I arrived at Suntec just before the Invest Fair started at 10am. Already, there were many people waiting for the doors to open. When it did, many proceeded straight for the seminar they had earmarked to attend.
I went to the talk by Michael Leong, titled “Investing Towards Your First Million“. Many other people had the same idea and the room was fully packed despite it being a Saturday morning.
Michael’s first slide had four points on the Alchemy of Investing:
- Mindset change
- Knowledge of the market
- Personality and strategy
- Monitoring and patience
While he didn’t really relate his talk directly to these four things, there were some other interesting things that he shared.
If you think you got money that you can afford to lose, you will lose it (in the market) somehow.
When Michael started ShareInvestor, he had very little money to invest. To bring out his survival instinct, he even took at pay cut of 60%.
When you are forced to the edge, the desire to succeed can make you very careful in your investments.
My view is that it could also have the opposite effect. With the burden around your neck, your emotions could just as well affect your trading.
Some other points that Michael shared of his own investing style includes:
- He focused only on a handful of stocks (as little as five). By taking a focused approach, he can go really indepth into the company and the industry.
- He looks for a ridiculous margin of safety. One criteria that he uses was that the free cash must be more than the market capitalisation.
- He takes a long term view to investing. There was a stock he had held for more than twenty years.
- He is after multi-baggers.
- Investing is not a game; games are usually fair.
- It’s more like a war. Like any war, you can be killed.
- Choose your opponents carefully. If you do not want to fight, choose an inhibited island.
- Prices are driven by demand and supply.
Overall, I found it a pretty good talk to start off the day. More on the rest of the day’s proceedings to come over the next few days.