Weekend brain food I
I have been blogging significantly lesser these days it has gotten busier at work and I just feel like chilling on weekends instead of crunching data and doing reviews. These days the stock price movements have been very sensitive to the FED and trade talk news such that I find it almost pointless to do much analysis (almost no good stocks I want to get are considered under-valued). Just glad that I have picked up some OUE reit, First reit and Capitaland in the past couple of months, regretful that I sold mapletree logistics.
Here are some recommended readings today for the bored minds:
 |
| Heavy on either extremes but light in the middle |
"This is a problem of scale. For someone ‘big’ enough, the bets on the 10 to 15 per cent side make up for the stagnant 85 to 90 per cent. Let’s say Taleb’s net worth is $5 million. That means he’s got a whopping ~$750,000 to spread around a diversified basket of highly speculative bets. It’s highly likely that at least one will pay off.
For a small investor, that high-risk basket might only hold $10,000 or $20,000, which is nowhere near enough to play this game. Minimum buy-ins mean you’d only be able to place one or two bets; perhaps a handful at most. The chances of holding the winning lottery ticket are tiny, which means you’ll end up with nothing, while the rest of your money moulders away in the bank.
I’m not saying Taleb’s barbell sucks. The point is that when you walk into a gym, you don’t use the exact same barbell as everyone else. Instead, you choose one that suits your ability and preferences. It’s not the specific weights that are important, but the general principles: decide on an acceptable level of downside risk – which will vary from person to person, make room for as much upside potential as your personal circumstances allow, and stay the hell away from the middle."
I wonder how would this change the finance and payment landscape in SG. Will consumers then see better financial deals (like how the telco fight resulted in better deals)? Hmm...
Happy reading! Ciao~
***
Popular posts from this blog
My household expenses rocketed this few months as I was on shopping spree. It's not because of the upcoming GST hike nor the attraction of Year-end sale. Image source: Unsplash It's because of my mom and because our household appliances are throwing in the towel one after another. Considering that it's been almost 10 years since we moved into the BTO, these appliances have been used way past their warranty and already to money's worth. I was surprised that some of them can even last for so long. First is our Samsung washing machine which the Start button spoilt. I bought one of Midea brand from Shopee at a sale. The only dissatisfaction is that it does not have a wash timer, unlike the Samsung one. Since we always wash almost the same load of clothing and use the same mode of wash, we can remember the estimated completion time now after a few washes. Second is the ceiling fan. Our old Fanco ceiling fan wasn't good, it required servicing in about a year's time a
Banks are pumping up interest rates in the shortest time span ever. (I saw that CIMB is currently offering as high as 4.2% on its fixed deposit! A rise of 1-2% in interest from just a few months ago. Darn, I should have waited.) This interest hiking spree is attributed to FED's rate hike , which caused the treasury bills yield to be climbing for a while. Hot money (from past QEs) have been flowing out of risk assets (cryptos, equities, junk bonds etc) to the supposedly more secure assets (bank deposits and gov bonds). Note that periods of past FED rate hikes are in year 1999-2000, 2004-2006 and 2007-2008. Then we see rate cuts after these periods. Inflation and loans interest rates have been climbing too. Layoffs are starting, economy seemed to be slowing. We won't be surprised to see recession , perhaps from next year, if the FED rate hike and inflation continue at this pace. Gotta keep a watch out for recession trends like a rise in the unemployment rate and a decrease in GD
I am finally back again after a 3 months blog hiatus. Not crushed or lost in space. I have started lately on a regular 35-hr work week and on my rest days I was preoccupied with taking care of family, household chores, going out with friends, reading novels and basically chilling. No inspiring topic here, just some quick updates. Inflation Despite most impacted by the rise in food prices, in terms of household expenses inflation, my family managed to get by comfortably enough on tingkat and homecook food. My next highest personal expenditure, after transportation, is meal-out with friends. With my regular work hours, income level has improved with slight sacrifice in terms of energy level. So I figured it justifies having those $20-per-pax dinners occasionally. I am made poorer too by my favourite eat-out food that have gone up in price by 10% or more! Mcd FOF meal $5 --> $5.80, Stuff'd chicken burrito $7.30 -> $8.10, Subway value meal $5.90 -> $6.50. T.T Currently going
What is Curve Finance? Before we dive into the tokenomic, I would recommend reading this article as a primer if you are not familiar yet with the Curve Protocol - Three minutes to take you to understand Curve Finance, the king of stablecoin trading platforms . (The article took me about 13 minutes to read instead of 3!) [I have purposely coloured the texts of various tokens such that it is easier to differentiate them as you read.] CRV is the native token of Curve Finance and distributed as reward for providing liquidity to the protocol. Now let's take a look at the brother protocol of Curve which serves a different purpose - Convex Finance. What is Convex Finance? It is a protocol that allows liquidity providers to earn trading fees and claim boosted CRV without locking up CRV themselves. Liquidity providers can receive boosted CRV and liquidity mining rewards (on Sushi) This means that one can stake their Curve LP token with ConvexFinance to get Convex LP tokens and then stake
I have been watching the bearish market unfold on the sideline, one that whacked almost every single asset class except for oil. Gold was not spared either as its price is sensitive to the Fed's rate hike. (Since it is mostly used as an inflation hedge in an investment portfolio, the non-yielding asset will have continued selling pressure if Fed continues its interest rate hike.) The worst of the bear-beaten lot must be cryptocurrency. Summer seems officially over and I don't know how long will this winter lasts. The massacre just got worse these few days. I was too confident and complacent last year to not harvest a fair share of profits while the sun shines. At the beginning of this year, I still DCA-ed into a few of them and thought maybe the sky was just... cloudy.. Until the hail storm comes, I have finally awoken to the fact that it is really winter now and how one catastrophe can trigger huge ripple effects. Some of my holdings with biggest price percentage decline: List
Disclaimer:
The contents of this blog are author's personal opinions and do not constitute advice to hold, buy or sell any securities, commodities or assets mentioned. I do not guarantee the accuracy and reliability of any information provided, and shall not be liable for any losses incurred from reading my posts or using the materials herein.
This blog may contain affiliate links to external sites.
I love your analysis in this field of business.
ReplyDelete