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Today I would like to introduce the concept of human capital and briefly touch on employee stock purchase program. What is human capital? Human capital is simply the ability to earn money by working. If you earn $5000 a month and has 30 more years of working life, the human capital is 5000 x 12 x 30  = $1.8 million assuming no pay increment and inflation is zero. Because the human capital is … [Read more...]

Long time ago, the only way people can invest was by investing in stocks. However, not everybody had the expertise to pick stocks. Moreover, most people were busy working. So, they did not have time to monitor their stocks. As a result, stock picking was based on rumors, hearsay. When times were good, investors borrow money (leverage) to invest more thinking that the stock market would continue to … [Read more...]

By now, everybody is aware that Noble’s share has been on a decline by a large magnitude. In fact, its share price is down by a whopping 98.43% compared to 5 years ago Like Noble, there is another company’s share price that has been sliding down. Unlike Noble, we do not hear much in the news of its dismay stock price performance. is a well-known company that is worth $300 million in terms … [Read more...]

is a technology company listed in Hong Kong. It is a highly efficient company in terms of its cash conversion cycle but it has caused shareholders to lose huge amount of money over the past few years. The share price has plunged by more than 60% although the Hang Seng Index is up by 20%. I will provide a possible reason for the large decline in share price. The following are the … [Read more...]

One of my client asked me about a particular company that is listed in Hong Kong and Shenzhen.  She wanted to buy this company. is not a small company. It has a market capitalization of HKD 173 billion or about SGD 30 billion. (For reference, the average market capitalization of the STI is 34 billion.) More than 90% of its customers are from China. Recently, the share price surged like … [Read more...]

In 2015, I met a client who engaged me for comprehensive financial planning. But I was quite frustrated with the outcome because the client did not take up most of my recommendations. In particular, I recalled he did not take my advice to invest in a diversified portfolio. Instead, he preferred to invest 100% of his investable money in just one company. paid very good dividends and was a … [Read more...]

I always get this question from clients whether should they convert their USD or GBP (or whatever foreign currencies) to SGD (or to other currencies). Similarly, I am always asked whether should they sell their stocks to buy something else. The same applies to properties. On the surface, these questions appear to be legitimate. But in reality, these clients were expressing irrationale … [Read more...]