My misses

In my previous posts, I had mentioned my hit stocks, stocks which had made me money.

In this post, I will share my misses.

When I first wanted to start investing in stocks, I know I want to do the investing myself but back then I did not even know where to start. Should I open a brokerage accounts with banks or other firms?

Then my elder sister opened an account with POEMS and started buying stocks. She encoraged me to do and coincidentally POEMS had a temporary booth at clementi MRT and I just approached the guy there and sined up for my POEMs account.

Next, I learnt the mechanics of how to buy stocks using my POEM account from my sister.

Some of the first few stocks I bought were 1) Super Group 2) Raffles medical 3) ASL Marine 4) Comfortdelgro.

I bought in small quantities around 2-3 lots per stocks using cash.

It was quite an exciting moment to key in the quantity to buy and the price.

One of the stocks that i have lost money in was ASL marine.

I boughts 3000 shares in 2008-2009 at $1.01/share.

That was almost 8-9 years ago. I didn't keep a diary to record down my reasons for buying the company. I only started to do so from 2013 onwards.

Back then, I vaguely remembered that I just solely looked at the company's financial statements without considering the industry's oversupply that had plagued many similar companies and whether ASL had the ability to ride out the crisis.

The stock price went down and even down when there was a bonus share given, i was given a bonus of 1200 more shares and the share price continued to stay down around 0.68 and that was when I threw in the towel and sold off my shares to free up monies that I could use to buy better shares that were trading at bargain prices.

I lost approximateky $200 and this was my first real paper loss.

I counted myself lucky that I only lost this bit of money but I learnt from the mistake.  I have forgotten to ask myself honestly if I believe the company can survive tough times.

Then on, I had some reservations whenever it comes to buying smaller player companies because I was not confident if the company can survive tough times.

Of course big companies do fail such as the Lehman Brothers case. But I felt that the chances of big companies failing are definitely lower than that of small cap companies.

I steered clear of penny stocks and also china based stocks.

Some food for thoughts

The past few months had been a roller coaster ride especially for holders of Keppel Corp (KC) stocks.

The oil prices had been going up and down. I find the behavior of oil prices similar to Mr Market (a term that Warren Buffett had used to describe the stock market).

It is quite an excruciating experience to see the rises and falls of KC price along with the oil prices. Where possible, I would try not to look at the stock market prices but I find myself checking the stock price almost twice a day.

It is quite difficult to detach your emotions especially if you see red (red color meant the stock prices have fallen compared to the day before).

How i cope with the roller coaster ride is by treating the stock market as Mr Market. From the perspective of a seller, on days where the stock counter shows red, I would imagine that Mr Market is in a foul  mood and is offering you low prices for the stock that you hold and he will return again with a quote the next day regardless you reject his offer today or not.

On days where the stock counter shows green (price has risen compared to the day before) I would imagine that Mr Market is in a euphoric state and is offering you higher prices for the stock that you hold. Once again he will return you with a quote the next day regardless whether you have accepted his offer.

Warren Buffett would tell you not to buy stocks if you could not stop checking the price of your stocks. Yes, this is true but with many phone application that allows one to view the sg stock price at a simple touch . It is a bit tad hard to put this into practice. Nonetheless I personally use the stocks app to monitor the prices of stocks that I held or am interested in, NOT because I want to sell my stocks but to make a decision to BUY MORE.