Personal Update - Training has begun.

It's about time to provide a personal update.

a) Training

Training has commenced for a week. I spent the first two days working until around 9pm. Comparing notes against my fellow trainees who are spread over other firms, I consider myself to be very lucky as some of my peers are finishing the first day of work at 2am in the morning. For the sake of the rookie lawyers reading this blog, I will begin pinging my classmates and sharing the consolidated data on this blog throughout this six months.

Some of the advantages of being a financially independent mid-career hirer is starting to bear out as we get into the workplace. The training stipend is a very small component of my income. The same cannot be said for a young professional trying to make his way within the industry.

I will be trying to get a bigger lead on my competitors and will be researching what local small firms can recover from government bodies for giving a fighting chance to a 40-something year old who has been unemployed for the past 4 years. Hopefully, hiring me will ultimately be virtually free thanks to the latest government incentives.

Yes, my peers are younger, sharper and more energetic. But I hope to have government subsidies backing up my candidacy.

b) Financial Markets

It has been a fantastic first week for my portfolio.

This January, we're seeing a very strong Capricorn effect. The market upswing in January seems to be much stronger if December has been a flat month. I am seeing some upside to my core portfolio but the real winner is my margin portfolio which has been up 5 out of 5 days. If I see similar performance over the next two weeks, my margin portfolio would be complete before Chinese New Year.

I need to get out of Tech firms and pick up higher yielding counters early 2018.

c) Crypto-currency markets

At the tail end of December, I started messing around with my cryptocurrency holdings because it has burgeoned up to about $2500 over the past 1 year from a spare change of around $100. As exchanges are limiting the amounts I can put into crypto, I can only play with what I have but I made one good move to plough half of my holdings in Ripple.

The resulting effect is that I now have around $5000 spread somewhat equally over 7 different coins. I don't have a methodology to trade cryptocurrencies because I think we're riding on a temporary mania. I am also not likely to make a lot because I have no intention to sell so I expect to see a crash before the year is over. However, for me to lose money, my entire crypto currency would have to crash around 80% though.

I see all this as the latest MMORPG that I am playing with.

d) Moratorium on book buying

My moratorium on book buying is off to a good start. The first week, I have already identified >$200 of books which I would have wanted to buy. John Naisbitt launched a new Megatrends book and Paranoia RPG just arrived in Singapore. SMU has just launched a new book on bitcoins and inclusiveness.

The $200 I saved was immediately committed to LTC.

e) Upcoming talks

I do have an upcoming investing talk at the end of January but I was told not to market it yet as the sponsor wants to give priority to their own customers. Maybe I can talk about it in about two weeks.