My Investing Muse

Personal Financial Management 3rd October 2021 This is part of my financial review and please do not consider this as financial advice.  Kindly perform your due diligence. Introduction Financial Management is an important part of our lives as we work towards financial independence.   From a recent Forbes article “5 Steps To Plan For Your Financial Independence Day”, author Mr Erik Carter provided a good definition of financial independence. “Financial independence is a state of being in which you don't have to work to pay your living expenses . You may decide to retire or you may choose to work because you want to, not because you have to.” The link to this article can be found below: https://www.forbes.com/sites/financialfinesse/2021/07/05/5-steps-to-plan-for-your-financial-independence-day/?sh=515fc12c2872   Financial independence is a goal all of us can work towards. For us to work towards financial independence, we should put together a financial management ...

Thanks to Tiger Brokers, I started to document my investing journey. I hope that this blog can help us in our investing journey. I hope that we can   build up a closely knitted community where we create value through sharing our learning, reviews and perspectives .   Success is not limited to Wall Street. I believe that we folks from Main Street (non-full-time investors) can do well too.  My personal goal is to create value so that we can gain more time for our loved ones and the things we are passionate about . This investing journal documents my thoughts, contemplations, muse, the ups and downs of my investing.  More importantly, this journal is to  hold myself accountable, to "live by what I preach" .  I hope that this journal can help us avoid mistakes, minimize losses and achieve sustainable profitability.   In return, I ask that we can be generous with our experience and learnings.  Let us pay it forward . Kindl...

This is a landmark week in our modern history.  Ukraine found herself caught in a battle as Russian troops poured into the country from several sides. This single "black swan" event has commanded the attention of all countries and brought volatility to the global markets.  This has overshadowed the various good news which would have otherwise introduced positivity to the markets.  US CDC has eased their masking guidelines following a drop in the following: drop in new Covid cases per 100,000 residents in the past 7 days drop in new Covid related hospitalization drop in hospitalization by Covid patients There is also another landmark moment with the nomination of Ms Ketanji Brown Jackson (the first black woman) for Supreme Court.  On top of this, the Core personal-consumption-expenditures index (Fed's preferred inflation measurement) climbed 5.2% from a year ago to hit a new 38 years high for January 2022. photo taken from news - congestion at US ports There is some p...

  One of the tech darlings of China   $Alibaba(BABA)$   /   $Alibaba(09988)$   has shared their quarterly earnings for the quarter ending 31 Dec 2021 on 24 Feb 2022.  This is my review. update as per 26Feb2022 From a 52 week high of 245.69, the stock (last traded at $107.94) is trying to break the downtrend as per the chart above.  With a  TTM PE ratio of 15.07 , i s this stock greatly undervalued or is this something that we need to skip ? Some Notable highlights: Global annual active consumers reached 1.28 billion as of 31 Dec 2021 with quarterly growth of 43 million. This implied a 27% year over year increase for local customers and 18% for international customers. This is made up of 979 million consumers in China and 301 million consumers international (outside of China). Alibaba aims to reach carbon neutrality by 2030 and has committed to an additional 1.5 gigatons of decarbonization by 2035, p...

  Whenever I review earnings reports or news, I prefer to approach all things with a pinch of salt.   what do we see - a young girl, old lady or ... both Humans -  we tend to see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear.  Thus,  coming to reports, we may end up picking up details of what we want (or hope) to read . Coming to investment, it is important for us to be neutral. I used to buy stocks because I loved a company for example Levi's Jeans. However, such love may not always be repaid with profits. We should not forget that we invest with the purpose of profits (first). In such cases, I have learnt that  it is best for me to remain as a customer instead of an investor of the business . We cannot mistake our love for their product & services against the intent of profits.   Ideally, we should invest in businesses where we share their purpose . After qualifying the business, I invest into...

Explosions went off in various parts of Ukraine as Putin has ordered a special military operation. Extract from Wall Street Journal (WSJ): Russian troops and tanks pushed into Ukraine and airstrikes hit the country’s capital and more than a dozen other cities early Thursday after President Vladimir Putin said he ordered a military operation to “demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine” and bring its leaders to trial. Ukrainian officials said an initial wave of strikes targeted military installations, airfields and government facilities across the country, as well as border-force installations.  JP Morgan summary of Russia Exports From the photo above (from Yahoo Finance) showing Russian exports as a share of global production, we can expect the price of these commodities to increase because of the current situation.  At the same time, Russia is also one of the biggest suppliers of oil and gas to Europe.  Europe is dependent on Russia for about  40% of its natural gas suppl...

  Palantir's earnings report was released on 17 Feb 2022 and the stock fell by 15% following the news. Palantir overview as per 9.45am SGT, 18Feb2022 The following is the summary extracted from Palantir's earnings report: Q4 2021 Highlights Total revenue grew 34% year-over-year to $433 million Commercial revenue grew 47% year-over-year US commercial revenue grew 132% year-over-year Government revenue grew 26% year-over-year Added 34 net new customers in Q4 2021 Loss from operations of $(59) million, representing a margin of (14)%, up 3500 basis points year-over-year and 900 basis points sequentially Adjusted income from operations of $124 million, representing a margin of 29% Cash from operations of $93 million, representing a 22% margin Adjusted free cash flow of $104 million, representing a 24% margin Closed 64 deals of $1 million or more, of which: 27 deals are $5 million or more 19 deals are $10 million or more GAAP net loss per share, diluted of $(0.08) Adjusted net earnin...

Just because a certain investor bought in a certain number of shares of a certain company, it does not mean that this guaranteed profit.  Recently, Soros's investing firm bought in   $Rivian Automotive, Inc.(RIVN)$  , this remains something puzzling for me as the company will remain in the red for the coming quarters till they have ramped up their production. If we cannot explain the business to a young child within 5 minutes, I am afraid that we do not know the business well enough.  After we have completed studies of the annual & earnings reports, we can establish an approximate value of a company.  Should prices fall, we do not need to join the mass sell off caused by panic.   Why do we need to run away from a sale - when a good company is available at good discounts (with a good margin of safety)?   We can even consider adding to our positions cause we understand that the current price does not always reflect the value of a business....