How important is timing?

I don't think there is such thing as timing. What is market timing anyways? I think most of the people mis-understood timing. Even I fail to understand what it means by timing. It is laughable that people wish they can get in and get out at the right moment of before market crash and before bull market runs. Is there a clock that tells you what time is it in the market? I don't think there is such clock.

So how do people seemingly time the market without the clock? They resort to emotion and technical analysis and they ignore market fundamental. The better way to invest is probably ignore your fired up emotion and technical analysis; just focus on fundamental of a company valuation.

Follow these 3 easy steps will help investors increase return on capital invested.
Three easy steps:
1. buy company’s stocks when there is a hidden value
2. maintain the position as long as there is hidden value in the stock
3. ignore technical analysis

Source: http://www.ndir.com/SI/articles/0609.shtml

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Simple life's journey to million dollar

Today is a great day. I got a break off work. It is a great opportunity to re-launch my blog. This is inspired by www.milliondollarjourney.com. The blogger there has done a great job reaching his goal. He has already reach $500k mark. I think he should be able to reach the 1 million dollar mark 3 years from now.

And today, I will restart my blog, to talk about my journey to million dollars and how I get there.

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It is possible to outperform Buffett.

The table on the right is the performance of buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway. At the annual return of at least 25% (I don’t have the exact number) he has become the richest man in world. Yes we all want to be rich like him by investing, but how? We aren’t as smart as him. Don’t get discouraged, you don’t have to be smarter than him to get richer than him.

You can do just as well as him by simply invest in his company Berkshire Hathaway. It is good, but as an engineer, my mind was trained to improve anything that can be improved, even improving our portfolio to outperform buffet! Now that’s worth a read:


According to my observation, all of buffett’s new investment in year 2008 has been losers for buffett. But don’t worry, buffett did his due diligence. And you can bet your life saving that his biggest new investment such as: Wells fargo, ConocoPhilips, US Bank corp, Burlington North Santa, Kraft will do extremely well in the coming years. If you buy the stock at 30% lower than what buffett paid, you bet you will beat his records. Here is what he bought this year:




Let us all come back in 1, 2 5 years and check out how these stocks are doing.

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Wake up! Your mind is playing trick on you.

You know your mind is playing trick on you, when your intellect tells the market bottom is near. Why would you fall into your own mind trick and sell the market instead of buying it? When this is the greatest investment opportunity Mr. Market offers you.

Here's when the bottom will be in. If you bring up stock investment at your thanksgiving table, and instead of talking about "when the bottom is" or "what a buying opportunity this is," your semi-clueless uncle/in-law (you know who!, everyone has one) stares at you with dull, distant eyes, remembers, with pain, what happened to his retirement portfolio, and says, "who the hell would invest in stocks? Are you crazy? What is this, the 90's?"

When the average, clueless idiot who knows nothing about markets or financing has given up hope, when the common lore is that investing in stocks is for sophisticated people and nice stable bonds and savings accounts are the best retirement savings, when people start scrutinizing their budgets and purchases, when the rich are frightened and ashamed of conspicuous displays of wealth, when wildfires burn through the vast expanses of empty houses in the inland empire, when you've got to know your neighbor, because neighbors have to help neighbors get by, when grandma moves back in, when it isn't the "other guy" who lost his job, when the American Joe has it so hard, has been hit, lied to, bamboozled, and screwed over so many times that he can't afford to be a useless idiot anymore... that is the bottom. No sooner.

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Finding the Bottom

There is only one cause that brings the bull market to its knee, which is when companies doing bad or the entire economy is doing bad.

That was easy, we can tell when we reached the peak and get out before the big crash (down 40%) but what takes the stock market out of the bear market? To make investing life simple, I want to get the clear clue. The simple answer is when economy starts to turn around. That’s true, but we will be way above the bottom. So it isn’t that useful.

If I look back at the peak of the bull market, people ignore all the fundamental and buy whatever the media suggest. So, same scenario for the bear market is the capitulation point where people sell regardless the fundamental. The bottom should be at the maximum fear. That’s when the economy seem like it will never recover, we will never get any job, business revenue will keep losing.

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Catch the Bull & Avoid the Bear.

How could we miss all the signals that were telling us the bear market(credit crunch) is coming?

I have already been hit by the worst financial turmoil in my first year of investment career. But, as long as I have a full time job providing me cash flow to invest, this bear market driven by credit crunch is probably the best lesson. It also prepares me for the future bear markets to come. Oh I am learning from the best-worst bear market.

We better learn from the our past and benefit it for our future. Here is a graph that pretty much telling us all the signs of pre-bear market and pre-bull market. Catch the bull and avoid the bear:

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Tell the telemarketers to beat it.

I was having a good monday afternoon nap until 3 telemarketers called me. It really drove me through the wall, so i did some research.

If you are from canada, you can call these numbers to put your on the "no calling list":
1)
1800-462-4463, pick option 2, tell them you want to be in the no calling list.

register the "national do not call list" http://www.lnnte-dncl.gc.ca/

2)
SQM (Service Quality Measurement Group)
To get off the calling list call 1-800-446-2095.
Remember to ask that you be put on the Do Not Call List for ALL companies that they are AFFILIATED with.

3) How To Stop Telemarketing Calls





Here is how one of us humor ourselves: http://www.snotr.com/video/1298

If you know anything to prevent them calling us, please let me know

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