Retirement after 3 months.

It's been more than 3 months since leaving the working world. It's time for another update :

a) Finances are holding up better than the working days.

Judging from the 3 months of performance, it's actually more profitable to make market calls at home than to work for someone else.

Finances have been holding up quite well thanks to the rise in REITs over the past 2 weeks. To be fair, I had been struggling to push my investments out of REITs for the past year due to the tapering but found only a handful of good stock opportunities that can maintain my current yield. Those positions are, therefore, unnaturally large and are starting to pay-off in a serious manner. 

My net-worth rose by more than 11 times my last drawn monthly salary in this quarter ! Of course, all this can revert to the mean very quickly since I don't ever take profits. The next three months will see me trying to move my focused bets to other market opportunities to raise my passive income further. 

b) Learning goals are aggressively met.

The Coursera Data Science specialization has started and I am currently doing 3 classes simultaneously. At my current pace, I completed one full month module in 3 days so I'm on the roll. Hopeful my training in R programming will allow to create some advanced tools for managing my portfolio. Currently, my engineering expertise and financial know-how are separated by quite a wide chasm and I'm still trying to get them to work together and Bloomberg is just too useful for serious investors to want to start coding.

There is a substantial chance that I will be pushing my learning goals in a radically new direction, I still can't share this with the readers as the institution that I am pursuing has not given me a positive answer yet. I should be quite game changing for this blog if that happens. 

c) Started attending my first AGM.

I started attending AGMs last Friday with the Sabana REIT AGM. I got  a nice phone charger as a door gift but lost out to the other uncles on the buffet table. Ended up only with one cup of coffee. AGM buffets are worse than morning rush hours on the MRT.

Please attend the AGM only if you have valid business questions.

d) Exercise and fitness is consistent but  not going so well.

While I have been running since I stopped work, I just could not increase my distance. Instead, I have been compensating with sit-ups. Now I can do 60 sit-ups after a run. Advice from a fried is to add push-ups to my exercise but I can't even  do a single one at the moment so I am doing some shitty push-ups inclined. 

e) Weekdays and weekends have now swapped places.

After three months, it has finally started. Weekdays are spent watching $7 movies, playing the markets, meeting friends for lunch and shopping for books. Weekends are spent with family so my mobility is reduced. Friday starts to lose it's meaning. Sometimes, you look forward to the Mondays as the stock market is open.

To think that years ago, I hated Mondays so much as I managed the team which maintained the stock market systems. 

f) What books I am reading

I am clearing the backlog of books I accumulated during my work days. Currently reading a book on actual work practices of Equity Analyst to professionalize my home-run operation and trying hard to make time for Michael Lewis' Flashboys. 

The only thing interesting is that I strongly recommend Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives. Epic Fantasy at it's best while we're waiting for George R R Martin's "Winds of Winter".