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.

A New Resolution

Given my poor investing performance this year, I have made a new resolution from today.

I will NOT invest my funds in any products or asset classes anymore UNTIL I have accumulated $10,000 in cash savings in each of my four savings accounts.

Only funds from offloaded holdings or dividends will be allowed for channelling into invesments.

I will update the blog again when this target has been reached.

Good luck to me.

Risk Aversion

Recently, I'm beginning to learn that everything we've learnt in the investment world is wrong.

Risk aversion is the arch nemesis of investing.

It used to be constantly shoved down our throats that investing was the only way to fight inflation. Rather than keep our money is savings accounts earning pathetic interest rates, we were far better off investing that money for a historic return of X% that would stave off inflation and hence keep up with rising consumer prices.

Yet the ability to save is a very strong virtue. Given our Asian roots, we are far better savers than people in the west. 

And maybe it is this ability that has withstood the test of time.

Saving and letting cold hard cash lay idle, is not the worst idea in the world. Because many a times, the best trade we did, was the trade we didn't make.

At least when you let your cash lay idle, you do not suffer the anxiety and worry of your investment going wrong (which, believe me, happens a lot). Even better yet, you do not suffer WHEN the investment goes wrong and end up with you suffering loses instead.

Save well, and save for a rainy day.

The Collaborative Economy

The collaborative economy is defined as initiatives based on horizontal networks and participation of a community. It is built on "distributed power and trust within communities as opposed to centralized institutions" (Rachel Botsman), blurring the lines between producer and consumer.

I was lucky enough to attend Rachel Botsman exclusive event talk in Singapore about the collaborative economy last week. And what a brilliant mindfuck that was. I think everyone in the room was equally impressed by the level of 'out-of-the-box' thinking she promoted.

Here are the areas she identified which were ripe for disruption.

> Complex Experiences

> Waste

> Broken Trust

> Redundant Intermediaries

> Limited Access

People I spoke to felt that her talk revolutionized their way of thinking, inspired them to push boundaries and encouraged more critical thinking towards disruption. The disruption of industry was actually the topic of the day, particularly in the FinTech space.

Several ideas put forward really set up some critical thinking in that room:

- We have always been used to the idea of B2B, and B2C. But C2C? That's what the collaborative economy is about.

- Monetization of space and vacancy. Ideas and companies like Bla Bla Car, TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Uber and Rent-a-pet are the ideas of the future.

- The concept of turning Social Networking into Service Networking and monetizing this.

- Trust is the most valuable commodity of the future. And monetizing trust will be crucial for the collaborative economy to be efficient.

- The new world order demands Access over Ownership. People don't value ownership of any asset as much as access to that asset as and when they feel like it. Hence if you can provide access without the high cost of ownership, then you will unlock the opportunity cost of sinking time, effort and money acquiring ownership of this asset.

- The smartphone is the remote control to the physical world. All businesses have to go into technology to survive.

- The concept of finding the PAIN that people are experiencing and solve it!

- The collaborative economy has created an environment where one of the most valuable hotel chains owns no properties (Airbnb), one of the most valuable transport companies owns no vehicles (Uber), one of the largest online content providers does not produce its own content (Facebook) and so on. That, to me, was mind-blowing.

- Another speaker also covered the underlying power of Alibaba and Tencent.  With a database of about 800 million users. They could easily turn into one of the largest financial powerhouses in the world simply by monetizing this user base.

Otherwise you can easily Google and read more about the collaborative economy.

I even managed to get a picture with Rachel Botsman herself!

Property Prices In Districts 15 & 16

Are slowly coming down!

A quick search has yielded some interesting results so far.

I firmly believe there is more weakness to come and if patient enough, we will be able to find some bargains.