Category: Uncategorized

BLOG: short name for a weB-LOG. It is a personal online journal that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption.

408 blog postings later, I am now into my 6+ year of penning down my thoughts since Apr 2016. Time indeed flies…

Back in 2016, I was at the crossroad of my life journey as I was trying to figure out what to do next. I had just resigned from my old job which I hated so much and was looking to start a new business venture on retirement homes (which eventually did not happen). I had just turned 50, hence the title of my blog address – Musings of a 50-year-old boy.

I wanted to chart a new direction to make meaning of what I would like to do next in my life, having reached my halftime crisis moment a few years prior in 2012 after being retrenched from a 19-year bank career. I had time on my hand as I had stopped working full time and was thinking of doing something impactful and memorable for myself.

Maintaining a blog requires discipline as it is a long-term commitment to publishing regularly while constantly thinking of a topic to write about. Should I talk about current news events or something personal that happened that week? I have to be thick-skinned enough to bare my soul to the world, yet no one may ever bother to read them at all. I had to condition and change my mindset to say “screw it and let’s just go ahead”. There is nothing to lose for an uncle who is already active on social media (FB, Instagram, LinkedIn etc) anyway.

I started with an online crash course on how I can create my own website address to start the blog. WordPress was the leading candidate which was the easiest to set up (as others like WIX only came much later). I followed step-by-step guides to create my space in the cloud and duly paid for the rights to www.musingsofa50yearoldboy.com plus an annual package to host the blog. It came up to about $150+ of sunk cost even before I started writing down my first virgin blog LOL…

In the beginning, I was overly ambitious and wanted to blog daily. I would force myself to sit in front of the PC every day to crunch something out, the thought of the day. It was painful at the start to always think of something to say, be it nonsensical or frivolous. The early blogs were short and personal, amateurish at best.

I eventually settled on publishing weekly blogs instead. I had more time and data to work on after 7 days. To compensate, my weekly pieces slowly became slightly longer. To date, they are about 1,000+ words in length. I had settled into a regular process of being able to churn out a few hundred words easily once I set my mind on the topics to be discussed to type away at my keyboard.

I usually begin my new blog on a Saturday morning with the first draft, aiming to publish by the end of the day or latest on Sunday. Grammarly is my go-to tool to help correct awkward grammatical mistakes and misspellings. I will usually do a final read of the article before pressing the send button.

I don’t advertise my website to catch eyeballs as I really don’t care if no one reads it. But the ego does feels good whenever I check the statistics and see a nice uptick. The analytical tool also shows me geographically the countries where the readers are from.

Sometimes I post the blog link to social media discussions where the topic is similar to my weekly writeup, like the recent mass shootings in America. I also am active on the Clubhouse app as I listen into my favourite rooms on a daily basis and I add the link to my intro bio there too.

Over these past 6 years, I believe that blogging has helped me to become a better writer. I am able to articulate my thoughts more consciously, direct from my brain to the PC. To prepare for some difficult subjects, I am sometimes forced to research more more to fact-check myself.

I begin by reviewing my iPhone calendar of my daily activities and reminders for the week to try to form the things I want to write. Sometimes, like this week, nothing much happens and I will be scratching my head to think of a topic that spans a longer period or to share a past experience and what I learned from it.

The blog also gives me clarity on my personal thoughts as I needed to formulate my argument to take a stand and state in on record in writing. It also forces me to action as I have committed to the world what I intend to do and keeps me focused on accomplishing them eg. my annual year resolution lists.

By talking about my game plans, I am able to track and monitor my progress and fine-tune it along the way. It pushes me to focus on the important things currently going on in my life and help me ignore the non-relevant fluffy noises.

I think that my writing quality has also improved over the years because of my blogging. I spend time gathering my thoughts together and then when I start to put them into writing, the flow is smooth as I compose them into words.

It sets a disciplined and weekly routine for me to organize my thinking to stay focused on what is important and to spend quality time on it, rather than wasting unnecessary minutes watching TikTok and youtube videos, which I still do…. LOL

Sometimes, I occasionally look back to my old blogs to re-read and review them again, just to check if my thinking has changed or to help reaffirm and strengthen my convictions. It is an “ownself-check-ownself” mechanism to remain true to myself and also to better understand the inner me. No apologies to the world as I bare my thoughts to the world without fear. It is almost refreshing sometimes to bring my inner soul out into the open, sharing my secrets with the world… I have enough materials now to publish my own e-book 🙂

The next phase of my objective to be a lifelong student has begun. My application to the new RISE 2.0 program had resulted in an aptitude test and a Zoom interview this week. Hopefully, I can start the 10 weeks full-time course soon. It will also coincide with a possible new consultancy project during the last quarter of the year. This project has elements of ESG leading to carbon credits that interest me about its limitless upside potential.

Another event that is keeping me occupied will be the class reunion to happen in mid-Aug. Our last one was in 2016, 6 years ago. We had wanted to do it again in 2021 as we turn 55 and call it the CPF Withdrawal Reunion. But thanks to Covid, we could not. Better late than never. It is now the “Post-CPF” Reunion. Looking forward to a full calendar for the remaining months of 2022.

ICO: Initial Coin Offering.

ICOs are another form of cryptocurrency that businesses use in order to raise capital. A process or event in which a company (especially a start-up) attempts to raise capital by selling a new cryptocurrency, which investors may purchase in the hope that the value of the cryptocurrency will increase, or to later exchange for services offered by that company.

I thought it is timely that I record my one and only ICO investment experience today. Like SPACs and NFTs, it had its heyday a few years ago before expanding too fast and then dying a fiery death not long after. It peaked around 2017 and died off by 2019 as regulators had to clamp down on the rampant fraud scams that were happening by then.

It was Ethereum (ETH), the second biggest crypto that birthed the concept of ICOs with its innovative way of raising funds, bypassing the requirement to technically be considered a security issuance. This opened up Pandora’s box of tech nerds with White papers trying to create an idea out of thin air and jump on the bandwagon.

The founders of ETH created this new crypto kid on the block in 2015 that eventually rivals Bitcoin (BTC). They had idealistic and lofty goals of a decentralised finance (Defi) Blockchain ecosystem controlled by no central authority that was immutable. Using BTC or fiat currencies, one could buy into ETH. It was touted as a platform where its ERC20 protocols allowed for many other altcoin systems to sit on top of it.

The founders had trial and error experiences that included a hacking incident that almost killed the project. The solution finally was to do a hard fork to prevent the hacker from stealing the coins. That created ETC (Ethereum Classic) as a branch-off and made everyone realise the potential of forks to create new asset class coins within the same original mother ship. Hence we had also seen many BTC forks too.

It also encouraged the proliferation of ICOs as anyone could technically start a project to raise funds via this process. Write a new concept White paper and use Metamask to distribute their new coin. Viola! It looks scammy at best, so I decided to do some research before I dive into my first and only investment.

I attended some free seminars on ICOs to try to understand the logic behind the investment. The so-called guru trainer encouraged people to invest with a 3 prong strategy. (1) To buy computers with powerful graphics cards to mine the coins, (2) to join insider chat groups of his to have access to new ICOs as soon as possible and (3) the investment strategy itself. The strategy that was described to us looked exactly like a pump and dump scheme LOL!! Get in fast and sell within weeks – get out before the ICO tanked…

It made me wonder what the ICO founders are doing with the funds they collected in exchange for their coins. They claim to have a limit cap on the new coin but that could be in the gazillions. The use of the funds was opaque and for all we know, they could have used it to pump the price higher instead of utilizing them for the main purpose of the coin, to create and develop a new ecosystem.

I was very sceptical of the whole concept as many ICOs were being pushed and I could not see any success stories yet. But I was itching to at least try to invest in one as I always believe that the best way to learn is to put skin in the game, to participate in at least one.

The opportunity came along as one of my cousins contacted me for his ICO launch. The concept was noble, to create an ecosystem to bridge the gap between small local Asian tour providers with the vast China overseas tourist market using this new coin called WeGold. People will use this newly created coin to exchange for services and trade actively amongst themselves.

They had strong investors to back them and one of them was a successful investor and an ex-classmate that had done well selling off his matured investments. He was sitting on cash and wanted to divest into new ideas. He was also an ex-colleague of my cousin’s team.

I thought why not and decided to invest 10k into this new WeGoGo coin. Soon, I became the proud owner of almost a million of this stuff in my MetaMask account. There were constant marketing updates about new drops and how they are progressing with their milestones.

The first signs of trouble began with the delays. Launch dates seem to be pushed back regularly due to multiple issues. They could not jump-start the ecosystem for various reasons too. The founders also had a lot of their funds tied to the project and were trying hard to push it along even though it was a first-time ICO for all of them.

Things started getting quiet and the Whatsapp marketing group went silent. I checked with my cousin eventually and he was kind enough to want to meet me in person to deliver the news. They could not proceed further and the burn rate had eaten into their funds and have decided not to seek new funds to further extend the runway. They wanted to cut loss as they had already sunk in about a million in this project. They would look to sell parts of the business to try to recoup some losses.

Well so much for my first virgin ICO. I thought that the people I know would make it a success. But that was evidently not enough in this new tech world. There were many other variables which had huge hurdles to cross. Starting and maintaining an ecosystem is extremely difficult.

Crypto exchanges decided to create their own crypto to facilitate transactions with some level of success. Binance’s BNB was issued at a few cents each and traded to a high of $650 before coming off this year to $230 now. Binance is one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world but MAS did not allow them to get a license to operate in S’pore and they are now headquartered in the Middles East. This is only one of the few semi-ICO success stories I can think of as of today.

Like ICOs, we have seen SPACs and NFTs over the last 1 year having its 15 minutes of fame before flaming out within a short time. Everyone’s looking for the next big thing and product lifecycles seem to get shorter and shorter as volatility increases exponentially. Buyers beware, caveat emptor!

In life, there will always be many new things to try. Like a buffet spread, there are a lot of dishes you might not have tasted before that you might want to experience. Investments are the same. I believe that one can study something forever but until you dip into it, you honestly cannot say that you have tried it.

Over the years, I have refined the process a little based on my past experiences. One should first spend some time researching the topic to make up your mind about getting into it. But with the first investment, one should be prepared to be able to lose all of it. It should be a bite-size amount and one should not bet the whole house on this new asset for the first investment. Also, we must avoid leverage as much as possible, as that will multiply your risk substantially.

After getting into the first time, you can then assess at a later date if the investment is a correct decision or if you should not participate in it again. It is like swimming. You can read so many how-to books about it but eventually, you need to get to the swimming pool to try out what you have learned in the books. Sometimes it is laziness that prevents me from doing the necessary homework. Then I can only blame myself if things did not go the way I want.

In my life journey, I am always game to try new things at least once and gain experience from the episode. Sometimes you get an invaluable lesson and learn about yourself as you do a post-mortem. One starts to know oneself better and why one behaves the way we do.

This leads me to the conference call this week on a new type of investment I went into a few years ago. Back in 2019, I had read up on the topic of Angel Investing. It is a process of providing financial backing for small startups and entrepreneurs, typically in exchange for ownership equity in the company.

There was a husband and wife team who had successfully sold and exited from the first company they had created and were discovering new startups to invest in. They realized that while these young companies find it hard to attract funds, there is also a ready pool of individuals with money to invest but they don’t know how to do it.

So they decided to set up a company https://www.angelcentral.co/ to bring these 2 groups together. On the one hand, incubating and mentoring startups to screen and prepare them for investors. On the other side, to provide a structured process for investors to learn about angel investing. Periodically, they would select a number of startups they like to put money in and invite investors to listen to the sales pitch of the founders.

In this way, they hope to create an ecosystem to support an angel investment community by building a bridge between demand and supply. This structured process is a win-win for all. Traditionally, this type of investment requires a high minimum amount and is only accessible to the very rich. Their process allows for smaller amounts and the participation of more risk-takers.

I joined their program as an investor for an annual fee and was invited to periodic sales pitch sessions. Each founder was given a short time to sell their ideas followed by a Q&A session. There would normally be about 4 founders/presenters in each session.

Eventually, I saw one that I was interested in as I foresee the potential to scale up if they become successful. Whenever a tourist goes for an overseas holiday, they might shop for branded products. The process to claim back the VAT (Value Added Tax) as a foreigner at the airport was very time-consuming and difficult. This firm wants to simplify the whole process and aims to target Japanese and Chinese tourists around the world.

The funding process closed in Dec 2019. In hindsight, the timing could not have been worse. Covid struck a few months later and countries began to lockdown and barricade their borders. Suddenly, overseas travel nose-dived and the company had to re-evaluate the business.

The management decided to conserve their liquidity to hunker down in order to extend and prolong their funding runway until the situation improves again. Expenses had to be cut to the bone while revenue was almost non-existent. The $1.6 mio raised at the end of 2019 was stretched to as long as possible to weather the pandemic.

At the call this week, the CEO informed all investors that the remaining funds may not last much longer. The last 2 years had taken a toll on him and he has indicated that he would like to throw in the towel and call it quits. I don’t blame him. No one knew how long the pandemic would last. Even until today, we are only cautiously optimistic that we have moved on to the endemic stage.

The company have decided not to ask existing investors to top up with more funds. Instead, it will talk to prospective buyers who are interested to take over the whole business. There are a number of interested parties. They are in the process of internal evaluation.

So much for my first virgin angel investment deal. It looks like a full write-off now for me. Things went beyond anyone’s control as external factors overwhelmed the core business proposition. It looked promising at the start during the old normal before the 1 in a 100 years pandemic struck.

Like all my investments, I have to take this as a necessary tuition fee to participate in a new investment class that did not turn out well. The loss is something that I can stomach and I came into it with my eyes wide open, knowing that this asset class carries a high risk. The probability of success is unmeasurable at the start as anything can go wrong.

My takeaway from this episode? I have a better understanding and process of how one can evaluate the success of a start-up business now. It has since also helped me decide to invest in another online start-up after reviewing their proposition. But it is not an area I will seek to explore actively in my future investment journey.

Angel investing is a high-risk game where out of every 10 deals, only a handful or even none can be successful. Having deep pockets is a given as one diversifies into many bets, hoping that the winners can help you recoup your initial investment plus more. It may not be everyone and perhaps sticking to buying exchange-traded stocks or mutual funds is more suitable for me.

ICO –

try first, dip your toes in, no leverage

skip NFTs but SPACs grab sad

Life has a way of throwing new adventures at you even when you think you are stagnating and not moving forward. We try our best to make way for fresh discoveries, to plan in advance for whatever is within our control to enable new doors to open.

Sometimes life does throws you a curveball. We can either move aside to avoid it or use all efforts to bat as hard as we can to reflect it back. Risk aversion increases with age and makes one less likely to take up challenges that seem unfamiliar and alien to our status quo. Sometimes, we need to fight that urge to free ourselves so that we can discover and explore novel experiences.

I totally believe the notion that when one door closes behind you, many other new doors will open in front of you. But for this to happen, it requires proactive efforts to plan ahead. Sometimes, you go into a funk and nothing seems to happen for a while even as you try. You wonder about what is going to happen next and life becomes a boring and routine drag.

I started 2022 with a bang as I wanted to go off in a new direction. I was frustrated with my old consultancy project work in an Asian country after 4 years. Things were looking stale and I didn’t think I could value add to the role anymore. The military coup certainly did not help. I wanted to make a clean break and try to figure out what I wanted to do next, to chart a new path.

I kept myself occupied initially with a new full-time FinTech course to get deeper into the areas I was always interested. This lasted till Apr. It was challenging for a non-tech-savvy uncle like me. I needed to prove to myself that I could handle it like any other younger person. It was tougher than I thought but at least I tried. Perhaps my expectation at the beginning was too high. The class of 30+ came from very diverse backgrounds and my project group simply cannot click as a team.

It also did not help that all asset classes were having a meltdown from last Dec till now. It was like a rabbit standing in the middle of the road staring down at an approaching truck that had high beam headlights on, seconds before impact. This slow-moving train wreck that is now into its 6th month with no end in sight. It is so painful to watch your portfolio going into the red across the board for weeks on end.

I was fortunate enough to time an overseas trip immediately after my NUS course ended. It was a good 2 weeks break to spend quality time with my family, to recharge my batteries. I came back all energized to start planning for my second half of 2022, to see what I should do.

One more short one-week Data Analytics course in Jun later, I had reached the mid-point of the year.I had been settling into a week-by-week mindless routine, bumbling along as I try to figure out what to do next.

One of the new projects that came along, post-Covid endemic, was to organize another class reunion again after our last one in 2016. I had discussions with my usual partner in crime organizer and we felt that it was time again to kick start this gathering. It gave me some purpose and nostalgia to do this again, even as we are unsure of how the endemic phase of the virus would unfold into the event date. We called this the “Post-CPF” reunion as us uncles and aunties were eligible to withdraw our CPF at 55 last year.

Then out of the blue, 2 potential new doors opened up unexpectantly for me this week. I am not so sure where they will lead me but I am willing to explore further. Either one might set me off on a new path and adventure. Both are aligned with some of my halftime objectives and interest which make them interesting to me.

The first was from an old schoolmate based in Hong Kong. He manages his own consultancy business and even wrote a book on how to do business in China that is available for sale on Amazon. He suggested a Zoom call this week to explained to me the background of his proposed venture.

He is trying to help a client seek new investors. This Fintech firm is looking to change the way microfinance businesses obtain financing in China. The objective was to create a new asset class of small business portfolios on an exchange platform. This will attract investors to actively participate in the success of many SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) setups in a fully transparent basis via real time data analytics monitoring. By bringing supply and demand onto an organized exchange, there will be synergies and win-win opportunities for all. Best of all, there is ecomonies of scale and China is already well positioned technologically.

We had a good 1-hour discussion and agreed to talk more. He plans to do a roadshow in S’pore in the later part of Q3’22 and perhaps I could also be of assistance to his marketing efforts. I believe I have the relevant experience and network connections that he can tap on. It will be interesting to participate in a potential game-changer effort to revolutionize and create a new asset class which can benefit small businesses.

The other interesting door that opened for me this week was from an ex-colleague. We have had on and off again discussions over the last few years on possible project collaborations. He is a very sharp and smart true entrepreneur that constantly seeks financial issues to solve and profit from. Many opportunities involved companies looking for funding. He facilitates as a middleman to bring the deals to the table of investors with liquidity.

Last year, he became excited about the possibility of using technology to help develop a platform for the trading of carbon credits. There has been not much progress in Asia on this area and he believes that he can bring everything together to create a viable business model.

A year later, he had finally gotten an anchor investor to help set up the building blocks of a company which can implement the various strategies he has in mind. He is beginning to look for suitable persons to add to this build-up and thinks I can be a useful addition to this company. We had a fruitful 2+ hours discussion and agree to take things a step further by arranging to meet at his office next week.

I feel energized again after this week. No doubt that the 2 events may lead to nothing but it gives me purpose to want to explore further. I think I have done enough studying for this year as a full time student and need to throw myself at other meaningful projects to develop my own purpose and drive in my halftime discovery journey.

So much happened in America this week. 2 powerful Jan 06 sessions piled on more damning evidence on the orange one. The supreme court also just overturned Roe vs Wade last night. These 2 events will have lots of ramifications plus new late-night comedy material into the US mid-term elections in Nov. The long-delayed tightening of gun rules was also finally passed after multiple needless death of innocents.

I am trying to make sense of what is happening in the world today and perhaps make a few bold predictions and forecasts for the rest of 2022. By writing it down in my blog today, I can reflect on them in the future to see how many I may have gotten right or if I was totally off the mark. This will also help me plan and formulate my investment strategy for 2H’22.

I want to look at 5 major trends at the top of my mind now which will likely shape the way the rest of the world will be heading into 2023. They are the political state of America, the Ukraine/Russia war, China’s Xi legacy, the interest rates playbook and oil prices. Hopefully, they will help to crystalize my thoughts for a proactive fine-tuning of my investment portfolio.

(1) America will be in an upheaval mode going into the Nov mid-year elections as the GOP and Democrats throw up obstacles and divisive issues in the path of the voters to desperately sway their opinions. We have already seen guns and abortion rights dividing the nation recently. The 06 Jan insurrection committee sessions will also pour kerosene into the flames as the groups battle it out.

The next 5 months will see political parties throw everything but the kitchen sink into the confrontation debate to win votes. It seems like a sure thing that GOP is likely to win back the Senate and Congress now, given the sky-high inflation environment. But nothing can be certain until then. We are going to see a more divided nation where core issues will bring up heated discussions. Too much democracy and first amendment rights plus the freedom of speech results in a powder keg of explosive conversations and even violence going forward.

(2) The Ukraine war has dragged on for too long already. Russia is rapidly losing its military inventory as the world feeds more weapons to Ukraine to fight back. Countries can now gladly send their expiring weapons over to them for defence against the Russian bear. The American military companies are laughing all the way to the bank with roaring new orders from all countries, especially the Europeans, as they need to stock up again. Viva La Americano!

Everyone will only want to buy American weapons now as Russia becomes a pariah. Uncle Sam has a win-win situation to massively write off at least $40+ billion of military equipment knowingly that these new fundswill go directly to support the mighty American military industry juggernauts.

Russia has changed its end game focus from conquering the whole of Ukraine to a narrower focus as they realized this is not a walk in the park. They are likely to capture the Donbas region at all cost, then call it a victory and return home. It is Crimea all over again. They cannot afford to have an unending war with ever-increasing causalities.

The sanctions will eventually bite hard unless China provides a lifeline. Russia and China have a long-term objective to break out of the world’s dependency on the USD Swift system, price commodities in another currency other than the USD and promote another alternative ie. RMB. 2 separate world blocs will evolve as the Western and Eastern hemispheres lock horns.

(3) China’s Xi is waiting to be re-elected to an unprecedented 3rd term by autumn this year. The zero Covid strategy makes no sense but yet they are holding to that policy. Is there something the rest of the world doesn’t know or is it because China has to steady the ship at all costs until Xi is re-elected?

Once Xi has won the mandate to run again, China will likely go full steam ahead to open up for business and unblock all supply chain bottlenecks caused by the Covid lockdowns. The Chinese are always a pragmatic race that prefers long term prosperity over war in their 2,000 years history.

(4) Will inflation give way to a recession and then stagflation? The Fed just hiked 75 bps and is likely to do the same at least 2 more times to contain the inflation monster. We should see peak inflation happening within the next 3 months. Interest rates should stabilise around the 3-4% level which is the long-term historical average. The last 14 years of post-GFC ultra-low interest levels will not return.

Deleveraging has happened in a big way in the last 6 months. The cheap money excesses since the 2008 GFC had been deflated substantially with broad drop of proces in the range of 75 to 90% in many assets. I do not think that there will be further domino effects to race down to a new low.

(5) Oil prices look shaky at current levels and is unlikely to head higher. Biden will arm twist the Middle East to increase production with the promise of enabling more new weapons purchases (win-win for America again). Failing this carrot approach, they will bring out the big guns to threaten them with new sanctions.

Just adding another million barrels a day of new output by Opec might do the trick to bring prices below $100. An oil tax holiday is a standby option at the expense of lower government revenues. Oil frackers can also be called to arms to “patriotically” defend the country as their cost of production now is $55 per barrel or even lower after a string of bankruptcies in that sector. The frackers just need to turn on the pipes to pump again. The environmentalists have to postpone their wish list for the greater good of the country. Biden will time the oil “rescue plan” into Q4 to time it nicely with the mid-term elections. He can then declare victory over the slaying of the inflation beast.

To sum it all up, the above 5 scenarios point to a turbulent 2H’22 filled with volatility due to risk events. They all seem to conclude into the month of Nov. There will be a lot of repositioning and posturing as portfolios are rebalanced. One should be careful from now till the end of the year. Investment opportunities have to be double and triple-checked before entering as our cash pool diminishes.

I believe that if the worse case happens and the economy weakens further into early 2023, the central banks will start to ease and print money again. This is the tried and tested put option to prevent a financial calamity which they have been doing so successfully since the 2008 GFC. It is an addictive drug that has no other alternatives nowadays. And the Kraken will be released again.

Investment-wise, I have to be nimble from now to year-end. I look to start trimming down some of the deadbeat stocks I own to increase my cash position. I will only invest more if I have done thorough research on the company as I conserve my remaining funds. I will continue to observe the crypto space and wait for it to stabilize further.

Bottomline, I need to strengthen my overall portfolio to prepare for the recovery and rally into 1Q’23. All my predictions may not pan out as forecasted. But the 5 major trends I listed above all seems to point to a timeline that is consistent with a turnaround for early 2023. I will continue to plot and plan ahead. Wish me luck!

Wikipedia defines a Ponzi as a form of fraud that lures investors and pays profits to earlier investors with funds from more recent investors. The greater fool theory revolves around the pushing of an asset price higher by attracting more people and creating a FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) environment.

The above 2 points perfectly describe the crypto markets today. BUT they can also be used to explain any other asset classes too. SPACs and NFTs are one. So are FANG stocks, plus traditional investments like stocks and bonds.

The premise of investment is to buy a promising asset ahead of anyone else before the man in the street discovers the hidden value. One then sells out when the hype stops justifying the valuation. Easy said than done.

We are now seeing a crypto winter, no thanks to the meltdown of all asset classes since the start of the year. There are many reasons being debated to justify the drop. It was the Ukraine war by Russia. Oil prices hitting $120. The ending of Covid as we return to a sense of normalcy. Supply chains getting stuck again after 2 years of standstill. Too many years of money printing by Central Banks that inflated all asset classes and now it comes back to bite us in the ass.

In hindsight, we should have seen it coming. Again, easier said than done. This was after so many years of binge drinking the Koolaid of successfully buying the dips. As more new money had been poured into the flaming fire of asset pumping, the rally was being fueled and turbocharged by new central banks accounting tricks.

More than 30% of US dollars were created over the last 18 months alone. The Fed had tried to overcome Covid by throwing UBI (Universal Basic Income) at its citizens in an effort to save the economy. And most other countries followed the same playbook as the pandemic froze all economies in their track. This adrenaline rush stop-gap measure always works from the 2008 GFC until the day it breaks the system. Is the day of reckoning at hand? Is the moment of truth here now? Will it work again? It looks inevitable that central banks may have to print more and pump the accelerator again within the next 6 to 12 months again.

Within the crypto space, we had seen a +10x rally beginning from Jan 2021 as the Gamestop saga successfully pitched the everyday man against the professional money managers. It emboldened individuals to hop onto the “sure-win” bandwagon of overnight riches with tips from newly created Clubhouse “professionals”. Many were touting new meme coins plus Bored Apes wannabes NFTs.

The crypto markets surged to a $3 trillion value and newly created billionaires fought against the old financial world. They pushed Defi (Decentralized Finance) aggressively by creating even fancier shinier objects to ramp up. The blurring of investment to speculation to Ponzi was mind-blowing. Cryptos are now below $1 trillion as 2/3 of the value had been destroyed.

And the party crashed spectacularly this week to new lows. The domino effect is shaking the crypto space to its core as the top 2 cryptos BTC and ETH got savaged. The fast and furious world of this market showed that volatility can increase on the downside as well as the upside. The destruction of the Terra Luna stablecoin, which suddenly became not so stable after all, is a painful lesson to learn.

Can we really create something out of nothing? Yes, we can and have been doing it for years. Take, for example, online gaming. As one gets more involved in the game, one can exchange fiat currency for online money to purchase and enhance your gaming experience. The company creates online gaming gold tokens out of thin air in order to collect your dollars.

Look at the recent collapse of the Terra Luna algorithmic stablecoin to maintain its peg. The foundation promised a yield of up to 20% per annum for staking via Anchor, the lending and borrowing protocol . How does it pay for the promised yield? By creating more tokens, duh!. If you believe that the price will be stable or heading higher, then FOMO will prevent you from cashing out.

The rug pull happens when everyone suddenly wants to exit at the same time. The logical algo-driven process is theoretically sound on paper but when a black swan event hits, no one knows if it can survive the onslaught. The real world has a bad habit of catching you with your pants down when you least expect it. It took only 2 withdrawal trades of about $100 million each to cause the depeg and the tokens spiral to almost zero within hours.

Suddenly, we are now seeing many asset price drops of 75 to 99% as being the norm, rather than the exception. It becomes crazy and we get numb to it like a rabbit on a highway watching the headlights of an approaching truck till impact. There is no time to react. Or is there?

There were signs out there for months but we refuse to believe that this time it is different. Many previous times of successfully buying the dips had conditioned us to do the same thing again and again, to double down. This time, our cash reserves are diminishing until we can do it no more.

The Terra Luna collapse has begun to threatened a contingent domino effect which had affected other algo stablecoins. Some exchanges like Celsius had started to freeze withdrawals and fueled more panic. Just this week, BTC had dropped almost 30% from 30 to 20k while ETH had also had a similar move from 2 to 1.1k. The total meltdown is a capitulation of highly leveraged positions seeking the exit door. The market smells blood and weak positions are being flushed out on the downside.

By the way, is Covid over yet? My blog weekly count since the start of the pandemic is 120 this week. I believe that we have already moved to an endemic stage. Historically, a virus tries its best to survive by being more contagious. But it also gets less deadly to ensure that the human hosts can allow it to continue to spread. That being the case, I will stop the weekly count today.

I am a 56-year-old Asian male. I started this blog 6 years ago when I turned 50. I was at my halftime turning point trying to make sense of what I would like to do with the second half of my life given that I had worked and lived in this little red dot all this time. I am fortunate to have been born at the right time in the 1960s and to have benefited from the prosperity of this country’s rise over the last 50 years.

The reason for starting a blog remains the same: (1) To let my kids have a glimpse of who their old man was like if they ever want to read it, (2) To improve my writing skills – about a thousand words per week and (3) To publicly tell the world of my ambitions and goals so that my commitment is reinforced to make me obligated to carry them through.

I left my last full-time job in Oct 2017 after a disastrous 12 months with a global banking name. The supervisor that hired me for the front office marketing role lost his job less than 3 months after I started. The new boss wanted someone with middle office capability that I did not have. As the new guy, I was overwhelmed by office politics from old-timers aiming for self-preservation. Obviously, I lost and decided to quit.

Since that time, I had come to the realization and acceptance that my old banking career is dead. By then, there was a low probability of me ever getting back into the banking game again. My previous managerial job role looks redundant and obsolete. Supervisors are becoming much younger, into their late thirties to early forties. I also acknowledged that I really hate office politics so much. I begin to value my freedom to do whatever I want, whenever I want.

Thankfully, an opportunity came along in Jan 2018 that allowed me to pivot into a consultancy career. I leveraged on my previous Treasury experience to assist an ex-colleague with his Myanmar microfinance company as a consultant on an annual contract basis. The money was not great but I get to travel every month and learn about a new culture. Most importantly, it was about time an ex-evil banker redeem himself and give back to society. To pay it forward. Other project consultancy work eventually came along which I gladly accepted.

Meanwhile, my lifelong learning journey began to develop as I took up numerous courses to dive deeper into my discovery of new technology to stay relevant. It is an area which interest me and I had a lot of time in between consultancy work to indulge myself. I discovered that I love to be challenged acedemically, to do projects and sit for tests and exams LOL. Lifelong learning is a passion which I embrace now. It gives me much purpose and joy.

The 50s are now the new 30s. Life expectancy has increased to 85 from 78 in 2007. By the time I reach my 80s, living to 100 would be the norm then. Financially, do I have the resources to live that long? Mentally and physically, do I have the strength to last that long? These are the things that I ponder about these days as I may have at least 50 years ahead of me.

I try to keep my life simple by following a easy to follow motto to lead and direct my second half journey: “Stay happy and healthy”. Knowing what is within my control and what is not is the first step to helping me achieve my goals. Having an annual list of new year resolutions to-do items keeps me focused at the beginning of each year for the next 12 months. Actively planning ahead is my go-to mantra to ensure that the goals I set for myself at the start of every year gets met. Even if they are not achieved by Dec, it is the effort and journey there that can be as rewarding.

Fast forward 4 years and a pandemic later and I have not been working full time for quite a while. During this period of time, I managed to complete a 12-mths part-time night study class for a diploma and a 6-months full-time Artificial Intelligence course. There were also numerous short courses plus 2 overseas training trips.

This was all thanks to the Skillsfuture initiative that strived t0 help mid-career citizens pivot to a more relevant and in-demand sector which I took advantage of. I see it as a means to take back the tax dollars I have paid over the years. Being older also means an immediate and unlimited 90% discount on all courses as an added bonus while the balance can be paid using the Skillsfuture credits all citizens get.

Ageism is a concern my age group is starting to feel nowadays. Is it just a concept or is it real? Do we need to look within ourselves and have a mindset change? One does qualify to be called an uncle once you hit 50. Watson’s even gives you a senior card too! It took me a number of years to get used to being greeted “Uncle!!” and to finally embrace it.

Is my work hunger gone? Am I viewed as a less driven worker or a threat to a younger supervisor’s job security as an older person? Is it me or the interviewer having bias thinking? Should I tell the truth or lie through my teeth? Is age working against me now? Do I still have the energy to get back into the rat race?

I do have this nagging feeling nowadays that I could have been passed over for some applications due to my age. The many years of work experience may not stand up against a younger competitor who is cheaper and does not come with old habits and a reluctance to embrace change. I need to face up to Reality.

I understand first hand through my courses that it is much harder for me to pick up new Tech skills versus my younger colleagues who live and breath it since they were born. They have never seen a green monitor, dot matrix printers, telex or a dial up modem in their lives! Meanwhile, uncle here struggles to pick up HTML, Python and GitHub.

There should be a work around to fight Ageism and I believe that it begins from within me. I cannot change the outside world’s view on ageing but I can finetune my mindset. I will continue to proactively embrace change as best as I can, to learn as much as I can absorb. I will set realistic goals to make my lifelong learning journey as interesting as possible while enjoying the ride into the SUNSET. Ideally, I want to be a full-time student and do part-time consultancy work from here henceforth – my BIG picture goal 🙂

And we have now just arrived into Jun. A halfway year to mark and review our plans for 2H’22. Time flies when too many global events, mainly negative, are happening all at once this year.

An eventful half-year to date that most investors would like to forget. It was the exact opposite of 1H’21 where retail meme stocks triumphed against hedge funds, while NFT and Crypto prices were going to the moon. What a difference a year has made as we weather the pandemic journey. 2022 is starting to look like 2020 all over again, except that in the case of the steep Mar 2020 crash, we had a big rally after that for the rest of the year.

This year, we had a China stock meltdown and a Ukraine war leading to more inflation fears and expected interest rate hikes. Talk of stagflation, supply chain breakdowns and record petrol pump prices sank all asset classes. If one looked back now, we would be surprised that so many well-known stocks during Covid have already dropped in price by between 75 to 90% from their all-time highs last year.

It has been a painful 6 months since Dec of suffering from volatile and wild swings in all asset classes. The general trend was down and each mini-rally is starting to look like a dead cat bounce that gets slapped down again. The strategy of buying on dips that had worked since 2008 GFC seems to be in doubt now. Do we use up our last cash reserves to average down or wait a little longer? Most have adopted a wait to lay low to try to weather the storm.

With Covid receding to the background and more people travelling into summer, I believe that we are slowing returning back to normalcy. I may want to stop my blog weekly countdown of the pandemic soon and it becomes irrelevant. Even if a new virus hits us, the response time would be even much faster now with the new biotech we have learnt thanks to Covid.

I just finished reading The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson https://www.amazon.com/Code-Breaker-Jennifer-Doudna-Editing/dp/1982115858 and am comforted that the many years of research and preparation with CRISPR and mRNA were put to good use to fight Covid. Future pandemic responses will be even faster as the world now has tools to splice DNA like never before to manufacture new vaccination solutions to new problems and even solve age-old ones in the near future.

The future looks brighter now on the biotech medical front. Oil prices should come down as supplies increase. US frackers will be attracted to come online again as prices are way above their $55 breakeven costs. Russia will fail at trying to capture Ukraine as the war drags on and it runs out of funds. China eventually becomes pragmatic again on Covid and decides that getting the economy and supply chain moving again is better than the alternative. Guess I am a natural optimist? Or maybe I am perhaps speaking from existing held positions and therefore a bit biased?

Back to my personal mid-year review and what to do next as I plan for the next half of 2022. I had managed to complete the full-time NUS FinTechSG course in Apr, went for a trip to New York and also just did a short one-week classroom training (Data Analytics for work using Excel) this week. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Excel had so many useful functions that I can apply to real-life problems with an analytical mindset and approach. It will be very useful for me to revise through the notes again to fully absorb the new Excel learnings.

My goal of being a lifelong learner has not changed and I am starting to look at more courses to sign up for in my quest for new knowledge that interest me. My timing is lucky too as the authorities had also decided to extend training funding for mid-career switch citizens. More new courses are starting to appear from this month onwards.

Two in particular that I am focusing on now are actually a repeat of what they did last year. They are planning to start a new batch in 2022 and are open for application soon. Whether I am successful or not, it is important that I try for them anyway. I plan to fail if I fail to plan.

The first is by BCG called RISE 2.0 https://bcg-rise.com/rise-2-0. It is an update of the same one that they had done before. There are 3 tracks to choose from: Digital Sales & Marketing: Learn how to accelerate business performance across the entire sales funnel, Business & Data Analytics: Learn the best-in-class tools and approaches used by digital champions in business and Digital Transformation & Change Management: Learn to lead digital transformation strategies and approaches. Since I had taken up IBM’s SGUnited AI program in 2021, I might not be eligible for this new course though. But let’s see how this turns out when they open for applications.

The other that has opened now is IBF’s TFIP program https://www.ibf.org.sg/programmes/Pages/TFIP.aspx . My first application attempt last year was not successful. Maybe my expectations were too unrealistic or that Ageism worked against me. I will have to adjust accordingly this year and optimize my past experience to help me pivot into the relevant areas which can give me a higher chance of success.

They have many tracks for application and it is a means for those interested to go into S’pore’s financial sector via the IT angle. They have increased the allotment to 700, twice the number in 2021. There will be screening rounds, apptitude tests and interviews before the successful candidate is offered a 12 or 18 months contract with participating Financial Institution with monthly allowances of SGD 4.5 or 5.5k.

Time to update my CV in order to submit my application. Closing dates in Jun while I also brush up my studies for my new driving lessons in order to earn my license again. This month should pass by pretty quickly with lots of activities and the celebration of my younger son’s 21st too. Before I know it, Dec will be around the corner and I will have to plan my 2023 New Year resolutions LOL…