D+192

Friday night, my sister sat down with me in my room at around midnight. She wanted to have a talk with me. It is regarding her recent job with LFI. Yes, it's the networking MLM company based in Aljunied. My sister had joined the company upon her graduation along with her friends i believe.

So the first thing i asked her was: "Do you know what is Passive Income?" whereby she replied: "Yes, It's about having money even when you don't work." I guess everybody who joins these companies ought to know that at least.

So, the next thing i asked was, "What do you know about Financial Freedom?" These time, she gave me an answer that was a less convincing one. She said: "Financial freedom is being able to do what you want to do."

Although i got to say that she got it partly correct, it is this danger of knowing part of the 'whole' picture that many people had tried and failed in the networking system without even learning the lessons of the outcome. I always believe that be it a success or failure, there is a lesson to be learn behind every event.

We had a moment of silence before i continued speaking. I told her, I actually had been in Networking companies in the past and the reason i left was because i didn't find this 'vehicle' to success suitable to me. or rather, I wasn't ready for it yet. My mindset then was to enjoy the benefits that many 'seniors' had preached about, The car achievers, the freedom of doing whatever you want. But least did i know that my thinking was too naive. I related my experiences of the last to my sister. She agreed.

From my experience, I warned her about setting expectations to financial success. And i was very frank to her in telling her that this company she's working at have a stint name in networking companies. Mainly due to the techniques the networkers used in getting friends.

I wouldn't blame most of these networking companies that telling potential 'recruits' that they could achieve financial freedom in as quickly as 2-3 years. Many had believed based on that. And many had set expectations of financial freedom in 2-3 years. And Many had failed miserably.

So, i gave my sister some suggestions. I told her that the reason many people in the networking line had bad reputation is because not everybody understand the true meaning of networking. They didn't even care whether or not the relatives they're trying to sell their product to, really needs this item. All they think about was closing the deal.

I told my sister, If you want to continue working in this field. You'll have to learn not only the selling techniques, but more importantly, is to train your mind in being able to see the true benefits of networking.

We had a long chat of almost 90 minutes and i ended the night by giving her the very book that changed my life. It's called: "Secrets of the Millionaire mind by T. Harv Eker" I told her to read this book, and after reading it, to tell me what she had learn. On top of that, I have offered my support in telling her to go all out and try this field. If she does have any problem, she can fall back and seek advice from me. That's what being a brother is all about. I'll be here if you need me.

So that's my first ever 'formal' conversation with my sister above her future. And I hope it doesn't stopped at that. I wouldn't be happy until my sister had understand the true meaning of financial freedom and passive income. For the mindset is the only 'vehicle' that can only to taught and trained by the individual herself.

Moving on, I shall share my view on what happened on Friday night in the US stock market.



Before i continue, I guess i should explain that A red bar represents that the trading day had a negative closing results as compared to the opening figure. For example, the opening Dow Jones Index (DJI) on 28th May is 10258 points and the closing figure is 10095.9, we see a closing figure lesser that the opening figure and as such, we concluded that there is a loss and represent it as a RED bar. Vice verse, The BLUE bar represents the closing figure higher than the opening figures and thus representing a gain.

As you can see, I've highlighted the activity pattern for the whole month of May. It is a repeated pattern of cycle. There is typical a weak rebound for every 2 to 3 days of sell-down. And the last trading day was a sell-down over the news that Spain had been downgraded for it's credit ratings.

So, If you had read my previous post, I would classify the Spain news as a negative one which one might say that it could affects the STI come Monday. Again, there have been signs and reports of the recovery/rebounding activity in recent times and whether this Spain news is a knee jerking reaction of sell-down remains to be known.

Let's hope that this market continue to rebound and not forget to catch the trend if the 2nd peak formed and with momentum pushing towards it. Of course, If you are adding positions, I advised in going in with a small amount of capital in case you need to cut loss.

There's this saying in the T3b forum: "Never catch a falling knife" which means that if you want to enter the market which is still volatile, you are not recommended to enter with your full force of capital less you catch the "falling knife" of a sudden downtrend and suffer a enormous cut loss.

With that, I wish everybody happy trading and a positive gain in Monday's opening STI.

D+191

I hope everybody is enjoying this public holiday because i spent mine at home watching the HBO series "The Pacific" by the creators of 'band of brothers". I've got to comment, that the series is as good, if not better. Band of brothers focused their warfare in the European front whereas this series, played on the World War 2 in the Pacific.

The US marines were deployed heavy in the initial assault on the war fronts and some live to tell the story as of what was filmed in this series. I love it, and it reminds me of the movie: "The Last Samurai" because that movie is arguably the BEST movie I've watched. Rather, i would consider that movie a classic because of the combination of modern and traditional warfare. It's the typical Guns V.S. Swords battle that caught my eye and imagination. Documentary movies are very encouraging as it tells a meaning or contribution a person has in history. Take the Movie "Ip Man" for example, Nobody would have heard of his name before the show, and now, I guess many non-martial artist would have as least know about this person.

Well, That's for sharing what i did today while the stock market was close. However, I do monitor the Hang Seng Index (HSI) which is the index for the Hong Kong stock exchange (HKSE). Hong Kong isn't having any holidays today so trading was as usual and here's the Chart i took out.


Today's trade ended with a very big blue bar. So, one may ask how 'big' is big? The answer is to compare with the others you see in the chart. Does it looks big to you?

If you still need convincing over whether it's huge, Maybe numerical figures could help. The HSI recorded a gain of +335.34 points. Now that's considered quite high for a daily trade figure.

You might ask what does the Singapore's stock market got to do with the Hong Kong exchange. Well, the fact is, Financial markets are interconnected. And Singapore's exchange follows heavily with the movement of the Dow Jones Industrial (for US) and HSI (HK).

The reason why Hong Kong is because Singaporeans are not able to buy shares in China. Only the Chinese people from People's republic of china could buy them. However, the Chinese companies are not stupid, They did duel Listing onto the Hong Kong market to make more investment capital. So, it is known to traders and investors that if you wanna invest in China, you'll have to buy shares off the HKSE which is why I am also monitoring the Hang Seng Index (HSI)

Being a trader, many people have different risk appetite and some view a long weekend like this one as a dangerous one to hold stocks given the current volatile situation. And i agree. Fortunately, today's HSI was a positive gain. And we just have to see tomorrow morning whether the Dow Jones is a positive as well.

Should these 2 financial market closes off positively, we could most probably expect a positive opening for the Singapore exchange come monday morning. Of course, There is no such thing as a guarantee. Although the Financial markets are closes, News & rumors continues to flows. What if (for e.g.) South Korea decides to declare War with North Korea over the weekend?

Wouldn't it push for a sell-off the moment monday comes? True or true? TRUE!

I hope that, by writing some fundamentals about stock investing/ trading, i would at least build up some background knowledge as to further analysis and comments i would share here in the future. Of course, anybody is welcome to provide a topic of discussion and i am open to it.

The reason I've changed my writing style and contents to this blog is due to the fact that i want to share my knowledge with everybody. I believe that by sharing what i know, I can help anybody whom happens to pass by and read it. I hope that by posting my comments and analysis here, fellow traders and investors could also learn something.

Although I still consider myself learning, I would also love to share what i know to all my friends. The means to my goal is clear. I've posted this before but i love this sentence so much that i could post this every single post!

"Success is about doing things that you find it beneficial to you and you stick to it!"

D+190

I woke up this morning greeted with a good new that the STI have been on course for rebounding. At lunchtime, i looked at the index and was quite happy that the market is on course for recovery. Whether is it going to be a short recovery or not, nobody knows.

But what i know is, tomorrow is a non-trading day for SGX due to a public holiday. I felt sad. Maybe i should go find a job that pays me higher wages on public holidays and during mondays to friday, I actually felt excited, more so than over a weekend when i know that the financial markets are close. =(

So here are some of my analysis:



You can always click onto the photo to zoom in if you cannot see the details. As you can see, Chart 1 shows that STI traded above the support level i have indicated. Another good news is that there is new peak formed at the top as shown in detailed chart 2 (below)



In chart 2, I've circled the 2 trading highs that eventually formed the peak line and as you can see, the STI actually closes quite near the peak. And on top of that, we've just witnessed a 2 day continuous recovery.



In Chart 3, I've chosen a stock that i had previously traded, Singapore Airport Terminal. I received a email from my broker on some recommendation on this stock this morning and as a result, the stock 'fly away' due to this recommendation i suppose. But anyway, what i'm trying to bring across is that we can't stop rumors, which is why t3b system would advised us to enter only in the 2nd break peak.

I have indicated a small note there stating that the break peak today was the first one. So, If the STI continues to rebound strongly (i.e. a 40 points gain or more), We could see a new peak formed as fast as 3 trading days, with that, we should be clear as to whether this stock could sustain the momentum to break the 2nd peak. So here's my recommendation and analysis from monitoring this stock.

Lastly, I would also like to share a video that i found from the Yahoo! finance page. The person in the video was claiming about how trader's feeling scary in this current situation. He also commented on the low volume being traded.

Thus, I hope you could gain some insights from this video.

I know my post today is a very technical and some of you may not understand what i'm trying totally but i hope I'm able to simplify my words so that even non-traders would know a little.

Cheerios, And enjoy a long weekend ahead!

D+189

As the title says, It's been 56 days since i last post out my Success stories here. I know regardless of how busy i am, I should be reminding myself of focusing on daily success.

But rest assured that although i have not been posting my stories here, my mind is as sharp as ever onto my goals and method.

Sometime in early this month, Chris bought me and Terence and we made acquaintance with one of his mentor, Sean.

Sean specializes in Options trading as well as value investing methods to grow his capital. Of course Sean admits that his results are mediocre but the idea was there, Which is to trade and get passive income.

Me and Terence were introduced into Options trading which we had our own research after the talk. And my sentiments are, Options trading would only be good in the US stocks. Besides, Trading in options would contradict what our Mentor, keane had told us(that is to keep our money in ASIA).

I considered my capital still small to trade regionally, and thus, trading in the SGX is sufficient in the time being.

So, Here's a little catch up on my trading recently, I traded Singapore Airport Terminal, Noble group, SMRT as well as a shorting on Allgreen Property.

I can say that i suffered a hugh cut loss for the first 2 stocks. The Macro Economical factors had make the financial markets volatile. In early April, It was Greece debts hogging all over the news, Then, it came that Goldman Sachs were in a investigation of Fraud.

In May, the whole of Europe were in the news as Portugual, Ireland, Greece and Spain (P.I.G.S) were in a huge budget deficit and requires borrowing from IMF and the European Central Bank (ECB) .

China were also thrown into the lime-light when they reported an inflation rate of 11% which obviously does not help in calming investors nerves. And just this week, We saw on the news between North and South Korea engaging harsh exchanges.

With Newspapers going as far as claiming that the North Korea are ready for war and South Korea having the backing of Japan, US. This certainly doesn't helps much in the timing as many would have thought of 'bad luck' speaking of such coincidence.

So, That was a recap of that happened during the days when i was busy preparing for my exams as well as monitoring the financial market every evening.

I can say that I've made a bad move in trading Noble stock. As because of that decision, I suffered a major cut loss (which is necessary to protect my remaining capital) . It was a move that I didn't seen it coming and all this caught me by surprise. And you can say that I do have troubles in my mind at times when i was feeling remorseful for my mistake.

BUT, I believe that i have the Mental strength to overcome such mistakes. I told myself, i should feel lucky that i suffered such mistakes when i am trading only with a small start-up capital. What would have happened if i had traded with a bigger capital? I'm sure i would have suffered a deeper psychological blow.

This is something that i have to learn and i kindly remind all my friends that if you're trading, train your mind in handling bigger risk appetite and management. A costly lesson like mine might easily makes you shun from stocks forever, period.

Trading is a journey of experiences of emotional control and risk management. I'm taking the positive out of the recent mistake and i believed i had grown from strength to strength with the experiences i had.

There's a saying in the army: "What doesn't kill you, Makes you stronger."

And now, You can be sure that i wouldn't be falling down or giving up on trading this easily.

Despite my recent 'downfall', I will still be posting my views on the Macro issues since the external factors are making the financial market very volatile. Do learn that his is only my views and use it at your own discretion.

On 24 may, Straits Time Index (STI) broke critical support levels which was a sign of 'bears are winning the bulls'.

On 25 may, STI rebounded weakly but nonetheless, a positive gain. My view is that such results are expected to persist amidst the recent events that could raise or take away investor's confidence easily. In short, People are being cautious and most of them are trading on news. The company certainly are doing well, Posting year-on-year profit of more than 40% gains (for some) but people are still dumping their shares.

On 26 may (today), STI continued to rebound strongly and some might argue that the 'deep correction' is over. But What i can say is still the same, With the external events happening around us, Volatility in the market would be here to stay. Although the Bulls may re-appear if the STI continues it's rebound until the end of the week, I believe that the investor's confidence would only be regained if clearer waters are been sighted. Of course, Since I am trading the trend, I would also recommend to monitor some possible 'rebounding' stocks.

And if the STI pullback tomorrow, It would reinforce the idea of people 'shorting' the markets. Some have profited from shorting especially with the recent 'correction' and selldown sentiments. But my advise again to my friends whom are trading, be very careful because we never know whether a technical rebound would take place after the correction.

lastly, Always Set Cut Loss Limits to protect your capital and i must really admit, the fact that your capital is well protected allows you to sleep properly at night!

With this, I shall end my post with a quote i read from the newspaper, Professor Robert Pozen from Harvard University was being asked about how we can overcome this economic crisis and this was a statement that caught me eye:

"When there are very high leverage in the system, It means that everybody is running for the exits at the same time!"