Observe, don’t react

Western society is dominated by control freaks, but control is overrated. Most people experience their best ideas when relaxed into a state of flow.

Instead of attempting to micromanage the world, step back and observe what happens without your interference. After all, disorder is beyond human control; it cannot be grasped.

Not just that, but life and the world are inherently disorderly and random, which makes any attempt at control futile. We might try to control other people, forcing them to do what we want, but attempts fail practically every time – all while wasting a great deal of effort.

In reality, the best way to get people to behave reasonably is to let them be naughty, crazy or free. Instead of attempting to guide their behavior to where you'd like it to be, simply watch and intervene only when they are a threat to themselves or others.

It's like raising sheep or cattle. If you give your herd a massive field to live in, they're much more likely to exist in peace and contentment. If you confine them to a packed pen, they'll be tempted to jump the fence.

So, in life, control holds us back, and the same is true in meditation. Oftentimes, when we meditate, we attempt to control our thoughts and prevent them from existing, which doesn't work at all.

Instead, you should wisely allow thoughts to come and go, observing them as they do so. Remember, your efforts to deter thought are not appropriate for Zen meditation. The only proper effort here is to return the mind and concentration to your breathing.

Authentic product - blinkist

Success in business comes from selling an authentic product.

If you bring up Starbucks in conversation, chances are pretty much everyone will know what you're talking about. You know Starbucks as a successful business, but have you ever wondered how it came to be?

The secret to Starbucks' success is, for founder Howard Schultz, no secret at all. Plain and simple, the success of Starbucks lies with the brand's authenticity, achieved by selling only the highest quality coffee.

Back in 1981, Starbucks was just a small retail store. It sold exclusively dark-roasted Italian style coffee, which may be ubiquitous today, but was still a novelty back then. By roasting the coffee dark, the coffee grows in strength, gains a more powerful aroma and has the distinct taste of authentic Italian coffee.

Starbucks never compromised its beans, and became known for its premium-quality, dark-roasted flavor profile that its founders were so passionate about. Because of those early business decisions, Starbucks had an undeniable feeling of authenticity about it since the start.

The company has held true to its authentic coffee profile, in tough times to the present day. In 1994, coffee prices shot to an all-time high on the world market, from $0.80 to $2.74 in a matter of days, after a frost that destroyed much of Brazil's coffee plants.

During this coffee crisis, a lot of shareholders promoted the purchase of cheaper beans, to keep the price of a cup of joe stable. But Starbucks was unwilling to compromise quality and continued to sell the highest quality coffee they could, instead reducing other costs to account for the higher price of beans. When the world coffee market recovered, Starbucks had an even stronger customer base because its quality remained consistently high.

Manager to employee ratio (adapted Blinkist)

Build organizations from the top down and keep an eye on manager-to-employee ratios.

As you move toward your goals, it's only a matter of time before problems arise. But there's no reason to panic or be deterred by these bumps in the road. Developing solutions for problems is how many companies improve. In other words, most problems will end up providing fuel for your machine.

However, if you hope to turn problems into advantages, you need to design your business so that problems get noticed and solutions get implemented as quickly as possible.

One of the best ways to build your organization is from the top down.

You can think of a good business structure as being the opposite of a building – your foundation is located at the top, which means that, first and foremost, you need to make sure you have great managers.

Every manager should be trustworthy and have high standards. If this isn't the case, their weaknesses and poor performance will eventually spread to their staff. On the other hand, managers who show their appreciation for excellent work, and have strong oversight and strict quality control, will lead teams of employees who rise to their level of great performance.

So that problems can be dealt with swiftly, each department should be given a certain amount of self-sufficiency and control over the resources they require. If bureaucracy is keeping departments from acting fast, your teams simply won't be able to do their job.

Finally, it's also wise to keep a balanced ratio of managers to staff. A good rule of thumb is not to exceed a ratio of ten to one.

The ideal ratio is closer to five employees for every manager, as this will give your managers the best chance of having meaningful relationships and mutual understanding with each employee. But rather than setting strict rules on team sizes, you'll get the best results by assessing each manager's capabilities and proceeding accordingly.

So now you have a basic idea of the principles the author has used to find amazing success. It's up to you to start putting them to use and turning your organization into a constantly evolving and constantly winning enterprise.

Mi Pay’s Campaign

Timeless advice on Investing

One should commit at least 20% of your income to savings. Such reserves are badly needed in urgent situations. The accumulation of your savings should be committed in liquid financial instruments. Liquidity is the primary consideration because you want the option to retrieve the money quickly at a low cost.

Some of my friends invest in land-related structured products that lock up their money over a long time. Some others invest their money in alternative schemes. Always put your money in traditional instruments such as stocks, bonds, exchange-traded funds, mutual funds and money market funds.

Investing in a long-term affair. Anyone that tells you otherwise isn’t a real adviser. Your returns are a function of cost and risk. The riskier your instrument, the lower your returns. The costlier your investments, the lower your returns. This is pretty straightforward.

There is no magic formula in investing. Diversification allows you to reap benefits of lower risk with the same expected return over time. The cheapest way to diversify is to put 2/3 of your money in stocks and 1/3 in bonds. Some recommend a 60/40 split. This is fine too, as long as you re-balance your portfolio annually. The proof of the benefits of diversification is mathematical. Giants in the financial industry have also urged individual investors to adopt such a simple investing rule. I recommend two books that you need to read; Common Sense on Mutual Funds and The Intelligent Investor.

My opinion is that you do not need a financial adviser. They increase your investing cost. The rules of investing are relatively simple. You do not need to outsource this responsibility. First, select low-cost funds. On average, managed funds charge at least 2% over passion exchange-traded funds. This reduces your overall returns in the long run by a gigantic amount. Beware of unique fee structures. Some fees can be hidden in sale charges, some in wrap accounts.

William F. Sharpe, a Nobel Laureate in Economics said: “The first thing to look at is the expense ratio”. You will definitely earn the highest returns in a low-cost index fund. An index fund that mirrors the market will also likely outperform any funds in the long term. In fact, more than 90% of funds fail to outperform the benchmark index. Funds with high expenses will under-perform their benchmark. Funds performance typically exhibit mean reversion. In other words, the worst fund of the year will more likely outperform the best fund of the year in future. To me, past performance means nothing. I will always only look out for index funds with the lowest costs.

Within the equity portion of your portfolio, simply invest in low-cost index funds in the U.S and the U.K and in Asia. Avoid synthetic exchange-traded funds because there is an additional layer of counter-party risk. Actually, you only need to hold a couple of funds in your entire lifetime. If you hold too many funds, it can be difficult to manage the exposure. Many of your funds will overlap significantly.

Want to invest in Commodities?

Commodities usually involves high costs of storage and procurement. For this reason, investors have relied on futures or commodities firms to obtain commodities exposure. With the introduction of commodities ETF, there is renewed interests. ETFs provide cheap and transparent way to invest in commodities futures.

Factors affecting commodities comprise weather, geopolitical developments, supply constraints in physical production, unanticipated increases in demand as a result of prosperity in emerging markets, and incidents that create political or economic turmoil.

Recent crisis have shaken investor’s confidence in equities. This motivate investors to explore alternative investments in commodities. What are some ways an investor can invest in commodities?

• Exchange Traded Funds provide the cheapest way to buy commodities exposure. These ETF track major commodities index
• Exchange Traded Notes track non interest paying debt and the credit risks of commodities contracts. Payoff to the ETN depends on the counterparty risk of the futures issuer
• Unit trusts have higher fees than ETFs as they typically employ discretionary management methods to invest in commodities or companies in the businesses related to commodities

An investor can also trade derivative contracts such as futures and swaps directly. The most direct way of investing in commodities is to buy the physical commodities incurring storage costs. One of the most indirect ways to gain exposure to commodities is to buy equities of related businesses.

Commodities have unique characteristics. Metals are seen as safe haven for investors and demand can be driven by the stability of the value of money. Soft commodities such as grain, crops and coffee generally react well to extraordinary detrimental events.

Agriculture sector is less dependent on economic conditions and more dependent on factors such as global weather. The low correlation (even lower than bonds) is an important tool for portfolio allocation. Commodity prices can also hedge inflation.

For long term investors, commodities will be a strategic allocation tool for the portfolio due to the low correlation with equities. For short term tactical allocations, commodities rise when inflationary pressures increase.

Costs are the best single predictor of the future performance of an investment

Costs are the best single predictor of the future performance of an investment. Keep costs lower — by tracking an index rather than investing in attempts to beat it — and for any given level of risk, your returns should be a little higher.

Why investors need to know about indices.

Research by London’s Cass Business School shows that randomly chosen portfolios — that might as well have been picked by monkeys — are overwhelmingly likely to beat market-cap-weighted indices. But most monkeys failed to match equal-weighted indices, or indices based on most sophisticated measures to limit risk.

So the hierarchy is that simple equal weighting indices beat monkeys, who beat value-weighted indices like the S&P, which beats the average active manager (who nonetheless complains that the S&P benchmark is unfair).

Yet our money is still mostly run by active managers, while none that I am aware of is run by monkeys. For these reasons and much more, we need to know more about indices.
https://next.ft.com/0dfb0de0–9fc0–11e3-b6c7–00144feab7de

Mr. Markowitz’s comment on this: “One lesson from 2008 is that if it’s very complicated and you don’t understand it, maybe you shouldn’t buy it.”

Anyone with a simple rule that required them to keep 40 percent in bonds and 60 percent in stocks would have “rebalanced” — bought stocks — near the market’s nadir five years ago, he points out. “Those who were too clever by half suffered tragic

Passive better than active

Net returns received by investors is net of cost. There are many types of costs. Some are clear, some are hidden. Our financial system is complex. There are too many middlemen, the leftover returns for the common man can be too little to sustain savings. Investors (you) becomes the bottom of the priority list.

Investors commit money and get exposed to risk. If the market moves in your direction, the hedge fund manager takes a large chunk of your wins. If the market moves against your direction, the manager is insulated from losses. He still takes a fee from you.

Benjamin Graham said that anyone can design a strong portfolio with just stocks and bonds that are representative of the market.

A doing nothing policy is always better than an active strategy. As long as you make a decision to move money, someone charges a fee. If I may summarize, always invest with the lowest cost instrument - index funds.

Just get that index fund

I hope to simply the process of investing among individuals. The investment sector is filled with fraud. As long as you buy or sell, someone makes money from you. And the world is consistently asking you to buy or sell. No one ever tells you to buy and hold forever, even though that’s the best strategy to induce the least cost.

 

I’m going to sure a few tips that you will find boring. But it’s going to save your life.
First, invest in an index fund. Never ever buy any collective instruments if possible. Any active managed fund will cost you an arm and a leg compared to a passive index fund. Run from anyone who tells you you can beat the market. No one can. If there is actually a fund with a superior strategy, it’s never going to last long before the market neutralizes it. Most likely you earn normal returns after cost.

Do not fall for simulated results. Be aware that most fund houses present results from a pool of funds they select – we call it survivorship biases. No one ever beats the market. There are great investors who existed in the past. But after taking their returns, adjusted by risk, the risk adjusted return also cannot beat the market over the long term.

Just buy the index fund. Please do not fall for tricks and sweet talkings.

Secret to buying insurance

Should I buy from a friend or direct?

Try not to buy from an adviser because insurance commissions can be very high. Yes, it can go up to 50% for your entire first year’s premium. This is why you should go online to get one yourself. Simply Google “Compare Insurance” to find out portals that can help you spot the cheapest coverage.

How do I shop for insurance by myself? I don’t even know what is needed?

There are just a few categories of insurance.

• Health insurance mitigates the risk of falling sick – I recommend to upgrade to cover private hospital expenses
• Life insurance – I recommend to cover your projected income until the age of retirement. By retirement you won’t need insurance because your savings is supposed to take over. Frankly, if your family is wealthy enough to survive should you pass on, forget about this.
• Critical illness – I like this. Buy this because you don’t want to be a drag to your family when you are critically sick. Note that both euthanasia and suicide is illegal in Singapore

Buy term insurance. They are cheaper. Do not buy wholelife or ILP. There is, however, a special case for ILP where you can choose to maximise coverage and use the rest of the remaining units to invest (very little).

Honestly, the products that an adviser sells you won’t be able to help you retire well. You need to seek higher income and, perhaps, work harder.

Con men and cheaters selling investment courses

Many errant businessmen are selling trading courses. No one with a working formula will reveal their “magic formula” for a few thousand dollars. The efficient market hypothesis states that any formula that takes if released into public hands and if adopted by the public, will result in the nullification of the effects of the formula.

But the case is different if the formula is one based on simple probability. 50% of the time it works, 50% of the time it does not work. You sell the formula for thousands, show the cases when it works, find a reason when it does not. Offer advice on hindsight, give many caveats for future looking tips. This is an old business. People have sold gambling tips over centuries. Today, the same con men are legitimizing this trade by dealing with regulated instruments like stocks.

Let me unveil the business model. They get you in to attend a free course, hype you up, sell a 3 to 4 - day course for thousands. At the end of the course, they sell you more courses and formulas and unique programs. You get sucked into the program. Just when you think this is it, there’s more. You signed up with one of the brokers they brought. Every trade you make, they make a fee, or at least, they earned an introductory fee.

If you want to learn how to trade FX or stocks, read a proper textbook. There is no shortcut. Keep a few honest financial blogs. There’s not many.

Regression to the mean - how one means the market over the long run

Look at the table above. Well performing funds do not stay at the top. They revert to the mean. This implies if you had bought a fund simply because it made good results in the past, you are more likely to lose. Simply put, if you came first, overtime you will underperform to emerge somewhere in the middle (the mean).

I get it that many professionals tell you they have insights. They print beautiful brochures. Anyone can report good results. Think about it this way, you came in 20th in a class of 40th. How do you show you did well? Well, you can say you were top 5 of those who went to the same club as you did. You could also say you were first in the entire neighborhood you stay in. These could be facts. But it does not take away the fact that you only came in 20th.

• Fund performance is hypothesized to be random
• Cost and fees are everything. Buy the cheapest that gives you the broadest diversification
• Please buy funds yourself, direct, not through advisors. They take a big cut

Simple investing truths

I haven't been writing about investments because I genuinely believe the public needs to be taught a lesson for listening to sub standard advice.

They believe that 0.5% processing fees, 1% sales charges are acceptable as long as the sales person is hot. The general public does not know simple mathematics and bloggers and advisers similar do not know simple mathematics. The first step is to learn geometric progression — go back to primary school, please.

Rule 1: Fees should be kept minimal. Free is better than 0.1%. 0.1% is better than 0.5% and in turn, 0.5% is better than 1%. In this light, buying from exchanges make more sense than from anyone else. Period.

Rule 2: Run away from ongoing charges. Sales platforms like charge you a fee on AUM (asset under management) is simply disgusting. They will all be disrupted by Fintech soon. The only persons that deserve a fee is the manager.

Rule 3: Diversify. Diversification is scientific. Read this set of slides. Buy into an index fund. A non-traded index fund is better than an ETF. A physical ETF is better than a synthetic ETF.

Rule 4: Re-balance annually. Not anymore or less. Stop reading substandard blogs and start taking the CFA curriculum if you are genuinely interested in finance. You won't get a job in the financial industry because you passed all 3 levels, but at least you won't get cheated.

The MAS money sense website has one of the best and most updated information on investments. Please read it.

My personal advice:

A. Spend money on Uber. Save time. Don't spend money on expensive investment intermediaries

B. Spend money outsourcing work. Don't do administrative work yourself and waste all the time and effort learning nothing. Rest more often. Think deeper. Read FT.com, take the CFA curriculum.

C. Enjoy life. Eat better. Do not take anything to sales platforms. At best, pay a small commission to the exchange and an electronic broker.