Noob-Trader's Chronicles

Biosenors Chart...

2010-03-24T22:36:00.003+08:00

Idea on trade: Technical Rebound

Bot on 19 March.

Results: No Strength in Rebound. Selling pressure on 24th March. Trades fails... hold 70 cents holds and resume uptrends...

Warren Buffet Wealth by Robert P.Miles

2008-08-06T17:11:00.003+08:00

Warren Buffett Wealth
Having a disastrous record of 50% paper losses from my portfolio with another 3k of realized losses, I been pondering if I am a cut into trading/investing and kept asking what wrong with myself as some peers that I met online achieving a good track record in their investment and one friend of mine who has influence me into stock investing reaping a good profit by both trading and investing...

My friend had mentioned that I have started off using trading techniques without cutting losses, ignoring crucial valuations, suggests that I read some books about investing and recommended me Warren Buffett Wealth – Principles and Practical Methods Used by the world’s Greatest Investor.

This book gave a brief introduction about Warren Buffet, the investment talent he processes and his investment journey showcasing some of this brilliant investment he made since he was young such as reselling the coke from house to house with a decent return on investment of 20%(which later in life he acquired the shares), the joint business venture of pinball machine that boost his wealth substantially, the key investments in GEICO Auto Insurance, Coca-cola and Washington Post.

It also introduces general principles like “Learning from the Best to be the Best”, "one needs to devote his efforts in order to be successful" and shares with us that wealth is created through owning a business. It also teach an important concept of the Down Market Test where the true measure of a successful investor is not a comparison of performance against the NASDAQ, DJI, S&P but rather how well a portfolio performs during down markets.

It then relates the key processes to become wealthy:
- Begin investing and building wealth early
- Have confidence
- Understand accounting and how business work
- Set Goals
- Save, invest, and live below your income
- Read, study businesses over many decades before you invest
- Be a business analyst, not a market analyst
- Concern yourself with what is going on inside a business, and free yourself of any concern with what is going on in the outside markets
- Learn to value business and purchase pieces of them for below what you think they are worth
- Make a list of traits that you admire and before you know it you will become the person you want to be
- Create another set of character traits that you don’t admire which will also remind you of the person you don’t want to be
- Write down the habits you want to develop
- Select your mentors carefully
- Identify what passion you have that could create wealth

It also shows why wealth is created by owning business by giving an excellent example of how the ownership of a business created wealth and how the Barnes Foundation of Philadelphia strict rules against business ownership bankrupt its own funds as inflation drain the funds which only focuses on fixed income securities (bonds).

Then it prompted you to evaluate what kind of investor are you and show define what is an active investor and a passive investor, and the difference between an investor and a trader (speculator). It stated that this is important as it will determine ability to create wealth. Below are the definition of investors and the differences of an investor and a trader (speculator).

Definition of 2 types of investor
Passive investor - not wanting or enjoying the day to day activity of evaluating investments
Active investor - hands on, fascinated, energetic participant who enjoys intensive reading and learning about all things related to finance, business, the economy and the investment world

Stock Speculators VS Business Owners
Business owner is concerned with what’s going on inside the business – with its employees, customers, strategic plan, growth and sales, expense and cost reduction, as well as increasing profits and earnings.

Speculator is more concerned about what is going on outside the business or the stock’s market price: the speculator buys something today in order to sell it later at a higher price. “The sooner the better” is the motto of every trader and speculator. Speculator focus on the price, and owners focus on the business. Speculators are market analysts; owners are business analyst
Question to ask yourself if you are an owner or a trader.
1) Are you concern with the present and future earnings of a business, or are your evaluating the only its price?
2) Are you influenced by reading and research? Or do others influence you? (Following the madness of crowds)

Value investing
Warren buffet and most value investors are by nature independent thinkers and get little satisfaction by being with the crowd. They do their own research and read nonstop. They observe others but do not follow, taking great delight in choosing their own path. Important step is to do some self discovery to determine your investment expectations, your time frame, and your risk tolerance.

Next, it guided us to develop our philosophy (plan) to achieve our results and speaks about the principles and methods Buffet use.

Warren Buffet Philosophy
Rule number 1: Don’t lose capital
Rule number 2: Don’t forget rule number 1

Buffet Investment Principles
1.Know what you own
2.Research before you buy
3.Own a business, not a stock
4.Make a total of only lifetime investments
5.Make one decision to own a stock and be a long term owner

Buffet method (cigar butt method)
Old economy stocks that have one or two puffs of earnings left (businesses that have low P/E with a lifespan of twenty years or less)
Attempt to buy a dollar worth of assets for 50 cents ( buy things for less that they worth)
Work out how much a business will pay you between now until judgment day. Discount that back to today and attempt to buy them cheaper.
Buy business you understand, with favorable long term prospects, operated by competent and honest people and available at attractive prices.

Calculation Method Used
Value Investing – it is about the careful review and calculation of a company’s book value and intrinsic value and its relationship to market value.

Book value is the simple subtraction of assets from liabilities.

Intrinsic value concept—what will you pay for a machine that generates $1 a year for ten years? You wouldn’t pay $10 because you would be just getting your money back over 10 years. You wouldn’t pay $9 today to get $1 a year for 10 Years, which would be a return of 11/1%, or 1% a year. What you would pay is determined by how much you seek in return on your investments. You seek an 11% annual return, which happens to be the long term rate of return o equalities over the last several decades, you will offer $3.52 for this machine.
Other methods: Present Value Calculation or Discounted Cash flow

Ways to evaluate Business
1) First, he looks at the business. Is it simple? Is it in an industry that he understands? Is it a high profit margin business? Any Debt? What is its return on equity?
2) Then he looks at its managers. Are they candid? What are their expansion plans? Are they well financed? How much Business do they own?
3) Then he looks at the market place. What is the business value? Can it be purchased at a discount to its market value?

Finally, wealth building requires that you know the valuation, price or management influence whether you’re buying, you know the management, the competition, and you understand what would be an attractive stock price.

Mistakes from my recent trades

2008-06-18T22:39:00.005+08:00

Lately I have made 2 purchases with some mistakes on them.

I will blog them down and try not to commit the mistakes again.

Trade No 1: Allgreen ( auspicious name for all my counter to be green green turned haywire)

Reasons I brought
Based on valuation, allgreen at that time NAV is slightly above 1.50 with a dividend yield slightly above 4 percent. Seeing such such an attractive valuations, I have enter positions using technical analysis near the horizontal support of 1.09 expecting some tech rebound off the support line. RSI indicates that it is overly sold and stochastic has signals for price to go up but MCAD doesn't has any obvious signal.

Good news popping out in sluggish sector!!!
Demand in the property sector showed signs of weakness in the 1st quarter. This sector has been sluggish since July 2007 due to government introduces development charges on project and soaring materials.

However, lately, our Government had planned to relocate some of its agencies and statuory board out of the CBD vicinity to increase office space and NDB is going to release the news of masterplan in the night where all the developers were excited over it. Seeing the severe drop of stock prices since july high, I believe it is trading at a discount now and was optimisstic over the new masterplan results which would benefit the developers and drive the sector up.

But things didn't turn out well... the masterplan deliver no surprises to the developer and does not have any positive impact. The stocks prices then plunged to 0.99 breaching $1 support before rebounding above 1 and stayed there. I have decided to hold the counter till the next property boom which I hope to be within the next four years.

Mistakes and Reflections.
Although the valuations and technical charts are attractive, I should not have ignore the overall general market sentiment and the property sector which happens to considered the second weakest sector other than finance.... Now have to bite onto my fingers and pray it would fall back to 2003 -2004 prices.

Trade No 2: KS Energy ( The counter that never fails on me)

Well not really a big mistake on this just that i had entered slightly earlier even though I anticipated RSI will hit 30%. However seeing the price is at the lower band of bollinger band and near horizontal support and the mid term support line brings on temptation to make the purchase.

Things to note here will be wheather the 50 days Moving Average will hold. best entry would be after testing the moving averge.

Macd going to cross soon, looking to add more positions tml.

Rebound expectation from Beaten Stocks.

2008-05-23T02:56:00.004+08:00

This stocks has been beaten badly, I feel that it has 'vomit' enough and is seeking some recuperation. For traders, I believe good entry point should be @ 1.6 and exit in the range of 1.68 to 1.70. Futherupside is expected when there are hugh vol near 50 Day moving average.
Do cut losses when 1.57 is breach unless of course you wish to hold.

Similar charts to this are Kim Eng and Starhub

My current watchlist:
GK Goh current price 0.99, 20 cents below NAV.
NOL pending

My Wantedlist
Tathong @ 2.21-2.23
IFS

Career tips: It's okay to be confused

2008-05-20T09:57:00.004+08:00

Perhaps it is because we understand more at a younger age these days; perhaps it is because we are allowed to experience more than we once could have; or perhaps it is because the world is getting smaller and our horizons are getting wider.

Whatever the reason may be, more and more graduates believe that they should...no, need to know exactly what they should do with their career once they leave university. Because many of you do not, you feel you have to "do" something else to help you find your way before you hit the job market. Whether it is taking a year out to travel, doing a Masters degree or volunteering to save the turtles in Venezuela, the reality is you probably will not be any wiser as to your future career.

But before you throw up your arms in exasperation, let me tell you one truth...most people never know exactly what they want to do with their lives when they leave university. Your parents probably did not, your uncles and aunts may not have had a clue, and I surely did not too! It is okay to be confused.

It is okay to be at a loss as to the kind of job you should take on when you leave university for the first time.

When I left university, I had a job in hand with Shell as a Finance graduate. I took it because it was the only job I interviewed for and heck, it was Shell! So I took a leap. My career journey since then has taken me through four career moves in six years but I have definitely enjoyed my ride in between. At 28, I can say I've found the perfect career in a great company that I might stick around with for a while - because I finally understand who I am and what makes me happy career-wise.

Your first few years out of university will be a process of discovery. You might get a job that bores you, is completely out of joint with your style or is in a field that does not engage you. Remember, you are not stuck in one job forever. When you have less obligations to deal with - being married with children, for example, IS an obligation - you have more leeway to make a few career mistakes. It only becomes a negative mistake if you do not learn from it.

Your career is one long journey that starts with your first job. At each job, you will learn new skills and enhance the ones you already have. These skills may not be specific knowledge in, say, database management or medicine. But they could take the form of project management, client liaison or business development - skills applicable in whatever field you are in. You also learn more about your own work style preferences - Do you like to work in a team or independently? Do you have a knack for managing financial numbers?

As you go down this journey, your skills base will build and you will understand your work style better. With each step in your journey, you will be able to focus your career path a little better because you are gaining real-life experience in a working environment. Taking a year out is great to experience life and challenge yourself as a person in different situations, undertaking a Masters will develop your knowledge in a specific field and keep your student lifestyle of studying and partying one or two years longer, volunteering to save turtles will contribute to the earth and your tan line. But if you're looking to figure out what you want to do with your career life, it is unlikely that you will find it doing these things. To get this kind of clarity, it takes a few years living your career journey, making choices, and learning from your successes and mistakes.

One day in a few years, you will wake up and be excited about work because you are doing exactly what you wanted to do. Trust me, when that happens, it's a great feeling!

by Koon Mei Ching

Okay, so its fine to be lost over what a person wanna do but to actually be able to find what a person really wants, the person will need to job hope into a few job to gain exposural. The good point is one get different experience but the disadvantage is they will suffer paycut when they jump to a different field... Haiz "One day in a few years", this quotation is subjective as most people don't actaully find what they like till the end of life...

Lesson in a Declining Market

2008-02-28T23:12:00.003+08:00

Ok back on my previous pick , Gallant, it went haywire as the support line was broken and naturally/immediately become a resistance. I was forecasting on a possiblilty of a technical rebound but it failed to close above the support line and thus went to the other direction. Nevertheless, I will keep on learning and find my system to follow.

In the course of reading, I have come across a valuable article and decided to blog it down so that next time I can refer back:

======Lesson in a Declining Market=========

1. EXPERIENCED INVESTORS USE FEAR TO THEIR ADVANTAGE. Only in markets where people are scared can you buy stocks cheap.

This is extremely true and majority of us have witnessed it. Typical example in 2007 is during march, august, november when panic are seen across the street, and rumours of traders recieving margin calls --->This will be the best time to enter the market as the market is over-reacting to the news and heavily beaten down offering the best margin of safety.

2. I own a private company. If I wanted to buy out my biggest competitor, I would want to pay as little as I could. Investing in stocks is the same thing. Why would I be upset if I could buy them cheaper? Shouldn't I be happy?

Ok, the above is quite irrevenlant.

3. You should enjoy declining markets. Declining stock prices... nervous investors... predictions of impending doom. It's during times like these that you have to keep your head.

BE A CONTRANIAN!!! In order to be one, Cash is IMPORTANT. This bring me to think about Capital Management where one need to keep reservation for such times in order to enjoy declining markets. I have been a victim of not managing my capital wisely and is suffereing now.

4. SCARED MARKETS ARE THE ONLY KIND OF MARKETS THAT CAN MAKE SAVVY INVESTORS VERY RICH.

Facts: Investor Guru Warren Buffet brought Kraft in January. An opportunity to buy severely undervalued blue chips or companies (Household Brands on food and neccessities) that will still have constant earnings through recession and depression.

5. The creeping anxiety most investors feel in a bad market is like a human’s internal "flight or fight" signal. But if you keep your emotions in check, it could make you a lot of money. Most people don't know how to interpret the signal correctly.

This is considered the deepest art for all newbies like me. Generally, noobs will tend to have the herd instinct where we follow the general crowd to buy and alas brought at high and suffer as shrewd traders are selling to us as we buy.

The Five Rules above has emphasis on the psychology aspects on investing and highlight the key aspects on how we should handle our emotions during price shocks in order to benefit it. I will definately keep this in mind and try to applied it in future when I am cash rich!

Hope this article helps you in your investing curve!!!

Gallant: Lousy chart with interesting details

2008-02-21T17:02:00.005+08:00

The stock markets has surge greatly this week. Sad to say, I am not enjoying the ride. But I am glad that i did not do any contra trades for some time.

I was browsing through some charts and come upon something interesting in a downtrend chart. I think it is ideal for a short play on it. Explanation on Chart.

~~~~Accumulating Cash in Progress~~~~

I am One Year Old

2008-02-15T20:21:00.002+08:00

Today marks my one year old in trading and conincidently Singapore also gave its budget talk.

Overall, my portfolio is heavily battled down as I cling on to my holdings ever since i loaded some of them during the peak of 3800... Total realised losses hit 3k (including ard 2.5k of transaction fees). the unrealised losses is daunting too with a figure of around 8k...

Majority of the losses are contra losses due to greed... and no holding power. The unrealised losses is deal to me holding throughout instead of cutting losses a big mistake from a trader style and became forced investor in the process.

As I grow with the market, I understand the importance of fundamental analysis and will try to apply in my investing/trading.

As for the budget small I am only concern about monetary entitlement the government are giving which all citizens are expecting it due to the its relatively good results in 2007. However, it manage to surprised me that with the plan for implementation of subsidaries for part-time students in NUS.NTU, SMU and UniSIM as it promotes continuing education of adults. I hope it will be implemented soon.

Enriching Session With Robert Tay

2008-01-29T23:31:00.001+08:00

I had an enriching session today after I attending a session-$10 organise by ShareInvestor together with my Mentor.

*****1st part - Introduction to CMC Markets ***

This session gave an insight of the CFD firm as above. Basically I know how does CFD works. It is a very useful tools to go short in the market as it is not subjected to expiry like warrants and gave traders more flexibilities(allows them to hold their short positions longer) through their share borrowings service.

New things I learnt are:

1) You may receive interest from shorting.

2) If you are a contra traders, the transactions fees are about 50% lower than the tradition broker and not subjected to GST charges.

3) If you go long, you are subjected to finance charges.

*****2ND Part - Sharing from Robert Tay UOB KayHian Representative****

After a quick dinner, we go on to Part 2, a sharing session from Robert Tay where he gave a recap on his previous sharing session in June and the, a glimpse of the economic/market outlook for the next six months, some general FA and TA.

Recap on sharing session in June and how the market move last six months

- Highlighted that after STI hit 3500 will have difficulties moving further up and july we saw a big price shock.

- the upward trend thereafter is supported by weak volume indicating there is lower participation and the trend is weak.

********Economic/Market Outlook***********

- Japan are already in a recession. Subprime mortgages repercussion are still not over, banks still have alot that they nv declare.

- The decoupling of Asian markets from the US from the news is not particularly true as US is the world biggest consumer and China Main export's client. With the weakening dollar, US will not be able to consume as much as before. This will snowballed and affect the economic growth of India and China.

-Inflation the next big problem. Inflation has risen pretty fast and to contained it, country should rise interest rate. The US is however doing the opposite way... thus it will drive inflation higher.

With the above pointers, the economic upfront is not in a present shape.

*********Basic TA relearn**********

Vol must support price action/trend.

**********Basic FA*********

Companies with high Leverage Ratio, High Price to book, and High price to NAV will be badly hit in a recession.

We went through some examples of chart to see the volume/price relationship and the of the top 30 stocks that have High Leverage ratio, High Price to Book ratio, High Price to NAV ratio respectively. This seminar knock some sense into me as the Art of FA is extremely important

Quote of the day

Inactivity is the best behaviour

2008 second trade

2008-01-24T23:10:00.001+08:00

====Recent Activites=====
Fed Reserve held an emergancy meeting on tuesday and announce a 0.75% cut on the interests rate. Together with the simulus package, Asian Market rallied to ridiculous height where we see HSI rebounded strongly from a low of 21709.63 on tueday to a high of 24,966.17 on thursday ( wide range of 3256.54) and STI recovered to a high of 3050 from 2746( 300 points range). During this 3 days, I saw heavy volatilies on the indexes which are swinging like a roller coasters. Many professional full time traders benefits from such volatilities.

====Jeopardizing Myself====
Again not learning my mistakes - seeing fellows traders share their wonderful profitting encounters has planted in seeds of desires to be like them earning back monday losses. I traded blindly this time and got myself into troubles again... YZJ - realised another 180 of losses as i buy high and sell low once more.... as i read through a possible bad news from our US counterparts data.

YZJ - I am condamning this stock now.... everytime i trade this counter I made losses ( 3 trades up to date mounting -1630.56 on this counter alone)

So far all 95% my losses are attributed by contra trades.... (contitutes by trading on emotions, envy, greed, temptation and stock chasing). My desire to get profits has jeopardize me and my plans. I never learn my mistakes even though I know them. I have no one to blame but myself and is getting rather sick to blame myself.

I REALLY REALLY have to stop looking the the live prices and perhaps block myself from communicating with others....

Procceeding ahead -
1) Restructure my personal finance... my last two trades has inflicted $740 damages to my saving cum expenses( had intend to put them in MMF to grow...) Life's going to be really tough ahead for me as I have to live more fragully keeping track on my expenses.

2) Need to heed fellow blogger LP's advise to keep 6 mths of expenses aside... Also need to heel mentor advices on reading up more and not get myself 100% vested. (Both had thought me alot but i failed to applied...)

3) Been too slothful on learning and my mind is always pre-occupied with other stuffs... Need to get those sorted out as well.

4) Stay out of the market for the time being....

2008 First trade

2008-01-21T15:51:00.001+08:00

====Expect the Unexpected====
Last week, B & B(ben & bush) announce plans to give stimulus package to help the US economy. Pscyhologically, market's outlook will be optimisstic since the government finally get involved to resolve the problem. In additional, the earning season is here once more with major blue chips giving their reports within the next 2 weeks. All this will boost the market.

Such combination has entices me to do open another position in hope for some quick gains on friday. (Greed) I have done my homework and queue to purchase YZJ at 1.44 to sell at 1.50(2 bids higher then the resistance of 1.48) later.. And I was right the prices are within the intra day trade.(1.43 -1.53).

However, I did not manage to get my lots at 1.44... I tried to control my emotion to give it a miss but alas emtions overruled me once more and I chased at 1.50 and plan to sell at 1.55. towards the end of day, it closed at 1.48(resistance zone) not a good sign but i held on to my belief of the key reversal in price.

This morning, I felt something is wrong when I saw heavy selling( had the chance to offload at 1.45), however, I still stubbonly cling on to it and hope it will reverse soon. After lunch, my face turn green when major support of 1.43 was broken, within an hour it raced down to 1.38 ( when trade turned wrong I should have do a market order at 1.42 but i didn't...)

Eventually, I manage to sell at 1.40 near aug low..... felt like a someone gave me a heavy punch on my face....

****Every Prediction is not 100%, you'll never know what Mr Market it up to... *****

Punting Goes Haywire

2007-12-06T19:38:00.001+08:00

===Ferrochina===
I have close my position for ferrochina locking a 5 bids profit. This is inevitably bad as it will give more temptations on the quick gains. And that was what has happened, now I have another open position deep in the red didn't manage to cut losses due to HOPE. Could have lock in some profits but I woke up late as i was on leave today.
Really have to stick to the screen and be very nimble...
Seems like JP Morgan dumping shares....

Will need to cut losses tomorrow or on monday.
Indicators on the charts is sucky and yet I entered into positions.

I am punished for not being discipline and not following my system again.

====Punting====

2007-12-03T21:25:00.000+08:00

===News Revolving A Protrader====
Ok, this ultimate trader is now being charge for managing a fund without a proper license. In my opinion, I feel that he is a solid trader but his methods are to the extreme end which is not really suitable to me.

I had attended the session on his DIFF system thought by his student with Mentor. Personally i find the price is not worth the $$ as most of the time, they talk about market psychology where we can learnt through books.

===Punting===
During the weekend, I have analysed some charts and a few of them (FC, N**) are showing signs of reversal and thus I have set my mind to punt on one of them. This mentality emerged into my brain due to the my mentor successful punting in Noble last week. You may say that I am driven by greed once more but I am in a desperate situation...

Being confident with my analysis, I set to queue a few bids above the support and manages to get it in a short time. To me that is not surprising as I believe that contra players are out to close their position on the strong gap up and I am still optimisstic even when the price falls 3 bids below my purchase price...

However, things starts to turn sour in the late afternoon where the general market STI decline from the strong sentiment in the morning closing its gap up and my screen is a sea of red. This has inevitably worried me... I really wondered what went wrong.... I'm regretful of my actions once more...

How I can only pray the DJI give a fanastic results tml morning....

Financial Crisis

2007-11-30T23:13:00.000+08:00

Been figuring out how to have a 3 column template for my blog for a week but couldn't achieve it... XML looks simple but hmm not that easy after all....

===Financial Position+++
Ok I am in deep shit now... Had not been managing my cash well... With my $$ struck in the market and my upcoming school fees, my savings is totally exhausted....

Have to look for loans already..... I am out of the league for stock market for the time being, a long time perhaps....

Had to look for sideline as well...

Survey About Me

2007-11-19T01:00:00.000+08:00

Came across this interesting survey from a fellow blogmates. My ReSULTs:

You Are a Pegasus

You are a perfectionist, with an eye for beauty.
You know how to live a good life - and you rarely deviate from your good taste.
While you aren't outgoing, you have excellent social skills.
People both admire you - and feel very comfortable around you.

What Mythological Creature Are You?

Portfolio Q3 results

2007-11-16T18:24:00.001+08:00

===Earning Season and World's Insight===

This quarter earnings seasons do not have much impact on most of the stock prices even when decent earnings are reported in fact most if not all went down even with remarkable results. The reason is obvious as the subprime woes got back into the scene making the worlds' economy gloom. With Expert Fund Houses like Merril Lynch, Goldman Sac, Citigroup & UBS credit woes falling beyond analyst expectations, the entire world is shaken. Thought that's the worse, you are totally wrong, the rising oil prices and the weakening dollar has added more stress to the world.

====Back in Singapore===

No doubt Singapore has enjoyed a robust growth in the economy but with all the dark clouds over US, the earnings on some companies looks ugly. A significant element that lower profits of serveral companies to the extend of making losses is the FX losses. The has affected the results of several companies such as Labory Marine, SembCorp Industries, Aztech ...etc results, which affect the growth of my counters.

===Aztech Financial Highlights===

Comparing 07 Quarter 3 to 06 Quarter 3

Revenue has increased from 8.9% from 61954 to 67495. With an increase in Revenue, COGS will naturally rise. However, the Group's COGS went up higher than its revenue with an increase of 12.1% from 49106 to 55050. This will definately bring the profit margin down and indeed the group reported a decline of 3.1 percent in the Gross Profit. It is alarming for investors and the management do need to look into the situation immediately to salvage the future growth.

Looking deeper, the group reported a significant increase in operating expenses. Other Operating Income has surge tremendously, increasing a 37.7% from 446 to 614. The figure is a very small in the overall picture and I find that this segment is relativly unimportant as it is not their core business. Selling and Distribution Cost has increase slightly, 2.1% from 2050 to 2093, which I feel is a reasonable figure. Next, the main attribute that erodes the earnings is the Administrative Expense(No idea what segment should be included here) where we saw an increase of 24% from 5232 to 6488. Finance Cost has gone down a bit, 10.7% , from 634 to 566.

From its further segmentation, I believe that the Administrative Expense consist of it's Provision of Doubtful Debts which amount to 579(previous year don't have), the Exchange Losses which surges 143% from 310 to 754, and the increase in Amortisation of Deferred Expenditure of 65.3% from 648 to 1071.

Other details are:
Decrease in Interest Income(2.4%) from 170 to 166
Decrease in Interest Expense(16%) from 531 to 446
Increase in Depreciation of property, plant and equipment(20.8%) from 1062 to 1284
Decrease in Loss on disposal of plant and equipment(22.2%) from 9 to 7

Altogether, the Quater Net Profit has decline 28.6% from 5030 to 3591.

The Group has provide explanations for the decline in profit.

A slowdown in orders from a key Contract Manufacturing customer in Asia Pacific region
The appreciation of Renminbi as well as rising labor costs and overheads in China, contributing to higher operating costs
An additional exchange loss of S$0.44 million due to depreciation of US dollar against the Singapore dollar
Rising commodity costs affecting gross margin
Provision for doubtful debts of S$0.58 million from 2 customers

From the above factor, I am very concern on the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th point. This factors are systematic risk which the company are unable to control and will keep acting against the company diminishing their future growth. .

Finally pertaining to the 1st and last point,I hope that the Management will need to ways to improve their sales and access their customers carefully to save themselves from giving their customer free stuffs(Provision of Doubtful Debts)

P.S. Tough Adventure on Financial Analysis

Bersek Mode

2007-11-10T01:00:00.001+08:00

Market is self correcting... I wonder why? It seems that the subprime story is overdoing its impact... WHERE'S THE END RALLY???

Portfolio status - 24% wipe out...

I am going crazy... Severely Burnt.... Felt deeply regret for exploring the unknowns... PPL just laugh at me and I hate it....

Lost.....

Conversation

2007-11-06T18:42:00.001+08:00

====A chat with my friend/mentor====

My friend cum mentor ask me how's my warrant and replied as usual another loss and that I could reduce my losses if I had not rush to sell earlier. And he told me it's better to earn then to lose... (who will like to lose money? duhz)... I then replied it is difficult to earn from the market... and he answered that it is difficult to earn in this market...

I then say I aspire to be like him can earn from most market conditions and grumped about my hugh losses and state about my weak emotions in trading. He highlighted to me that it may be my analysis instead of emotions... and note me on there is there is no such things as quick profits.

He then ask for my Observation, where I answered STI hovering around support lvl of 3670 and seems like consolidating at that level and later jio me to join another course where I decline as I am utterly out of cash and tell him to teach me after he attended.. He then tell me the system is good, wanna to learn must learn from the best... and mentioned that the fees is cheaper then what I attended before.

I answered that the system may not be suitable for me as its for pro trader who have the luxury to trade on a full time basis. Futhermore attending the course now is useless to me as I do not have the lifeline to trade futher... Another thing I observed from the system is one has to be nimble in the trades and I personally find that (e.g STI warrants) it may require a hugh caps in order to beat the transaction fees.

My friend/mentor then state that i am lack of confidence... and I response in an anguish mind to him how to be confident when my portfolio is down 21 percent...

Then he went along pointing the pros of the system like short term swing play and that TA is about entry and exit where I highlight on the cons that it requires a strict cut loss discipline and in my states, I cannot bear to cut further losses.... (one mininal loss- transaction fees will be from 54-60).

I then go on to state that both of us begun differently(He - FA, Me - TA) and have different track records. He has made consistant profits while I made the latter, consistant losses and that is a hugh difference. He mention that he dun speculate like me, I think he does speculate some times though and say my downfall is due to greed.

I then reasoned with him that I do stock chase due to the fact that it acted on my anticipation and gave me an assurance to buy because when I buy a stock with same analyse, it just goes down... and then he say I have committed all the taboos in trading....

Personally, I do not think that I am greedy (as i always cut my profits) but is just anxious in recovering my capital...

Now with a mountain of losses and no lifeline avaiable, I am deeply despair and felt that all the efforts I have put in does not pay off at all... this makes me severely sick of the market...

Grave Mistakes...

2007-11-06T11:23:00.001+08:00

=== Lock another 150 losses ====
DJI vomitted 356.29 points last friday. And recover about 20 points on sat.
From what I observe, dips like this dun just come in one wave, and news of bad results from citigroup will definately cause another tumble when it opens trading on monday.

With such anticipation, I have join the putties bandwagon in hope to have a fruitful ride. In a rush-headed mind for profits, I have overlook the ISM report and its impact on DJI.

Early warnings were send out yesterday when STI tested 50 days MA and did not decline further after HSI closes with a deep drop of more then 1500 points, instead it retrace back to 3670 support lvl. At that point, I still foolishly held on to hope and took the gamble.

===This morning===
DJI closes 51 points down. To me, it seems ok where I should be able to enjoy the ride down. To my dismay, it went the other way round!!!

Trader Instincts
"When the trades goes wrong, you have to rush for the emergancy exit!!!"

My margin of risk was compromised and thus I took my losses before HSI opens as HSI is usually a driver to STI in either direction(decided not to take the gamble).

Mistakes:
Herd-Following
Panic buying/selling(brought at day high/sold at day low)
Traded on emotions/greed

Unstable State Of Mind....

2007-11-01T10:21:00.001+08:00

Fed has cut its interests rate by 0.25%. SO What!!! My counters still hantakaki ard their prices.

I am in a berserk mode now... as I am being defeated yet again... With the same analysis of prospective counters, those that I brought goes down! Those that I never buy, goes up. This is driving me Crazy...

Lately, I have done some analysis and felt like doing some contra on Ferderal, NOL, and ChinaAElec, but due to the facts that what i buy will goes down, I did not make those trades and in the end saw them goes up as what I have anticipated.... DULANZ....

Attempting to ease my drought seasons, I follow some of my Mentor trades... But seems that I have been cursed, of so many of his winning trades, I just kept hitting those losing one.... Faintzz

In this unstable state of mind, I begin to chase stocks in my watchlist like Berlain Laju.... but quickly withdrew my order as I know it will be a mistake to trade on emtions/impulse...

Haiz... Seeing my holdings without any positive movement is getting on my nerves...

The Feeling Inside Me...

2007-10-30T11:34:00.000+08:00

====In the Market Today====
As mention in my previous posting on the importance of Sector In Play! Today we get to see how powerful it is with all the constructions, commodities and marine sector surging up significantly.

Argh... I am 100 vested cannot do anything even when I saw a buy signal in Ferderal yesterday. It have move in the direction I anticipated... Still got more room to moved up... and thoughts of contra filled my mind now...

haiz... Main issue now is that there will be having a fed meeting tomorrow and it is a gamble that the fed reserve will cut rates... and the other towering issue is the unrealistic balloon floating over the Hong Kong Island...

Risk: Extreme High esp when I do not have any credits to pay off.. better keep my fingers off the button...

Problems Young Investors faced:
- Limited Capital
- Fear & lack of confidence...

News Flash

2007-10-29T22:09:00.000+08:00

====Property Curbs====
In an attempt to cool things down, our government have step in to intervene hot property market, making the current deferment scheme more rigid for home buyers. The reason behind it is to make the homes more affordable the locals??? Hmm, I wonder how...

Nevertheless, this has brought a deep impact on our property players in Singapore where we saw most of them topping the top 30 losers today. I think this sector will sleep through the winter till next year.

With the government's target to achieve a 6.5 million, it will definately be back in play next year.

====Labory Being Taken Over====
News of this lucrative Marine and Oil Company being taken over by Dubai Drydocks has sparken up the prices in Labory. Hmm but analyst see the offering price too low????

Hmm, so far counters that speculations beign take over all cheong(Ezion by Ezra, Chartered Semiconductors by Temasek Holdings)

====CNA DMG Analyst Report====
Aztech got hugh contracts for its ADSL modem in Northern America and expects to clinch onto a futher 2 billion worth of contracts. As of now, factory are 100% operated.

12 Month Target Price: 0.51 (Oh My God!!!!)

Papa Bear Knock out!

2007-10-26T23:42:00.000+08:00

====Market Talk====
STI has gap up and close at 3771.55, just nicely above 3750 short term resistance. This largely due to the positive closing of DJI in their last two trading session. Tonight Technology Giant Microsoft will be reporting its earnings, its' new product Microsoft Vista Earnings will definitely boost up DJI. Thus, I believe that Papa Bear has been knock out already and the bull regime will assumes with the earnings season ahead.

Review on the week actions: Marine stocks, Commodities, Contructions take turns to soar...

===My Regrets===
Loading up ChinaEnergy during the bearish tone is my biggest regret... All along, I have known and been told that Commodities, Constructions, Marine & Oil were the sectors in play and what I have brought doesn't belong to any of the sector mentions... That's very Dumb of me As I did not applied what I learnt from Master Dec/Mentor Neo which focusing on the sector in play and buy relevent stocks.( Need to slapped myself for that)

What all I can do it to wait for ChinaEnergy to be appreciated....

===Hopes and Wishes===
- First ,to offload Longcheer when opportunities comes!
- Hope that my counters can get into the green zone soon.

===Plans Ahead===
Thereafter I will revamp my portfolio carefully as spreading my little capital over so many counters(over-diversified) does not bring in profits effectively.... Will reduce my counters...

"You do not need many counters to bring in small profits, you just need one or two to bring in big profits"

Will definately also focus on Risk Management too as my capital is small.

Investing in myself by reading up more books in the after exams!

====Extras! Extras! Interesting Counters===
ASL Marine, LaboryMarine, Jaya Holdings all trading near resistance, high possibilites to break out!
Olam Rebounding Up from Moving Averages.
Noble Group assuming uptrend.
Midas possible break out from Moving Averages.
Golden Agriculture Testing Resistance. PineAgriculture at support level.

Aztech...

2007-10-25T10:23:00.001+08:00

====Aztech, A Prospective Counter that Sunk...====
The images below are excerpts from SIAS research in july. The report(figures and future prospects) is pretty impressive and has attracted me to buy.

Other driving factors: Provider for Singtel Mio and Skape phone.

Summary:

1st half 2007 Net Profit up 25.2% compare to 1st half 2006. Deducting the one-time exceptional gain in 2006. It up by 45.4%!!! Impressive results!

Financial Position is stronger than 2006(see images for figures) indicates a good and stable growth.

P/E ratio stand at 13.8, which is the second lowest among its peers. Industrial Average P/E is 18.1. Lowest P/E stands at 11.5, Highest P/E stands at 25.2.

SIAS give a TP of 0.87!!! I brought at 0.575, if hit target will give me a yield of more than 50%!!!

====Q3 Results====
The 3Q results is totally not fanastic.

Revenue rose 13.6% to S$185.13 million when compared to 2006

Net profit increased only 3.1% to S$12.62 from 2006

Quarter-on-quarter basis, the Group witnessed a 8.9% increase in turnover to S$67.50 million

Quarter-on-quarter basis net profit declined 28.6% to S$3.59 million....

Credit Agricolor has sold off their holdings and brought a significant drops to its stock prices... The only comforting news is that the company and its' directors kept buying back shares which indicates that they are confidence in the future growth.

====Actions====
An Big Mistake Trusting Brokerage Research(A repeatation of LongCheer...)Keep this counter in my locker and take whatever dividends they give...

Time of Volatility

2007-10-24T22:40:00.000+08:00

====Swinging Market====

Last Friday, DJI went down by 366.25 points to close at 13522.02. Whao the black monday effect is so great. The festive mood has also spread to STI on Monday 22/10/2007, where we have a gap down and another further decline to 3632.98 for the 1st hour before HSI comes to our support which helps us end the the day with only 35 points down.

Then came tuesday, DJI manage to close slightly higher last night and we get to enjoy some ride up the index with the support from HSI.

Last night, DJI manage to shoot up due to the strong earnings from Apple. This has boosted our index and STI manage to gap up today. However, HSI start to lose its strength and STI got its beatings as well, managing to close at 1645 near the 1650 support this support will not hold now...

More reports(beatings) to come in US:
MBA Purchase Applications (wk10/19 , 2007) Oct 24
Existing Home Sales (Sep , 2007) Oct 24
DJI - 168 as at 11.20pm

=====Actions====
As the saying goes"Volatilty is your friend" and I am out to buy on weakness during such times.

And I got to pick up China Energy yesterday. With the purchase, I am 100% vested again!
Chart below:

Today, it manage to gap up but has closed lower.... I can only hopes that weak holders are out of from the previous selling... and it can hold at ard 1.32....

Haiz a jinx again... failed to anticipated further decline due to US report.

Tomorrow Aztech report earnings.... due to market sentiments, positive results will not have any impact on the counter....

Portfolio status: Down 15%...

SnapShot of See Hup Seng

2007-10-17T23:37:00.001+08:00

See Hup Seng Ltd provides corrosion prevention services for the marine petrochemical & chemical and construction industries.

With the booming marine and construction industries, I believe SeeHS will be able to flourish with the services it provides. May need to hold long to yield big profit.

Mission Failed!

2007-10-17T17:14:00.001+08:00

====Market Sentiment====
Today market sentiments is a total inverse of yesterday. We saw STI diving down from previous closing 3,810.72 to 3,735.39 just before 10a.m. Then, it seems to have found some treasure at that level and slowly rises back to the surface of the water to close at 3,839.73 making a +29.01 gain. This is particularly caused by ever strong HSI which guided it up to the ship and get its' way back to the north-bound course.

====Actions====
(1) Shorting IPO
Today's debutee, ChinaOilTech open at $1.20, a significant increase gain of 100% from its IPO price at 0.60. Like most IPO, excitment has catalyst it up to $1.35 at the beginning of the morning.

To me, it is overly price and thus I begin to execute my plan to short it! 3 try of market sell at prices above $1.20 were missed.... And eventually at 9.45a.m, I shorted it at $1.09... with the belief it will go down beyond the day low of $1.

Prices have flucuate between 1.03 to 1.13 till 4.20p.m. , thereafter, it goes up to 1.15 and eventually close at 1.13. I have stick to my belief that it will goes down below $1 around 3.30 P.M., the time that market tend to have lots of selling. However, it did not even hit $1... I had become weary and set my buy queue at 1.06... which it only manage to touch but my buy order did not get through... Finally, at 4.25 p.m., I have to accept my mistake to realise yet Another LOSS of around $86 by covering my positions at 1.10...

Again, I have to thank Mentor Neo warning me that BB be back to push the price after a strong HSI closing at 4.30P.M. If not my losses will me much more.

(2) Buying On Dips

As mention in my previous posts, small corrections are the best time to buy on dips. Personally, I do have a few counters to purchase in mind to ride the year end rally and settle for Courage Marine queuing at 0.485 at 12.00P.M. (Notice that I have set my buy queue at a late time, this is because I am overly engrossed on my shorts position and forgotten my plan).

The counter manage to hit 0.475(ML entry price: super strong support) in the morning and I have missed it(reason above). By the time I remember my plan, it was at 0.50... I then set it at 0.485 in hope to get it in the noon sell-down.

During the noon, the lowest it got was 0.49, needless to say, I did not get it.

Conclusion: Both plans had failed!!!

===Lessons===

In my desperate state to recover losses, I have make a risky attempt by shorting. I was highlight that I did not calculate my risk well.

(1) At 60cents, ChinaOil Tech P/E was 20(consider high). However, its peers is trading at a P/E ratio of 40. Therefore 1.20 is reasonable...

(2) I know that PowerHouse is shifting from the States to China and HongKong. And I have neglect a little on HSI market sentiment and went against the trend, I should have release on weakness when I am ITM. Being stubbon and holding on to my beliefs is a mistake.

(3) As shorting is taxing, I forget about my intial plan to buy on dips.

(4) One must not be greedy to lock profits when shorting.

===Feelings/Thoughts===

Till now, I feel like a jinx(being negative) and always wondered how I am able to earn like my peers to earn from the market. My long recovery journey seems to be NEVERENDING and I felt very frustrated/depressed about it.

When will this be over??

Personal Comment:

INVESTING IS ONLY FUN WHEN YOU ARE EARNING, NOT WHEN YOU ARE IN MY DREADFUL STATE OF LOSSES

The Awaited Correction

2007-10-17T00:11:00.000+08:00

==== Small Talk in the Market====
Yesterday(posted after 12am), we have experienced great volatility in the market where we seen a Morning Glory where STI open at 3,826.81 running up to 3,856.36 which later become a Looming Afternoon when it got tired and slips to a low of 3,788.88 before closing at 3,810.72.

===What Happen and Thoughts===
This has caused a great commotion in the midst of the bullish market and we saw a hugh selldown across the market.

The possible cause may be
1) The awakening of the credit woes in US.
2) The Uncertainties of the Fed Meeting in the weeks ahead on 31st Oct.
3) The fall may be a memoir of Black Monday on October 19, 1987.

Well, this is inevitably good for me as I am waiting for the bear to strike from my sale of Lian Beng. With this pullback, I hope to get some cheap bargains to ride the year end rally in Nov.

I am very interested to see how counters like Courage Marine, Sky Petrol(Fund House just entered), Ezra(just posted good results) and of cos China OilField Technology(IPO start trading) will react with the negative sentiment, especially when the experts in ShareInvestors are triggering the sell call.

Of course, the more adventurous can try to short some counters tomorrow for quick gains.

Quickies for shorting
Raffles Education
UniAsia( left peanut)

SnapShot of Hiap Seng

2007-10-16T14:14:00.000+08:00

Quick Analysis of a undervalued stock.

P.S. For Bro Max(insider brought at 0.795)

Wishy-washy

2007-10-16T11:44:00.000+08:00

I have been wishy washy in trading(lack of confidence)... getting more and more conservative with my buyings(fear)... and not following the primitive system of mine. I always have this mentality that I can get the stocks at a cheaper price(those who knew me knows that i usually set 3 bids away from open price and I seldom get them) thus always failed to buy those stocks and they flew away without me.This has made me lose lots of profit.

Today, another counter long in my watchlist flew away again. That is Courage Marine... I have been bioing that counter below 40 cents since the correction in July/Aug and today Big Fund House, Merril Lynch has entered into it, making the price shot up to 0.525....

Well, too late to enter again..... Haiz....

Investing is Fun?!?!?!??

2007-10-15T15:44:00.000+08:00

Today, Mentor Neo have said to me that "Investing Is Fun". I totally rejected the idea as my journey to now, is not enjoyable... and I am still in a dreadful state, still trying to recover my losses...

Investing is only fun when you are earning. However at my state, I do hate the game alot... Throughout my journey, I have no doubt made mistakes and suffer the losses in vain. I do know my mistakes and is trying to learn from them, preventing myself to make the same mistakes.

However as I continue, I begin to doubt myself...

I have constantly analyse charts and try to update myself with the latest news. I have did alot of analysis for prospective counters before my entry. However, the counters always failed me when after I brought. Then the irony about it is, when I analyse and never buy, it went up.... These has make me pondered alot before making making any trades.

Another Trading Mistake

2007-10-14T23:48:00.001+08:00

====Lian Beng Blasting Higher & Higher====

Just when I thought I got a good price by selling at day high on Thursday, Lian Beng has make yet another miracle on Friday!!! Argh!!!

Fridays are usually sell down day as people (mostly speculators) do not want to hold through the weekend. I am surprised that the highly speculated Lian Beng can yet hit another record high today when we have 558 losers out of the 825 counters in SGX.

This may indicates that
1) TA and FA is not 100% and highly price stocks will become more expensive as long as there is high demand on it.

2) It is hard to time the market

3) I have not learnt well to predict the trend.

Lian Beng New Chart Below:

Looking at the chart above, I realize that I have made a mistake in my analysis. I failed to see that the trendline is still intact....I must admit that to a certain expects, Fear has gotten me into selling Lian Beng due to the fact that many experts have analyze about the minor pullback in mid October. This only shows that my psychology to deal with the market is weak...

Sale of Lian Beng

2007-10-11T23:34:00.001+08:00

==== Small Talk in the Market =====
2 and a half mths has passed since the last correction in late jul/early aug where we see a sharp decline in STI from an all time high of 3700++ to 2900++ breaking the 200MA support.

Back to present, we managed to see STI breaks into new record of 3900+ into the uncharted region yesterday. Several analyst feels that he recovery is way too fast and predicts there may be a pull back in mid Oct.

During the week, STI has gapped up on two occasion only to closed lower due to the profit taking sentiment in the market. Just yesterday, STI hit its high of 3906 and close at 3814 (almost a hundred points down). It may be a sign of warning.

====Personal Experience====
As a beginner, I am alway heavily vested in the market. This has made me got caught in the two market corrections where my holdings got struck. From the experience, I learnt to be smart and decided to lock some profits to safeguard myself against the forseeable correction ahead.

Looking at my holdings, I have only 2 counters(Lian Beng & STI ETF 100) that are on profits. This scale down to only one choice - Lian Beng - as its the only one that I could liqudate into cash. I have already do my research on Lian Beng and its peers before selling it. (see below)

===Personal Analysis===

Overview of P/E (Sources: Straits Times, 10th Oct, Wednesday)
CSC Holdings: 43.1
Chip Eng Seng: 34.2
LC Dev: 55.9
Lian Beng: 77.3
Yongnam:63.9

Comparing among its peers, Lian Beng has the highest P/E. It is very risky for investors enter into it now.

Constructions Charts

All the charts above shows a possible downtrend. It may be a good time to lock profits and entered on dips during the correction.

New Securities Account!

2007-10-05T23:53:00.000+08:00

===Small talk with securities trading account===
We have seen/hear news of technical failure in securities trading platform from time to time when there are exceptionally large volume of trading on the trading day itself – these days are usually crucial to investors/traders as majority of them happens on when there are price shock/correction in the market. The technical failure results investors/traders to lose significant amount of profits, eating into their profits and the extreme worse cases go to margin traders where they could not cut their losses. Thus, it will be best to have a reliable securities company trading platform and perhaps diversify your trades with different trading platforms.

Personal experiences
I have been trading with POEMS since Feb. From my experience, I feel that it is simple and easy to use especially for beginners like me. It offers investors/traders a wide variety of financial instruments from the most common stocks, bonds, treasury bills, unit trust to the sophisticated instrument, forex. However, I have encountered some cases from primarily where live prices system crashes and cannot be shown or companies name cannot be display on live prices to the worse where I cannot log into the system for a few hours during the trading day.

This is especially annoying as I cannot manage to protect my profits and cut my losses and watch my counters prices drop sharply from the SGX website where I can’t do anything (Still got another alternative: call your broker place your order which incur a higher transaction fees). I had complained about this to Mentor Neo and he suggested to get another trading account as POEMS trading platform is usually unable to handle large trading volume on crucial day.

Recommendations
He has recommend Lim & Tan Securities and iOCBC Securities to me and emphasis on Lim & Tan securities as they are having a promotion now. The promotions give a 50 NTUC vouchers and 6 months free subscription to ShareInvestor Account after completing 3 trades with them. WHAO! That’s a good deal as you can get access to a range of analyzing tools and comprehensive information of stocks information from ShareInvestor website. As for iOCBC, it offers free SMS alert features for free whereas the rest need to redeem points for the feature.

Action
With such attractive benefits and features, I have applied for both last week and managed to get my Lim & Tan Securities trading account today and iOCBC has rang me up to inform me that my account will be ready by next week. :)

"Too Fast Too Furious" Week

2007-10-05T17:42:00.000+08:00

===Small talk in the Market ===
China stocks legacy ended briefly on Tuesday where most counters fall sharply on Wednesday after a big gap up. The rally is set due to China week long holidays as they celebrate their National Day. Major indices kept breaking new highs for 2-3 consecutive sessions?!?!?! This is very alarming as Dow Jones was one of the indices which broke record high even with its credit risk deficit….. Hmm where is the connection???

Amidst in the rally, we saw some spectacular performance in the constructions sector who follow the properties giant rally last week since the review of booming property article from Business Times on 27/4/2007. The most amazing play would be ei-nets… which make almost a 500% yield comparing it prices on 20/09/2007 to the prices today.

Personal thoughts/views

On the whole, the market is enthusiastic for the rise of the sleeping dragon for the 1st half of the week until the fever was stop. Haiz, we are not HSI ultimately…. this is extremely bad for me as I hope to release longcheer among the rally…. Have to keep in my pocket now... will look forward to release it in the year end rally. I only hope that Dow Jones (major concerns for the world economy) does not interfere with the year end rally….

Along the way, I have pick up Ouhua which I mentioned in my previous postings. I was really happy to see it rises 10 cents from my buy price but good things always have short time framed and it decline sharply to 0.525 -0.535… Short term support now at 0.535… May have to release soon for other attractive counters before it hit my buy price and goes beyond it…

As for ei-nets, personally I have received tips (from someone who is right so far with his previous 3 tips) to buy in August but I did not purchase it as I have doubts over it. Furthermore, the company has reported losses lately and makes me unconvinced with the tips… Well with the rise, it has proved that his tips are reliable… Though I have missed the opportunity yet again, I was not upset as before because it will make me uncomfortable to invest in it.

Next constructions, well I have realized a little late that the booming news for our properties giant will brings in the construction play. Though I did not make any new purchase in that sector, I still enjoy the ride from -Lian Beng- as it secured another contract from Kovan development site bringing up its book order to 575 million. This also makes me experience something new as it has broken new highs where I am not able to predict its resistance level from the chart…. Now I do not know when to sell.

Once again from the chart we see that prices reflect before news and know that it’s a dirty game after all with the 3 consecutive volume spikes from the charts!

Note: Previously, I had set my sell target at 0.58 before July correction, have now change my perspective on it and decide to ride on the trend.

Finally, I have dropped my target to even out my net losses before year end. I feel that this has given myself too much pressure and affect my psychology in trading. From this, I learn that a little pressure is good but too much make one person go haywire.

==== 1st OCT 2007 ==== IRONIC DAY

2007-10-01T17:06:00.000+08:00

A dreadfully sad day for me where i ponder over my earlier decision... Now, I am feeling some regret lingering from my soul....

We have a good bullrun in the exhange today with china stocks conquering the top gainers and my capital are rolling back to me. Yet with these, I am not feeling the joy that I should have felt......

something is gone and missing forever...

Stock Chasing

2007-09-28T16:55:00.000+08:00

Firstly, the bad news, Chinamilk cheong to a high of 1.31 and I am not in the boat.... DOESN"T MeANT TO Be....
The day today is another bullday for majorities of the counters... especially the red army... and i am out to buy!

I got into my new position ===OUHUA=== today but also at premium hope it doesn't disappoint me...

I have set to queue at 0.475 earlier in the morning and adjusted to 0.48 before ten... didn't hit the price throughout the morning and closes at 0.515 for the morning session. Coming back from lunch I adjusted my order to 0.50... One hour passed... nv hit that... change higher as time ticks away. Finally at 4.55pm, i do a market order at its high of 0.515... Argh... hope it doesn't fails me.... with this purchase i am again 100% vested...

Trading for so long, I have to admit that I do not have the emotional edged when I trade... and it resulted much downfall in me like contras, warrants, failure to cut losses when triggered and always cutting profits due to short term prices falls... this shows that my perspect is very short and doesn't see the big picture behind...Need to made improvement on this... However, this emotional part is very hard to train.

I really wondered how my peers can achieve that esp WL where can be so cool-headed and focus when he trades and Mentor Neo who has much more paper loss but is yet still so confident.... Hope that I can reach that stage soon....

Trading Hipcups

2007-09-27T23:25:00.001+08:00

Have one trading hipcups on my lastest buy today. This incident start from last friday when i entered positions into milk milk. Milk Milk was trading near its bottom last week and I made an attempt to enter postion queuing my order @ 1.12 in the early afternoon despite my analysis that 1.09 is the best entry point.

The whole afternoon went and i saw saw the price see-saw-ing between 1.13-1.15. It didn't manage to hit my 1.12 mark and just 30 mins before the trading hour ends, I adjust it to 1.14 which I manage to get it 4 mins before closing.

Markets then open the following week and I made the payments through EPS on tuesday.
On Wednesday, I proceed to check my account to see if my $$ is transferred into my trading account where it reflect $0.... then i guess ok the transaction should not be so fast and its normal. Milk Milk also drop to a low of 1.10 this day which is near to my forcasted entry price.... I then curse and swear over my impatience as I got the counter at a premium ...

Today, I check my account again the morning, It again reflect as $0.... i then proceed to check if my purchase has gone true. To my astonishment, it is still outstanding.... "OMG where is my thousands of dollars". I then called my mum for the security pin to log into ibanking and double check my bank account and the thousands of dollars is reflected as transferred...In a panic, I set to queue at 1.17 to sell.... as I dun have capital to pay. Thereafter, I rang my broker to check.... and got to know that the money is in but is not reflected on the account. From this call, i get to know that account details are only updated 1 day after transferred (the condition is it need to be before 9p.m.). I have transferred after 9.p.m. on tues and thurs it will only reflected on thursday.... where they need to key in manually into the system(what a lousy system that the securities company has).... I then went to check the order status and wanted to withdraw the order.... KNN it went thru.... argh.... blame it on my ignorance this time..... Sian innocently miss the boat.... SAD (MacD line going to cross signal line, 4G1R, low RSI)

NAN DAO I MING FAN TIAN SA GU XING! Why I always have sway encounters!!! TAMADE!!!

Aspiring Article

2007-09-27T00:38:00.000+08:00

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day
by Alex Hahn

It must have been one of these cold, dark and rainy days in November 2002 when I first realized the importance of knowing how to invest one’s money.

Back then, I had just graduated from high school and was drafted directly afterwards. (A little explanation: I live in Germany, and we have a draft system here for male citizens.)

Although I do not know the precise date any more, I remember every detail like it was yesterday. I was sitting in my small room in the barracks – the medical officer had ordered me to stay inside because I was recovering from an injury - while most of my comrades were outside in the foggy Hunsrueck Mountains in the southwest of Germany. They were there conducting arduous military exercises in the cold, while the sound of the pouring rain was being cut sharply by the yells of our drill instructors.

For many Germans who choose to serve (there is a community service alternative), the time in the military is a phase of transition from school into “real life” – so it was for me. This particular evening, I had received a call from my parents informing me that from now on, it would be my responsibility to manage my savings. Granted, I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth at all (in fact, very far from it), and the savings were modest (measured by objective standards), but it was important for me to know that the funds were in the best place possible because they came from the heart. After all, hard work and strong discipline had been exercised for several years by my parents (especially my mother) to save that amount.

This was a new situation I was in, and it made me think: Where do I get zero risk and the most yield? (A typical approach for many Germans – the financial markets are still considered a casino by many.) Why do interest rates rise and fall? Am I better off to put money into a savings account when interest rates rise?

However, I did not know much about the financial markets and inflation back then. To be more precise, I hated them. To me, everything related to stocks, funds, banks, etc. necessarily meant dealing with arrogant and narcissistic airheads who wear suits and talk nonsense but pretend to know it all. (Of course, that was my limited thinking back then.) Shortly before, I had heard stories about friends whose trust was brutally abused by some brokers to generate commissions, and eventually, these friends had lost most of their money; of course, that was not an option worth considering. Especially since the advice my friends received was, “You must average that one down now,” or “Time for a little replacement in your portfolio. Now we will strike back at the markets,” Just the poor-quality rhetorics managed to keep me away from gentlemen like these.

Three years later and 30 miles north of the Twin Cities, MN, USA:

Times had changed, and my military service was over. I had enrolled in university, was working towards my master’s degrees and about to become an educator. In order to gain some practical teaching experience, I volunteered to participate in a cultural exchange program with the United States, which eventually led to an assignment in a small rural community. It was again in November when I received an e-mail from my bank in Germany, telling me that my money was about to be released and could be re-invested.

The only difference: This time I wanted more. Much more.

Coincidence or destiny – I happened to stumble over an American investment advisory newsletter. (No, I am not talking about The Tycoon Report or any other Tycoon products yet.) It was written by a guy who was strong in terms of rhetorics and fundamental analysis. What impressed me back then was that he did things his own way and delivered quite some critical commentary on the Wall Street system. However, his annual performance was modest and clearly below average; he had big timing problems with his recommendations. Nevertheless, I trusted this guy and thought I would put my luck to the test.

What did I do? Basically, greed was ruling my decision-making, and I wanted to “make up” for what had been withheld from me for all those years. “Time to get your piece of the pie, Alex, and become a rich jerk.” So I cherry-picked and bought the stocks that had had the best performance during the past year. I wanted to own them, plus I did not care about buy limits or any “grandpa stuff” like that. I mean obviously those stocks were super fast rockets, and the publisher had been so damn right on them. They had to go up, hadn’t they? Why was the guy so cautious? It was time for my ride, a pretty fast and profitable one – at least, that is what I thought ...

Of course I – rightfully – got my butt kicked in a painful way by Mr. Market, who obviously had decided to show me from the start that he had no obligation to feed me for free. Ouch.

It did not take me long to understand that analyzing what went wrong was a necessity if I wanted to continue in the markets, so I sold all my shares at a high loss. (Two weeks later, they ALL skyrocketed, by the way ... So much for timing.)

I came to the following conclusions:

1) Never, ever chase a stock.

2) Do not think the market has to feed you. You take advantage of what it gives to you; it is impossible to “rob” the market.

3) Mr. Market does what he wants. It is hubris to think you can control him or forecast him successfully on a constant basis.

4) Only invest as much as you can afford to lose. Things CAN go really bad.

5) Look at the risks first. What can go wrong? Something will. No matter how good the preparation and the research is.

6) If you follow a complete-portfolio-strategy, do NOT cherry-pick.

Phase II: “Now it’s all gonna be different.”

Some months later, I decided to return to the markets – in April 2006. (Yeah, I know, great timing ... ;-) )

Since I had lost quite a lot of money the last time, I wanted to try “high explosives” this time and went into emerging market small caps on a highly-leveraged basis. The gains started piling up, but then Mr. Market seemed to have discovered that I returned and was indulging myself in a new style of incredible idiocy, so he kicked me out again – by letting off a market correction. Again, my investments (luckily, not that much money – compared to my first loss) were hammered into the ground without any sign of mercy. In retrospect, I feel like a little kid who broke into a bulldozer at night to have a joy-ride in the over-drive mode. The only difference was that I was not just driving around, but I was bulldozing my portfolio, and there was no joy at all included ...

And it got worse:

I was desperate, and even more ashamed when asked by my parents to report on what I had done with the savings. They were shocked, disappointed, lost trust in me, and I have to admit they were totally right.

Although my intentions had only been the best, I deserved everything I received. My idea had been to make monster profits and show my parents that their money was in good hands. After all, the editor had done it for the entire last year, so why not this time with me as a part of it? Naive thinking of a youngster ...

The result: People started doubting me, especially my parents. They questioned my mental sanity and regretted deeply that they had passed the savings on to me. Seeing this disappointment every day – I will never forget that. It was a humiliating time. I could hardly look into the mirror. The damage to my reputation was huge, and I had disappointed strongly. Of course, I just wanted to undo everything and to go back in time, but sometimes, the best escape from a situation is running forward. (A good rule, too, by the way: Never look back and cry about the past or indulge yourself in your past success. Always look ahead.) After all, I still had this deep feeling inside me which told me that the stock market works IF you know how to work it! My parents called it compulsive gambling; I called it confidence. Of course, I had to ignore the people who looked at me every day with their sorry faces, the people who talked behind my back and the people who laughed about me and ridiculed me.

It was hard, but I tried to forget about all that, and I sat down for another painful analysis which led me to the following results:

1) You need a VERY big bank account if you want to make every mistake by yourself. Learn from others, constantly educate yourself and NEVER make the same mistake twice. By trial and error without guidance or a firm system in place, you get wiped out sooner or later (especially if they use leveraging against you. Oh boy.)

2) You cannot just follow the masses. You need to be ahead of them and at the right spot at the right time to make money. (I may quote Teeka Tiwari here because he just says it best: LET THE GAME COME TO YOU. Actually, I have had a sign with that sentence next to my computer for some months. Now, I do not need it any more, luckily.)

3) Buy stocks when nobody likes them. Sell when people get crazy about buying.

4) Too much media kills any objective thinking.

5) You need to have a system or a strategy to guide you and to keep to CONSTANTLY when operating in the financial markets.

However, all these logical ideas did not exactly tell me HOW to do it, so I decided to search for educational material on the web and luckily I FOUND it with The Tycoon Report. (This was about 12 months ago.)

Since then, my learning curve went absolutely ballistic. It all started with one article that I read on a Friday quite some months ago, when Teeka Tiwari mentioned a system called Point&Figure in one of his writings. I had never heard about it before, so I spent some hours on research and ended up buying a book on the topic. This just changed it all. With a theoretical understanding in mind, I signed up for Point & Profit, Teeka’s great trading service, and wanted to see how a real professional investor uses that system. My membership cost me a lot of money (relative to what was left of my portfolio), but I learned many invaluable lessons. Some months later, I canceled my membership and wanted to try things on my own. Guess what happened?

I FAILED. For a third time. But this time, I had been smarter and only had done paper trading. Here is what I have learned:

1) Never trade for revenge. You’ll kill yourself financially.

2) Superficial knowledge is not enough. If you want to learn a good concept, learn it entirely and make sure you understand every necessary part of it before trying to apply it to real money.

3) Be patient and do not pull the trigger because “it feels right” or “this time it feels different.”

4) Try to forget about fear and greed and replace these emotions with a system which has proven itself successful and can guide you. There is no room for panic in a serious trading approach.

If you know what you are doing and know that your system eventually works, your fears will be taken away and you will learn to trust your decisions even if they seem to be against all the "wisdom" that is communicated in the media. Trust in your own decision-making. You cannot be right on every trade, but you don’t have to be if your system works.

Again, I had to go back to the books to continue my education. Now, I had enough and was deeply fed up with failing. This time, I was sure to get it all right. “Time to rock-and-roll, Alex ...”

Here is what I did:

I wrote my personal “playbook” just for myself on every potential market situation I could think of and every trading instrument I could get access to (options, warrants, contracts for difference, stocks, bonds, etc.). I created rules over rules for my own portfolio. This book contains objective criteria that tell me when to enter a trade and when to get out. It includes a fixed set of trading scenarios for the use of highly leveraged derivatives. I have a diary for every trade I do in which I enter my emotional state when deciding to make a transaction and much more. If I am angry or sad, I do NOT trade. No matter how good the situation appears to be.

This time everything worked. And it is still working, big time. My success rate went through the roof, and I am very profitable for the first time ever. It will take until I have regained all my initial losses and all the trust I ruined, but the last six months have brought me forward very rapidly. Of course, there is still a lot to learn (and will always be), but I now understand why my initial confidence was right. You CAN operate the stock market and be successful and you do NOT need a PhD from an expensive university.

My understanding is that learning how to invest and trade is a life-long task. The matter is not who is the fastest, strongest or smartest (think of the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, which was run by Nobel Prize winners), but to make sure that in everything you do and every decision you make, you give the best you can. Aim for top quality, constantly. Never settle with what you have achieved. Your performance at the end of the year is the sum of the quality of your individual decisions. If you keep working on yourself, you will eventually succeed. There will be ups and downs, but at the end, you will break through.

For me, it is helpful to remember that failure always starts in your mind before it becomes reality. If you master your thinking and your emotions, nothing can stop you. Everything you need you can learn right here and use this website as a basis.

Learning might sometimes be a longer process, but after all, Rome was not built in a day.

Sources: Typhoon Report

Insights of STI ETF 100

2007-09-26T22:27:00.000+08:00

Ok, one of my two winning counters currently is the STI ETF 100, as mention before, it is like a pure equities unit trust but the difference is that it is listed on the stock exhanges where we can get access to real time prices and trade throughout the day. (Note: Unit trust only trades once a day). Like unit trust, it gives investors great diversification.

Components of the ETF:

The ETF aim to tracks the STI index with these 50 companies. Thus, with this ETF, you get to have some holdings in each of the 50 companies from the table. If you observe carefully, you may notice that most of the companies are blue chips and their stock prices are very expensive on the exhanges. Thus with a small capital, you do not have a luxury to own them.

The ETFs has provided investor an alternative to own those stocks as it require a smaller capital. However, it disadvantages is that with diversification, it offer a less attractive capital gain then each of the individual stocks.

Finally, I feel that the ETF is good for beginners are the prices are more stable than each of the individual stocks.

Trading not my cup of tea...

2007-09-24T16:33:00.001+08:00

Have been trading in the market awhile... and failed to achieve much results from it... alot of stocks has recovered aggressively except for my holdings...
In my journey, I have always cut my profits and hold my losses..
Think my system is really wrong... now without any cash, I am in the midst of quitting trading... my actions now is to hold my stocks till it recovered and sell them off...

Observations from the market.

2007-08-24T14:33:00.000+08:00

Due to my part-time studies school assignments, I have not been posting for a while. However, I am still actively watching the market movement trying to pick up the some experience to enrich myself when the similar situation arises again.

The stock market has been very volatile for the past one month since the 26th July where US market has plunge greatly due to credit risks in the home mortages that made the bear sterns fund to collapse and investors fail to get any money back.

This crisis has spread across to the rest of the world which make investors/traders panic resulting in a massive sellout in the every market and with the exception of the ShangHai Stock Exchange. (Ironically, China should be the major threat but it seem to be in her own world rising like each every other day, and all major indexes decline it did not even not even scratch her)

Even with strong economic growth reported, Singapore was still not sparred. STI has fallen sharply from its peak @ 3685 to the possible bottom @ 2962 in three waves with some false recovery in between. It has broken some major supports that I forcasted using T.A. The situation further worsen when it manage to break 200 days moving averages (last line of defense) an indication that the bear years may be coming in.

In the correction, every counters falls as investors/traders sell in panic. Blue chips were the first to go falling sharply till is is ridiculously cheap as compared to pennies. As the market recover, these market gaints make pretty aggresive movement punching the bear deeply in its face.

As for pennies, this correction is a doomsday to those companies that has their operations funded by debt. This is most noticeable in the construction counters, where construction leader like CSC and yongnam fall greatly. Companies that are overly prices from its fair value also get their beatings. This is seen from the speculative play of serveral counters before the correction.

Another interesting observation that i have notice is, counters (courage marine) with high dividend payoffs are shown to be much more resilient in the correction. This shows that with a possible bear year emerging, traders/investors will flock to these counters to get the dividend gains.

From these observations, I notice that the risk reward is better to buy blue chips on dips instead on investing in warrants. And in times of uncertainties, we should bank on high dividend yield counters as they are more stable and the dividends will be a bonus to us even in the bears years compare to the interests paid by putting our money in the banks.

Practical World===UnRelevant to stocks trading===

2007-08-17T23:48:00.001+08:00

There is this intersting letter that I heard while tuning to Class 95 when I was driving back home today. Below are the narrated details:

A guy by the "penname" of LY had broke off with his girlfriend 7 months ago. This was due to the fact that the girl's mother had look down on him as he is not earning highly enough.

Well this average earning John manage to move on with life and got to interact well with another girl(whom he knew for six years) developing feelings for her. He then confessed and the girl went MIA(haha no la just distant herself from him) thereafter.

He is confused and ask her if it is becuase of his confession and the girl says that her mother wants her to marry to a well to do guy(I believe should be consider rich guy ba) and she will listen to her mother cause she single-handledly raise her up.

Additional Info: This guy is earning 40K per year which should be what majority of the guys are earning from a regular job in singapore now....

Well from the above, we can see how "sway" the guy is to have 2 such encounter in a straightrow. We will pray for him and hope the third one will be exceptional!

Haha ok enough of the crap. Down to the earth, we have seen the cruelty of the society and some expectations that the guys need to live to in order to have the "license" to have a relationship that leads to a future marriage.

This is pretty sad but it's part and parcel of today life with the evergrowing inflation. With this, I urge all to look for alternatives

Recovery in progress but...

2007-08-14T14:36:00.000+08:00

Today, counters in SGX looks pretty green indicating market recovery for serveral counters. Looking at my portfolio, there are totally no movements or only slight movements...

I am pretty depressed about it and is puzzled on the price movement on them. There have been news on reconstructing of the roads for the F1 racing event next year last friday. This means that OKP will have potential to raise. However, it only inch up an unimpressive 2 cents.. and i am still 20 cents down from my purchase price...

Next, my "Project FISH", Pac Andes, OCBC give a technical coverage expecting it to rebound. That should be a good piece of news to me but looking at the resistance they set 0.81-0.87.... taking the low price, I am 10 cents down. Seems that I hook onto a Rotten fish... Another Longcheer to be counter...

Next C & G Holdings, Its Q2 result shown an increase in profits by nearly 30%, for the 1st half od 2007 when compare with 2006. That should also sparks the counter up but there is not much buying interest today...

Lian Beng, a major worry in my portfolio, with negative cashflow, the management is planning to give dividends... Hopefully I can sell it off at a small profit before the XD date...

Conclusion, I am very disappointed with myself. It seems that my picks so far are all claypot picks... Feeling very lost now....

Summary of the week.

2007-08-10T23:42:00.000+08:00

The heavy volatility has brought exciting times to many. Sideway trading has been going on for the whole of this week and skilled punters are happily gaining some kopi money where i only could watch from behind...The feeling of hearing people making gains where me myself is having all the sour losses is pretty sucks.

I am really tempted to do some swing trades as well but i do not have sufficient holding power to do swing trading..... haiz all i can do now is just watch the market...

Recently, central banks around the world are injecting/planning to inject money into the market to provide liquidity. This should be some good news as they are putting in effort to avoid the financial crisis. Hope my counters will recover fast.

ShowHand on Royal Flush?!?!?!

2007-08-06T23:23:00.000+08:00

Singapore Economy has perform well during the Second Quater. With such a strong performace, serveral investors/speculator are confident in investing into our home growth companies and some other prospective overseas companies thus most of them including me go in and grab.

I have already showhand all of my capital into the market since the cards opened are the spades' royal family and the last unopened card is the Spade of Ace since the Singapore is so bullish!

Then came along two uninvited guest, Mr Bear Sterns Fund and his Ugly Friend Subprime Mortages before I get to open my last card... They seated beside me and do some wonderful tricks on my last card. Being nervous on the arrival of the unexpected guest , I look onto my card again and to my shock, my ACE is gone and now I holding onto a JOKER...

What I do now is pay protection money to Mr Bear Sterns and Subprime Mortages to delay the time so that I can rub the joker into my orginal spade of ACE....

Lesson: Never to be too confident on the bullish market. Things may not turn out to what we predict as there are external parties that may affect the market. Keep at least 30%- 50% of cash reserve instead of vesting all of them!

Itchy hand on Fujian IPO

2007-08-03T11:02:00.000+08:00

OK... I did silly things on IPO again mounting my net losses to 3.3k.... I had repeated this mistake over and over again... This has shown that I do not have the mental edge to trade in the stock market .... Argh the failure to handle my emotions in trading has brought several downfalls onto me.

Greed and Patience
The incapabilities of human being to control the above thinking and emotions will result failure in serveral aspects of human life and partically to the me in the stock market.

Can someone please enlighten me in how they control this emotions???

Recent Actions:
Added Aztech and STI ETF.

Interesting Article!

2007-08-01T23:19:00.000+08:00

5 Lessons for a Declining Market

EXPERIENCED INVESTORS USE FEAR TO THEIR ADVANTAGE. Only in markets where people are scared can you buy stocks cheap.

I own a private company. If I wanted to buy out my biggest competitor, I would want to pay as little as I could. Investing in stocks is the same thing. Why would I be upset if I could buy them cheaper? Shouldn't I be happy?

You should enjoy declining markets. Declining stock prices... nervous investors... predictions of impending doom. It's during times like these that you have to keep your head.

SCARED MARKETS ARE THE ONLY KIND OF MARKETS THAT CAN MAKE SAVVY INVESTORS VERY RICH.

The creeping anxiety most investors feel in a bad market is like a human’s internal "flight or fight" signal. But if you keep your emotions in check, it could make you a lot of money. Most people don't know how to interpret the signal correctly.

Came across this interesting article! Hehe hope you gained more knowleade after reading!

Emotions Part 3! Pharse preceding the fall!!

2007-08-01T17:39:00.000+08:00

Today we have another correction whipping 115.95 points of STI to 3431.71. All the stocks has drop 5-10%, a lot of margin calls to reach speculators, resulting in more selldown.

I begin to feel numb from this correction when I see my portfolio falling deeper eating into my capital. Guess it part of the learning journey where I have to curb emotions and selling in frenzy realising and piling on more to my net losses.

I believe I can protect my capital by holding them through the storm.

Below are the pharses of the correction:

Pharse 1
End of June to first 2 weeks of July: Pennies stocks like jade, oculus and many others that no one notice raise vigorously where some has gone 4-5 folds from their usual prices. Speculators at work.

Pharse 2
A series of short lived rallies(e.g stocks that rises high but close back at the end of the day/stocks that rises alot and fall on the next day) went across serveral stocks. This is a good time to lock profits and get out of the market.

Pharse 3
Catastrophe strikes, all stocks jus keep falling everyday. Good entry when bottom is formed.

With this experience, I must be better prepare for the next correction!

What seems to be cheap got cheaper...

2007-07-31T23:58:00.000+08:00

Ok I have loaded up Raffles last friday based on a technique from Tycoon Report. Basically, it talk about using moving averages to determine your entry and that fundamentals solid company will tends to rebound quickly when they break the 200MA. Using this technique, a friend of mine manages to make quite some profits from some counters.

Without giving another thought, i make my entry into Raffles Education @ 1.91 as it break the 200MA line.

Last Friday Today

OK from the above chart, I concluded whatever I brought turns into claypot. LOL, jus another learning process.

The other similar chart will be Midas. Both company are fundamentally strong company that got some scandals lately that caused their prices to fall sharply. But I never expect them not to (hold/trade sideways) under 200 MA.

Well, from this, I learn

1) you never know if the bottom the real bottom.

2) that we should wait for confirmation in reversal trend then make the entry.

Market Correction Part 2

2007-07-28T13:00:00.000+08:00

A Raining Saturaday, seeing the Dow Jones performance again. it went down by another 208.10... Whao, that will be quite an impact to the world indices again. I glad that I did not manage to get hold of the STI ETF 100 yesterday as I could get it at a cheaper price on Monday.

Everything in the stock market will be dirt cheap now. Singapore Economy Q2 is strong, i may see Jospeh cycle prediction coming true, where STI will mark its peak to 4300. If you have cash, i believe this is a good opportunity to make entry into the market already.

Market Correction

2007-07-27T19:22:00.000+08:00

Ok, the market went down as expected due to Dow bad performance last night. Everything gaps down and some even delcine further. Today should be a great shooping day for all yet i am out of cash, thus I turn to my alternative option, to use my CPF.

the STI ETF looks to be a great buy today and I set to 34.5. Well, it didn't hit my buy price again. It only manage to hit 34.74 the lowest, 0.24 cents higher then my buy price... I change my buy price a few time till i finally settle at 35 which is also the 1st in queue at that price...There are no kind souls to sell me at that price... and at 4.55pm or so... some investor got impatient and brought 300 shares at 35.79 make it close nicely to formed I think the term is call hammer..

Well, waiting to get is alway sian... that's life, let hope monday I may have the chance to get it.

STI Status: Our STI is finding its support at 50DMA now, I expect a rebound from there.

Uncle down having bad temper!!!

2007-07-26T23:41:00.000+08:00

Ok, things look pretty bad on the world economic leader, I think Uncle Dow will gave markets around the world a tight slap to lower all the heat that has been genearate over the past few months. I believe that will be a good time to pick out undervalued stocks which may need to held for quite a while for the market to recover.

Hehe seems like got opportunites for STI ETF 100 lor keke.

Emotions Part 2

2007-07-25T22:00:00.000+08:00

Feeling depressed in trading lately, perhaps I held too much anxiety in reaping profits and overstressing myself to make those them. In the impatient state of mind, I have made serveral fallecies in trading, especially on contra trades...

I remembered Master Dec say that trading should be fun... I think I gave myself too much pressure and trading became unenjoyable....
I will not be trading in the near term, will be just watching the market and do more research on the stock market.

As for stocks I currently hold, I will be reverting to investor role and continue holding them till it hit my target price.

Current position:
Realised NET LOSS: Ard 2700

Will continue to blog on and test my methodolgy before I make my entry into the market for a round 2 fight!

Managing Market Emotions (-_-")

2007-07-24T19:37:00.001+08:00

When everything in my watchlist is rising without retracement while my holdings are trading sideways. I feel miserable and sad doubting my stocks selections. This has made me have the urge of doing contra on the winners on serveral occasions and today, I did put buy order for meiban grp 3 times and withdrew them.... The devils and greed in me and the worrisome mentality that I will miss out a good buy made me submit to the devil. However, I managed to withdraw my trades 3 times... it was difficult....

Urgh weak mentality... Must to trade within my capital... Still trying hard to learn that...

Important Note: Opportunities are always abound, do not be silly to look for short gains by putting a hugh amt of capital on stakes!

Insider Trading! Pac Andes after thought.

2007-07-23T21:52:00.000+08:00

Glancing through the charts today, I come across another counter with what I will presume as "Insider Trading". I have spotted this in China Essence before. Charts below.

I expects some sideways trading and the a sudden surge in Gallant like ChinaEssence before.

Pac Andes thoughts:

The charts looks pretty bad, with the issue of rights for investors to subscribe, and the scandal on Midas that affect most china counters, Pac Andes seems to have more downside ahead... well will be keeping this counter on hope analysis now....

Some Sharing!

2007-07-22T01:16:00.000+08:00

Ok, I understand that making investment in stocks may scare most of you my peers away! I will highlight one low risk investment that will yield significant returns. I know many of you will think what i mention is too good to be true and feels unconvincing about it. Well be patience, read on, and decides later.

Introducing to you the Fanastic Investment Vehicle!
TATA!!! Exchange Traded Funds!
I will just give the rough details of the STI ETF 100. Basically, it make investment in the top 100 performing companies when it started out. Now, it has strink the size to 50 and going to cut down further to 30.

This instrument is like unit trusts where professionals do their research and build up the fund with equities, bonds, currencies . Same things goes here and the professionals comes together to evaluate companies that will have strong performance and build the Exchange Traded Fund up.

The ETF is review yearly ensuring strong perfomers in the market constitutes to the fund, making the fund more valuable. Thus, it can be said this fund will just head higher very year with the slightest chance of heading down.

Investing in the STI ETF, you will be entitled to dividends as well and so far, it has effectively give dividends twice a year since 2002. With this, it edge out unit trusts as it constantly rewards its investors and from what i see has a faster gain then most unit trusts.

The best part of the story is 100% of your CPF-OA can be use to invest in it whereas only 35% of your CPF can be invested in stocks. With the ETF, you can easily beat the 2% CPF interest that the government gives with the dividends you get from it and you still get to have capital gains from what you invested.

Do give ETF a thought! There are other ETFs offer by Lyxor on Singapore Stocks Exchange, you may do more research on them before investing.

Over-Xposed... Poor Management In my Fund.

2007-07-22T00:47:00.000+08:00

C & G Hldgs @ 0.68
CapitalandDBeCW070924 @ 0.155
Hiap Seng @ 0.73
Lian Beng @ 0.48
Longcheer @ 0.84
OKP @ 0.97
Pac Andes @ 0.92

Looking at my portfolio today, I felt overexposed. With a small capital, I am now holding 6 stocks and 1 warrants... hmm that has practically stretched all my available cash and even eat into my CPF...

This is unhealthy. Diversifying myself into many counters with little lots make my profits grow in a slow pace... Hmm, I will need to re-organise myself after selling some counters.

Proceeding On:
Without ammo left, I can only practices technical analysis on my charts now...
Alternate Options: Negotiate with my Mum for funding, but looking at my poor skills I doubt i will make that move...

Lessons: Too much Diversification with a Small Capital make you see slower/small profits... It will be better for Small Capital Beginner like me to hold just 2-3 positions.

Great Stocks Sale!

2007-07-20T20:24:00.000+08:00

Over the last two days, Negative News has drove SGX to make lots of offers to the general public. Majority of the public erm ok perhaps maybe only me is too scare to enter on the previous two trading occasions. Today is the last chance but I am on External Seminar!!! Argh!!!

Finally manage to access a computer at 4.00 p.m.! Serveral prospective counters I wanted had flew... In the end, I loaded up with OKP with simple analysis. I have a lot of interests in this company as it builds all the roads in singapore and now it is expanding it business into oil industry collaborating a project with Rotary. I see it as a good headstart for the company to enter the lucrative oil business.

Featuring Midas

2007-07-20T01:14:00.000+08:00

Midas has been a shock for many today especially to my fellow friend, Neo, who is heavily vested on it! Its prices kept free falling from the open price 1.84 till 1.30(beyond 200MA) where the company request a trading halt at 10.30a.m for investigation.

Midas is a aluminium leader in China's market with serveral hugh contracts under its wing!!! With such a high book order value, I believe many value investors were trying to get at a discount as it was extremely undervalued (OCBC give a target of 2.19 earlier on this year) in today's meltdown. I would also have enter positions if my poems trading platform didn't hang. Luckily, I was not able to place order.

The Meltdown is puzzling and everyone is desperate for news. A piece of news then come out from an article in China Cai Jing (now removed from Cai Jing web, content can be found here) that the director, Chen Wei Ping (rumoured to have stakes in Raffles Education and Sitra Holdings) was involve in a big bribery and that Midas is an empty shell.

Whew!! Thank God that I did not manage to get into any positions.

Neo was panic and lost when i reveal the news to him. He was in immerse thoughts thinking about ways to protect his capital but never took actions. Seeing his tension, I tried to clam him down.

After investigation, the company denies the allegations amde to the director and resume trading at 3.45p.m after lifting the trading halt. Prices soared to ard 1.73 and retrance back finding support at 1.43. With serveral uncertainties and fast price actions during the last hour, I could imagine the tension Neo was facing and he did not made ay actions

Reaching home, he did more research and discovered the article I give him was removed! Hmm, seem that it could be an unethical report/allegations (content of the report can be found here) made on the director.
To further confirm, he manage to find,
1. Its board of director consists of Chan Soo Sen, one of the MPs. Our MPs could not be investing in a shell company.
2. Another important evidence that has also recently declared it dividend, something that a shell company will not be able to do!

With this, he managed to develop his plans to execute tomorrow. Hope that he can ride through the storm.

Another China Company Allegations: Delong
All these alleagations has made me worried as I have 4 China counter. Hope that they are fine...

Market Rebound?

2007-07-19T23:54:00.000+08:00

Attended Master Dec talk on KLSE yesterday. As usual, with his technical tools he always spice the crowd up.

Ok, back to the business, Master Dec give a few insights to watch out for Uncle Dow support @ 13350, hit that level, cut losses! Personally, I hated the idea cost when I cut losses on China Essence last weakness 2 weeks ago, it hit new high.. making me heartache.

This time round, I adopted HA (Hope Analysis) on my counters and will ride through the storm for the correction holding them till I see daylight.

Last night, Dow Jones has fallen as expected but did not do badly. This has triggered STI to closed abt 20 points higher today with most industries has climbing back today. A sign of rebound is seen and my counters recovered!!! With serveral uncertainties, I will more cautious as a 2nd wave may be coming.

*Properties/Land Developer Industries pulling back
The increase in development charges has evidently made properties/developers counters topping the top losers chart. Capitaland did not fare badly today and manage to close at open price. Will revert back to old plans on report earnings play! Hope that a strong Q2 earnings will reduce the damages done.

One developer gem is spotted in the pull back, that is LC Dev. This counter has impress me by making a peak of 0.565, closing remarkably at 0.56, 0.06cents higher. Most probably is that its development projects are all overseas so it does not have any impact from the rise in development charges. If I have not remembered wrongly, Kim Eng Seng has given a coverage with a price target of around 0.76. May be a good chance to load up.

Other prospective counters that I will be looking are in the oil and marine sectors. Construction Giants also seems attractive on the discount it offering now. More contracts annoucing in Aug/Sept, high chances of rallies again. Sian so much opportunities so little money especially when I vested all my cash in the stocks already!!!

Lesson:

Money management is crucial! Money is every traders/investors lifeline. It is important to have a fair amount of capital reserve with you as it will come in handy in such situation!
At the point that the market corrects, think of what counters that you will buy!

Big Meltdown!

2007-07-18T17:06:00.000+08:00

18 July 2007 (Market correction or incoming of the berserk bear??)

Impact Number 1 : MND (Ministry of National Development) has give the death sentence to majority of the land developers in singapore effectively by rising the development charges from 50% - 70%. These has finally amke me understand why the properties counters did not join in with the market recent rallies. Several warnings - (MM Lee mentioning about the property, burst failure of indicators) has been hinted to me but I did not hailed them planning for my cut loss on caps warrants. Now, it only left two months of time value... and I need to quickly decide on the actions to take....

Impact Number 2 : Selling Pressure was high this few days, there was a ususal tension in me and decided to withdraw my buy order on project fish. Got too chatty on the market direction. Glancing back to my trading platform at around the price was already beyond my buy price... In fact, at 3.30 p.m. there is a massive sellout across all counter in SGX.
This may be link with the collapse on the 1.3 billion hedge fund in US... Thereafter, the markets across the world is filled with bloodshed!

Hang Seng - 215.38

Nikkei 225-201.69

STI -67.08

Conclusion: Dow to fall tonight!

Heavy casualties to contra players!
There are alot of contra trades going on lately. Will advice to cut losses! For those who failed to cut due to system failure in trading platform better act quickly tomorrow!

Damages report: My portfolio is badly affected as well will be planning for my cut loss price tonight....

Action: Will revert to bear operation to tame the big gizzly bear!

===Project Fish===

2007-07-17T22:35:00.000+08:00

Ok, there is one gem that had been residing in my watchlist for quite a while with one i fail to get it for quite a number of trading sessions. Let me unveil it to all!

====Project Fish====

Code Name: Pac Andes

Equipment: Fishing Rod????

I have been eyeing this counter since after I mention shorting to a fellow trader friend of mine. As the business fundamentals is still good, I have been looking for a good entry point after the downtrend stops. When the RSI hits 20% and start to retrace up, I starts queuing for it.

Never knew that fishing is so hard!!! A few occasions and practically week everyday last week, I been queuing for it, setting a 3 bids safety margin away from the open price but fails to get hold of it! Argh! This ikan bilis is really getting on my nerves! I will try my luck again tml!

&%$%&&*)**^$#) GOT IT ON MARKET MELT!!!!%$#&^&**(*#

(-_-")

Pennies's play

2007-07-17T20:20:00.000+08:00

Pennies stock have been activly traded this few weeks topping the top 30 volume daily making lots of break out but too bad I wasn't in the boat. Counters such as Rowsley, Bakertech, Contel, Jade, Alantac has made many folds for the past 10 days doubling, tripling their normal prices. That has made a lot of people happy except me.

I could have be in equation boat but did not darn to enter, haiz lack the confidence... and it increase 7 cents since yesterday haha I should try eating "se dan" to gain confidence heard it will helps!

Well, have to scout for new gems liao. Currently, IPO is still in play, rotating around one another. Chances for multi bagger is still around! I will be digging out on some potential pennies that has not move much!

Below is the list of pennies that I feel will move.
Pennies Watchlist!

Acma
Oculus
Eagle
Oniontech
Excelpoint

Do keep a lookout!

Reflections from 5 months of trading...

2007-07-14T13:09:00.000+08:00

Looking back on my past trades. I have closed 33 trades , averaging to 5-6 trades per month (a sense of overtraded for a beginner with small capital). While some are good trades, many of them are bad ones.... Need to really look onto them to fine tune my techniques....

Let review some of them briefly:

(16/02/07) 1st virgin trade made: Cityspring
A company doing infrastructure for the city! A lot of excitment over the company as it has gain strong backing from Temasek Holdings - our country's second investment wing other than GIC. With the backing, it can tap to vast network/resources that Temasek has established.

With such exciting prospects, I made my entry on the fouth trading day @ 1.48 without any piror trading/investing knowleadge. Held for one and a half month and let it go of 1.52 before the counter turn ugly(count myself lucky). Around $24 of profit! Something much better then the bank interest!

2nd trade: Longcheer (Still dun have any knowleadge)
Just heard it a good company from my friend and made the entry @ 0.84 on 22 feb, 3 trading sessions before the China Sneeze that tanks the whole world on 27th feb.... Struck in it till now... Will be selling off this laggard soon!

3rd Trade: Noble Group (woke up from wrong side of the bed)
Buy on friend's recommedation again.
Ok some clog up in the trades - when buying, I submitted a sell order, shorting the counter. Panic on my mistake, I immediately buy back at a higher price doubling up quantity to save some transcation costs as i still want the counter... This results in a lame and unnecessary loss of nearly $84 bucks! (big joke!)

Major losses.
Begin to start contra trades after learning MacD indicator and a bit on reading Volume, where I gained small profits and got hugh losses.

Genting International (-463.97)
Saw abnormal high volume going on in the counter! (Must be insider news) Made a 10 lots entry on 9th April @ 0.95. The prices start to decline... sold at a lost @ 0.91 due to contra day expiry at 12th April... Thereafter, prices soared to a peak of 1.12 on 17th april after the annoucement of securing the casino license on 16th april - monday six days after I made my entry.

YangZhi Jiang (-889.42)
IPO play! Protential to become next Keppel Corp or Sembcorp Marine of China!
I manage to get 10 lots @ 1.34 near the low of the day on its debut day on SGX. The counter kept soaring and hit a high of 1.39. As it rises, I got greedy and withdraw my sell order, raising the selling price higher till I set 1.4 where it never hit... Fast rise, greater fall. It make a U-turn the next day.. and never came back the following few days of my contra period... settling for my losses at 1.26 right at the support level at that time. Now the price is 2.20... almost a 65% return from my buy price...

HSI warrants (-920.82)
Warrants are high leveraging tools for traders. It is a double-edge sword where one could reap big profits or big losses! As for this trade, I did not understand warrants at that point of time and just join my friend in his trades. Now that I know the basics of them, I strongly urge beginners to avoid warrants especially Hang Seng Index Warrants. They are not for the faint hearted! I respect the aunties and uncles of Hong Kong as they can stand such fast volatility in their market!!!

Yongnam (-334.41)
Contra 10 lots on the following day - 10th May after knowing that it manage to secure a million dollar project in dubai the night before from SGX annoucement. To my surprises, it just went down... Cut losses on the next day! Hmm, seems like I cut losses till used to it liao.

ChinaAngel (-1060 est)
Got too carried off in my recent IPO contra profits.... Went in to contra with my biggest Lots ever vested- 15 lots... Things look bad and cut my losses at a low price... marking my biggest losses ever...

Lessons

Contra trades is like betting that the stocks will go up within 4 days after you buy it.The chances are 50%-50%.... erm as for experts traders, I do not know their chances. Most people does contra trade out of greed and resulted in more losses than gain thus it is not wise to do contra trade.
Going on the long term on good stocks are much more rewarding then doing contra. Looking back ar a few counters that i have brought, they almost brings back nearly 100% return from the capital if i held till now...
Lastly, I am know not metality/emotionally strong and disciplined to follow basic rules resulting in big losses...

The Angel that gives A Devilish Blow!!!

2007-07-13T19:14:00.000+08:00

~**Friday the thirteen - An Unpleasant day!!!

Today, a new company ChinaAngel made is debut on SGX. Having made 2 quick gains on IPO debutes, I just went on in and whack! It increase 2 cents within 2 mins of trading to 0.820! I then set to queue at 0.805 and waited, hoping the transactions get through. In a blink of seconds it gone through! And as usual I always felt negative things will happen after the transaction goes through! Lack of confidence! Something I should overcome from more good trading!

Things started to look bad... At 9.15a.m, 13mins later after I got my positions, it drop to 0.775... I hold on to it as i think the rallies will come in anytime. However, it never came... It falls deeper down to 0.765 at 9.50am. Then, I set a selling price looking to settled with some profits at 0.815 before going to a meetin and pin hope that it will goes through during the 10 am rally.

Coming back to Office At 12pm, I quickly check the price. The Angel thrust his sword into my heart as it proceed to made newer Lows! Checking back on the transaction history, the 10 am rallies only hit 0.78.... In a panic, I decided to cut losses and sold of my positions at 0.740 netting a 1040 losses!!! Argh, just when I recovered my losses yesterday and the glory ends here... bringing me back into the red zone!

Lesson Not learnt: I know this fatal mistake for quite a while, yet I am still committing it! That is Stupidity! Greed is the root to all the foolishness in me! Another redundant and expensive fees paid for not learning!

Moving On, after I cut losses, I proceed to what I originally plan and brought on C & G Holdings, the other part of my plan to buy Pan Andes is unable to execute as I had jus netted a big loss. This two counters have been give me buy signals. I chose C & G as it cheaper, hope that it don't disppoint me.

Below is C & G Holdings chart.

System Or Luck!

2007-07-12T19:00:00.000+08:00

You will get to meet all sort of trader/investors when you start trading! Ok, below are two friends whom I knew that trades.

Lady Luck
A friend of mine Mr A, have made a hugh profits of out luck. Let me give you a general description of him, he is a person that does not do analysis to buy shares, always hantam any particular counter ask me for opinions. This happens often and is very frustrating! I have preach him to read up on books attend courses etc but he does not make the effort.

2 Weeks ago, he brought LC Dec and told me it a good counter to buy. I then question him what made him buy the share? Did he look up on the fundamentals, or basic on technical indictors to buy? And he gave me an answer mentioning it has good prospects as LV Dec is doing properties.... this kind of answer is well... like going to a food court with 3 fried kway tiao stall and one of them has the yummy food posters so it will be nice that kind of answer...

After hearing the answer, I just ignore him and dun even bother to look at the counter. Lately, LC Dec has been appearing in top vol for a few trading sessions and drew attention to me but is too late... it has risen 30 cents from the time I heard from him...

Doing a research on it, I found out this company has udnergo a demerger from Lum Chang Holdings and focusing onto its hotel business. It is asset rich with stakes in the three holiday inns hotels and some other hotels in china and london, it also has a land parcel in koh samui where they are planning to developed into a resort and some residential properties to sell. It a turnaround company!! Argh miss the boat!!! I doubt A know what the company protential the company has... Lady luck has just gave him a smile!

Unbeatable System!
Then there is B, who buys on financial institutions/brokerage firms coverage that yields high returns. He is disciplined to follow his system and now is enjoying the fruits of joy with more then 50% returns from the capital in half a year!

Me
Well as for me, I am still searching for a right system and gaining more experience to time my entry/exit to and from the market! On and off, I still tried my luck on contra trades out of greeed, but going to cut down as it only have 50% -50% chance and is mentality taxing . I hope to be more emtionally discipline to do my trades. I have been interacting with other investors/traders getting to know their past experience. These sharing are valuables as not people are willing to share out their trading methods.

Conclusion
It will be advisable for beginners to interact more with other investors/traders as you can learn much more from their experience! Here is this blog named GrowMoney where i frequents. A group of experience and amatuers traders/investors gather and interact daily. Its a good learning ground as the owner often shares his analysis/methology with us. Do take visit there.

Simply IPO!

2007-07-11T22:47:00.000+08:00

I just love IPO!

IPO stand for Initial Public Offering where a company send invitation for to investors and allocated a small portions of shares for the general public to subscribe! Anyone with a trading account can applies via the ATM or Interent Banking to have a chance to get the placement.

Charges
There will be a $2 application charge for applying. You will also need to pay for the amount of shares you applied upfront. Your applications will go then through a balloting and you will get to know the results a day before the company starts trading on the market! In the event that your application is failed(which is a norm), the money that you pay upfront will be credited back to your bank account.

The general fact is, the chances for you to get your shares by applying through IPO is almost equal to you buying a toto quickpick to strike a 10 million jackpot! So please don't pin too much hopes on getting it through.

After IPO results is out, the next day will be the first official trading day for the company in the market. It usually draw a lot of market interest from the general public and some speculations from the big players as well. Thus, its a chance for people to made some quick gains through contra trades but know do make sure you know your limits and cut loss when you are wrong!

Today there are 2 IPOs first day trading. I only managed to brought in one, RH Energy as it is mentally stress to look after two trades. I brought near the low at 0.740 and reap in some peanuts profit by selling off too early @ 0.765 within 10 mins... Seeing the strong rally, I set to queue in at 0.755 but did not get it the whole morning and the counter fly into the sky hitting a peak of 0.89. If i have waited patiently, I would have made a jackpot out of it... Nevertheless, it made some impact for the recovery in my losses...

Lesson learnt: Need not rush to set a sell price, it may limit the protential profits. Always observe market sentiments! Of course dun to too greedy as well and set a unrealistic sell price which I learnt from YangZhiJiang !

Upcoming IPOs trading dates

China Angel Food Limited - 13/07/07
CMZ Holdings Ltd -16/07/07
China Sports INternational Limited - 19/07/07
Wanxiang International Limited -20/07/07

Earning Seasons! ...Without me...

2007-07-10T22:25:00.000+08:00

Great surge on STI yesterday leaded mainly by the three banks bringing up the index to 64 points. buyers flock the market with optimism that the Q2 earnings will be strong!

This is extremely bad for me as I had liquidate myself into cash position making some losses from china essense when dow jones show weakness two weeks ago and most of the counters are too high for me to enter now...

Let me retrace my trades on essence I made my entry price @ 0.95... a day after the counter show a hugh increase in trading volume, after purchasing it, the trading volume as extremely low for the next 8 session... i dislike the looks of it as low volume mean low liquidity... at that point, dow jones show weakness... feeling the worse is going to come, I cut loss at 0.905.... Looking at the counter made me felt stupid as it made a peak at 1.13 yesterday...

The other counter that I turn into cash position during the dow jones weakness is inter-roller....Locking in at a peanut profit of $25... and now inter-roller is laughing at me...

From the above, I conclude that technical analysis is limited as it indicates the price movements in the short term future... For a longer term, I believe that fundamentals analysis on the company financial information is the key. Thus, I will begin my quest to learn fundamental analysis...

Crazy Bull Run!!!

2007-07-07T21:16:00.000+08:00

There have been a series of rallies throughout the week. Most noticeably in the construction sector on the first two days of the week where counters like Yongnam, CSC, Sim Lian got a heavy demand as buyers plunge in to buy before the release annoucement of the IR contract!

The rallies then goes on across other counters like pennies , properties. Temptations to get into some positions clouded my mind as i wanted to be part of the rallies thus I loaded up on Lian Beng in hope that it will go to new heights... Sad to say, the rally ends there after I brought! Argh! Not discipline enough to control my emotions! Well, the chapter of IR contract has not ended, will be holding on to Lian Beng with optimism that it win some wonderful project!

Personally, I find that these rallies is absurding as US have been trading sidesways with no particular direction. Currently, Dow Jones Chart has already shown a double bottom formation and forming its third peak to do a triple top formation where some dangers may luking! Then again, I may be thinking too much as it may be just a consolidating pharse to reach for new heights.

Dow Jones Chart

Let's see how it moves next week!

In the Learning Curve

2007-07-05T23:45:00.000+08:00

I have been trading for the past six months and got to learn a fair bit about from stock market but my learning process is just the beginning as there are still much to learn from. I am lucky to be guided by a friend of mine who recommend me good trading books and some basic skills to get myself started.

Personally I have also attend a course named "Cracking the Stock Market Code" to learn technical skills and some seminars to acquire some insights of the trend from professionals. For beginners, I will recommend you to go for the course as you can save alot of time self discovering all the technical indicators by yourself.

Currently, I am using technical analysis to enter and exit the market. I am moving on to study on fundamental analysis and hopefully it will help me this will equip me with a better edge against the market!

My current portfolio are
Longcheer @ 0.84
Hiap Seng Engineering @ 0.73
CapitalandDBeCW070924 @ 0.155
Lian Beng @ 0.48

From the above, you can know that my picks still need much tuning! Keke, I am relatively new and is still embarking on the route to survive in the market. Hopefully I can get over this pharse fast and begin to fetch my profits thereafter!

FYI: The three pharses in trading are
1. Learn to survive the market first
2. Make small profits
3. Make huge profits

Kicking Off

2007-07-03T22:36:00.001+08:00

To kick off, you will need to open a trading account from a brokerage firm like Poems, iOcbc, DBS Vickers, UOB KayHian etc. They will help you to open a trading account under the brokeage firm and a CDP - Central Depository (PTE) Limited Account with SGX. The CDP account is use to store your fully paid up stocks.

I am currently using POEMS account. By trading, you can still earn reward point to redeem free seminars/trading services from POEMS. POEMS also open other accounts like CFD - Contract For Difference and Forex Trading Account as well.

How to get about trading? Each brokerage firm has its own trading platform where you could see live prices reflected from SGX price ticker. On the platform, there will be a buying price and a selling price with the respective queue volume beside them. A transaction will go through when two individuals agree on the price to buy/sell their stocks.

In times when buying/selling volume is high, you may not be able to buy/sell at the price you set and the price may flucate away from your price. Thus, you may have to monitor and reset to queue at another price.

In the event that your buying transaction go through, you are required to make the payment through ATM or log on to your ibanking account and make the payments through EPS (Electronic Payment Services) within T+3 Days where T is the day that the transaction went through. You may also choose to CONTRA it off within T+3.

When you failed to pay up, your brokage firm will call to inform you that they sell the stocks for you and will place the selling price 2 bids below that current price which will be disadvantagous to you!!!

You may also sell the stock at a high price when you think that it is overly price and buy it back at a lower price within the same day. This method is call SHORTING. It's pretty much advance and meant for the skilled traders not recommended for beginners. ***IT IS IMPT TO BUY BACK WITHIN THE SAME DAY*** If you did not, your broker will give you a call 4 days later to inform that SGX will buy back for you at 2 bids above then the Day High Price!!! Do take note as you will not know how the stock is performing 4 days later!!!

As for the charges, a buy/sell transaction is $25 excluding misc and gst fees online. By calling your brokeage to place your order, it will be $40 exlcuding misc and gst. For SHORTING and did not buy back within the same day, SGX will buy back 4 days later and the adminstrative charges is 70%...

I have tasted both the defeats of contra and shortng with my broker giving me phone calls. Thus, it is strongly not advisiable to do too much contra trades and shorting if you are not sure what you are doing! However if you are skilled enough, you can go ahead by all means.

Getting Started On Personal Investing!!!

2007-06-28T23:37:00.000+08:00

GST has risen to 7%!!! In this society, Expenses are always going up... With the inflation growing in such a fast pace that drains off our pockets faster than we know, we need to think of alternatives to generate income. This is where Investing flashes through our mind!

In Singapore, there are various kind of investment vehicles from- bank saving account, fixed deposits , insurance, corporate/government bond, unit trusts, money markets, treasury bills, stock trading, forex trading etc etc.

From all the above, I have turned into stocks trading after I learn the attractive rate of return from my friend, Neo. Thus this blog will be devoted to stocks trading.

I will advice all to start young as it will compound more rewards into the future.