Thanks for joining me!
I have always wanted to do a blog and writes about everything I know and think about the matters that are related to the financial world, investments and economics.
So here’s a little information about me.
I am a 37 years old male living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I graduated with a bachelor degree in electrical & electronics engineering, worked in the field for over 6 years, quit and did my MBA concentrating in finance full time before going back to the work as a manager. But deep down inside, i know, everyone who knows me know that I am passionate about the world of finance, investments and economics. I like to study companies, read their financial statements, annual reports, news about them, digging a little bit more about the people making decisions in the company, how did the company’s product do in the market, who are their competitors, how do their future look like, how does the current economics conditions affect their business, etc..
Why does this matter to me? Because I love investing in great businesses. I like to be associated and be a part of businesses that changes people’s life for the better, businesses that make a dent to the universe, businesses that care about people including their staff and customers, businesses that are well run by a team of excellent management who cares about maximising shareholder’s value, who cares about making the world a better place to live, who are accountable and take responsibility, who have their interest tied to the shareholder’s interest, businesses who make that extraordinary profit margin compared to its competitors, businesses like Apple, AirAsia, Hartalega, Mastercard, Alibaba, Disney, Shopify, Stitch Fix, Chipotle, Starbucks, Pentamaster, Magni-Tech to name a few.
As you can see from the list of businesses listed above, one can easily see that I am an investor who pays attention to public businesses that are listed in the US and Malaysia. These two markets, mainly. I have started investing in companies since 2006, the year I graduated and started my first job. Back then, I had little to none financial literacy and know nothing about banking and economics. I bought stocks based on what people recommends or brands and businesses that I have interaction with in my day to day life. Because of that, I had invested in a few hyped stocks and had since made huge losses in the stock market. It was not until 2012/2013 after I have quit my day job that I have finally had the time reading investment books about super investors like Warren Buffet, Ben Graham, Philip Fisher, etc and value investing which led to the “cleansing” of my portfolio by removing rubbish companies and slowly adding winning companies. My MBA studies had enabled me to become financially literate and helped me to discover what I really like in life (it’s actually finance, not engineering!!). I started to understand the many important factors that sets a company apart from the rest, the qualities that made a company from ordinary to good and from good to great (the management plays a huge role in this), and since then I have started to make better investment decisions.
I plan to share my views about companies (whether or not I have vested interest in them), about the financial markets and the general economic conditions in this blog. I will also share some of the lessons learnt from the investment experiences I have gathered, with the aim of knowledge sharing. I also hope to improve my knowledge by putting my thoughts down in writing which I believe will in someway help to challenge one’s thought and opinion and encourages me to do more research on things that I am not sure. Of course, I wish to also polish my writing skills.
I hope you will enjoy reading and find my articles useful to you. I look forward to reading your comments and feedbacks.
Chua – 29 April 2020
Chua Financial Blog 