Wednesday, July 18, 2007

The Government giving a Black Swan?

The government has given us a black swan today. The markets falls cascadingly when the development charges increase from 50% to 70%. And the most badly hit was the Sesdaq.

It's a pity that there is no put warrants on Sesdaq, else I may have bought some yesterday. I was looking at STI warrants yesterday, but I did not buy.

Euphoria turns to pessimism. Contel drop back to my purchase price. I do hope it drop further, so I can bear to buy more. I also hope some of my targeted stocks drop, so I can also buy more.

While I am fully vested in the market now, I do have spare funds and borrowed funds left unused. I do use a little leverage which is less 15% of my funds. This leverage has been lying in the bank some months back as I cannot find many bargains since the last Feb/Mar drop. Probably the leverage can be put to use soon. Maybe I should see if I can get more leverage. I don't know.

In the more deeper June correction last year, I manage to find better bargains such as CG Tech at 26c or China Sky at 80c. Not sure if I can find better bargains this time. But bargains come at a cost. My portfolio declines my 25% during the last June correction. I did feel quite upset during last June drop.

I am re-reading The Black Swan this morning, hoping to instill a bit more pessimism in my market outlook. Surprisingly, the market or the government decides to join in to give me more pessimism too.

The Black Swan mentioned that we always don't learn that we do not learn. Probably that's quite correct given my euphoria and the market yesterday. The book also mentioned on human's fondness for retrospective thoughts, or looking at the rear-view mirror. Which is also interesting, as the rise in Sesdaq may be due to retrospective thoughts. And lastly, I read that we are poor predictors of the future.

Given this knowledge, I can only know that I dare not predict where the market may go next. But I being human, I can't help but predict that the market may go down some more.

Yet, I am feeling more happy than unhappiness now. Probably that's due to I not holding any Sesdaq stock or not holding any property stocks. A more certain reason may be that the market and my declining portfolio may not be most important. Another matters more to me.

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