Category: Travel

I came across this article about Bill Benter, the pioneer in systematic gambling who made more than a billion dollars in horse-racing. I don’t really have many heroes in my journey towards trading success. However, Benter’s story was a major inspiration for me when his story was first reported in Hong Kong back in the 1990s. His approach to scientifically model horse-racing is no difference from my custom market breadth analysis – we are really looking at the data objectively to figure out what really matters.

I have been busy meeting people from early morning all the way to midnight almost everyday since the day I arrived in Hong Kong. They came from various backgrounds and our meetings are on very diverse subjects due to the fact that I have multiple businesses that somehow, of great interest to all these people. It is good that I get this chance to really summarize the experience here.

Immigration to Canada – hot topic and I was told that people of all social economic status are looking for ways to get out of Hong Kong. Going to Canada is an option but it may not be the best choice. As oppose to hard sell what one of my investment firms can do for the people looking to immigrate to Canada, I listened to them and gave them honest advice whether Canada is a good choice for them.

Here is a list of good reasons if you are thinking of immigrating to Canada:

• your children are young and you are looking for a place with good education system for their future
• you were educated in Western countries and like the experience
• you are thinking of retirement and that a decent healthcare system is your concern

If you are not interested in at least one of the factors above, just the damn cold weather alone can be bad enough to drive you away from Canada. After all, Canada is the country with polar bears.

Stable investment vehicles – this is a new emerging topic as playing in stock markets and real estate no longer generate significant returns for many HKers. The outlook of Hong Kong economic conditions in coming 5 to 10 years will likely be consolidation or even recession as global economic slowdown has already hit last quarter. So smart investors are now waking up to the situation and want to park their money in something stable with reasonable return. And we all know putting money in the banks does not produce any return nowadays.

Well, when looking for alternative investments, it is important to understand what you are getting into so that you do not have the wrong expectation from the product. For example, the high interest rate mortgage investment funds offered by one of my firms is not a term deposit. It is by-design a market driven investment product. It carries some market risk that is relatively much lower than those corporate bonds. The more willing you are in understanding the concepts, the more likely you will accept these investment options.

High return investments – this one is the most interesting topic for which I see a very dysfunctional investment mentality among majority of the Hong Kong population. First of all, way too many people have completely messed up beliefs about investing in general. Although normal people in western countries do share a significant amount of these problematic beliefs, the retail traders and investors in Hong Kong have taken this further by ranking luck as being something tangible … just don’t tell them they don’t know what they are doing.

I will prolong my stay in Hong Kong and probably travel to some other Asian countries to close a few more deals.

For my US readers, Happy Thanksgiving!

p.s. I am posting early this week because I do not have computer access in coming two days while on the road.

This past week I offered The Art of Chart Reading to my readers for $1 at Amazon. It ended up some readers do not have access to the discount due to the fact that Amazon actually has regional limitations on the discount campaign. I apologize for this inconvenience and will organize other discount directly on my site so that all readers will benefit.

Many of you already know that I travelled to Hong Kong and expressed concern of my safety. I like to say thanks to all of you for sending me messages about this. I am doing fine here in Hong Kong so far and I will stay safe as promised.

During the flight while I was doing my meditation, I dreamed up quite a number of ideas for webinars and video lessons. I am working on the drafts now. The only issue is that I did not bring my microphone here. Hopefully I can record the voiceover here with a replacement.

It is kind of fun doing marathon meditation. I have not done that for several years already. It brings back old memories …

I am extremely busy since I arrived in Hong Kong as I already arranged all these meetings beforehand. It is a very effective way to get things done. Starting next week, when my schedule is not as packed, I will post my thoughts about the current state of the financial markets worldwide.

I have been doing this for almost a decade now. The audience has changed from just my affluent clients to all my readers. Hopefully my take on the markets can help many of you navigate the markets in year 2020.

Have a great weekend all!

I came across this video with James Rickards, the lawyer of Long Term Capital Management. LTCM is the firm that nearly brought down the world as we know. This is a great video explaining many things that everyone should watch.

And it is now official, the introduction webinar of DaytradingBias at futures.io on Nov 12th 4:30 pm ET. Register now to participate!

For those of you asking about NinjaTrader version of the day trading strategies offered at DaytradingBias, I am happy to say that we are making good progress on that front. When they are ready I will let you know.

I have scheduled a trip going to Hong Kong again later this month. This time it will be a short trip to take care of some business deals. I do not foresee much issues to stay connected. For anyone who like to meet up in Hong Kong, drop me a line and we can work something out for sure.

Have a great weekend all!

I was doing a presentation in Hong Kong on alternative investment vehicles earlier this week. Some questions are quite interesting. But specifically there is this one question many readers will be interested to know the answers,

What are my opinions on the current market environment?

Here is a quick summary:

• Brexit is good for UK. British Pound will bottom out soon after Brexit.
• Do not short Euro now. Too crowded. Too late.
• When every major economy are using ZIRP to stimulate the economy, there will be unintended consequences.
• Gold is in the beginning stage of a two to multiple years rally.
• Equities will not be the place to be for good return in coming two to three years but not necessarily a “crash” that many people wanted to see (i.e. Chicken Little syndrome).
• Real estate will not generate good return because it always normalize to the long term bond yield which may turn negative if the central banks choose to do so.
• US dollar will be the place to be until it gets too expensive for the 3rd world countries to service their debts.
• The belief that you need physical gold implies you believe that the system is heading for total collapse. If that is the case, you should not pile up gold bars. You should buy guns instead. (Stolen from Tim Morge)

There is this very odd thing I like to complain about the restaurants in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. Many restaurants offering breakfast on their menu but they do not open until much later in the day. And many of them do not indicate what time they open. So I was walking up and down the street not able to find a place for breakfast even though all these places having their signs telling me the nice breakfast they serve … by lunch time.

The week was so packed with all sorts of meetings I could not work on the book list on technical trading skills. I will catch up with that when I return to Toronto in couple of days.

And this year is first time in my life that I have so many people surprised me with birthday cakes and well wishes. I don’t usually celebrate my birthday at all for years. So it is a drastic change indeed. Thank you all of you for remembering my birthday!

For those of you who are curious about my exact date of birth for whatever reason, here is the clue – first moon landing.

Have a nice weekend all!

It has been an extremely busy week since I arrived at Hong Kong this past Sunday. Being busy and having a hectic schedule are not really something that pose serious challenge to me. But the hot weather is. I was effectively sweating all day going everywhere. It was only made tolerable because of the breaks I got from going inside air-conditioned buildings …

It is a more personal trip for which I am meeting with my family, across multiple generations, quite a number of times. We do not get the chance to see each other that often. It is good to see people family members are doing fine. Time is short though since I will head back to Toronto this coming weekend.

One thing I notice is that the price of everything has rise significantly in Hong Kong in just half a year since I last visited the place not long ago. I ask around to see if my observation is correct. It turns out many fast food chains and retail stores are increasing their prices due to the upward pressure of labour costs.

I was rereading the book The Magic of Thinking Big by David Schwartz on the plane. Before all these movements of self-help and all these talks about better performance through the building of proper perspective, we have this book explaining it all way back when. It is still the one that I recommend most to young adults because of the way the message is delivered.

Looking ahead, this coming week will be as hectic as the first one since I have been providing strategic portfolio allocation advices to my clients. I am also in talk with potential investors who are interested in some of my business ventures. Even though I do not usually get myself directly involve in running the start-ups I invest in, it is a great idea to spread the words when the opportunities show up.

Weather forecast is saying that it is going to rain all week long. To me, that means lower temperature. Yay!

Have a nice weekend all!