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Markets have been going the way it should the past few weeks. Up some days and down by more. Its likely I’d end the year down with a decline in the portfolio value of 7%.

However, I did take profit just a while before all the market churning action was taking place. I am not a market sage, it just happened that my baby boy was about to be born and I was just keeping to more cash out of prudency.

One of my friends sent me a link to this interesting New York Times post about “How a Market Pro Lost His House.” Which hits home more than anything that even professionals in finance are liable to get it wrong. So when experts can be wrong, and they do this for a living, what hope have mere mortals like you and me?

The answer is quite simplistic and borne out from a decade of investing and learning about it first as a professional in the field and then as a hobby now.

It is to hold on and do your buying and selling in parts and not in whole. After selling some of my positions, I felt silly for not selling more. Even if you feel smug that you have done the right thing, Mr. Market will still smack you in the face and make you look like a fool. 

I am sure that you have encountered situations where when you buy a stock, a few days or weeks later, the stock goes south. Or when your sell it, it goes up later. Since we can never sell at the absolute highest or buy at the deepest bottom, the only way we can help ourselves is to buy in parts and never commit your entire reserves. Nor sell everything.

The only vow I have is to in future make the parts a bit bigger, so that I have less of a seller’s or buyer’s remorse for not selling more or buying more.

After all, markets move up and move down. If you can catch it right a few times and have the holding power when you did not catch it, you will have done well by any standard.

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6 comments:
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Anonymous said...
December 7, 2011 at 10:08 PM  

too difficult to read. bad choice of colour

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Take Stock Sing Song said...
January 26, 2012 at 10:08 PM  

Hello,

I wanted to email you but I couldn't find the option. Hence, I've decided to drop my query here.

I was one of the attendees of your talk at FISCA session. I noticed that the examples summary of the company statements were extracted from Thomas Reuters. But I couldn't find any data from Thomas Reuters that they could provide.

Appreciate you could advise where I could get the same data. Or any other places that could provide essential info. like book value or EPS, is greatly appreciated. :)

Thank you and look forward to hear from you soon.

Cheers,
Sharon

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Lemizeraq said...
February 14, 2012 at 10:03 AM  

Hi Sharon,

Sorry for the late reply. Saw this post only today in my stack of emails as busy being a new father.

You can find the information at Yahoo Finance- Singapore here: http://sg.finance.yahoo.com

The information that I have from the seminar is printed from www.poems.com.sg but you have to be a Phillip Securities customer to have access to that.

Regards,
RH

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Take Stock Sing Song said...
February 14, 2012 at 9:26 PM  

Oh thank you! That helps!

I'm a Philips Securities customer but I hardly go in so I wasn't aware they offer the data. xD

Btw, congrats on being a father!

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Lemizeraq said...
February 15, 2012 at 1:33 AM  

Hi Sharon,

Thanks :)

They hide it very well in the poems.com.sg screen. It is under "Stocks" and you have to click on "Research".

Next click on either "Dataline" to bring up specific stocks or "stock screener" if there are specific ranges of stock you are looking for.

Regards,
RH

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Branden Yong said...
May 23, 2012 at 11:25 PM  

I see that this post is posted on 29 Nov. Right now, It's May 2012, and all I know is my portfolio is getting worst:(

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