Spencer Li

Shares Investment Guest Article Feature

Shares Investment Guest Article Feature

Recently, I was asked to write a feature article in the “Shares Investment” publication to give an outlook on the Singapore market. As you can briefly see from the chart in the picture, I am expecting a larger correction, which would at least see prices dip below the 3,000 round figure. To find out more, this publication is available at selected bookstores and most news stands.

Shares Investment Guest Article Feature 2

 

According to Investment Trends’ Singapore Broking Report 2011, Shares Investment (Singapore) is the most popular magazine among frequent stock market traders in Singapore. Since july 1995, Shares Investment has been weel-acclaimed by both the investing public and local stock brokers – boasting of more than 30,000 readers every issue.

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Spencer Li

SGX Exclusive Interview | StockWhiz Trader Profiling

StockWhiz Trader Profiling

 

Recently, I got profiled for the SGX StockWhiz Online Investing Competition, and was asked to share some of his experiences with the participants:

  • What are some trading strategies that you would like to share?
  • What are the key elements of successful trading?
  • How do you decide which financial instruments to trade?
  • What are some educational resources you would recommend?
  • Who would you consider to be your trading mentor?

To read the full interview, click here.

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Spencer Li

Tips for your Resume: How I Managed to Land a Job With the Big Boys

The point of a resume is to provide your future employer or headhunter a glimpse of your achievements and skill sets, and the purpose of this is to stand out sufficiently, so as to get an opportunity for an interview.

Resume-Tips

After looking through many resumes and talking to many employers, I have a pretty good idea of what they are looking out for, and what should be avoided in your resume. Here are some of my personal guidelines:

      • Keep your resume to ONE single-sided page. Employers have piles of resumes to look at. They will only spend a few seconds scanning your resume to decide if you are worth a shot. They do not have time to scan two pages.
      • Use a decent template. A resume with ugly formatting may get tossed away before getting read.
      • A photo is optional, but if you are including one, make sure it is a professionally taken portrait shot, and not one simply taken using your webcam.
      • Provide relevant data, but not more. Relevant data includes your name, address, mobile number and email address. Irrelevant data includes your birthday, height, weight, race/religion, horoscope, next-of-kin, favourite colour, etc
      • Have a professional-sounding email address. School email addresses are acceptable, but for personal email addresses, please use one that resembles your name, eg. john_tanxx@gmail.com, instead of something like cute_boi88@gmail.com. You get the idea.
      • Put in only the best stuff. Given the space limitations, and considering the few seconds of attention that will be given to your resume, you want to make sure they read the good stuff, so don’t dilute and bury it within other less important experiences. This is not an autobiography, so it is not necessary to write in every single experience you have been through. Write only what is relevant to the job, and things that will possible enable you to stand out. Hint: no one really cares about the medal you won in primary/secondary school.
      • Categorise your experiences. Common categories include “Education”, “Awards & Honours”, “Leadership & Activities”, “Professional Certifications”, “Skills & Interests”
      • Include the time periods for each work and education experience
      • After stating each work experience, include two or three bullet points of elaboration to give a brief description of what you did and what you achieved

If you have any additional tips to share, feel free to add them in the comments below.
Good luck! 😀

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Spencer Li

The Cheetah and the Trader – How to Go for the Kill

The cheetah, while the fastest animal on the African plain can outrun any of the prey it feasts upon, always chooses to go for the young, weak, or sick. Once identified, he attacks with laser-guided focus and effectiveness. It is only then that the kill is likely. This is the epitome of a professional trader. Be the cheetah.

 

The Cheetah and the Trader

 

Here are some common questions I get from people:
“Sometimes I can’t find good setups in the market, should I trade the less optimal setups or should I look for more different stocks to trade?”
“The setup I learnt from xxx course was working fine a few months back, but it doesn’t seem to be working now. Should I continue using it?”

 

So, how do we go for the kill?

As cheetah, we should always go for the easy trades. But quite often, for the newbie, the easy trades are staring them right in the face but they do not see them. This is because they are only familiar with a few simple setups (with simple rules/formula) that work best only under specific market conditions.

All these questions have a common theme. Traders who learn one or two simple setups think that they can trade successfully, but when the market changes, quite often the simple setup or system that they are using cannot adapt to the market, and becomes discarded.

Hence, a good trader cannot keep relying on the one same setup. Rather, he needs to know the basic form of a setup, so that from there, he can create a wide variety of different setups that are best suited to the current market situation. That is why we teach a variety of setups (and certain proven variations), leaving them the core skills to tweak setups to adapt to any market situation.

 

complete guide to investing and trading psychology cover

If you would like to learn more about trading psychology, also check out: “The Complete Guide to Investing & Trading Psychology”

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Spencer Li

Lunch with Jim Rogers

Yesterday, I attended the Shares Investment Conference, and here are some insights I got from the talks, as well as from chatting up the speakers during the private VVIP lunch session.

Lunch with Jim Rogers

Insights from Jim Rogers

Jim Rogers is a very charismatic speaker, sharing not only market wisdom, but also wisdom on living life to the fullest. He had tons of interesting travel stories to share (especially since he travelled around the world).

He is bearish on the US and European markets, for obvious reasons, at least throughout 2013 and 2014. He also talked about a possible bond bubble in the forming, especially in the longer term.

For his portfolio, he is short on US stocks, and has large holdings in Singapore stocks. He is also buying up china stocks (during a crash), expecting a long-term bull for China, at the same time also accumulating the RMB. Other up-and-coming investments include Myanmar and N. Korea, which are starting to show some signs of opening up.

His most bullish sentiments lie in the commodities sector, especially in the area of agriculture. He spoke of cycles of supply and demand for these markets, such as natural resources, land, and commodities. Hence this new cycle is expected to usher in a new era of prosperity for farmers. If one is interested to invest in US real estate, he recommends areas like Iowa and Texas.

On a non market-related note, Jim says that the most important thing is to find your passion in life and do it, then you will never have to work a single day in your life. Trust your heart, and don’t let others discourage you. He ends off by suggesting that investors study philosophy and history, the former to teach us how to think, and the latter to help us draw from the past to cope in a world that is ever-changing.

Lunch with Jim Rogers 2

Insights from Mike Bellafiore

Mike is a famous proprietary trader in New York, and the trading firm he started, SMB Capital, is now one of the top trading firms in New York. He was featured in the famous TV series, Wallstreet Warriors.

Mike started off the talk by stating upfront that there is no need to predict the market in order to make money. He said that many professional when asked will not be able to give a view on the market, simply because it is not necessary to have a view on the market to make money.

When training his new traders, he tells them not to dwell on a losing trade, and instead focus more on the winning trades. One should not celebrate a trade simply because one has made money on it. One should be asking “could I have made more on this trade? Did I manage the trade well such that I got the most out of it?”

When asked about his views on high-frequency trading (HFT), he said that it resulted in more whipsaws, and stops getting taken out more frequently, but the way to go around that was to be ready to re-enter a position upon getting stopped out, and using a time filter to aid in this decision-making.

Someone in the audience asked him what parameters he used for his indicators, to which he replied that he preferred not to use indicators at all. This got me sitting up in my seat, because I had been telling my students the same thing. He said that newbies tended to get bogged down by indicators, but professional prefer to use a blank chart to read the psychology of the market. In fact, the messier one’s chart is, the more likely he has no idea what he is doing.

Over lunch, he shared with me some useful tips on starting a trading firm, and I am very grateful that he is willing to share his experience so generously. Overall, I had a great time at this conference, and I would like to thank the speakers and organisers for the great insights and excellent lunch!

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