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INVEST Fair 2009 Review
The Invest Fair held at Suntec over the weekend was very crowded. When I went there on Sunday, most of the free seminars were packed with no seats left.
If you look at it, the exhibitors at the fair can be divided into three main categories:
- Platform providers (eg. securities firms, fundsupermart)
- People who are there to sell alternative investments (eg wine, land)
- People who are there to sell their trading/investing course (T3B, Kishore)
Of course, there are others like public listed companies who are there for investor relations reasons and also a couple of booths selling books/cds on investing.
It took me very fast to breeze through the exhibitor’s booths as:
1) I’m already familiar with most of the platform providers.
2) The few public listed companies who are there do not really interest me.
3) I’m not keen to pay a few thousand dollars for a 2-3 day course that will teach me about investing/trading. I have to repeat it here again: Attending a 2-3 day course does not make you become an expert trader. If you think that trading is easy and you can make more money than your monthly earned income after a few days of training, you are bound to get into trouble one day. And if anyone tries to impress upon you that trading is easy, stay clear of him.
4) Having seen the recent “explosion” of some alternative investment providers like UAG and Oilpods, I am more cautious of such investments now. Yes, there might be some gems out there but I am going to say no thanks. Remember also what Warren Buffett said recently – If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Nevertheless, there were a couple of takeaways from the seminars that I attended. More on this tomorrow.