The Price of Coffee

I realised that there is a vast difference in the price of a cup of coffee in various shops.

In a normal hawker centre coffee shop, a cup of coffee will cost you around $0.70
In a fast food restaurant, a cup of coffee will cost you around $2.00
In Starbucks, a cup of coffee will cost you easily $5.00

Matter of fact is that the coffee actually tastes almost the same to me. I certainly cannot tell the difference between a Starbucks coffee and one that is served in Macdonalds if you put me through a blind test.

What is amazing is that it does not mean drinking at Starbucks will make me a happier person. In fact, it is possible to drink a cheap cup of coffee and still derive the same amount of satisfaction and happiness.

It is thus possible for a person to spend a lot less and still be happy. Better to be eating bread and living a peaceful life than to have a buffet spread everyday but be unhappy.

Just my thought for the day.

The author had a cup of coffee at a fast food restaurant that cost him $2.10 today. He feels that the coffee was only average and did not particularly enjoy the coffee session anyway.

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What is Dow Theory and Why It Matters to You

What Dow Theory?

Charles Dow never wrote about any Dow Theory nor presented it as a trading system.

However, Dow Theory today serves as a theory on underlying stock prices and is very much a pillar of technical analysis. The theory was derived based on editorial articles that Charles Dow had wrote and it was subsequently called the "Dow Theory" by others who referred to his work.

Dow himself never spoke about any such theory. If anything, Dow was more a scholar than a speculator.

Dow Moves to New York City

Dow was born in a small town in Conneticut in 1851. He apparently held around twenty jobs before he found his passion in journalism. After certain life events, Dow decided that carrying out journalism at the Providence Journal was too small for him. He packed and moved to New York City with an old friend, Eddie Jones.

Together with Jones and a friend named Charles Milford Bergstrasser, they decided to go into a news distributing business. They called their company Dow, Jones and Co.

Perhaps the most lasting contribution to finance was the Dow Jones Average that was the first attempt by someone to create a sort of aggregate indicator of stock market trends. The Dow Jones Average is still what most people turn to if they want to find out how the market is doing today.

6 Basic Tenets of Dow Theory?

One of the assumptions of Dow Theory is that trends in stock prices, once under way, will always tend to persists until the market itself sends out a signal that these trends are about to be reversed. The 6 basic tenets of Dow Theory are as follows:

1. The market has three movements. A main movement( measured in years), medium movement (months to a year) and short swing (hours to a month). It can be said that these 3 movements can occur simultaneously, for example: "a daily short swing in a bearish medium movement under an overall bullish main movement."

2. Market Trends Have Three Phases. The accumulation phase, public participation phase and distribution phase. The accumulation phase is when investors who are in the "know" are buying stocks against general market opinion. The stock price does not change much in the accumulation phase. The publich participation phase is when this information becomes known and there is a rapid price surge. The distribution phase is when astute investors exit their holdings.

3. The Stock Market Discounts All News. The stock market price quickly adapts to any information that becomes available.

4. Stock Market Averages Confirm Each Other. When two averages move together, it confirms that the direction is correct. If two averages diverge, it means change is likely to come.

5. Trends are confirmed by Volume. Low volume trading does not make up a trend. Only high volume indicates a trend.

6. Trends exist until definitive signals prove they have ended. There are times when there are market noises and small reversals occur against the trend. This noises should be ignored and the trend should be given the benefit of the doubt. Difficulty lies in deciding which tools to use to decide whether the trend has ended.

Analysis of Dow Theory & Why It Matters to You

Till date, there has been no conclusive evidence on the profitability of using the Dow Theory. While studies remain inconclusive, some have have argued that Dow Theory produces excess risk adjusted returns compared to a simply buy and hold strategy.
Today, many chartists or technical analysts still consider Dow Theory's definition of a trend and its insistence on the study of historical price action of stocks as one of the pillars of technical analysis.

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Book I Am Reading

I have been reading Capital Ideas by Peter L. Bernstein the past few days.

It provides an insightful account of the origins of Wall Street and also touches on the pionering work of all the early scholars with their new theories on risk, valuation, investment returns and the actual implementation of these theories to the real world.

This book really provides in-depth insights and timeless advice and shows how the unique contributions of these various individuals have profoundly changed the investment world as we know it today.

Why people should read this book is because it provides a very academic response to what has proven to work and doesn't work in the world of stocks.

Random Walks in Stock Market Prices - A Case against Technical Analysts and Fundamental Analysts

Eugene Fama quote on Chartists:

"He must show that he can consistently use these patterns to make meaningful predictions of future prices"

Eugene Fama quote on FA:

"The analyst cannot merely protest that he thinks the securities he selects do better than randomly selected securities; he must demonstrate that this is in fact the case."

My Stand

The onus is on all chartists and fundamental analysts to prove that their system works better than a portfolio of randomly selected securities. I do not side with any camp.

$323 in Dividends

One of my REIT holdings has just declared a distribution of 1.90 cents per unit.

I have 17,000 units of it in my portfolio.

This means that I will be getting a windfall of $323.00 sometime in November.

Donald Trump's New Son-in-Law

So it seems that Donald Trump has gotten himself a son-in-law. And it looks like this son-in-law will get along very well with Donald as he himself comes from another major real estate family. See the article below to find out more:

IVANKA Trump has wed the son of another major New York area real estate family.

The daughter of Donald and Ivana Trump married Jared Kushner at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey, on Sunday. The Orthodox Rabbi Haskel Lookstein performed the ceremony.

Trump, 27, is the co-host of Celebrity Apprentice, a vice president at her father's real estate company, and has a jewelry company.

The 28-year-old Kushner is publisher of The New York Observer and an executive at the Kushner Companies, which owns and manages commercial real estate and apartments.

Kushner's father was a prominent Democratic political donor who pleaded guilty to campaign and tax law violations.

Wedding guests included ex-New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Barbara Walters and actress Emmy Rossum. -- AP

Financial Freedom Art Gallery

There are days when I go a little eccentric and I just need to express myself through my blog. For those who are wondering where I got all these pictures from, you ought to check out Photofunia. It allows you to do really cool stuff with pictures that you upload.

Today I allowed myself to spend some money buying certain accessories for my house.

I was pretty happy with the results and I would say it was definitely money well spent. Looking at the stuff I bought makes me happy everytime I get home.

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Why You Should Quit Smoking

All smokers should quit smoking. Logically, I guess everyone knows the health reasons why. Today, I will like to show the financial aspect of smoking.

Smoking Raises Your Insurance Premiums

Insurance companies know that smokers have a higher risk of falling ill and perhaps dying young. This is not based on guess work but on actuarial studies where they study statistics and stuff. As such, a male in his 30s who is a smoker will pay a higher premium for insuring himself compared to another guy who is not a smoker.

Overall, this premiums might seem only slightly more but add it up over the years and it could amount to a tidy bit of money.

A Pack of Cigarettes Costs Like A Meal?

If you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day, you would be spending easily $5 over dollars per pack. This is good enough to pay for lunch or dinner!

Why would you want to spend an additional $5 a day when compounded over 30 days, that amounts to $150.

Over 12 months, it is equivalent to $1800!! That is easily half a month's pay for a graduate that just started working.

If you are in your twenties, just invest $150 a month at 8% returns and you will be amazed at how much money you will have when you retire.

Smoking Accessories

Smoking stinks. And I mean literally. That is why smokers often have to buy a pack of cool mints to suck on after they have had their fix so as to make their breath fresh.

This pack of cool mints again costs them $$$.

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