Athena Trader

A long time ago, I wrote about Million Dollar Traders  which I chanced upon on YouTube. It was rather interesting and a reader wrote in to ask for a review. I thought of going one step further and share what a FT retail trader does as well. I figured that a comparison is more fun than writing about a day in the life of a FT retail trader.  In Million Dollar Traders, a bunch of normal people learnt the ropes from an ex City trader and they start their day by reading the news to gather ideas for the trades they are going to place. Both ACCICB and I are self taught so there's no mentor so to speak to guide us. I'm not sure whether they learnt FA and TA or just TA but I apply both and ACCICB applies mainly TA.  What I do every morning is a little different from them as I go directly into Google Finance whereas ACCICB uses Marketwatch to look at the price charts, read a little news on how the U.S. markets ended last night to see its effect on JPY market when it o...

One of my teachers said the title of this blog post in one of the classes and it has stuck with me ever since. I find it very relevant given my current situation where I am basically valuing every company and I hope to God I'm not changing nothing, because Mr Market is constantly evolving so I'm also refining my ways with the passing of time. Which is funny since I'm self taught and my ways are different from ACCICB and yes we do argue about our ways but since he's still not 100% right each time, I prefer to do it my way which kind of pisses him off when I get it right. I was very tempted to use his way since it looked much easier but I think it didn't quite fit me. To me, many roads lead to riches so to choose a road that sits well with me and consistently allows me to make $$$ is the best way for me. Still, I think that I'm changing my viewpoints and investment style and one of them is by not telling ACCICB what trades I'm doing. There was once when I...

Recently, there has been some talk that the government could be easing off the property measures that were put in place to cool the market and that has seem to make the property counters move positively. ACCICB has been making some buys here and there so I thought of taking a look myself. This blog post was written weeks ago but I never got around to finishing it then ACCICB told me that he tried to buy Capitaland for trading but didn't get it and the next day there was a trading halt due to the issuance of the convertible bonds. I was surprised and we were wondering whether Capitaland will be privatized like Keppel Land but I guess it wouldn't be....? I did some research on 3 of the players, namely CapitaLand, CDL and UOL. Amongst the 3, I like CDL and UOL and will be giving CapitaLand a miss. Source: CapitaLand's website I wanted to buy CapitaLand as I felt that it provides the best coverage for all the different stakes it has in various companies such as Ca...

Recently ACCICB and I have been thinking and looking around to purchase a new car. Our current Japanese car is 8 years old so it was a case of changing now or driving it till scrap in 2 years time. We were advised that changing our car next year would be pointless since there will be no value left in the car to do so. Given the astronomical COE prices in recent years, in fact, I think it has never or hardly dropped since our first car was bought in 2007 and if you use trend forecasting, it seems unlikely to drop in the next 2 years. Thus off we went to the Japanese and Korean car showrooms and test driving was indeed a tiring task. I guess it can be fun if you like cars which funnily ACCICB used to like but now doesn't care for it so much. That was because of an incident in the past that made him realise that family is more important than a physical object and if your family is in pain, no physical object will make you feel better. We finally narrowed the car to the car ...

Actually I don't know why people call the market Mr Market as it feels that the market behaves very much like a woman. Fickle minded, full of mood swings, is often irrational etc. Personally I love and hate Mr Market as it can make me feel like a genius or an idiot, sometimes both at the same time!  I love Mr Market as this is one of the ways to make $$$ using your own capabilities, unless you outsource this job to someone else, then this no longer applies to you. Basically it means no amount of ball sucking, politicking, scheming etc will make Mr Market go the way you want it to be. This is true for the average retail investor with nary a resource.  It also means it doesn't give a shit about your looks, height, race, religion, education, experience as all these are thrown out of the window as you face Mr Market on your own. It's a one to one fight so if you are a competitive person by nature, winning the match can really boost your self esteem. Naturally, you trai...

Recently there has been a lot of talk about financial independence and retiring early. FIRE for short it seems. I know plenty of people around me who have achieved FI but are not RE simply because they are not geared that way. They want to be mentally stimulated at their jobs or businesses and they continue everyday despite being able to tell their bosses to FO.  My ex boss who was retrenched from the bank when he was in his 40s could have RE years ago. He had a world class education from USA, worked in a big shot investment bank in USA and then came back to SG as his parents are here. His house was fully paid up, he had multiple investment properties but he was a man I respected for many reasons. He was highly intelligent but never stingy in mentoring me although he wasn't my mentor as my senior was supposed to do that instead. He was very frugal as he drives a second hand van, dresses simply and his wallet was falling apart but yet he doesn't change it at all. Yet, h...