Athena Trader

I don't blog much these days but December has always been an interesting month for me as I love X'mas save for the rain in Singapore. I'm usually in a good mood due to the festivity especially if I'm overseas soaking in the X'mas lights, enjoying the good food and happily shopping in the cold. I reflect on how I have spent the year and hope that next year would be better. Because no matter how good this year has been, you always want the next year to be better and that's human nature I guess. 2015 has been a particularly challenging year for me in all aspects of my life and I'm glad 2016 is almost here! While I think that trading in 2015 was really difficult for me as I made the transition from investor to trader, I can only work on myself such that 2016 would end on a positive note. Whatever Mr Market throws at me, I've gotta be ready to decide and then act upon it.  But I've not forgotten my investor roots and intend to park some money in ...

I wish Doctors will give positive and realistic advice...if not I rather get the realistic than the positive advice. At least that way I get to prepare myself mentally for what may happen. But I guess Doctors can't do that when they have never gone though the procedure themselves or gotten sick that way before. It's very much like trading and investing if you think about it. For a small time retail trader and investor, we have different resources and pain threshold so when we talk to the professionals, we think that they can give us positive and realistic advice. The truth is, unless they have gone through the path of being a small time retail trader and investor and come out tops, they could try to understand what you are going through but will never experience the pain that is hurting you everyday. Simply because your mind, body and soul reacts to the pain differently from others. They have been hardened by numerous battles, scars aplenty to show their time spent in war ...

I've not blogged for a while because I've been busy with other stuff and nothing came to mind and since this is not a job, I don't see why I've to push out articles for the sake of it. The year is coming to a close so I thought of reviewing how the stocks that I blogged about performed thus far and for simplicity, I'll just take the stock's closing price on the day that I wrote about them (as close as possible) and last Friday's price.                     Then             Now ASX BAL           A$2.80           A$12.64 IVC            A$13.26         A$11.80 SGX C09            S$10.21           S$7.16 C31            S$3.53             S$3.23 U14           ...

If you have read the news lately, you would have heard of Trikomsel restructuring their bonds and this post is to spread the word that they are looking for their fellow bondholders to contact them at trikomselbonds@yahoo.com as strength is in numbers for a case like this.  The bondholders are likely to be accredited investors such as private banking clients with the banks in Singapore or maybe fund houses or institutions etc thus it came as quite a shock initially as this is the first time in 6 years that a SGD denominated bond is seeking a restructure of its bonds which could mean a few things such as no more coupons till the maturity date, extension of maturity tenor, haircut and of course the dreaded loss of principal.  According to Tradehaven where I read this news, Trikomsel held a meeting with their bondholders today, which could mean the private banks who act as custodians of the bonds and maybe some individual retail bondholders who have this bond registered u...

I've been fiddling with my investment portfolio recently which saw me selling off some of my SG holdings. Some dough has been placed into SSB and we decided to give the Perennial Real Estate Holdings retail bond a miss since we have some exposure to them. I'm trying to figure out whether I can shorten my trading timeframe from a few days to just a day and maybe even intra-day which I target to do in a few years time.  I've also been testing out my new trading strategy and so far the picks have been right such that I can exit the next day with a nice profit. I think I'll continue to put this on trial before I officially start as "churning" my trades with just a one day time frame works nicely for me. It's not that swing trading doesn't work for me but sometimes I do get kinda caught in trying to short and long or long and short the same stock which usually takes more than the couple of days if I want to maximise my profits. It would require me ...

According to ACCICB, he only read 1 TA book and learnt the rest online and he told me that this book is the only book I will need to read. A reader left a comment long ago that he wanted to know what book it was, therefore this post is for that purpose and after this post I don't think I have any more posts I should write but haven't! That book seems to be rather hard to buy given that it's so old as it was passed down by ACCICB's dad. The book is  Martin Pring on Market Momentum  and I wouldn't say its a beginner's book since it does expect you to have some basic knowledge of TA. Although I'm a super fast reader, I took a long time to read this book. It's as if I want to digest it slowly, understand it, apply it to live charts of those companies on my watch list etc. I think it was also not a good first book to read if you are clueless about TA. For a beginner, I would recommend Steve Nison's Japanese Candlestick Charting Techniques which is ...

I admire people who put themselves through tremendous odds as well as go through what outsiders view as hell to do what they love to do. Everytime I admire a painting or a sculpture or any piece of art, I can only think of how obsessive the creator was but really when you are doing it you don't think it's being obsessive but more of being in the moment and being fully absorbed. In fact, you don't even find it tiring or boring but instead you are energized and excited and just want to reach perfection. Which is why most masters paint the same famous artwork more than once before the final piece is selected. In trading, there's no visible end product to be shown and everyday is a test of many things...your emotions, your mind, your conviction, your capital and the list goes on. Although as time goes by, for me, the effect is lesser and I'm less affected by the changing numbers. Sometimes, you may find yourself thinking at the back of your head even when you are j...