Adventures in the Terra Classic Blockchain.

This week, both my mum and various pals on FB have been buying a lot of Toto tickets. I just took a short visit to the website and noted that the next draw is worth $8,000,000. When this happens, heartlands normally go berzerk and you see long queues in every betting outlet in Singapore. 

The crypto space has its Toto equivalent and a few days ago, I authored a paper on the Terra Classic Blockchain on the Dr Wealth Blog ( link ). The central idea is that we can treat some long-shot cryptocurrency bets like a visit to the amusement park. Everything is harmless so long as you do not entertain the idea that real money can be made. 

It seems that the world has changed over the next 5 days. A hacker group known as Anonymous has decided to throw their hat into the ring and pledged to bring Do Kwon, architect of Terra, to justice. As a result of that both the LUNA Classic and USTC mooned.

• In my article, I got into USTC at around 0.63 cts. It is now 7.35 cts. A 10x increase.
• LUNC was 0.000054. Now it is about 0.00013. More than an x2 increase. 

I'm sitting on decent profits now, but I've yet to cover all my crypto losses if I count my losses that are stuck in Finblox right now. 

So as I've suspected, the Terra Classic blockchain has become the new Toto, if USTC restores the peg, then folks like me will be sitting on 200x gains. I can't even imagine what will happen to me if LUNC gets to $1. While these are all highly improbable events, so is winning Toto. As a consequence, there is a lot more capital locked into the legacy Terra Classic blockchain than the new Terra 2 Block Chain. 

From a mathematical perspective, high-risk high-return asset classes do have a role to play in your asset mix provided you have will power to keep it within 1% of your total net worth. If you lose the 1% to a de-pegging event like LUNA, it will not affect your overall portfolio, but in the event, it goes up 10x, it would significantly boost your annual performance. 

USTC and LUNC has gone up too quickly over the past few days, it will retrace, but traders will be waiting for the next catalyst to make their move. 

The next catalyst can be anything, a new platform that accepts USTC and LUNC can lead to another rally. But my bet is that any incriminating evidence found on Do Kwon and Terraform Labs will lead to minor rallies. I see a major upside coming if, somehow, Do Kwon's influence on Terra Classic can be totally excised from the chain by regulators.  

The central ideas are explained in Robert Ross' High Risk, High Reward Investing and I will be talking about this tonight.

If you're free, why not log in for this short session where I address my Alumni who might be thinking of pivoting into high-risk growth instruments.

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3816560529405/WN_zj1qD-w4TGaP36I51sM2jg 

Fighting Insurance Balloon Snatchers with Dividends Investing

 

There's been quite a outrage lately against the latest stunt financial advisors are pulling against parents of little children. Mothership has an article that contains the details here : 

https://mothership.sg/2022/06/aia-roadshow-balloon/

The company has since apologized and then word was circulated over the web that a particular group in trying to deny that they are behind the balloon stunt in Tampines had inadvertently admitted that they pioneered the maneuver.

The follow-up actually even reflected even more badly on FAs as some seem to be more sympathetic towards the balloon snatching maneuver. This was reported on CNA as FAs cite rents as some kind of justification to bully a small child over a balloon : 

https://mothership.sg/2022/06/aia-roadshow-balloon/ 

My friend suggested that I talk about how to generate dividends to pay for balloons so that parents will never be subject to the marketing tactics of insurance agents. I think we can take a step further to use the dividends coming from retail landlords to pay for these balloons. 

Because... natural justice.

If I am an FA, I'd really hate S-REITs and will find a way to paint REITs negatively in any way I can. This is because older Singaporeans often will not switch investments once they have a way of getting >5% every year. The benefits illustration of longer tenured endowment plans cannot exceed 4.25%.  

So in this mental exercise, we will begin with a quad of retail REITs and their current yields taken from Stocks Cafe:

• Capital Integrated Commercial Trust - C38U - 4.75% 
• Frasers Centrepoint Trust - J69U - 5.34%
• Starhill REIT - P40U - 6.58%
• Suntec REIT - T82U - 5.56%

If you build a Balloon Portfolio by blending these four REITs in equal shares, you should expect a portfolio that yields 5.56%. By buying shares of retail retail malls, you can be assured that part of the rents from these insurance booths would get into pockets over every calendar year.

( Disclaimer: A well-diversified portfolio should contain much more than four stocks. This is just a way to show how you can pocket the rents paid by insurance agents to buy balloons for your own kids. ) 

So imagine you open a brokerage account and invest $1,000 into each of the four REIT, you should expect $4,000 x 5.56% or $222 a year. 

The next step is to figure out how much it costs to get a balloon. I found a link to buy a penguin balloon filled with helium at $9.90. (link)

$222 would pay for 22 balloons a year or almost 2 every month.

And the beauty of this is that you get $222 to deal with any of the antics insurance agents will attempt on you or your family. Maybe it's just balloons targeting kids today, but it may also be cosmetics for the wife in the future or health center massages in Geylang for the husband. Financial advisors will never stop bothering you the moment you step into a mall since atrium sales are now allowed again. 

More importantly, you gain agency over your own lives (pun intended). 

The insurance agencies has been fighting a war of brand positioning over concepts like early retirement and nothing infuriates them more than a person who can buy equities on their own to make investment income a reality. 

Pivoting to Growth Investing - ERM-CCI Community Event for Q2 2022

Our next community event will be on 30th June 2022 730pm.

Like all community events I conduct, members of the public are invited to attend, but the materials assume that attendees have already completed at least one course I conduct. Alumni can also gain access to the recording.

The YTD performance of the STI cannot be said to be particularly stellar, but it has outperformed US and China markets. So while dividend investors may be reeling from slight losses, investors who focused on growth would have suffered very much more. And students from my ERM programme should have collected quite a decent amount of dividends in May and June 2022.

In this episode, we will discuss the points to note for a small pivot into growth investing. While I am all for dividends investors continuing to farm their dividends into dividends stocks, some students in my community may wish to consider channelling some income into growth stocks so that they can benefit from bull markets after Fed stops raising interest rates. 

Investing in growth stocks is fundamentally different if you are dividend/value investor. You are coming from a position of strength and likely using a combination of salary and dividend payouts to take positions in growth stocks that will give you the highest probability of profits over the next 6 months to 1 year. You also can exit and move the funds back to dividends after taking profits.

In this next presentation, we will :

• demonstrate how to use the tools you already know to screen stocks.
• introduce the simplest frameworks on how to time the markets and minimise your regret.
• define a comprehensive exit strategy for your growth positions.
• rinse and repeat our frameworks on how to apply it to cryptocurrencies.
• update ERM portfolio results and discuss details on how you can sign up for a refresher class. 

This will be a short 1-hour gathering over zoom and I look forward to catching up with students during Q&A. 

Register for the talk here : 

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/3816560529405/WN_zj1qD-w4TGaP36I51sM2jg 

Which husband would you choose?

 

The last thread had plenty of great engagement from female readers so I thought I'd do a thought experiment for the ladies today.

Suppose you have to choose between two men:

• Bert works for his money and earns about $5,000 a month but does not know how to invest. 
• Ernie gets $5,000 from a trust fund every month but does not work for a living.

Who would you choose and why?

If you apply some logic, Ernie would be a better choice because he can get $5,000 every month without doing anything, so he can theoretically give you financial support and still be helpful around the house. The choice of Ernie may also be supported by economists like Thomas Piketty who posits that over time, the growth in investment returns from capital trumps the return on the value of labor over time.  ( r > g )

In reality however, Ernie is more likely to be discriminated against in modern society, because he's laid back and his personal time has no value to the real world. Bob can be introverted hermit without suffering any consequences, while Bert can be seen as a potential leader in corporate world. 

This thought experiment exposes the differences between rationality and evolution. 

Ernie comes with $5,000 and time that can be deployed around the household, but Bert would still be the pick of a majority of women because he's got potential, leadership qualities so may be considered a better candidate to father more children.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. 

Lady readers can share whether they prefer Bert or Ernie.

Of course, I think the modern woman would prefer not to make the choice given that they have pretty good careers on their own. If they are PMETs most of them already have built onto themselves an Bert. 

The promise of investing better allows women to have their cake and eat it too. Ideally, they can have both Bert and Ernie while retaining their autonomy as well. 

This makes it really stressful for single men who have to up their game and generate the same kind of income as multiple Bert's and Ernie's. 

The alternative is to lie flat and just give up on starting families. I'm seeing a lot of this too.

I find some new-age Gen Z guys amusing. They dress themselves up to look like a harmless chipmunk even though they are of the age where they can date women, but the only women who might date them are those who are into Spongebob Squarepants.  

Robowars and the Gender Gap in investing

 

Of late, aggressive marketing teams from robo-advisors have been trying to promote superior returns by comparing performances against their competitors. But finance is a very subjective field and when making comparisons, it is possible for one party to make it seem that they are better for investors by adjusting their timeline of comparison. The result of these aggressive forms of marketing is war, where roboadvisors try to one up each other to steal market share.

For a more detailed treatment of the Robowars, you can visit Seedly here to read about one salvo being fired by Stashaway.

Personally, I'm not really for roboadvisors taking pot shots at each other because marketing professionals need to be hired to do this, and this inflates the expenses of a roboadvisor and its ultimately the consumer that pays for the entertainment. 

I am also sensitive that investment trainers do not do the same. Singapore dividends investing is riding high at the moment after perhaps a decade of trailing behind US Tech investors and Crypto bros. In another economic regime, we would not be doing that well, trends come and go. If trainers start tracking their portfolios and trigger a wave a comparisons, it would invite reprisal when the economic fortunes begin to shift. I think it's a lot easier to focus on personal charisma and refining a philosophy to pick students who are more aligned with your style. That being said, because two decades ago, I got challenged by an insurance agent to compare investment returns, so I have have my performance tracked on Stocks Cafe, just in case some investment pugilist wants to come knock on my door. 

In the end, I did throw my hat in the ring. I suggested a simple duel. The warring robo-advisors should always be ready to publish returns net of fees, standard deviation, and Sharpe ratios for three years ending say, 1 June 2022. A higher Sharpe or Sortino ratio should adequately divide the boys from the men. Interestingly, once these marketing guys see a genuine attempt at resolving the issue of whose dick is longer, they disappear from the forums. 

Comparing dicks is of course, what some companies might want to get out of business of doing.

Yesterday, I was also invited by Stashaway to attend to discussion the gender gap when it comes to investing and went out of sheer curiosity because I cannot imagine why someone would be crazy enough to invite me, a BBFA spokesman and Senator of Singapore Incels, to discuss why women are not investing sufficiently in the equity markets. So I had to go to at least find out how I got selected. 

I was pleasantly surprised and flattered to hear that I'm one of the OGs of financial blogging. For a blog that earns just $150 every 4 months, that was very flattering.

The research presented was not novel, as Stashaway is heavily regulated by MAS. I expect them to present the results on the web soon, I added some points which probably cannot be shared by on their platform, instead I just want to put on this blog what I think about gender differences in investing :

a) Males invest more aggressively because, unlike women, we males are ranked and yanked based on economic resourcefulness. So long as women prefer more successful and wealthier men, men will not only be aggressive with investing, they will take more risk than it is mathematically rational to do so. This is why men buy more crypto, and women buy more cosmetics. It's evolutionary psychology.

b) Simply showing what women are leaving on the table when they lower their asset allocation to equities is not enough to get more women into investing. I bluntly told Stashaway to invite a lady divorce lawyer to share her experience on the latest case law. She can speak credibly about division of matrimonial assets and in which cases wives actually end up giving husbands maintenance. Fear is a much more powerful motivator. 

c) My favorite narrative is that, in modern societies, guys are not reliable anymore. Males not just lose important earning years doing NS, we are slowly losing out academically to women. While guys dominate the STEM disciplines, there are guys who can't operate a spreadsheet. Even if the strongest case where a women finds a local male grad in the tech field, it'll be heroic for him to take on 70% of the economic workload. Women can look into societies like Afro Americans in the US where black males face large unusually high incarceration rates and see how much these Black women are studying hard and empowering themselves. 

 d) In my possibly archaic view, men will never be an "Ally" of women. I'm a provider to the women of my family, and I am concerned about the welfare of my daughter when odds are my son in law will suck and unable to support her 100% (won't even be his fault). When you say Ally of women, I imagine some effete BTS team member who wears makeup and support equality so long as they sell more music records. Gen X men are grudgingly partners, but only because we're not good at making money anymore to feed the whole family. I think a lot of old school guys want to provide for the whole family but they can't.

e) Ideally, guys needs to be kicked out of the discussion room for now. Upon reflection, it does not come as surprise or irony that most of the folks discussing the research finding in room are the dudes and I contributed quite a fair of that yesterday. I feel genuinely bad about the whole encounter now. There were two journalists in the room, and they were so quiet I though I was in a speed dating situation organized by the SDU in the 2000s. Initially, I'm not a big fan of women's only events because of my firm belief that stocks don't check your gender before they send dividends in your bank account, but giving up some space so that women feel more comfortable about speaking up is really important for now.  

Anyway, this is just a glimpse of my personal encounters yesterday, I think we should give Stashaway a chance present their findings and pivot to an important demographic. And do give their fund performance some slack - sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Over the super long term, the gap will not be too different for portfolios with the same asset allocation. 

 

  

 

For Air-level students, straight B's may be a mark of mediocrity

It may a virtue or a fault with the Singaporean system that we can be so lenient with some of our kids but so brutal to others. 

This week we are treated to an article that talks about the shifting fortunes of the A-level intake for different local university faculties ( link ). While Law and Medicine kept the minimum straight-A requirement, the newest top faculties include not just Computer Science, but also Data Analytics and Food Technology. 

As some faculties got elevated, others fell. Accounting is a particularly prominent victim of this shifting of fortunes with the cut-off being straight-Bs. 

What erks me is not the change of fortunes, as I've witnessed Engineering move from star faculty to the proverbial garbage dump, but the reaction of the faculty when they start getting more ordinary students. 

If you read closely the comments of the Accounting professor, I came off with the impression that admitting straight B students is an unmitigated disaster for the accounting faculty, it is as if straight B accountants are unlikely to think critically or bring innovation to the industry. Of course, the professor did not position it that way, he was questioning whether the course material needs to be reformed, but if you think more deeply, why do reforms only need to be triggered when you start getting straight B students? 

( If the Faculty of Engineering watered down the syllabus when they got students who get a C in Physics and Maths, people can die! The solution is to prevent them from graduating or give them a Third Class so they can make millions selling real estate or insurance! )

What entertains me more is that the Computer Science faculty in NUS does not even hide its exclusiveness anymore with prominent figures calling the older Straight-C generation of computer scientists "garbage in garbage out". I think it says more about the professor than my CS peers in the IT industry. 

This is one of those rare moments when you experience the true feelings of elites in Singapore. I actually think that only Air-level types get exposed to this before the working world. It's real-world training and at the very least it mirrors the public sector and the scholar-farmer divide - the largest employer in Singapore. 

While I think there's absolutely nothing wrong with straight B A-level grades, I always preferred the A-level system because this is where personal growth comes from trauma.

The world of local degrees is going to continue to be like this. At the micro-level, people are constantly going to be benchmarked and subject to a lot of microaggressions. At the macro level, NUS and NTU grads, even straight-B accountants,  can now get fast-tracked roles in London which should see increases in starting salaries in a few years' time.

While I might come off being unhappy with this, I think exposing my kids to elitism, prejudice and unfairness is a good way to build their character, which is why my stand on bribing them to go JC instead of Poly is still something I am considering. 

You would not really want to do the opposite as well. A friend sent me a link from the Mothership where a bunch of parents defended their decisions to send their kids to a private university.  

This was so badly done, I thought whoever orchestrated this should be fired. 

At the end of the day, if elitism and injustice is something that upsets my kids, then I suggest that they try financial markets for change. 

A REIT will give you the same dividend regardless of your A levels grades. 

In similar vein, the Terra USD lying in a wallet of a Dean's Lister will depeg no matter how many Phds you have.

 

Should a fresh Polytechnic Graduate get a Private Degree or Wash Dishes for a living?

Once again, I can't express how disappointed I am at Millenial advice columns and HR career experts who miss out on this latest issue that once again I will have to blog about this.

Suppose you are a fresh graduate from a Polytechnic and contemplating a private university degree. 

A quick survey on the latest private degree salaries would expect a salary of $2,900 based on April 2021 data (link). The private degree is not cheap because it lacks subsidies and will cost you a couple of years of your life.

Now, if you look at the current trends in the industry right now, dishwashers can earn about $4,000 a month. (link) 

The gap of  $1,100 is not trivial, suppose you become a dishwasher for three years and save the $1,100 difference compounded at 6% p.a., you will have an additional $42,000 compared to your peer who would have just graduated from the private university and accumulated around $56,000 in student loans (I used JCU Business Degree costs in my model).

If you can save more than $1,100 a month, the decision to become a dishwasher instead of attending a private degree can come up to over $100,000 if you factor in additional earnings and the fees you would pay!

Of course, there might be some concerns about dishwashing work in Singapore. 

The first concern is whether the dishwashing work at $4,000 is sustainable. That will be a valid concern if we take on more foreign workers to do this work, salaries will dip again. But I think it's high time the government start to rethink its labour policies to allow foreign workers only in tandem with more local hiring. Also, nothing stops the poly grad from attending a private degree after the gig is no longer available.

The second concern is that an office worker may have a career ladder but the dishwasher doesn't. To be realistic, we may need more data on salary increments of private degree holders, but suppose we go with an annual 5% increment of a $2,900 salary, it would take more than 6 years for the office worker to reach the level of the dishwasher. That's assuming the dishwasher does not invest his savings. Adding the length of the degree we could be looking at a 9-year salary advantage! 

The third question is that dishwasher work is backbreakingly hard and may attract social stigma. This, I agree. But a $4,000 salary is the right step to change our attitude toward blue-collar workers and these salaries may also push business owners towards better automation which may result in easier work.

The issue of Private Education Institutions has always attracted a lot of controversies and I seem to be the only blogger happy to talk about this. So much so that folks actually goad me into commenting whenever a salary survey comes up.

There are of course the politically correct words spoken by folks who run these institutions who keep accusing the industry of discrimination, but no rational business owner can ignore the cost savings they can get when they hire a PEI student as compared to hiring a local grad. The situation may even be the opposite - some policymakers have in their books subtly hinted that the salary uplift of a PEI grad compared to a polytechnic graduate worth about $500 pm may not be justified.

There is a lot of food for thought, but I will end with a thought experiment. 

Suppose a diploma programme director was to be able to convince his entire cohort to take up dishwashing roles, the salary survey for the following year will show results that even exceed some local degree programs! 

That is at least a powerful story in the hands of a local journalist.

   

  

 

Dirty Secrets of Wei Foo

If I do not have something interesting to write about, I'd normally explore the content generated by others to see whether I can build on top of it. Once again, the Woke Salaryman did an excellent comic strip on FIRE and I think I can add value by doing an article on this. 

Please visit this link if you have not done so earlier because my article assumes that you have read the comic.

I've been following the response to this comic, and I must say that I'm quite disappointed. 

A common response is that we should try to become Wei Foo. 

In my opinion, that's not mature because it's hard to attain FIRE. 

A mature response is to figure out who you really are in that strip. 

My cousin, who works for an asset management firm, lost money in LUNA (like me) and admitted that she's a lot more like Curtis. As for myself, even as I FIREd almost a decade ago, I find that I have a much stronger affinity with Amelia, because my ENTJ personality makes it hard to do nothing post-FIRE. 

I also don't agree with the life philosophy of many folks who area ahead of me in the FIRE movement in spite of my deep respect for them. Do I want to aspire towards a life playing MMORPGS until I die? Or spend the rest of my life splitting hairs to get the 4th decimal place of the safe rate of withdrawal?

As I'm part of this FIRE movement, I think we're to lax with Wei Foo and I want to deconstruct Wei Foo properly and explain why he may not deserve the admiration that has been depicted in this comic series.

a) Wei Foos may be born rather than made

Wei Fee is an imaginary construct of the Woke Salaryman who did an admirable job trying to depict a person who can achieve FIRE. Kudos to them for not Mary Suing themselves into their strip. 

My first issue is that Wei Foo is likely to be born with some specific personality traits, which Woke Salaryman was unable to explore due to their medium.

Every ERM class I conducted would fall into just one or two MBTI personality trait. As it turns out INTJs dominate the FIRE discussion groups on Reddit and also my biggest paying customers, so much so that I no longer see myself as an educator of finance, but as an enabler of a specific group of people who self-select into the ranks of the Financially independent. 

I have very close INTJ pals. 

You don't really turn kids into INTJs, its largely natural occuring, so this defeats that round of folks trying to "become Wei Foo for the winz". A stereotype INTJ-Wei Foo-compliant-avatar is a software architect who listens to World Music, watches obscure anime, and reads books about the Occult. I love hanging out with them, but even I can't even get remotely close in terms of broad interests.  

If you accept my assertion that Wei Foo are probably INTJs, then all hell breaks loose.

b)  Wei Foo may be in a very elite industry that is very hard to get in.

INTJs are fundamentally not a high-earning personality ( but they are above average ). Amelia who seems more ENTJ can say that she can do sales or take on a leadership role to earn her $12k a month. If you expect an Introvert to so the same, then you will be left with just maybe software development that will respect introversion and a broad conceptual approach to work. Accountants and Engineers have an ISTJ inclination.

Modern software engineering is a very modern niche skill. 

(Otherwise the private management degree holders who have a starting play $1,200 less than dish washers today will apply en masse to become full stack engineers.)

Even if you do get into the industry, there's a big difference between the 100x developer who can architect a blockchain smart contracts platform, and a tech peon who specializes in shaping JDBC connections. Its an intuitive open mindedness that can adapt a technical solution to business needs.

Worse, the Wei Foo of the future will be conversant in Quantum Computing. I took a couple of introductory courses and it's no joke. Basically you need to manipulate linear programming matrices that contain complex numbers. Right now, you needs Physics degree with a specialization to get a foot in the door, an elite CS degree may not be enough.  

So it's not easy to qualify as a Wei Foo, you might need to be top 5% in STEM subjects.

c) Wei Foo may be emotionally stunted and will have trouble finding a mate 

The introversion that allows Wei Foo to master finance and investing and develop the "Kiam siap" to FIRE will be an impediment to developing an emotional bond with someone. There are some folks who FIRE and have a family, but there are also quite a number who FIRE and stay single. 

I'm saying this because I feel it too even when I'm not an introvert ! We ENTJs are also emotionally stunted, but we're kinda proud of it.

If you combine introversion, kiam siapness, super mild Asperger's, deep interest in hard core fields like investing and finance, it's a straight road to BBFA life. I encourage female readers to date them to really understand what I mean.

This is why I disagree that Wei Foo can even get married on shoestring budget. Most Wei Foos won't even come close. 

I think if we adopt this framework to deconstruct Wei Foo, then we will understand that sometimes, it's not the price we pay to attain FIRE, but it can be our genetic makeup, and the price to pay is understated. 

Fortunately, the world requires all sorts of folks to function, you need the Amelia and Curtis to run the economy, and if some of them never attain FIRE, it is possible fine.

The movement has evolved milder forms of FIRE like Coast or Barista for other personality types, go read up on them further to explore which idea suits you.

Terra USD - LUNA is like your penis, difficult to cut it off.

 

For those looking for a great article on Terra 2.0 which just dropped, you can refer to Dr Wealth's blog here. 

If you want to read something less wholesome, please continue.

My new LUNA token has finally arrived. At the moment, I have no idea how much they are worth, but some folks are estimating a ballpark value of about $5 each. When exchanges start seeing some transactions, it may sink very quickly because there doesn't seem to be any motivation to hold onto it.

I'm not selling mine. If the new LUNA crashes again, I might buy even more. 

With the new blockchain, the old LUNA classic blockchain is really starting to erode. I have a morbid fascination with the UST and LUNC tokens which really lost a lot of value, but I love playing them like monopoly money, I've got liquidity pools worth a couple of hundred bucks ( but millions of LUNC) spinning off $10 USD a day, but the websites no longer seem interested to interact with my wallet when it's on classic mode, so I can't even claim my tokens. 

It's always sad for a trainer to see a blockchain de a slow death erode this way, because even if the tokens have no value, the idea of using tokens to connect to a website and being able to get into a liquidity pool at a low fee can be a powerful educational tool. With $100, someone can get millions of LUNC and then get into a pool that gives 1000% p.a. 

My personal wish is that somehow the classic blockchain survives and attracts a kooky bunch of computer scientists who then proceeds to crafty really weird projects on it. 

For the new blockchain, I understand its sole purpose is to preserve some kind of developer ecosystem, but experts are saying without a stablecoin and 20% returns, there is little motivation for it to grow. 

So I will make a weird prediction here.

Some kind of stablecoin with high returns will come back to Terra 2. It might be disguised in a another form like a derivative or even a liquidity pool, it may be convoluted to execute, but the truth of the matter is that young men need the fantasy of a high yielding stablecoin to feel in control of their lives. 

Terra USD-LUNA dyad is really like your penis. 

You can't live without your penis. 

If you cut it off in the new blockchain, someone else will find a way for it to grow back. 

Would it be legal? Well, whoever reinvents it will not care. 

If you observe crypto bros when LUNA was in it's peak, it's like a penis member fully erect. Guys become a lot more confident when they date women and engage in a more edgier and risk-taking behavior. The reason is that women really do take economic resourcefulness as a primary consideration when selecting men. I may even venture to guess that UST-LUNA has a direct impact on levels of testosterone of significant male population when it is rising. 

Terra grew because it is an enabler. Why else do Ponzi schemes keep coming back in a different form?

The saddest thing about Terra is that the UST event is a massive castration event for thousands of young single men. It came at a time when other erect asset classes are witnessing their own castration like US Tech Stocks and China Tech stocks. 

These are, indeed, flaccid times.

Hopefully, some of the more clear-headed investors have taken note that those who invest locally in REITs, bluechips and business trusts are still doing ok at times like these. While dividends investors are not flashing their 12-inch erections at others, we've always been modest in most economic climates. 

After all, anything larger than a mouthful is a waste.

Previews cancelled this week due to nasty sore throat

I've been really unlucky. After a 3-hour wait in TTSH awaiting my specialist appointment, I developed a sore throat over the weekend. I've since been conducting ART tests every other day, but I have been negative so far.

While I'm feeling fine, I was unable to go ahead with my previews this week because I've developed a really nasty cough. This is disappointing as I've got a spotless absentee record so far for the past 3+ years and dividends investing has been gaining some interest probably at the expense of growth, tech and crypto investing as of late.

I'll probably get back to shooting videos next week, with at least two coming up. 

For now, I've got a new article out on retail bonds.

I'm going to take a rest and I hope to come up with something on this blog in about two-days time. 

It's probably good for me to lay off my work for a while and just focus on reading investment books for a change. 

Soul vs Structure - Singapore's Faustian bargain

 

One of the small tiny superstitions I subscribe to is that shit awaits someone once he or she says that "Singapore has no Soul". It's almost as if LKY is now some kind of Guardian Angel that will exact vengeance against anyone who says we have no soul.

Sharon Au said that when she moved to Paris years ago and recently her apartment in France got robbed and the robbers took everything except her pussy. Days later, she complained that French authorities were too busy to help her retrieve her property.

Even during my KL trip, my aunt complained that Singaporeans have no soul. Then, in the latest SEA Games, Malaysia's medal tally was so bad they ranked behind us - a country that has an insignificant population that does not even have an emphasis on sports. 

I'm going to now try to unpack and develop this idea further with a few mental models.

The first thing we're going to do, is to figure out what having a Soul trades off against. We have to give up our Soul for something right? 

Off the bat, I'm going to suggest that Soul trades off against Structure. 

So if you go by my logic, Singaporeans have no soul, but our traffic system works because of an oppressive ERP system and traffic rules that do get enforced. In KL, you can wait 3-5 minutes for the pedestrian lights to turn green only for 15 seconds. As a consequence of that, no one obeys traffic rules. My mum almost got knocked down over a zebra crossing that has faded stripes in KL Sentral.

The larger intellectual challenge is to show that Soul and Structure tradeoff against each other like inflation and unemployment. It is possible that they are not mutually exclusive. 

To deal with this, we will apply another mental model and examine who likes to complain that Singaporeans have no soul. 

I'm going to just guess that on the MBTI these folks belong to the FP or Feeling-Perception spectrum with a low score in Conscientiousness. It's largely their inability to deal with folks on the TJ or Thinking-Judgement spectrum who have high conscientiousness so the most convenient way to avoid cognitive dissonance is to just claim that they are soulless. 

At this juncture, do note that when TJ guys make a mistake, it's often buying the wrong stock and misjudging probabilities on investments going up. However, when FP folks make a mistake, it often involves venereal disease or large doses of heroin. Almost all Legends talked about by alumni group involve someone who is an FP. FPs lead a dramatic life full of ups and downs, but more downs as they get older and TJs start climbing the ladder.

Another reason to support the trade-off is that those places that emphasize soul would normally have serious issue arising from a dysfunctional structure. Parisian police are too overworked to deal with folks getting robbed. Malaysia cut their sports budget and headcount by half and still acted surprised when the SEA games results were so bad. 

So there you go. There is definitely a case that Singapore lacks a soul, surveys have shown that we exhibit the least amount of emotions in the world. 

But is that such a bad thing? 

We get a decent structure in return.

Our system works, we get decent healthcare, low taxes, and a great REIT regime that supports retirement planning. When the FP artistic types were hit by COVID-19, our structure provided them a $1,200 - $1,500 stipend so they can continue to complain that we have no soul instead of doing food delivery worker or a prostitute. 

Now let's see whether the structure we built up can deal with banned chicken imports from the North. 

I got pals celebrating because it means more decoupling in the future, but I'm looking forward to more vegetarian meals in June.

  

  

Some financial lessons I learnt from my recent trip to KL.

I've got quite a lot to talk about my trip to KL, but I will wait a couple more days and instead just focus on the financial bits first. In a few moments, I need to examine what can be salvaged from the Terra blockchain implosion so folks can catch up with me on my next preview on Tuesday, which will be changed, once again, to reflect the realities of the crypto space today.

So one of the highlights of my trip was meeting my cousin's old secondary school classmates. I met some of them years ago and one or two have become regular readers of this blog. As alumni of the prestigious English College in JB, my cousin's pals are fairly high SES - you can imagine some kind of RI-ACS hybrid if you translate them to Singaporean terms. As adults they are super-qualified, cosmopolitan and globalized citizens and have a very interesting if somewhat un-Malaysian perspective about life. 

I think I picked up one novel or two lesson from them. 

One of the flaws about being Singaporean travelling to Malaysia is mentally dividing everything by three when we look at Malaysian prices.

As a consequence, everything we see in KL is cheap. 

The first leg of the trip we ate well, but the prices are cheap only relative to Singapore. Malaysian locals can't eat like we do every meal. ( The noodles I ate shown above cost $90 MYR, and standard has dropped greatly ). 

On my second leg where I went around with my mum, we ate what local workers ate and avoided expensive restaurants. The Chee Cheong Fun from Petaling street is $8 MYR, possible the second best in Chinatown as number 1 was either gone or not open on that day.  

Here's the insight. One of this blog's readers is my cousin's pal who works in a fairly prestigious startup in Singapore. His commute is tough - he lives in a hotel a couple of nights a week here before going back home to Malaysia. 

He's actually got a lot of respect for Singapore hawker culture, which if you think about it, would be unusual for Malaysians because they have to multiple the costs by 3 when they buy food here, and food at home seems almost always better in terms of quality and taste.

His reasoning is simple - Singapore has kept a lid on food prices relative to our salaries while Malaysian's spent a larger proportion of their earnings on food. 

$8 MYR for Chee Cheong Fun in KL is a steal for a Singaporean, but it's not a joke for locals who have to contend with these prices on a regular basis. 

One of my cousins's doctor pals told me that he spent $40 MYR on chicken rice. To be fair, he added char siew, roasted pork and more chicken into his rice and the price inflated to $40 MYR. My cousin's other pal even said that individual portions have gone up to $70 MYR for chai png when they were feeling really decadent and hungry.  

Finally, one of them asked me how to FIRE like that ?

As a loyal patriot, I have a simple answer :

• These are the best of the best Malaysia has. So naturally, Singapore wants them too. So step one is find a job here.
• Open a brokerage account here and buy our REITs to get about 6% dividend yield.
• I think it's possible to open CIMB bank accounts in both SG and MY branches so dividends can be channeled across borders. My cousin is testing this technique. I'm still investigating this for my mum. 
• Practice geo-arbitrage. Work and save in Singapore. Spend in Malaysia.
• According to my ERM research on Malaysia Expat cost of living it is only $14,000 SGD a year. $240,000 SGD in Singapore REITs yielding 6% can sustain an expat lifestyle in KL. In Singapore, you will need $500,000 SGD to lead a basic subsistence.    
• Just completely ignore your CPF contributions. You will get it back one day. No Malaysian ever regrets leaving his money in our CPF system given the way our currency is strengthening over the years.  

Of course, for such eligible professional Malaysians to work in Singapore, many things can happen to torpedo this plan. One possibility is that they can get entrapped by our women and live as slaves to money forever.

That's not entirely a bad thing for Singapore.

So to the elites of English College, please come and take our women !

 

 

Yes, I am now in the Million LUNA Round Table or MLRT !

 

Before something goes really wrong for me, there will always be some kind of foreshadowing. 

A week ago, I gathered with my SMU JD classmates in one of their apartments and we updated each other on our career progress ( or lack of progress in my case ). I realised that none of them are really aware of what's happening in the crypto landscape and, just for fun, I decided to pitch the general idea behind the Terra blockchain to see if they will buy it, lawyers being pretty smart people.

The cut the long story short, I totally failed. 

My pals do not buy the 18+% Anchor protocol at all and every effort to explain how a central bank facility and the workings of the LUNA-UST pair was unable to convince them to accept that such an idea is feasible in any way. 

At that time I dismissed their concerns because I thought perhaps I was not convincing enough. After all I got a shit B grade for International Moots. It's not easy to get lawyers to buy into anything, and all of them rely on their salaries as their primary source of income.

The rest is history as my classmate's skepticism was proven right.

My damages were slight, so far I have lost about $16k. If I had conducted more classes on crypto, my Anchor holdings would have been higher and I would have lost more. It was sheer luck that my entry into crypto was less than 1% of my net worth at the moment Terra collapsed. Right now, the biggest source of damage is the effort I put into my course slides which need to be retooled away from the Terra blockchain which means a third of my material needs to be rewritten from scratch.

I just want to say something about Ponzi schemes as a skeptic, and a trainer who did lose money just in one :

So long as women continue to choose men based on his ability to obtain economic resources, guys will always look for the next best way to make money, juts to impress hot women. If you can find some purportedly riskless approach to make 20%, even folks who are aware and document the risks like me will put at least a token position to experience the thrill of winning, if only for a short while. Genting is a company that exists solely to provide this kind of entertainment. 

Prior to Anchor, I've been burnt by shipping trusts and Eagle Hospitality trust, in all these moments, I knew that something was wrong but I like the double-digit yields. I think the solution was never to avoid such schemes which are too good to be true, but to do position sizing so that a loss will not hurt you this much. 

So would I play 0.1% into Do Kwon's next project? I definitely would!

Anyway, I always believed that in great moments of chaos, anything can be a ladder.

At the moment, everyone is pounding on LUNA investors with "I told you so" kind of articles. I thought maybe I do a final "Hail Mary" manoeuvre on the Terra blockchain and mess with critics before it collapses for good.

So when the Terra blockchain was shutdown, FTX was the only exchange that was allowing trades on LUNA. 

I gathered all the referral coins I earned from my students from different platforms. ( I will not even touch my dividends for this Hail Mary attack)

About $150 USD worth, pumped it into FTX and bought for myself 5.45M of LUNA!

My entry price was around 0.000027+. One day earlier, I lost $2,000 buying LUNA at $1. I figure that the infrastructure and engineering talents in the Terra ecosystem cannot be worth so little so the least I can do is to donate to this engineering marvel.

So just like that, I ended my LUNAtic adventures a LUNA multi-millionaire.  

I am now an MLRT! 

Now anything can happen. 

At the moment, I have almost earned x8-10 of my investments, but to recoup my crypto losses it needs to go up another 10 times. 

I probably will not move this asset until it is large enough to offset my home mortgage so paper gains will just give me more bragging rights.

I'm going on a trip, this blog will be back next Friday !

 

A LUNAtic is born !

 

Yesterday morning, the other Dr Wealth Crypto trainer messaged me on FB and told me of the depegging event for UST. I checked Yahoo Finance, and yes indeed, the worst has come to pass in the Cryptocurrency landscape. 

One of the most viral stablecoins UST has lost it's peg to the USD !

This depegging of UST from one USD is possibly the biggest event in crypto as it proves that algorithmic stablecoins are not exactly stable over the long term. I assessed the damage to my holdings. I lost about $5k from the entire depegging process in my $30k cryptocurrency account. It's a drop in the ocean because I was only ready to hit 1% of my assets in Crypto by the end of the year, so I have little skin in the game as of now.  While most of these losses are in UST Anchor protocol, it was my liquidity pools which took most of the damage. 

But there are reasons to celebrate:

• A 30% drop in stablecoin value is no big deal compared to what tech investors are experiencing as of late, as a product of Singapore's education system, I know it's not important how well you fare, but also how badly others do.  No point in choosing to be a millionaire surrounded by billionaires.
• Amazingly, collateral-backed stablecoins like USDT and USDC remained stable these few days, so at least the strategy of diversifying across stablecoins worked to mitigate losses for my students. I even expect some students to miss out on Anchor protocol because setup is so complicated.  
• The third reason is LUNA :

When I backtested LUNA, I did not like what I saw because it was highly volatile, so formally, I don't teach my students to buy LUNA. Even if they do, it will be part of a bespoke index I build using software tools involving the largest non-stable coins. None of the software tools would have supported a buy since my first course was run in April. 

But, at the back of my head, I witnessed LUNA turn pals into multimillionaires because they got in at the right time. LUNAtics are the Insane Clown Posse of the crypto world, the crazies who follow Immortan Joe in Mad Max. Not everyone likes them in the crypto world because they can be quite religious when it comes to investing. 

LUNA is now trading below $15 when it was close to $100 weeks ago, so this morning, I took the plunge to become a LUNAtic myself! Of course I did not hold the LUNA as LUNA per se, I invested it into a bLUNA-LUNA pool for 80+% a year and a even put in spare change for a LUNA-UST pool for 1,060% p.a.

Want to go retard, go full retard all the way!

I bought about $1,000 worth of LUNA. If LUNA drops further to $5, I will buy $5,000 more. Of course, I will only buy LUNA with my dividend payouts from my REITs, and I will not sacrifice earned blood money on this. My trainer revenues will only be put in a diversified stablecoin portfolio.

At the end of the day, the entire algorithmic-based stablecoin regime may end in a few days time. Maybe after this, no one will back an ecosystem like Terra anymore, but there is also a reason to believe that even a salted fish can resurrect itself. I have no idea how the UST peg will restore itself, or whether LUNA will even climb back to $20. 

If it happens, it happens, and I will possibly make a decent amount out of this.

My crypto course will conduct a preview tonight. I hope to have a fun discussion about my latest moves on UST and LUNA. 

Follow this link: 

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/8016517228733/WN_OJTraGTlSNuFBgVLTXwreA

 

 

  

 

On Benz Hui, greater intelligence, and small intelligence.

 

Most folks in my generation grew up watching HK drama, so many Singaporeans are familiar with Benz Hui who is an accomplished HK actor who has settle down permanently in Singapore. Of late, Benz Hui has said some candid things about Singaporeans which I think deserve a good solid rebuttal. 

That being said, I'm a fan of this great guy, and I think we should be grateful that Benz feels comfortable criticizing us - if anything it means that he has found a new home. 

One of the things I was grateful for growing up was my exposure to HK D&D players which shaped the way I play RPGs today. HK players took me under their wing and presented a new play of playing Dungeons and Dragons. The style was pure mayhem, and channel HK comics like Dragon Tiger Gate rather than Western fantasy canon. 

Singaporeans were stickler for rules, so our gameplay was not inspiring. My paladin would just attack with his Holy Avenger round after round, not really inspiring.  My HK gamer senpais told me never to question what the rules allowed me to do, but to find actions that the rules never explicitly said no to. 

The result was hilarious. 

In one game, a cleric was told that to create an artifact he needed to place on an alter a vessel that can contain his deity's power. He declared that there was no better vessel than himself and turned himself into a living cleric-artifact. The DM allowed this to go on for the lolz. The cleric was able to develop artifact powers after the ritual. He infused his left had with the Heal spell and his right hand with the Harm spell and became almost invincible in combat.

My HK mentors also taught me a bit about life which I internalized to this very day. One lesson when I was in JC  was  to stop daydreaming and never waste time queuing for fast food, if a queue shortens, I should be ready switch queues. I extended it to includes tasks like preparing change before it was my turn to order.

But eventually, we all have to grow up as adults. I have to complete JC, get into the Army and eventually study for my degree. 

In that process, I stopped looking up to the HK mentors I had.

For one thing, D&D as a game improved it's writing and the rules became a lot clearer and the chaos mayhem style of HK players lost its favor. Instead, a close reading of the rules that allowed different rulesets to synergize with each other made our characters more powerful. Reading became more competitive and intense and you can be rewarded by a strong fundamental grounding of the ruleset.

In real life, HK gamers lost their cushy operator roles to IT engineers from India and had to return to HK. Their careers never recovered and some refused to meet my pals when they visited. I know that even those days, their chaotic attitudes to life also prevented them from making investments and I suspect may struggle financially to survive today.

In the grander scheme of things, how can a bunch of stoners Singaporeans, derogatively called "Po Zhai" and "Mm Seng Muk", become an economic powerhouse that can even eat the lunch of possibly the finest entrepreneurs and businessmen of the world ?

Hong Kongers focused on small intelligence, tiny improvements that are wise for that context, just for that moment. The dumber Singaporeans were more obedient and malleable, but we focused on greater intelligence, employing mental models to understand rent-seeking, investing and developing skills in artificial intelligence and blockchain programming. We were slow because we were united and saw multiple steps ahead. 

Plugging the trust ABSD loophole is a deliberate move NOT to become Hong Kong.

I doubt my HK mentors will like me a lot today as I pull rental payments out of thin air, engage in liquidity mining, juggle my three degrees, and only leave for work only when I feel like it. Few of my friends who knew me as a joker and a troll would like my current setup. 

It's not too different from Benz Hui. His best anecdote is that HK doctors fear Singaporean patients because we challenge their decisions all the time and we're too smart for our own good. 

For one thing, Singaporeans doctors are quite used to this. For another, there is actually an economic idea called adverse selection that explains why it's perfectly rational for Singaporeans to be that way.

At the end of the day, doctors may have some kind of oath, but they are also in the business of selling medication. As it turns out, doctors know a lot more about medication than their patients, so an information asymmetry arises. Maybe the doctor is selling a drug that is high margin or an operation was suggested to earn more profits. To understand whether a cheaper alternative exists, it makes sense to study every alternative and challenge the decision of medical practitioner. Bridge the information gap. 

Even our common law supports the idea that doctors should render advice like provide alternatives to each treatment ( Montgomery test ) - we're actually helping our doctors too!  

Even if we do give doctors a break, I strongly urge readers to spend time studying the products sold by insurance agents. If a commissioned salesman makes an aggressive recommendation, you will definitely profit by seeking alternatives. 

Finally, I don't think Singaporeans will stop studying and questioning just because Benz Hui says so, if anything, his grandchildren will be Singaporeans and will as kiasu and kiasi as we are. Similarly Singaporean D&D players will not go back to an older edition of a the game to play something that results in pure chaos like improv theatre.

 

That being said, we should open our doors wider for HKers to come down to teach us a bit about the small intelligence of starting businesses, developing grit and self-sufficiency, it will compliment our existing strengths very well.  

Test trip to JB !

 

It's been two years since I travelled, so after the long public holiday, my brother in law drove me and my mum into JB to settle some banking matters which have been stuck for close to 30 months. We've collected rent for over two years and because of the old bank setup, the money was stuck for a long time and we had to endure the currency depreciation of the ringgit over the past 2 years. 

I just want to highlight some points of my trip so that readers can avoid the mistakes I experience today.  A lot of unpleasantness when resuming travel can be avoided if you read my blog.

a) PR's need to update re-entry permit.

Because I am not a PR and deal with matters for my mum online, I misunderstood how re-entry permits worked, I thought it's something that is based on dates and it just needs to be renewed. Today we had issues with ICA because while we have a recent re-entry permit, but it was keyed to the older passport and I did not transfer it to the new passport. ICA was very patient with us and let us through but I have to resolve that issue online after I came back. 

If you do not valid re-entry permit as a PR, the electronic gateways will not admit you and my mum was ping ponged a couple of times in Singapore customs, so please respect and follow the rules. Best thing is every time you renew your passport, just update the re-entry permit.

b) Touch and Go card.

Our troubles did not end there. Having a Touch and GO card is vital to get into Malaysia but we did not have a card with credits. We got stuck after our passport was cleared in Malaysia customs. Lucky, my plucky BIL managed to seek help from a customs officer and we were able to clear customs, but if you don't rely some some persuasion, I really would not know what would have happened to us.

This is, apparently, a major issue for drivers. 

Of course, my troubles did not end there.

c) Breakfast was good.

The only good thing that happened today was Storia Cafe, their mee siam and Otak is out of this world. Go google for details before your next trip. The boss has a reputation for being a damn nice guy and he rounded down the bill. In the end, I paid $3 SGD per head for a full breakfast !

I'm grateful to my BIL who researched that place thoroughly and it was his first meal there too.

d) ATM card fails after long absence

So all I wanted to do was some banking. We could not withdraw money because the ATM card expired and undoing it would mean an hour of wait. There are two manual forms to fill but lucky the staff we had was super steady. Bank was obviously understaffed even though they should expect hordes of Singaporeans to come down to make withdrawals. 

One poor Singaporean uncle I met actually could only complete his work on his second visit. It was just a long line of sad looking Singaporeans at the bank today because they can't withdraw their cash.

e) Bank probably cut into a new database, so may not have your records.

Oh it did not end there. My mum has been banking with the same branch for 30 over years and they claimed not to have my mother's PR status, so we had to fill more forms to update the database.

f) Strange questions asked during TT of cash to Singapore. 

The thing about TT to Singapore is that AML measures need to be taken, but this was not the first time we did this. We had our Singapore bank books, but staff wanted to confirm whether the joint account can be acted upon independently and this confused my mum and I could not recall what the right answer should be. I had to be there to answer some questions for the paperwork to clear.

For noob, make sure you copy down the SWIFT codes for the local bank and account number manually before you go and bring an account statement or bank book with you. I panicked because I had no data plan in Malaysia and had to use Wifi until I realized my mum had the Singapore bank book along. 

Naturally we did the paperwork successfully but it will take a few days to figure out whether we succeeded. 

I think there are probably a lot of savvier guys who can think of better ways to go about doing what I did. I'm largely constrained by the systems setup by my parents 3 decades ago and most of the paperwork is not under my name. This is not sustainable, so starting tomorrow, I will be actively trying to decouple my mum's current bank from our family's financial operations and building a better one that works online.  

Overall, the trip was worth it because it solved a lot of ongoing issues with family finances. Otherwise, it was really sad to see the devastation of City Square, MPH Bookstore is gone but fortunately, I got some really good Malaysian finance books in Popular bookstore. 

It's one thing to feel powerful because your dollar is worth more than three of your neighbors currency, but if there are only a few shops to buy stuff from, what is the point ?

City Square will probably heal in six months. I will take few more surgical trips to Malaysia on weekdays to visit other areas like Midvalley Southkey, but I think a bus trip to KL is in order.

Being aware of the latest FA tricks of the trade.

 

Ever since I completed my last batch of students, I've been trying to expand my social circle through outings meeting with collaborators and students so that I can remain updated with whatever young folks do. Along the way, I've picked up new tricks that FAs are pulling to get more sales prospects so that can warn folks what these latest techniques are :

a) Selling insurance by matching folks in dating apps

So one trick in the book is to get into a dating app like Tinder, or Coffee Meets Bagels and choose to date any guy with the aim to sell insurance and financial products to them. This is actually quite frustrating for single guys who struggle to get a date and who may be anticipating the outing for a while, only to be sold ILPs in that meetup.

I think these apps actively discourage such behaviour from FAs but I'm also seeing a variant strategy where the date proceeds as per normal the first time around but selling only starts on the second date. Maybe this way, it's not a violation of the T&Cs of the dating apps because the second outing is arranged through a different medium.

The only way to prevent this from happening is to really have a clear idea of your self-worth. If you are a 5 and some girl who is an 8 or 9 accepts your date, maybe you want to find out what industry they are in before you get too excited.

( Not pertinent to this discussion is that I heard that there are a bunch of muscular guys selling gym memberships on dating apps, so women are not spared. )

b) Holding a second part-time job as a sneaky disguise to pounce on leads

It gets worse. I learnt from a student that more sophisticated techniques exist, and FAs are popping up in places you'd least expect. 

I heard that a FA actually picked up some Sommelier certificate and actually found part-time work in some wine place that organises singles events. She will ask single men out to sell them insurance. 

This is a very high-level play because the last thing you'd expect is someone with a formal job is actually an FA as well. 

When executed well, I can't think of any defence to prevent the date from becoming a waste of time. 

Fortunately, I've only seen single men fall prey to this, but if FAs can take on any part-time role, any business meeting can be weaponised for sales. I can imagine an influencer wanting to collaborate with me on a video may try to sell me stuff in that meeting - but I will ensure their reputation will not survive if they waste my time this way.

c) Hiding in "finance mastermind" groups. 

This comes from my personal experience.

A couple of ERM students and a collaborator of mine are mutual friends and we arranged to meet each other last night at Keong Saik Road. When we are arranging for the meetup, a student asked me whether I can allow an FA to show up. I was puzzled how the meeting details got leaked, apparently, my students tried to organise the meetup in a telegram group that focuses on finance discussions. It's a small group but has at least two FAs.

Once this FA heard about this, he tried to shift the meeting venue to his office!

When I heard about this incident, I got so mad, I said I would not show up if the FA comes. I can take a drug addict, a pimp, or someone that's been to jail, but no way I will allow a commissioned FA to gatecrash a drinking session with my ERM students.

It's not to protect me and my friends, it's to protect the FA! 

I explained that I probably would not be able to remain civil and I will openly rub the fact that I am a multimillionaire without ever accepting financial advice from an FA. I will brag about my cheap SAF Group insurance. I will make him question his very own existence in this universe.

I know that in the age of Telegram and Whatsapp, it's very common for folks to build discussion groups. I'm in several myself, but I also am aware that salespeople tend to hijack the discussion for their own purposes. One group I am in has real estate agents and every day it's just airy-fairy talk about condominium launches.

Sometimes I blame Napolean Hill for coming up with the idea of a mastermind group. Set a standard for your friends, if they see you as a source of revenue, you may wish to think twice before committing time and effort to a network.