PPVV

A key takeaway at sales training yesterday was learning how to find out the PPVV of every prospect you meet.

Passion

Pain

Values

Vision

Find that out and you would be able to better understand that person.

Definitely something that's applicable to our everyday life.

3Ws & 3Cs

Some things I have learnt last week

W1. What do we want to achieve and why?

W2. Where are we now?

W3. What next?

C1. Clarity

C2. Climate

C3. Competence

Applicable in almost all that we do in life.

Very useful.

Big Brother China

Back when I discussed the idea of The Collaborative Economy, I forgot to mention one other takeaway. One which I recently remembered.

That Tencent and Alibaba have more than 800 million users is a perfect depiction of the danger of social media and individual privacy.

Here you have the perfect setup where these social media groups with hundreds of millions of users (Facebook included, though far more restricted, ironically) who do EVERYTHING in their daily lives via some form of app linked to these mega companies.

From payments of taxi rides, online purchases, banking, bills, booking of tickets and so many other transactions. From linked blogs, blogs, weblogs and statuses, comments and likes. From investments, credit cards, insurance, financial-linked accounts and funds transfers. From every single private detail like birthdays, family members, daily activities, actual locations, account numbers, ID and addresses. The Chinese big two have ALL these data.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Now think about how this data can easily be used. From credit scores, outstanding payments, loans, and large purchases to the more scary like voting sentiment, consumer sentiment, dissent, criticism, political bias, and location-monitoring.

This is the really scary part.

What if every Chinese citizen is given a certain overall 'score' churned out by all this data and this 'score' is subsequently used to predict and decide the future of every individual? What if an individual is unable to work in the government sector no matter his educational qualifications? What if a whole family cannot qualify for certain rebates simply based on one family member's political criticisms? What if a glass ceiling appears even before you started the first day in your job?

The implications are endless. 

There is much good such data could  achieve in the right hands and mindset, yet in the wrong hands, this could also easily lead to demographical discrimination.

Something very interesting to ponder about.

Terrorism And REITs

On the back of the brazen terrorist attacks in Paris the night before, it appears that the atmosphere of fear created has reverberated all over the globe.

From an investment perspective, this atmosphere of fear will affect our investments as well. From the number of people staying away from crowded places, to general avoidance of large foreign branded places, this will become the new normal.

Stocks such as REITs and property owners of retail spaces will likely be affected. Particularly in Singapore, where a lot of us are used to thronging malls, there might be a concerted effort to avoid the mall crowds in case an attack happens.

There would be avoidance of malls in general, cinemas, taking trains to popularly crowded stations, maybe even concert and sporting events.

While we try our best to adjust to this new normal, going to work in our usual transport modes, we bear in mind that we could reduce the probability of being caught in an attack by avoiding large-scale events and places of large crowds.

Hence it is not the best time to invest into REITs right now IMHO.

Trade safe.

CAIA

And I thought I was too old for this...

Here we go!!!

A New Resolution II

Following my resolution to focus on savings, I am proud to say that I am currently on track and have kept to the resolution.

For me, this is not an easy thing given my knack of thinking that uninvited money is opportunity cost.

I have actually saved quite abit this month. Definitely more than what I would normally save, given how prudent I've been in the last few weeks.

Let's hope this will continue for awhile at least.