Creating Some Value

Today has been a busy day for me. I spent the whole day attending a stock investment technical analysis course on how to use Fibonacci projections and retracement. The class started late and the bulk of the attendees are mature investors in their 40s to 60s. I have been reading up on technical analysis and my brother has also been giving me a crash course on the various technical indicators. Why am I learning stock investment? I have been thinking for a while to utilise some of my time to trade in the local and possibly the regional markets. Not just to keep my mind working but to try and earn some money as well. Not a big timer but a small time trader. I find technical analysis very mind simulating and of course very interesting. During the course, the trainer would utilise actual stock performance to explain the concept and do some back testing to test if the model works. It looks so easy as if the technical indicators can actually help an investor make better decisions and of course make money. While back testing may be a good method to validate the model, I think problem is that in real life, you are looking into the future. You trade based on the model you selected and because real money is involved, fear takes over despite back testing shows that the model is working. After all, past performance is no indication of future success. The execution of the trade becomes difficult and this is faced by most of the new traders like me. I read in many books that new traders pays a lot of 'tuition fees' in learning to trade. To minimise losses, I would start learning by doing paper trading (no money is involved) and see if my stock trading model is working or not. Once the confidence is build up, then I start to invest in real money. This year is an interesting year because it's an election year (in USA, in China, Malaysia and Greece). It's also an Olympic Games and Euro Football championship year. All these events affects the stock market. Dow Jones shed by more than 274 points last Friday and it would be interesting to see how the local stock market opens tomorrow. I will look towards Tokyo for the lead.

I was not very comfortable attending the stock investment course. This is because of the chair. There are not enough cushion and back support. My butt was hurting and I also had some abdominal pain. Luckily the trainers were entertaining and I enjoyed the course and learned from it. Otherwise, I think it's not worth putting up with the pain.

Saturday was a sad day for me. I received news that a lung cancer friend of mine died. She was 59. I thought she would be the one that would most likely be healed because she was undergoing a new Japanese therapy after both the chemotherapy and radiotherapy failed to halt the progress of her lung cancer. The last time I spoke to her about one and half months ago, she told me that she was doing fine. Except that I was sad to learn that she has become bed ridden due to some spinal nerve injury caused by the radiotherapy treatment. So it came as a shock to learned of her death. May she rests in peace.