Important Investment Tenets

1. According to Warren Buffett, invest only in a business you understand, and not in companies you hear about at the hairdressing salon or at parties. If you don't know what the company does, then don’t invest. It's your hard-earned money. Do a little homework and research on the company in which you are planning to invest. There’s a plethora of free information and tools on the web to help you.

2. Buffett also believes in buying cheap. Sometimes the notion of cheap and expensive in the stock market is far from clear. In a bull market, the value investor could easily find himself or herself with nothing to buy. But opportunities are always out there. Think about it, if you shop around for the best prices on most things, why wouldn't you do the same with your investments?

During a period of stockmarket decline, Buffett was quoted as saying:

"I find nothing frightening about it at all. If I own a good business, I don't really care whether the markets open tomorrow …. I have no idea what business is going to do next month or next year ….. I don't think it's important whether you're confident about tomorrow or next week."

Buffett’s confidence comes from taking a long-term view of the economic fundamentals:

"If the economy does well over a long period, markets will do well over a long period. In the short run, the market's a voting machine and sometimes people vote very unintelligently. In the long run, it's a weighing machine and the weight of business and how it does is what affects values over time."

Moral of the story: Learn to buy a stock like you are buying the entire business. Do not let market emotions overcome you, and buy on the assumption that the stock market is going to be closed for the next 5 years.

Do not think that you can buy the lowest and sell the highest

Let’s say you start by investing $10,000 in the stockmarket and achieve an annual compound return of 30%. At the end of 10 years you will have a tidy sum of $138,000. Of course, if you were the average investor, you would probably think returns of 30% in the stock market are impossible over a long period of time.
Well, when you read about Warren Buffett you will see that he has been averaging around 30% in the stock market not for 10 years, but for 47 years! Not only that, he has been doing it with conservative, long-term investing.
Many people have tried to study Buffett’s investment techniques in detail. While Warren Buffett has written extensively on his general principles and methods, he has written almost nothing about the specific details. To invest successfully over the long term, it is imperative that we understand some of the key principles of long term investment through the experience of “the world’s greatest investor”.

MAS: Notes with "KF" marking have no value

The Money Authority of Singapore (MAS) says the $50 notes with the letters "KF" marked on them are considered to be deliberately mutilated and they command no value. According to some source, the letters "KF" which appear to be marking stamped onto the note, are not part of the design of the $50 note. Please don't be panic when you are lucky or unlucky getting some "KF" marked note during daily grocery shopping. However you are advise to bring them to the banks for one-for-one exchange. Just wondering is "KF" note correlation to KFC whereby the "C" for chicken eaten by hungry ghost. Hmmm..

Where Are You??

Mas Selamat bin Kastari where are you?
A massive security dragnet has failed to catch you indirectly cause a major setback that diminished Singapore's reputation. Please tell us where your hiding place is. I’m strongly believed you just have learned this to survive for so long if you are still in the jungle somewhere in Singapore.

Do you know that everybody is searching for you? And your picture is putting up around our neighborhood as such transit link, bus interchange, subway or even our lift main exit at every block. Although we are tired to blog about you, the causeway between Johore Bahru and Woodland have been jammed up to 2 hours or even worst for lorry driver because of you good work.

Hey naughty boy you have been playing hide and seek with the Singapore Police Force one and a half month since you escaped from detention on 27th February 2008. Dude Singapore is not a fugitive's playground for you. When you will get tired and back to your iron bar?

My Ultimate Idol - Warren Buffet

There was a one-hour interview on CNBC with Warren Buffet, the world's richest man who has donated $31 billion to charity. Here are some very interesting aspects of his life:
1) He bought his first stock share at age 11 and he now regrets that he started too late!
2) He bought a small farm at age 14 with savings from delivering newspapers.
3) He still lives in the same small 3-bedroom house in mid-town Omaha, that he bought after he got married 50 years ago. He says that he has everything he needs in that house. His house does not have a wall or a fence.
4) He drives his own car everywhere and does nothave a driver or security people around him.
5) He never travels by private jet, although he owns the world's largest private jet company.
6) His company, Berkshire Hathaway, owns 63 companies. He writes only one letter each year to the CEOs of these companies, giving them goals for the year. He never holds meetings or calls them on a regular basis.
7) He has given his CEOs only two rules. Rule number 1: do not lose any of your shareholder's money. Rule number 2: Do not forget rule number 1.
8) He does not socialize with the high society crowd. His past time, after he gets home, is to make himself some pop corn and watch television.
9) Bill Gates, one of the world's richest man met him for the first time only 5 years ago. Bill Gates did not think he had anything in common with Warren Buffet. So he had scheduled his meeting only for half an hour. But when Gates met him, the meeting lasted for ten hours and Bill Gates became a devotee of Warren Buffet.
10) Warren Buffet does not carry a cell phone, nor has a computer on his desk.
11) His advice to young people:Stay away from credit cards and invest in yourself. Remember money doesn't create man but it is the man who creates money.Live your life as simple as you are.
Don't do what others say, just listen to them , but do what you feel good.
Don't go on brand names, just wear those things in which you feel comfortable in.
Don't waste your money on unnecessary things; just spend on what you really need.