wealth you currently have in the stock market may just an illusion; but whatever current paper losses can be real!

Hard and painful lessons learnt in 2008 have made this time will be different for me!

Read? In the Bearish 31 Dec 2008 : Who Took My Wealth? But, 7 Years after 2008, In 9 Jan 2016

1. No more cutting losses to contra trading!

2. No more financial pressure of ensuring adequate liquidity to fund two children university education.

3. All time ready to fight the next Bear with the largest war chest.

Find Your Own Psychology Of Investing

Find your own psychology of investing that matches your own  emotions and account size; then you will be more likely to be successful investor over long term and on your own term.

Read? Pillow Stocks : The Less Stressful Long-term Investing When We Get Some Of Them Right!

Uncle8888 has been waiting till his neck is so long to find the next batch of pillow stocks to increase his lifelong dividend income.

 

THIS TIME ISN’T DIFFERENT: Billionaire investor warns lazy thinking is taking over markets

Read? THIS TIME ISN’T DIFFERENT: Billionaire investor warns lazy thinking is taking over markets


There doesn’t have to be a recession.

Continuous quantitative easing can lead to permanent prosperity.

Federal deficits can grow substantially larger without becoming problematic.

National debt isn’t worrisome.

We can have economic strength without inflation.

Interest rates can remain “lower for longer.”

The inverted yield curve needn’t have negative implications.

Companies and stocks can thrive even in the absence of profits.

Growth investing can continue to outperform value investing in perpetuity.

“The nine propositions reviewed above all represent variations on ‘things can only get better forever,’” Marks wrote. “If they’re the ideas guiding investors today, that should be considered worrisome.”

Though it’s always difficult to predict the timing of an economic downturn, Marks said that he’s always been confident that a recession is on the horizon at some point.

“We’ve always had economic cycles, and I believe we always will,” he wrote. “Eventually, favorable developments will lead people to engage in behavior premised on excessively optimistic assumptions, and eventually the over-optimism of those assumptions will be exposed and the excesses will correct in a period of negative growth.”

“Very soon, the current recovery is bound to become the longest in U.S. history,” he continued. “However, I believe the odds are that it’s closer to the end than the beginning. ... The recovery is likely to go on longer, but perhaps not much longer.”

Marks, known for his prescient investment calls, correctly warned about the 2008 financial crisis and the dot-com bubble implosion. Oaktree Capital had $119 billion of assets under management as of March. Marks has a net worth of $2.1 billion, according to Forbes.

Do we want the Fed preventing recessions?

While Marks went on to cast doubts on the popular idea that the Federal Reserve and other central banks are capable of postponing a recession, he also questioned whether delaying the inevitable was a good idea.

“When I hear people talk about the possibility that the Fed will prevent a recession, I wondering whether it’s even desirable for it to have that goal,” Marks wrote.

He continued: “Are recessions really avoidable or merely postponable? And if the latter, is it better for them to occur naturally or be postponed unnaturally? Might efforts to postpone them create undue faith in the power and intentions of the Fed, and thus return of moral hazard? And if the Fed wards off a series of little recessions, mightn’t that just mean that, when the ability to keep doing so reaches its limit, the one that finally arrives will be a doozy? ”

Such skepticism comes in stark contrast to the confidence exuded by the likes of venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya. An early Facebook stakeholder and investing presence across several industries, Palihapitiya told CNBC at the time that entities like the Fed have used tools like quantitative easing to orchestrate a pacified economy.

“I don’t see a world in which we have any form of meaningful contraction nor any form of meaningful expansion,” he told CNBC in April. “We have completely taken away the toolkit of how normal economies should work when we started with QE. I mean, the odds that there’s a recession anymore in any Western country of the world is almost next to impossible now, save a complete financial externality that we can’t forecast.”

Though perhaps a tempting philosophy for the many investors who’ve spent the past decade cashing in on the prolonged uptrend in hot technology companies unburdened by interest rates, Marks warned that it’s easy for stock prices to climb far beyond realistic earnings forecasts.

“Tech and venture investors have made a lot of money over the last ten years. Thus there’s great interest in tech companies ... and willingness to pay high prices today for the possibility of profits far down the road,” he acknowledged. “There’s nothing wrong with this, as long as the possibility is real, not over-rated and not over-priced.”


“The issue for me is that in a period when profitless-ness isn’t an impediment to investor affection — when projected tech-company profitability commencing years from now is valued as highly as, or higher than, the current profits of more mundane firms — investing in these companies can be a big mistake,” he said.

Singapore 2018 healthcare cost inflation hits 10%, 10 times the economic inflation rate: Mercer report

Read? Singapore 2018 healthcare cost inflation hits 10%, 10 times the economic inflation rate: Mercer report

CW8888: Scary for retirement planning or FIRE

SINGAPORE’S medical trend rate - which measures medical cost inflation - was 10 per cent in 2018, 10 times the Singapore economy's estimated 2018 inflation rate of 1 per cent, according to Mercer Marsh Benefits' 2019 Medical Trends Around the World report.

The economic inflation figure was obtained from the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook Database in January 2019. Singapore's headline inflation officially came in at 0.4 per cent.

Singapore's medical cost inflation was slightly lower than the Asian average of 10.4 per cent, with Singapore coming in sixth highest out of 11 Asian countries surveyed.

Vietnam was top with a 14.5 per cent increase, neighbouring Malaysia increased 13.4 per cent and at the lowest end of the table, South Korea's medical trend rate increased by 6 per cent.


The American human resource consultant's report surveyed 204 insurers from January to March across 59 countries (excluding the US due to different research parameters), asking them for information on the rising cost of medical care in each market as well as the types, costs and frequency of medical conditions that were claimed for by company employees in 2018.

"Health and wellness solutions among corporations in Singapore continue to be under-penetrated or poorly designed," said Neil Narale, Singapore business leader, Mercer Marsh Benefits. "This highlights the potential value of interventions especially among high-risk groups, such as health and wellness programmes to reduce the incidence of disease, and screening for earlier detection of disease."

He said employers could move towards more proactive integrated healthcare offerings which adopt preventive wellness measures, condition management and early intervention measures.

This "will also help employers improve the health and productivity of employees while controlling future increases in medical costs", Mr Narale said.

Globally, the top three health risk factors influencing medical cost remain metabolic and cardiovascular risk, dietary risk and emotional/mental risk.

In Asia, environmental risks were the second-biggest factor due to the effects of high pollution levels in many of the region’s major cities.

Mercer said the number of insurers investing in initiatives to enable quality-focused care that better guides members to the right care options quicker, has more than doubled.

Globally, 63 per cent of insurers are helping members make smarter healthcare choices by providing education, tools and incentives to drive positive behaviour.

9 REASONS JOE 6 PACK CAN’T INVEST LIKE WARREN BUFFETT

Are you also one of those who believe Trainers can teach to invest like Warren Buffet?


Read? 9 REASONS JOE 6 PACK CAN’T INVEST LIKE WARREN BUFFETT

Despite the fact that he draws much of his investment strategy from Ben Graham, Warren Buffett has some tricks up his sleeve. Being the world’s third richest person comes with a lot of perks that individuals off the streets just can’t mimic. Here’s why Joe 6-Pack shouldn’t expect to be reeling in billions like Buffett.


Buffett gets the first call

Individual investors are often limited to learning about companies via quarterly reports, investing newsletters and other publicly available knowledge. Rather than having to seek out expert sources and documents, Buffett has top investment bankers and dealmakers contacting him. Unless an investor is great friends with a pack of CEOs and analysts, they have a slim chance of finding the same opportunities. Berkshire Hathaway gets a jump on the average Joe.

Buffett gets deals other investors don't get.

Simply put, Warren Buffett gets better deals than any other investor in the world. Take his 2008 investment in Goldman Sachs, for example. Buffett invested $5 billion in preferred shares of Goldman, with an astonishing 10% annual dividend. Joe 6-Pack isn’t going to be offered Goldman paper with a 10% coupon. Ever.

Buffett can take bigger risks

With a market cap of $188.5 billion and $41 billion in cash, Berkshire Hathaway can afford to take risks and sustain losses in pursuit of high returns. Said Buffett in one annual letter to shareholders: “we have for some years been willing to assume more risk than any other insurer has knowingly taken on. Indeed, we have a major competitive advantage because of our tolerance for huge losses.”

Buffett buys private companies

Buffett has been known to buy into companies that are not listed on public exchanges, taking them over under the Berkshire Hathaway umbrella. Most investors don’t have the funds or the access to pull off that type of move on any sort of scale. In 2010, Berkshire Hathaway completed the acquisition of BNSF Railway in a deal valued at $34 billion, Buffett’s largest private purchase to date. 2010 was BNSF’s most profitable year ever, with almost $17 billion in revenue.


Buffett has help

Buffett has a team of investors working under him, helping do the legwork on his investments. Top minds like Ajit Jain (pictured here), who helped lead Berkshire Hathaway into the Indian market, and Todd Combs, a former hedge fund manager who joined Berkshire late last year, give Buffett an advisor network that the average Joe just can’t match.


Buffett doesn't need income

Joe 6-Pack wants to retire someday, and will likely need to draw down his savings throughout his golden years. Whereas most investors rely on decumulation throughout retirement, Warren Buffett has no need for such income. As a result, he can hold equities for as many decades as he wants, allowing him to really reap the benefits of slow-burning turnaround stories without worrying about income. Says Buffett, “Our favorite holding period is forever.”

Buffett has influence on companies

When Warren Buffett tells a company’s board how to position their business, it listens. Although he often likes to maintain a hands-off approach, Buffett isn’t afraid to offer his guidance to a company under his watch. Said Jain in 2002, ''Warren and I might have had a 30-second conversation or a 30-minute one, but he has been involved in every piece of business I have done."


Buffett had incredible timing

Warren Buffett has some fortuitous timing working in his favor. Not only was he lucky enough to be a student (and later colleague) of master investor Ben Graham, but he began investing in the aftermath of World War II. At the end of 1956, when Buffett started his own investment firm, the S&P 500 cost $46; now it’s $1339. That kind of timing can’t be taught.


Buffett has an army of followers

When Warren Buffett announces an investment in a company, thousands of followers piggyback on his picks, helping to prop up his investments. Most other investors don’t have the support network to move markets.

Five Lessons from History

Spur 7 June 2019 at 13:00:00 GMT+8

Why it's so hard to be greedy when others are fearful.

Just some food for the Mind. ;)

Read? Five Lessons from History


Lesson #2: Reversion to the mean occurs because people persuasive enough to make something grow don’t have the kind of personalities that allow them to stop before pushing too far.

It’s true for investors. The kind of personality willing to take enough risks to earn outsized returns is generally not compatible with the kind of personality willing to shift everything into muni bonds once they’ve made enough money. They’ll keep taking risks until those risks backfire. It’s why the Forbes list of billionaires has 60% turnover per decade.

Long-term success in any endeavor requires two tasks: Getting something, and keeping it. Getting rich and staying rich. Getting market share and keeping market share.


These things are not only separate tasks, but often require contradictory skills. Getting something often requires risk-taking and confidence. Keeping it often requires room for error and paranoia. Sometimes a person masters both skills – Warren Buffett is a good example. But it’s rare. Far more common is big success occurring because a person had a set of traits that also come at the direct cost of keeping their success. Which is why downside reversion to the mean is such a repeating theme in history.

CW8888: Working hard on how to keep those money won from the stock market by staying rich and not returning too much back to Mr Market. Let see whether it works well!

Read? Beware of Illusion of wealth in the stock market

Every Bull and Bear market may impact you differently. Beware! (Time to refresh)

Sunday, 8 August 2010

Read? Every Bull and Bear market may impact you differently. Beware!

Monday, 24 November 2014

Read? Is Bear Market that Scary???

Bak Tu Dried Noodle

At $3.80; it seen to be value for money and more vegetable for healthier choice! :-)

Else where it is around $4.50 to $5.50

Britain’s best known stockpicker posts apology on Youtube after suspension of flagship fund

CW: Past performance doesn't guarantee success in future market cycles. Market is always changing! 

Read? Britain’s best known stockpicker posts apology on Youtube after suspension of flagship fund

I Can Depend On CPF For Passive Income Upon Reaching 65 In 2021 To 85 in 2041

Upon reaching 65 in Oct 2021; Uncle8888 can depend on his CPF for passive income with draw-down strategy to spend all his CPF money starting from $60K and factoring 2.5% yearly inflation to $100K in 2041 @ 85 years old.

Read? 1M65 CPF OA Possible Or Not???

Merdeka Generation Package Roadshow

If you are from Merdeka generation and also eng eng can go and visit road show to collect goodie bag and do survey to get Ya Kun Kaya Toast set meal.

STI Major Point Since 1990

Sell in May and go away?