5 Stock Investing Lessons from Car COE

car coe $25000 (Nov 2018)
Latest Singapore Car COE for Cat A (Nov 2018) is $25000, falling from nearly $100000 over the past 6 years till now. Many people wonder if it is possible to get COE at $50 or even $1 again.
 
I review the last year Ein55 Graduate Homework (Nov 2017) in application of Optimism on Singapore Car COE, here are the 5 lessons which can be learned and extended to stock investing.
 
1) Trend of long term car COE is up, indicating COE has become an asset (although limited lifetime of 10 years) or commodity which has value.
 
– Similar to investing, even for giant stocks which could grow in share price over the decade, they may not be suitable for everyone, only for longer term investors. A key difference is stock value could remain or stronger after 10 years but Singapore Car COE would drop to value of $0.
 
2) Optimism has been declining over the past 6 years, COE price trends have been bearish in short term and medium term. Over the past few years, each time COE shows a record lower price since the peak of $100000, potential buyers would get attracted to buy car but get disappointed later as price continue to drop further the next year.
 
– Similar to investment, even for long term value investing stocks, their share prices could fall in short to medium terms. Therefore, integration of trading into investing is crucial, avoiding buy low get lower. More importantly, an investor should know the fair value of a stock, buying at a low optimism price.
 
3) Few people is able to buy at $1 historical low price of Car COE as usually it happens during global financial crisis when most people are fearful with limited cash or purchasing power. The timing of next possible $1 Car COE price depends on when will be the next global financial crisis and also the degree of low optimism.
 
– Similar to stock investment, we don’t have to guess when a crisis would come. Instead, we just wait for the low prices come to us. When the great sales of global stocks (global financial crisis) has come, one needs to prepare in advance, eg. selling stocks at high optimism first, converting to cash, waiting patiently for prices to drop below value again, more precisely, a low optimism price. This way, we don’t have to speculate on future happening, depend on known facts of value and prices available now to make a high probability decision: Buy, Hold, Sell, Wait, Shorting.
 
4) In general, Car COE Category A < $10,000 could be considered low Optimism price, any lower price (eg. $1 to $9999) is just a bonus. Value is what you get (10 years COE) and price is what you pay. Therefore, for 2 different car buyers, one may buy COE at $10000 while another one may be lucky to get at $1, but both will be happy, $10000 buyer may not think “losing” of $9999 when comparing with lucky case of $1.
 
– Similar to stock investing, investors should not speculate to buy at the lowest price as it is nearly impossible to know (reverse is also true, to sell at the highest price). Instead, we should apply Optimism to know when to buy low enough, when to sell high enough, which is more reliable from probability point of view. Some stock investors who acquires stocks at high value (eg. high quality assets of property or cash), they may still feel “lose” money when share prices fall down. One should train to view value and price as if buying a handbag at 2 different sales, one could be 50% sales, another one could be 70% sales, both are bargains, no need to buy at the best sales which no one would know exactly.
 
5) For car owners with COE expiring soon, there is an option to renew with 5 or 10 years extended COE (at the current rate of $25000), using the next 5 or 10 years to wait for the next global financial crisis, if it happens 2 years later, just sell back the remaining years of COE (eg. 3 or 8 years) at the original price of $25000, buying a new car with lower optimism COE price (eg. less than $10000 for Category A), “earning” from the difference.
 
– The strategy above is similar to shorting in stock trading, sell high buy low. Although there is no shorting in Car COE, this is a strategy as car owners may not able to wait for a period of time without car to buy car at low optimism price. However, it is possible for stock investors to keep 100% cash, waiting for the next global financial crisis to buy low safely with 10 global giant stocks, assuming one has the holding power through the winter time of stock market.
 
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Learn from Dr Tee in high-quality 4hr free stock investment course to learn the Optimism strategies with integration of Fundamental Analysis (FA), Technical Analysis (TA), Personal Analysis (PA) with integration from markets Levels 1-4 (business, sector, country, world).
 

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Stock Investment Lessons from Malaysia Election

It is very hard to write about Mahathir (老马) in history book 10 years later. 成也老马、败也老马。幸亏老马识途,大马有救!
 
Mahathir’s life is like a company, started as an activist (start-up company or disruptive technology), then leading the party or even establish country vision 2020 with own set of rules (growing company), eventually ruling for more than 20 years (matured company), finally stepping down from the stage (changing from CEO to Chairman or Advisor of a company after retirement), cannot rest during retirement (bringing down at least 2 prime ministers and 2 deputy prime ministers, similar to internal company conflicts), finally starting another party and rule the country again (start new company as competitor to take over the market share).
 
Under PH, due to balanced power among the 4 or 5 parties (if Sabah included), we are back to 1957/1963 when Malaysia first independent with balance of power among Umno, MCA, MIC and even later with Singapore and Sabah/Sarawak joined. This is similar to a company with several major powers, there is no significant major shareholders, no one has more than 50% shares (like Umno in the past few decades), then it becomes a group decision making, until one day a party becomes larger again.
 
People should be the boss, although each one is like owning only 1 share in a company but when group together, it could choose the board of director to rule the company or the country. Malaysia now has a dual-political system which is good, similar to USA, every 5 years, the board or ruling parties/alliance has to show the report card to people (you as the boss), you could decide who to fire or hire. Therefore, education is required to train the people to be a smart boss, knowing the short term needs (saving GST, toll fee, income tax), understanding to compromise for long term needs (growth of company or stock).
 
Understanding a country (general election) is similar to choose a good company. However, when a company is not good, we could sell the stock and choose a better one. When a country is wrong, we should correct it, not just abandon it. Although there is no forever right, at least Malaysia is back to the right starting point again, which path to choose will determine the growth of Malaysia.
 
Singapore without much natural resources, after SG50, could grow to be a strong country, therefore a giant (not just by size). Singapore is similar to US in the past 50 years, able to attract foreign talents who are dissatisfied with home countries, to stay as second home or even new home, contributing to success of Singapore. If Malaysia has the right management (see the example of last 10 years of statement governments in Penang and Selangor), the growth rate should be stronger than Singapore. Singapore may not have the same outstanding leader as late Lee Kuan Yew anymore but with a system setup, at least it could be a slow grower country (3-5% GDP), similar to other matured economy such as US.
 
From investment perspective, there is no need to guess or predict which country will be better 10 years from now. We could just choose from the current market. China has been recovering from the 100 years of correction since Qing Dynasty, we could ride the way by considering China related stocks, especially related to rising of middle class. For Malaysia stocks, we don’t have to guess the impact of new government, just use the next few years to observe the different Malaysia giant stocks.
 

To learn about stock investment, which country to invest, what giant stocks to buy, when to buy …. simply register for a free stock investment course by Dr Tee.

Dr Tee Investment Course (Stock, Property, Commodity, Forex, Bond)

Malaysia Political Cycle Investing

I stay till over 3am tonight (9 May 2018) so far, observing an important historical milestone in my home country, Malaysia: a dramatic change of federal government, from BN to PH. PH will also control 7 state governments (Perak is still uncertain).

Chinese believes in 60 years of cycle duration (5 x 12 = 60, 一甲子), it is about 60 years of BN ruling Malaysia since independence in 1957. 《三国演义》:“话说天下大势,分久必合,合久必分。From the wisdom of thousand years of Chinese history, we learn that when there is common interest, various groups could become friends, but one day, they will split due to internal conflicts again. It will take a long time before the next cycle to split begins, if the new PH government could use this historical opportunities to strengthen the foundation, it could continue to rule Malaysia for several decades.

How’s the impact on Malaysia future economy, stock investment, forex, etc? Short term market reaction so far is a weaker Ringgit vs USD because this is a major change in Malaysia. PH has announced 2 days of public holidays on May 10 and 11, not sure if Bursa stock market will follow the soon-to-be government to rest for 2 days. If yes, there could be some turbulence.

We don’t have to speculate which Malaysia stocks will rise or fall down. Instead, let the trading or investing opportunities come to us. Let the share prices stabilize for a few days after absorbing the market news. It is never too late to grab on investing opportunities in Malaysia.

In a longer term, if Malaysia is under a more efficient government, the economy and stock market will have higher growth potential but it will take at least 1 decade to see the results. PH is still an alliance of different parties, sometimes compromised decision may not be the best but as long as it is fair and transparent, the country could move in a positive uptrend direction again.

Optimism is also crucial for a political system. BN lost in this political tsunami, partly due to past few years of oil & gas crisis and weak ringgit, local people has been at low optimism in life, especially with the rising cost of living (eg. GST). PH may not be lucky as well because currently is Level 4 (global) high optimism, even if Malaysia stock is at moderate optimism, based on a 5 years political cycle for 1 term of government, it is not easy to achieve uptrend in stock market to show the results 5 years later. It is the same situation for Trump in US, who may try to sustain the high optimism US stock market till at least year 2020 as a report card to seek for his second term as US president.

There is no regret to witness a political cycle of a country. Sincerely hope Malaysia will become a better country, being a closer partner with Singapore. Learn about future stock investment opportunities in Malaysia, Singapore and the rest of the world with from Dr Tee free investment courses.

Dr Tee Investment Course (Stock, Property, Commodity, Forex, Bond)

Crisis Stock Investing with 4 Qualities of Low Optimism Stocks

crisis stock investing

Crisis stock investing is investing in cyclic giant stocks, ideal for Buy Low Sell High investing strategy.  Usually crisis may happen at business (Level 1, company losing money), sector (Level 2, bearish sector), country (Level 3, recession) or global (Level 4, financial crisis), creating different degrees of fear in the stock market, resulting in fall of share prices.  Subsequently, when the market fear turns into greed, these crisis stocks may become uptrend momentum stocks, ideal for selling high.

There are 4 different qualities of crisis stocks with long term low optimism. An investor has to carefully identify the nature of crisis stock investing, understanding how the falling in share prices are induced.

1) Low Quality Low Optimism (L1 Crisis Stock Investing)

Long term optimism of stock is low, driven by decline in L1 business but L2-L4 are fine.  Noble Group could be an example. Without consideration of sustainable business, pure strategy of Buy Low may result in Get Lower in share prices, which is a common pitfall for Technical Analysis.  Both Fundamental Analysis (FA) and Technical Analysis (TA) should be integrated with Optimism Strategies with consideration of Personal Analysis (PA)

2) Average Quality Low Optimism (L2 Crisis Stock Investing)

Long term optimism of stock is low, driven by decline in L1 business & L2 (sector), while L3-L4 are fine. Examples include oil & gas crisis stocks in the last 1 year, casino crisis stocks 2 years ago, etc.  It happens during the sector rotation which the sector market cycle may not align with the country/global economy cycle.  If the sector is not a sunset industry, usually it would recover again as there is unique demand vs supply within each sector for investment.

3) High Quality Low Optimism (L3/L4 Crisis Stock Investing)

Long term optimism of stock is low, driven by decline in L1-L4 (business/sector/country/global financial crisis). More than 50% global cyclic giant stocks during global financial crisis would be affected in both business (drop in earning or even losing money) and share prices (L1-L4 from individual stock to global stock indices).  Since the market fear at L3/L4 may not last long (global political leaders would take actions by then to save the whole world), the downside of global stock market is limited but an investor needs to have sufficient holding power through the cold winter time of global financial crisis.  For example, many cyclic giant bank stocks may behave this way.

4) Excellent Quality Low Optimism (L4 Crisis Stock Investing with strong L1 Business)

Long term optimism of stock is low, driven by decline in L2-L4 (sector/country/global financial crisis) but L1 business is fine. Less than 10% global growth giant stocks during global financial crisis could still be profitable or even growing in business while the share prices falling relatively less (defensive in nature) than the average in global stock market.  In fact, defensive growth giant stocks are suitable for Buy Low & Hold for long term investing, sell is an optional strategy.

The safest time to buy a giant stock is when everyone is afraid the sky will fall down while the business is still operating normally with consistent performance. This could be a rare opportunity to buy during a crisis but many people are too normal, do not know how to take this advantage to truly buy low sell high.

A smart investor may not need to consider only crisis stock investing.  There are other strategies such as growth stocks, dividend stocks, undervalue stocks and momentum stocks, etc, may be integrated to form a balance stock investment portfolio.

Learn from Dr Tee through high-quality free stock investment courses.

Dr Tee Investment Course (Stock, Property, Commodity, Forex, Bond)

Master the Year of Dog 2018 Stock Market

2018 Stock MarketI would like to wish Ein55 community, a Happy Lunar New Year of Dog, profiting in 2018 stock market. If you ask doggie, what is the outlook for Year of Dog 2018 Stock Market? The answer mostly likely is “Wang! Wang!” (旺旺 = “prosperous” in Chinese).

Doggie could feel it because the global economy has been bullish with increasing GDP, higher PMI and lower unemployment rate. Likely doggie could chew on bigger bone for its meals because the master is getting rich as well.

Economy and stock are related as if the Master walks the Dog. Sometimes the dog (stock market) runs ahead of master (economy), sometimes it is behind but they are closely connected.

The master has been chasing the dog uphill for quite a few years, recently the doggie decides to take a rest as it is either too tired or scared when seeing a sign of bear coming from far away. It has to wait for more encouragement and assurance from the master to move forward again. It is possible both the Master and the Dog may turn direction to go downhill as they have been away from the Home (Value) for quite some time.

In the world of stock investment, we need to analyze both fundamental (country economy to company business) and technical (prices from Level 1 individual stock to Level 4 global stock market), understanding the risk of greedy high optimism market and opportunity in fearful low market market.

Enjoy a peaceful Lunar New Year 2018 Stock Market with your dream team stock portfolio!

Dr Tee Investment Course (Stock, Property, Commodity, Forex, Bond)

Short-term or Long-term Investing? Choose the One that Works for You!

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As much as I love investing, I believe that most of us invest with a similar goal in mind, i.e. to make money, to get our money to work for us, and to attain financial freedom. However, considering how different investors can be when it comes to styles and personalities, there is really no one rule that applies to all. Perhaps, that also explains why the stock market is so confusing and unpredictable in the first place.

There is no way to know what every single person thinks, but we can make our lives easier by knowing our own investing personalities and what floats our boats. Boiling down to the basics, you need to know whether you are a short-term trader or a long-term investor (though in real life, many of us are a mix of both).

 

Short-term Trading

You will like short-term trading if:

  • You are comfortable with keeping an investment for only a short period of a few weeks, or even days.
  • Your goal is to make quick bucks to reach a shorter-term goal, e.g. purchasing a car, funding a vacation, etc.
  • You are not a fan of doing extensive fundamental research on the businesses that you have invested in, but you are able/ willing to commit a significant amount of time to trading and checking stocks.
  • You are ok with taking risks and dealing with profits and losses due to short-term price fluctuations.
  • You can accept high transaction costs as a result of frequent trades, which reduces your income in a bigger proportion as compared to long-term investing.

 

Misperceptions of Short-term Trading

  1. Short-term trading does not require patience.

Truth: Even for a short-term trader, not every day is a trading day. We need to wait patiently for the best opportunity to long or short.

 

  1. Short-term trading is always about buying low then selling high.

Truth: Short-selling (profit from falling in share prices) is equally if not more important. Most people only know how to long the market, and therefore they lose money or end up doing nothing when the market is bearish.

Currently, there is still upside in the last phase of the bull market for short-term traders, possible to buy high sell higher but shorter term position should follow shorter term market signals.

In my free 4hr investment course, I will share with you high-probability trading techniques for short-term traders to profit from the rising and falling stock market.

 

  1. There is no need to read up on anything if I am trading short-term.

Truth: Short-term trading, being more speculative and volatile in nature, requires one to react quickly to market news and sentiments. In order to profit in both bearish and bullish markets, one would still need to read up to understand the impact of market-changing factors such as the US Federal Reserve interest rate hike, Donald Trump’s national policies, oil & gas crises, and global quantitative easing (QE), etc. It is important to know the impact of global economy on stock market.

 

Long Term Investing

On the other hand, you may like long-term investing if

  • You are okay with holding an investment for a long period of time, and buy or sell only once every few years.
  • You have a longer-term goal in mind, e.g. building resources for your retirement, and you are expecting your investment to increase in value over the long run, and/or also provide income in the form of dividends.
  • You prefer fundamental analysis to technical analysis.
  • You like value investing.

 

Misperceptions of Long-term Investing

  1. You do not have to hold a lot of cash if you are buying at a discount.

Truth: Even if you have met the “golden opportunity” where blue chips have more than a 50 percent discount in stock prices, you as an investor have to accumulate bullets (cash) to be able to make substantial profits when you buy low and sell high.

 

  1. If you are investing long-term, you can just sit on your stocks and not care about them for a long time.

Truth: While it may be true that you do not have to react to stock market changes immediately like short-term traders do, you still need to review and reevaluate your stock portfolio from time to time. Even in long-term investing, you would need to do spring cleaning regularly, classifying your stocks into different categories and treat them differently, for e.g. fundamentally-strong stocks for long-term holding, cyclical stocks to sell at a high, and junk stocks to sell at the right time, etc.

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Time flies, and before we realise it, half of 2017 has already passed. On a global level, stock markets have performed superbly for 1H2017, rewarding investors with attractive returns that have not been seen for quite a few years. How sustainable is the stock market rally then? Will there be a market correction?  Take actions now to position yourself for investment.

 

4 Critical Actions in Bullish Stock Market

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There are many people confused, what they should do in the phase2 of bull market. Which action is right? Buy, Hold, Sell, Wait or Shorting?

The answer is dependent on unique personality and condition. In general, we could broadly categorize 4 types of critical actions for 4 groups of traders and investors. Each of them as a gift from heaven:

 

1) Long Term Investor (No Stock)
– best gift from heaven is to wait patiently for global financial crisis, applying low optimism to buy fundamentally strong stocks at lousy price

– intermediate plan is for a long term investor to apply mid-term trading (provided able to match with this personality) to profit from the phase2 of bull market, but the investor must follow trading exit strategy as Optimism is high.

 

2) Long Term Investor (with Stocks)
– examine the past entry price, was it low optimism? If yes, hold during intermediate optimism (with consideration of L2-L4 signals), prepare to take profit when optimism is high. Ein55 Graduates have learned many techniques to integrate trading into investing to maximize the gains.

– after selling the stocks one day, move to Group1 for next action.

 

3) Short Term Trader (No Stock)
– 2 possible strategies, 1) buy low sell high (swing trading) which requires a minor correction, 2) buy high sell higher (position trading) with momentum trading or breakout strategy, entering when a critical resistance is broken upward.

 

4) Short Term Trader (with Stocks)
– hold and take profit using quicker signal, different price target as Group 2.

– after exit, the buy/sell process could be repeated many times until the bull run has ended one day, then applying reversed strategy of shorting to profit from bearish market one day. Trend follower for short term trader.

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In summary, there is no one solution, one could make money with any action aligning to one’s personality: Buy, Hold, Sell, Wait or Shorting. If there is a mismatch in personality with strategy, then any action could result in losses eventually. So, we should know ourselves first before planning for stock trading or investing. Actual personality is much more complicated, each one of us is unique but the 4 types above are the most common ones: trader vs investor, with and without stocks.

We need to take action to convert knowledge into fortune. It has to be the right action at right time, aligning to our unique personality.

4 Seasons of Investing with Optimism Strategies

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There are three schools of thought to achieve the best of both worlds in stock trading and investing. To bridge these three schools of thought, i.e. Fundamental Analysis (FA: business and economic performance), Technical Analysis (TA: price movement) and Personal Analysis (PA: emotional management), I have formulated the Optimism Strategies.

The essence of the optimism strategies is to identify fundamentally strong stocks, and buy/sell at a time aligned with technical analysis indicators, matching our personalities to take the right actions: Buy, Hold, Sell, Wait, Short.

It may seem hard to practise the above when pessimism is looming over the markets, but as investors, we all need a bit of optimism.

To make things simpler, I measure optimism on a 0 to 100% scale, where 0% stands for fearfulness or extreme pessimism, and 100% stands for greed or extreme optimism.

The general aim of investors is to find the best time for entry or exit by applying the Optimism Strategy at four different levels: Level 1 – individual stocks, Level 2 – sector/ industry, Level 3 – country/region, and Level 4 – world.

However, most undisciplined retail investors would simply follow the herd mentality—buying when everyone is buying and selling when everyone is selling. But again, these people usually end up buying high and selling low, and thus losing in investment.

 

Don’t be Thrown Off by the Word “Crisis”

I think a very important part of being optimistic is to not be afraid of crises, and not be distracted by “what everyone is saying”, because every crisis presents an opportunity.

If we were to observe how frequently crises occur, we will find that Level-1 crises happen almost all the time. Wind ups happen for weak companies when the earnings, assets, and/or cash flow are insufficient to pay for the debt. This could happen very unexpectedly; such was the case for Swiber.

Level-2 crises tend to follow the market cycle of the particular sector, for example oil & gas, casino, etc. But that also means that opportunities can be found every few months.

Level-3 crisis could happen every year, e.g. the US losing AAA credit rating (2011), China stock crisis (2015), Brexit crisis (2016), etc.

Level-4 crisis is even bigger in scale, but less frequent as well. Picture the Dotcom Bubble (2001) and Subprime Crisis (2008).

The above sound scary, don’t they? But I think that the greatest investment opportunities lie in the most fearful and most unexpected financial crises. This brings me to the next point.

 

The 4 Seasons of Investing

Of course, I don’t mean seasons in the literal sense, neither am I referring to the quarters in a year.

I use seasons as an analogy to describe market optimism. Winter is cold and seemingly lifeless, so I use it to represent a time/period when investors’ interest is very low (Optimism < 25%).

Summer, on the other hand, is hot and vibrant. I use it to represent a time when investors’ interest is high (Optimism > 75%).

Spring and autumn are seasons with milder climates, thus these two seasons refer to times when investors’ interest is average.

Needless to say, seasons come in cycles. Knowing that the market neither prospers nor stagnates forever, our aim is to enter investment in “winter” (when others are fearful), and exit in “summer” (when others are greedy).

Based on the concept of the four seasons, I have formulated a strategy to pick the optimum times of entering or exiting the market, as depicted in the diagram below:

ein55-newsletter-no-042-image-4-seasons-of-investing

If  you are unsure about what this diagram means, I will be giving a more detailed breakdown of the approach investors can take in my free investment course.

If you’re interested to learn more, you may stay tune to my upcoming articles in this space or even attend a free investment course where I would explain the concepts more in-depth. During the free 3hr high-quality short course to the public, I will also share about 5 out of my 55 investment styles. Click on the button below to find out more about the latest upcoming workshop.

Investment Strategies for Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) – Low Risk High Return

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Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) is getting popular among the investors, total global asset value has exceeded US$3 trillion.  ETF has the best DNA of both stocks and investment funds.  ETF is an investment fund which can be traded like stocks, having the stability of investment funds (risk diversification over a large portfolio) and flexibility of stocks (buy / sell in stock market) with minimal fund management fee.

There are thousands of ETFs globally over various investment markets, eg:

  • Stocks: SPY, STI, QQQ, RSX, XLE
  • Bonds: SHY, TIP, AGG
  • Commodities: USO, GLD, DBA
  • Currencies: FXA, FXB, FXC

Famous ETFs providers are SPDRs, iShares, PowerShares, ProShares, Vanguard, etc.  For stocks ETFs, it could be related to stock indices, sectors or a group of stocks selected by the fund managers, either actively or passively managed.  Some ETFs could be operated inversely (shorting, eg, PSQ – ProShares Short QQQ ETF, higher ETF price with falling in Nasdaq 100 stocks) or with leverage (Ultra, eg. SSO – Ultra S&P500 Proshares, 2 times leveraging of S&P500 stock index movement).

An investor must learn how to choose the top 10 global ETFs (low risk high return), aligning with own personality and investment goals.  Fund managers could help in what to buy, diversifying the investment over a large portfolio to lower the risks.  For those with limited capital, ETF is a low-cost way of investment diversification, 1 ETF is equivalent to a portfolio of many stocks with good businesses.  It is also easier to monitor 1 ETF, comparing to monitor the entire index with hundreds of component stocks.

S&P500 stock index is a common fund of choice for ETF because this is an investment in US, No 1 economy in the world, through 500 top US stocks.  SPY is a popular ETF by SPDR on S&P500.  Let’s learn how to buy low sell high for medium term trading.  Currently S&P500 is near to historical high price, long term optimism is moderate high, not suitable for investing.  However, for medium term traders, each correction of mid-term optimism (see chart below) below 25%, creates a new trading opportunity to buy low.  The reward to risk ratio for mid-term trading is around 2:1 (66% upside vs 34% downside, due to 34% Optimism).  Over the past 4 years, SPY ETF has appreciated by 72% due to capital gains in S&P500 stocks.  It is relatively safer to trade SPY ETF (through S&P500) compared to trade 1 US stock.

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Which is the Real Black Swan? Learn to Profit from the next Global Financial Crisis

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In the ancient time, Europeans thought that swans are all white in colour until one day, black swan was found in Australia, it became a surprised news.  Black swan event is a financial term used to describe an unexpected event which later evolved into global financial crisis.  There were people and company went bankrupt during the downfall of global stock market.  There were also people who took advantage to buy good business at low price, making many times of fortune in a short time when the crisis is over.

Every crisis is an opportunity. However, there are different scales of financial crisis, from Level-1 (company level, eg. Swiber or Noble), Level-2 (sector level, eg. Shipping Industry), Level-3 (country level, eg. Russia) to Level-4 (global financial crisis).  Level-1 crisis happened almost all the time, weak company could wind up the business when the earning, asset or cashflow is insufficient to pay for the debt. Level-2 crisis follows the unique sector market cycle, eg. Oil & Gas crisis, casino crisis, opportunity could be found every few months, suitable only for trading if it is not aligned with higher level of crisis.  Level-3 crisis could happen every year, eg. Euro Debt Crisis (2010-2012), US losing AAA credit rating (2011), China stock crisis (2015), Brexit crisis (2016), creating a good opportunity for both traders and investors.  However, none of them could be named as Black Swan event or Level-4 crisis (global financial crisis), similar to Dotcom Bubble (2001) and Subprime Crisis (2008).

The greatest investment opportunity requires the most fearful financial crisis in an in unexpected way.  Every year in a bull market, many “Dr Doom” will try to predict each event could become the next global financial crisis, but why it usually ended up just a smaller scale of regional crisis?  In fact, each of the yearly financial crisis could become the next global financial crisis but it requires greater fear to trigger.  Based on Ein55 Optimism Strategies (see chart below), global financial crisis will more likely to occur when world stock index is over 75% optimism, eg. in year 2000 (which triggered the dotcom bubble in 2001) and year 2007 (which triggered the subprime crisis in year 2008).  For other smaller scale crisis (Euro Debt, Brexit, US credit crisis, etc), world stock market was at mid optimism level (<60%), it was not greedy enough, therefore the global investors were also not fearful enough to escape at the same time when crisis happened.

In the past 20 years, world stock market has gone up 3.4 times in share prices (see chart below), a highly profitable investment option. World stock market index was at the critical 75% Optimism in year 2015, the global stock market correction has helped to cool down to moderate high level of 60% Optimism.  With US S&P500 index reaching historical high every few months, world stock market has been increasing in optimism level, risk is getting higher each day (40% upside, 60% downside) but not back to the critical level yet.  If there is still a last rally, global stock market could be speculated to a high optimism level, the black swan of the next global financial crisis will be likely to wait there.  We don’t have to guess what and when is the black swan event because it is unpredictable in nature, therefore it is called a black swan. However, Ein55 Optimism Strategies could help us to prepare for that golden opportunity in future.  As long as we are not too greedy, taking profit at high optimism (>75%), we could save enough capital, overcome our fear to buy low at low optimism (<25%) and hold until recovery of world economy, making profit from global financial crisis.

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