meek-investor

Memories of those days, goes the title of this post in Tamil. Alumni reunions are an American tradition. It was not very common in India, until recent years. You passed out of school and college - and that was that. You went your own way , kept in touch with a  few, lost touch with most and lived your own life.  Rarely did you return. But that trend is changing. A week ago, the 1961 batch from Madras Medical College held their 50th year reunion. Everybody was 70 plus in age, obviously. Some 60 odd batchmates attended, it is reported. They came from far and wide. They went back to their old classrooms . They went back to their labs. They sang the songs of their days. Including this one (sorry its in Tamil) which was actually released in their year in college.  They ribbed their mates as they used to do so long ago. In short, they had a whale of a time. What is it that attracts people to reunions. After all they have gone so far a distance that they may not even be able to...

It was a long time coming. In retrospect its actually surprising that the backlash is starting only now. The backlash against email, I mean. A few days ago Atos Origin, a French IT company, started the ball rolling by announcing that it would ban email in the company by 2014. Now Volkswagen unions have struck a deal with the company that emails to their unionised employees would be switched off after office hours. This had to happen. E Mail addiction is an extremely serious epidemic as this blogger observed here . It is a global pandemic of epic proportions. Walk into any office or meeting - you would see rows and rows of people peering into their screens or thumbing away at their Blackberries. Eerie scenes more suited for George Orwell's 1984. Its well known that more than half the emails you get are completely useless. And you get a LOT of emails. For some reason your genes are so programmed that you have to see each and every one of them 15 nanoseconds after they arrive. The ...

Throughout my life, I never like reading book of any kind. The only type of book that I read was text book so that I can get through Singapore education system. However, there are two books that caught my attention. Who Moved My Cheese? When I started the 'new' family business, my brother and I were the executive directors and my father was the 'adviser'. As our business grew each year, I had to deal with more employees and managed everybody problems, needs and expectations. I was stressed out minding everyone business and making sure that the business ran smoothly. Through one of my friend's recommendation, I bought the book 'Who Moved My Cheese?'. You may ask why this book as I am the one moving the cheeses around in the company. To make a business successful, we need to understand that the most important asset is the people. Without happy and committed employees, the company will not be successful. This book actually provided me some insights on the chang...

Rahul Dravid, India's elder statesman of cricket, delivered the Bradman Oration at Canberra last week. If you want to hear a classy, graceful, charming, stylish speech, look no further. Class, grace, charm and style define the man and perhaps it is but natural, that his speech was all of that.  It is about cricket, of course, but even if you are not a cricket fan, listen to it if you have the time - this is how a speech should be made. Its 40 mts long, but I really wished it wouldn't end. Rahul's speech follows in the lines of another classic speech - from Kumar Sangakkara of Sri Lanka, when  he delivered the Cowdrey lecture in July. Another gem, you can listen to here . English oration is alive and well in the colonies, atleast in the sporting world !

Another year flew past and I am glad that the company I am managing grew its sales by another 15% again in 2009. Fulfilling our profit obligation to the business buyer, I was paid in full the second installment from the escrow account in Jan 2010. With the second payout, my target for 20K passive income seem to be in my sight. Feeling comfortable with my bonds investment, I decided to load up a few more bonds issues. The following are the bonds that I had chosen for 2010: Temasek Bond (10yrs, 4.3%) DBS Preference Share (perpetual, 4.7%) Olam Bond (3yrs, 4.1%) Olam USD Bond (10yrs, 7.5%) Hyflux Bond (5yrs, 5%) Sembcorp Ind Bonds (5yrs, 3.73%) Arief (3yrs, 4.75%) I started experimenting with equity linked notes (ELN) and I was sold the following benefits: get interest yield of about 7% to 10% if equity price on redemption day is above strike price.  get the underlining equity at a price that I am comfortable with if the price is below strike price + interest I was quite comfortable w...

This Wednesday, we welcome back one of our most beloved and most frequent visitors, Nato Green, along with two brand-new guests! Nato Green is the creator of Iron Comic, the co-founder of Laughter Against the Machine, a prolific HuffPo blogger, and a Jew who cures his own bacon. He's such a regular friend to the show that he's earned the coveted moniker of "The Fifth Businessman," a title previously shared by Stu Sutcliffe and Brian Epstein. We also welcome Sammy Obeid, a UC Berkeley graduate and nationally-touring comedian who was the first comedian to ever appear on the Food Network telling jokes. He placed third in the SF International Comedy Competition and won Best of the Fest at both the Arab-American Comedy Festival and the Out Of Bounds Festival in Austin. Though Sammy does five sets a night, every night, this is somehow his first visit to The Business. It's long overdue, but we are glad to have him.   Finally, all the way from the City of ...

As is often the case, the seemingly trivial turns out to be a giant event. I suspect this is the case with Huawei's announcement , buried in the back pages of financial newspapers that it would no longer pursue new business in Iran. So what , you might ask.  Read on. One of the fundamental principles in China is the total separation of politics  & economics. It has one of the freest of capitalist systems (at least for Chinese) and one of the most controlled of political systems. In foreign affairs, China has diligently pursued a policy of complete non interference in political matters. Its policy in Africa is unique in history. It is rapidly colonising economically, but scrupulously keeping away from interference in local politics. It will do business with anybody - God, Archangel Gabriel, Satan, Devil whoever, as long as there is business to be done. Before you denounce it, consider that there is some merit in this approach - the Chinese say political matters are for the ...

When I travel, there are nothing to do on a plane except watching all the movies on Kris World entertainment. One of the movie I like was the Bucket List. This show set me thinking what are the things in life that I hope to do or experience before we leave this world. I drafted my bucket list about 4 years ago: buy a sports car (porsche would be nice) :) travel with my family and parents at least twice a year :) built my dream house (semi-d, land area > 4K sq ft) :) retire at 40 with passive income of at least 20K / month :) plan my will and probate just in case I kick the bucket for whatever reason :) get my 2A/B bike licence :( travel to all the exotic places in Asia (e.g. Cambodia (Ankor Wat), Lombok, Myanmar, Nepal (Kathmandu), Vietnam (HCM, Hanoi...) :( learn to dance (never been on the dance floor) ;) Learn scuba diving :( start a business which I enjoy (must break even) :( provide guidance and support to my children if they want to be a tow kay :( I am fortune to achieved som...

I was very STUPID to promised a growth of 10% every year for the next four years when we sold our company in early 2008. Any short fall will deducted from our payout held in an escrow account.  Having work real hard in 2008, I managed to grow our company (or rather their company) sales by more than 15% in both the top and bottom line. It was a great relief to me as my payout will be deducted if the company missed the targets. Having hit our targets, I received my first installment from the escrow account. 2009 is the year I started to subscribe to Business Times and I started to pay attention to what was happening in the global financial world. Engineer by training and entrepreneur by circumstances, I had totally no experience in financial investment. To overcome this weakness, I decided to engage the service of the private bank for my financial planning. With my new bank account, I suddenly become a 'accredited investor'. It is still a joke to me today as I still do not unders...

What to do with my new found wealth? I am used to running a business operation and managing risk when I was a entrepreneur but I have zero experience in managing my new found asset, CASH. This is what I did in 2008. bought myself a piece of land and build my dream house bought my wife a car paid up all loans, big and small and achieve loan free status opened a fixed deposit account bought some bonds for passive income Portfolio : 2008 In 2008, I had a contractual obligation to work and guarantee the top and bottom line for the buyer. As I have a full time job commitment, I was unable to paid much attention to my portfolio. Thus I placed the bulk of my bet on corporate bonds like DBS 5.75% preference share, Capital Mall notes and JP Morgan Asia Confidence notes. My passive income was about $11K/mth by end 2008 and the following is my investment portfolio in December 2010.  My target was to build up a passive income of 20K/mth before 2012. 2008 is considered one of the dark...

Who's gonna be at the Dark Room Wednesday? Miles K! Miles QUE?!? Who's a witty comic comin' up in the Bay? Miles K! Miles QUE?!? Who's website is http:// cleverthingstosay.com/ Miles K! Miles QUE?!? Miles K. Stenehjem, that's que! To quote East Bay artist Kaitlin McSweeny: "Miles K. Stenehjem is an elegant satirist with a wit born of sensitive desperation and fearless experience, in my opinion a sort of Oscar Wilde of this time, if Oscar Wilde could lay down some pretty sweet freestyle rhymes and deliver stand-up performances that make even today's recession-depressed audiences gasp and guffaw." Miles has also recently opened for Andy Kindler, has a show of his own called "Everything Jamboree" and now joins us on our humble show. Sean is taking a well deserved victory lap around Los Angeles this week, but Chris, Bucky and the newly returned Alex will be on hand to stoke your hot comedy giggly-fire. As always we ...

I was recently reviewing the effectiveness of media ownership policies and regulations and was struck by the limited success they have achieved during the past 50 years in Western nations. There seem to be two central problems with ownership regulation efforts: ownership really is not the issue that we are trying to address through policy and we have convoluted views of ownership. Media ownership is not really what concerns us, but is a proxy of other concerns. What we are really worried about is interference with democratic processes, manipulation of the flow of news and information, powerful interests controlling public conversation, exclusion of voices from public debate, and the use of market power to mistreat consumers. It is thus the behavior of some of those who own media rather than the ownership form or extent of ownership that really concerns us. This is compounded because media practitioners, scholars, and social critics have highly convoluted views about ownershi...

What's common to beautiful, popular, controversial, helpful, successful, deserving and proud ? Besides being adjectives ? What's common is that they don't apply to this blog. Nothing here is beautiful, popular ......; you get the drift. When you are tagged to apply those adjectives to your blog, you have to really scratch your head. Tagging used to be a rage three years ago when blogging itself was a rage. Blogging is now in a steep and precipitous decline. The ladies who started deeply intellectual tags that asked "What are you wearing" have all disappeared. Tags have naturally vanished. But Reflections , a star blogger started this tag and Preeti , a master blogger has tagged me with extremely affectionate words that have gone straight into my head. I was also tagged by a blogger I deeply respect and admire, and since she did me the honour of not linking my blog but simply saying incredibly kind words, I am doing so likewise. So I have force fitted the adjective...

What is the ideal age for retirement? For me, the ideal age is when we achieve financial freedom. The next question will be how much is enough for retirement? I define financial freedom as follow: yearly passive income > yearly expenses having emergency fund for unforeseen situations sufficient insurance for any critical illness or disability having sufficient fund for the children education ability to maintain current lifestyle I had done my due diligence on my check list and I had met all my conditions for retirement. All these conditions were met before I hit 40 years old. In fact, I had been planning my for my retirement for nearly four years before I decided to truly retire.  The the big day came when I 'lost' my day job in Nov 2011. My day job was a contractual obligation when my father, brother and I sold away our business in 2008. Although I am excited about my life turning point, I was never prepared for the following situation: What to fill in on the application fo...

This is the first time I am blogging and it will basically tell my life story in achieving my dream life style. I was born into a fairly rich family and stayed in a semi-detach most of my life.  My father was a businessman and he owned a hardware distribution business with his business partner (my uncle). Business was successful and my younger brother and I never tasted hardship. My father was a businessman most of his life and he always provide us the best life he can afford. I still remembered him buying me a car just after I passed my driving license when I was just 19 yrs old. At that time, I was one of the very few JC students driving to school. I was enjoying life in JC1 and I nearly failed my promotional examination. One fine day, my father asked about my study and instead of giving me a scolding, he asked me to quit JC and help him in his business. I was a little shocked as he seldom talk to me or show concern about my study. Deep down in my heart, I knew I can easily get i...

There are more people in the world today who own a mobile phone than a toothbrush. This may startle you, but its true, at least according to 60secondmarketer.com . There are 4 bn mobile phone users in the world. The annual sales of toothbrushes is 3.5 bn. This won't surprise you if you read the excellent book, Poor Economics , by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. My good friend Ravi, who often comments on this blog, very kindly gifted it to me and it makes fascinating reading.  It was named as the Financial Times Business book of the year . As the byline says, its a book about rethinking poverty and the ways to end it. The book destroys many myths about poverty and provides fascinating insights into the behaviour of the poor. Its no surprise then that they would rather own a mobile phone than a toothbrush. One of the big insights is that things that make life less boring are a priority for the poor. The  quote from Oucha Mbarbk, a poor Moroccan villager sums it all up "Oh, bu...