The biggest explosion was reserved for Nvidia, which on Wednesday after market close announced spectacular financial results that exceeded everyone’s wildest expectations.
Its total revenue from a year ago rose 265%! Never had a large-cap stock (> $1 Trillion) ever achieved a 3x jump within a year! Net income during the quarter was $12.3 Billion ($4.93 per share) which was up 769% versus last year’s $1.4 B (57 cents per share). Year-on-year gain in earnings per share for its fiscal 4th quarter was up 486%! It expects the first quarter revenue of about $24 Billion, easily beating analyst estimates.
Nvidia’s share price jumped almost $100 overnight in the after-hours market from below $700 to almost hitting $800. It briefly touched the golden $2 Trillion market cap. The stock price rise added $277 Billion to make it the biggest one-day market cap addition in US history – see chart below. This makes Nvidia the world’s 4th most valuable company by market cap now.
Its Hopper H100 chips had a stranglehold on AI GPU that is so complete that demand has shot off the roof. The US even had to ban them from selling to China, terming it as a strategic asset to slow down China’s AI push. Ironically, all of the chip production is outsourced to 3rd party manufacturer TSMC, hence America’s strategic interest to “defend” Taiwan against China…
Analysts all over the world now have to remodel their price estimates given the quantum leap in financial results achieved within such a short time. There are no signs that its growth will slow down soon as AMD and Intel are beginning to try to compete. Nvidia already has more than 10 years of headstart in GPU development. AI wars are happening and all the big boys like Google and Meta are positioning to roll out their versions of AI urgently to stay one step ahead of each other.
Meanwhile, OpenAI fired a bazooka by previewing its latest text-to-video AI called Sora. The resulting videos created by using just a one-sentence prompt were amazing! They were so life-like that I swear that it could have been real… The humans and animals moved in such a way that it looks natural and I cannot tell that it is a deepfake. The way the snow lands on the puppies and the detailed creation of the surrounding environment of a crowded road blew my mind.
Groq had developed a Language Processing Unit (LPU) which is an alternative to GPUs that is purpose-built for LLMs and token generation. It can reach speeds of 500 tokens per second. For comparison, GPT-3.5 can do 30-50 tokens per second. One can experiment and compare it with Meta’s Llama 2 (70B) or Hugging Face’s Mixtral 8x7B for comparison.
Will Groq give Nvidia’s GPU a run for their money now? I bet one of the AI big boys will be urgently trying to acquire Groq or seek collaboration at an obscene valuation any day now. The AI war is intensifying and shows no sign of slowing down at all.
Just a side story. The tech-heavy Magnificient 7 stocks consisting of Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, Tesla, Apple and Amazon have single-handedly been responsible for the bulk of the market rally to date. They account for 75% of the S&P 500 gains this year! But Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang believes that AI has hit a tipping point, the beginning of a new evolution of growth? Hmmm….
I have been watching this story unfolding since the Fed did multiple aggressive interest rate hikes of more than 500 basis points (5%) from late 2021 into 2022. I was wondering when the dam will break for highly leveraged investors as borrowing costs skyrocket at least 5x, especially for property-related plays.
Before that, Covid had hit us in full force by Mar 2020 and global demand collapsed due to country shutdowns as supply chains stopped functioning. When we saw light at the end of the tunnel in late 2021 as the vaccines were introduced, it was inevitable that the inflation monster would have happened, based on hindsight. Because of a lower base of demand caused by the pandemic, a small increase and turnaround in demand would have easily set off inflation red flags.
This in turn triggered the Fed to act accordingly. The low-interest rate environment caused by the 2008 GFC could not be sustained after 14 years. The Fed had to stay ahead of the inflation curve and hike very fast to tame the beast – a textbook move.
Before the rate hikes from 2008 to 2022, traders and investors have been taking advantage of the low-interest rates to make leveraged bets on all asset classes as a sure win and profitable move. Buying any dips was the main strategy and leverage provided a winning combination of maximizing profits.
But the bets began to unravel into 2023 as borrowing costs skyrocketed by a factor of 5 to 8 times. A 1% loan to buy a property on leverage had become 8%. Most of the trades are not sustainable as interest costs began to outweigh revenues.
Coupled with hybrid work that continued into the endemic, companies have started to reduce office space too. In the era of Zoom meetings and hot desks, demand for commercial rental fell off the cliff. It was a disaster waiting to happen for the highly leveraged big players of real estate around the world.
Some real estate funds began to walk away from their loan obligations in 2023, forcing the banks to repossess the buildings and begin loss provisions for non-performing loans. Several banks have recently announced setting aside big reserves for these loans. We are seeing a wave of them lining up to update the shareholders on these new potential liabilities and losses.
It is a global phenomenon as real estate plays are beginning to crack under the pressure of higher interest costs and collapsing rental demand – a double whammy.
“The shakeout in the $20 trillion US commercial real estate market has long been delayed for a simple reason: No one could figure out just how much properties were worth. And, more crucially, few wanted to.”
The Bloomberg article cited a Blackstone-owned office building in Manhattan that was offering a 50% discount. Many other buildings were also being sold at fire sale prices. With $1 Trillion of commercial real estate loans set to mature by 2025, there is more urgency for companies to unload.
The same picture is being played out all over the world from Europe to Japan. Investors have to write down their properties or walk away from their loan obligations when left with no options. Banks that backstop the original loans will be forced to sell into an already weak market while provisions surge.
Even as the stock markets are reaching new highs thanks to the AI boom, the commercial property sector could trigger a reassessment of the rosy situation. Hopefully, the global contagion effect from this sector will not turn into a tsunami that puts the brakes on the party.
Expectations of rate cuts had been dampened by sticky inflation numbers. We are never returning to the good old days of low to zero rates again. It is more likely that we will return to the historical levels of where the long-term rates should be, which will be between 3 to 5% range.
As of today, the outstanding commercial loans could be a ticking time bomb that is waiting to explode as maturities come due in the next 12-24 months. Opportunistic real estate fund managers now wait on the sideline to buy over these highly discounted buildings. Hopefully, the purge would be happening in a controlled manner, rather than as an avalanche of selling. That tsunami may tip the stock markets and cause the economy to turn bearish.
But in the overall scheme of things, this asset class alone may not tip the boat over. There have been so many assets that were inflated because of the low-interest rate environment for so long and it will need a number of them crashing at the same time to trigger a major down move.
It was a long few weeks of celebrations as the traditional CNY (Chinese New Year) festive period is traditionally practised. We will have a few reunion dinners before the actual day and then at least 3 more days of non-stop feasting and gathering of family members.
It is also a period to count our blessings and treasure the memories and quality family time we have had over the years as we enjoy this annual holiday. It is one of the most important periods on the calendar. A group photo of each gathering captures the smiles of everyone.
This year was a bit special. My older son managed to join us during this time after missing CNY for 2 years while studying overseas. He had started work in HK but managed to come back earlier as he could work in the local office.
The other thing of note was to see that my parents’ situation had stabilized. Mum’s dementia condition has worsened a lot over the last 9 months and Dad was trying very hard to cope, to manage her and himself. They had lived alone for years but now it was time to get permanent domestic live-in help to ease their burden of caring for the house and themselves. Their helper just arrived recently and the situation has improved, much to our relief as siblings.
I started the week on a Monday (05 Feb) with a CNY dinner with some very old friends from primary school days. One of them had recently reconnected again and perhaps it may be due to his health condition for his wish to want to meet up. I have known him for almost 50 years now since we were 8 years old. That is an incredible 85% of my life! The 4 of us reminisced on our innocent childhood days when we had zero worries and only cared about what we wanted to do next at the playground.
Wednesday was another CNY dinner with very good friends from my banking days. All of us have easily known each other for almost 25+ years now. We have had numerous long lunches over the last many years to build up a strong camaraderie of friendship which I treasure deeply.
Thursday was a reunion dinner at my sister-in-law’s place from my wife’s side of the family. A traditional steamboat dinner with a lot of wines and a bottle of sake. Too much food and alcohol as usual.
Friday was the actual day for reunion dinners as it is the night before the 1st day of CNY. I will usually cook for my family that evening and invite my parents and in-laws to celebrate with us. My whole family with our boys were also together to make this a memorable year.
Day 1 of CNY falls on a Sat. We had to do 4 visitations to pay our respects to our elders. First, it was to my parents’ place, then to my in-laws for a sumptuous lunch. Next was to my wife’s grandmother’s place. She has also recently been bedridden even though she is still very alert. Finally, it was my grand aunt’s place to pay her our respect as the next oldest at 90 years old. The grand finale highlight was a big gathering at our place for more than 20+ relatives from my wife’s side that night.
Day 2 of CNY is generally reserved for my side of the family as we spent the whole afternoon into the night at my parents’ place. We also visited my oldest sister’s newly renovated home as a sort of mini housewarming. The evening was another Loh Hei with potluck dishes from each family. The group photo is getting larger with new additions to the 4 generations gathered together.
Day 3 of CNY is another long lunch at an aunty’s home with more wines and food. Everyone chatted excitedly about planning for a big family group overseas vacation in the latter part of the year. Finally, it was dinner at our place for my older son’s last night with us where he invited a number of his good friends over for dinner.
This week’s blog will be my diary to record what happened and to remind me of the joyous moments we all shared once a year. As all of us get older, these occasions become more precious as we move towards our twilight years, especially for our ageing parents and grandparents. It is also for the special effort my son made to return from HK to join us.
We are indeed blessed with the fortune to see as many people as possible over the CNY festive period. It should not be seen as a chore but a celebration of what the Man upstairs had given all of us, We must count our blessings every day of the year and not just for this week alone.
ChatGPt was launched on 30 Nov 2022. It has been an explosive 14 months of non-stop AI growth since then. I have written about its progress every few months since then and it is time to do it again, to look into my crystal ball and see what lies ahead in 2024.
Firstly, let’s talk about Large Language Models (LLM), the engines behind the rapid acceleration of AI. They are working horses behind the output of ChatGPT, Bard and a host of generative AI image tools like Mid-Journey.
Basically, an LLM is a very large deep-learning model that is pre-trained on vast amounts of data. They are artificial neural networks that mimic the human brain in absorbing and digesting unlimited amounts of data as part of their training to be able to come out with amazing outputs based on any multi-modal inputs, be they words, voice or images. An LLM simply consists of a huge dataset that is controlled by a few hundred lines of code that feeds and trains the black box.
Just to give you an idea of how big the datasets have become within the last 3 years, I will share a personal experience. Back in 2021, I did a full-time IBM AI course and our project team wanted to create a simple Python program to detect deepfake photos. Our programmer could only find a free 15,000 images dataset to train our GAN (Generative Adversarial Network) model.
As of today, a mere 2+ years later, Meta has introduced its open-source LLM called LLama to the world at zero cost. It is a fine-tuned generative text model which has been pre-trained on 70,000,000,000 data points. That’s right, 70 Billion… It is one of the biggest and most advanced LLMs of its time now.
The sky is the limit and 100B+ LLMs are coming very soon. So much online data is being produced and recorded every day that it has become an unlimited resource for LLMs to tap. Elon and Tesla are a good example of what I mean, which I will expand on later.
We are starting to see multiple ways to commercialize and monetize AI daily. There can be so many new uses to be discovered and it is only limited by your imagination. OpenAI recently allowed its premium users API access to its ChatGPT 4.0 engine so that one can customize it with a smaller dataset to create personalized and narrowly trained chatbots. They call the newly created end products GPTs. They can be narrowly focused applications like being a coach companion chatbot on how to be a better writer/tennis player/gamer etc…
At the same time, they just launched an online store that is similar to Apple’s app store. All creators can now post their GPTs for others to purchase. This will eventually develop into a whole new industry of professionally made services to cater to any specific need that you may have. You can sell these GPTs apps for $0.99 and make decent money. The world is your oyster as your marketing reach for your virtual non-physical product is now global.
As I have described previously in my blog, I can create a mini-me chatbot that mimics me exactly. Using the LLM access I get, I can train my GPTs using the data from all my WhatsApp conversations. They easily contain at least 5 to 10 GB of my characteristics which I can train the model on to become a version of myself.
Boy, are we going to have a blast this year with all the political elections happening. There will be so many deepfakes going around that all of us will be hard-pressed to know what is real and not real anymore. Another massive online scam version 2.0 will be unravelling into 2024 LOL.
On a more serious note, I predict some things will be fast-tracked and become useful for the majority as AI evolves in the next 12 months. Below are a few examples that can easily come true within a matter of time as the LLMs can be refocused to attempt to solve specific problems.
The area related to my topic this week concerns Tesla and the self-driving solution that they were trying to resolve. The previous solution was to provide algorithm-style instructions to the car based on inputs of external stimuli (visual and radar). This was highly complicated as the algo may not be able to pre-empt all situations and react in the right human way when faced with a situation that the algo code did not cater for. For example, an accident in a particular environment like a petrol station.
Then Elon had a light bulb moment. Hang on, why are we still using algo for autonomous driving instructions? Tesla collects tons of real-time driving data from every car they sell. They record the information of every trip of each Tesla car all the time.
Hence they already have a treasure trove of data they can use to train an LLM model. They just need to remove the bad drivers and only use the rest of the data to train the new autonomous AI model. It will become a model driver that will be familiar with handling all possible situations from the years of data Tesla has stored. AI-trained self-driving cars can become Tesla’s new edge very soon as it pivots and morphs from an EV company into an AI tech powerhouse.
Using the same method as above, can you imagine what else we can do? On the medical front, we can train a model to detect cancer. Show it millions of healthy X-rays and then another batch of those that cancer has been diagnosed. Once the model is live, any patient’s X-ray can be scanned and the AI will provide a superior assessment of the probability of cancer and whether it will happen in a certain time frame. Some doctors have already started experimenting with this new approach to medical analysis.
Sounds too far fetch? Why not? the building blocks are the same, aren’t they? We can test brain scans for signs of dementia and other diseases that only doctors with many years of experience can detect. I foresee the biggest AI impact will be in the area of science and medicine. It has already helped scientists fast-track the COVID-19 vaccine development, allowing for comprehensive computer simulations instead of having to conduct long drawn-out human tests.
Joke of the week. EU AI Act was passed late last year but it is only to be implemented in 2 years. That is like a lifetime in AI time and it may even become sentient AGI by then. Copyrights infringements? How do you enforce that on a pre-trained LLM? How can an LLM neural network unlearn something it has picked up? Can a human brain do that???
Food for thought but 2024 will be another exciting year of AI given what we saw what ChatGPT can do in 14 months. AI revolutionized and upended whole industries within a short period of time. AI moves at light speed and humans will need to up their game to simply just to keep abreast of the new developments. We have to embrace AI or be left behind. My favourite quote from Thanos that speaks to AI – “It is inevitable.”
The new year started very quickly as we busied ourselves with new goals for the next 12 months after a relaxing holiday with a lot of quality family time. Chinese New Year (CNY) is coming soon in 2 weeks, starting in early Feb. It usually happens in late Jan to mid-Feb period according to the Chinese calendar.
I can sense s festive period of excitement building up for many people as we start to do spring cleaning and begin to stock up with CNY goodies, preparing for reunion dinners. We will eat a lot and have precious family gatherings where alcohol and pineapple tarts will flow freely.
For me, the excitement is the preparation of the reunion dinner, thinking about the dishes I want to prepare and stuff to buy. Just this morning, I rushed to the CNY seafood warehouse sales to check them out and buy some of the stuff I needed. They opened at 9 am and I wanted to avoid the weekend crowds where busloads of elderly people are there via community centers organized tours to shop too. I normally only cook for the family for Christmas Eve and CNY reunion dinner, bringing my family together with my parents and in-laws.
This main CNY reunion dinner will be held on the eve of CNY on 09 Feb. The day before, we will also have one at my sister-in-law’s place on 08 Feb. Tomorrow evening, there will also be another early reunion dinner with my sisters’ families and our parents, an almost 20+ group of close family members with the new additions, dad’s great-grandchildren.
We will also line up several visitations for the first 3 days of CNY. Generally, we pay our respects to our elders on day one, visiting the homes of our parents and in-laws plus the most senior ones in the clan. There will be a lot of food and many meals to enjoy, with special goodies and dishes only to be found during CNY. We usually end the first night with a big gathering that evening with my wife’s side of the family.
The 2nd day will be more visits and we normally spend much of the afternoon till night at my parents’ place with another big gathering of our extended family. Besides a lot of titbits, there is also the S’pore tradition of the Loh Hei, a tossing of vegetables with sweet sauce and making a lot of noise to welcome luck into the year of the wood dragon.
The Loh Hei was a 1960s local invention that charges a crazily expensive price for mostly julienned fresh vegetables masquerading as a healthy dish with too much unhealthy stuff hidden inside the salad LOL.
The whole CNY period (2 weeks before and after) will be a festive period of celebrations to usher in a new year. It is also the satisfaction of seeing well-fed family members spending quality time together, laughing together at wine-influenced jokes that makes it so memorable.
I normally set out to have around 6 KPIs to motivate myself every year so that I will have certain goals to target and achieve. This exercise helps me stay focused on the year ahead and keeps me on my toes. Else the 12 months will just simply slip by. Before you know it, Christmas would have happened and I don’t want to realise then that I did nothing meaningful for the whole year.
This year, it will be a bit different because I started a full-time job 4 months ago. As the leader of the team, I have set some milestones and targets I want to achieve. Given that this could be my last job before I reach my career finishing line, I want to give this my best shot.
Hence my 2024 KPIs will be kept short this year as my job will be the overwhelming factor that will occupy most of my energies and efforts for the rest of the year.
To read at least 15 books. This will be less than last year’s 20, in which I had only read 14.75 books. Hopefully, I can read faster while also working longer hours. I will try to add a few fiction books to help me relax and enjoy reading more.
To close at least 1 of the 2 funds we plan to launch officially in Mar. We will have an official opening ceremonial event in early Mar. The funds’ documentation should be ready for us to sound out to the interested Accredited Investors list that we are now developing as we introduce to the world our company’s existence and what we plan to do.
To keep my mind active with short online courses or even a physical class (Target to do 5). I need to keep challenging myself with new interests that I want to know more about and do a deeper dive into these topics. It could be more AI-related or even sustainability investment-related ones that are relevant to my job.
To stay happy and healthy always. I will not be having long runs and exercise sessions during the weekdays due to my full-time job. I plan to squeeze in some short evening runs and occasionally go to the gym in the evening.
Here is to a more determined me as we roll into 2024! I plan to achieve the above KPIs with lots of hardwork and meticulous planning in order to ensure the successful implementation and execution of my targeted goals.
For the last 5 years since 2019, I have been diligently planning my New Year resolution / KPI (Key Performance Indicators) list at the start of the year and then assessing/grading myself when the year ends before writing another list.
This annual exercise helps to keep me focused via a 12 months big picture macro overview of what I want to set out to achieve. I will keep a softcopy on my iPhone Notes app and review/add details to it throughout the year as I work towards the targets like the number of books read by adding a short book summary when I finished reading a book.
I used to do the same annual KPI exercise for my team during my Treasury sales career. It was to get buy-in from the team heads first. Then we will eventually communicate to the whole team when we have our first team meeting in Jan. Every member will be aware of each teams’ KPIs. It will also foster team work as each person will strive to help others achieve the overall group revenue target.
My 2023 KPIs were as follows:
Read at least 20 books (B+)
Complete at least 10 online courses (D)
Edit videos (F)
Develop my consultancy pivot (A+)
To create a personal GitHub page (F)
To stay healthy and happy always (B)
Read at least 20 books. I managed to complete 14.7 books last year, a slight improvement from the previous year. A short summary of each book read is listed below. I am a slow reader and I should try to read faster and also add some fiction books to the mix this year. There should be one hour set aside before bedtime every night just to read, instead of watching TikTok and Twitter…. I give myself a B+ grade here
Complete at least 10 online courses. I did 2 full day classroom classes -ACI one-day sake course and ACI one day whisky course, Complete only one online course: “Google Introduction to Generative AI”. Generally lazy to do more as I was disappointed that a full time 3 months course I signed up for did not materialize and I did not want to do the part time one offered as it would burn week nights and every weekend. I grade myself a D here.
Edit videos. I had a backlog of more than 2 years after the autoedit video software company I was using for the last 20 years went belly up and ceased to exist. I tried to buy a few newer ones but they were so complicated and not idiot proof enough for me to pick it up fast. I was stuck in a limbo. Hence I did zero editing eventually. I get a F for Fail here.
Develop my consultancy pivot. I am happy to say that this was my best achievement for 2023. The Oct 2022 consultancy project turned into a fulltime job in Sep 2023. I have been at the job for 4 months now and loving the new challenges I have to face every day. It is going to be my last career move to the finishing line of retirement. I plan to get this my best shot and hope that this venture will succeed. It is a golden opportunity that I will cherish and not waste it. I give myself an A+ here.
To create a personal GitHub page. This was an ambitious tech KPI which I thought I could pull off. Then with the launch of ChatGPT, I had to serious consider that no-code could become a reality and programmers will be out of a job soon. AI can easily help to spot coding bugs, translate code from one language to another or even provide one with the codes based on a sketch/drawing of an end result website. Why do we ever need to code any more? It makes no sense for me, a non-IT person, to try to learn to code this late into my life journey, no? I give myself another F here.
To stay happy and healthy always. 2023 was filled with many happy moments of quality family times but also a realization that our parents are aging and moving to the next phase of human limitations and medical deterioration. I give this KPI a B grade.
I did a HK trip to follow my wife for her business trip in Mar. Then we joined younger son in Seoul in Jun. This was followed by a Osaka/Kobe trip with older son when he was back from his overseas study. Finally at year end, we did a family trip with my in-laws joining us in Macau and HK.
We came to realise that dementia had started to progress quite rapidly for my mum and mum-in-law in 2023. This next phase of aging requires all of us siblings to force ourselves to face some tough choices and to make decisions on their behalf, to see what is best for them. I had to be the bad guy to talk to my dad to give him some hard facts to wear down his resistance to having a full time maid. Both of them cannot continue to live on their own any more without external help.
A new year ahead, a new 2024 KPI list soon. I will aim to pen it down next week. It will be my proclamation to the world of my annual intentions and goals for this year, whether anyone reads it or not LOL.
Appendix:
To read at least 20 books
1 – Too Big To Jail by Chris Blackhurst – All about HSBC and the money laundering of drug money from Chapo in Mexico in pursuit of growth and profits to turn a blind eye to compliance. Governments are too fearful to give out criminal charges for fear of financial meltdowns but rely on big fines which don’t work as the bank can afford to continue to pay them. It is an ongoing problem.
2 – Seeing the Unseen by Guoli Chen – A review of Chinese tech firms. Interesting read and new info. How the dog-eat-dog competition onshore May not have prepared them well to adapt to their overseas push. A lot of names and examples are mentioned. Talked about the evolving small overseas successes while the preference to keep resources for onshore China is still strong.
3 – Alibaba – The House that Jack Ma Built by Duncan Clark – good intro to the Alibaba story from the start till 2015. A better understanding of the man and how he built the company in his image and beliefs, what he had to do and also learning from his past mistakes.
4 – The Big Short – Michael Lewis re-read the book again because of the recent SVB banking crisis and watched the movie again. Had a better insight into the book now how the synthetic CDO works and what went wrong. Some similarities but generally the leverage was much crazier in the 2008 GFC.
5 – Adrift (America in 100 charts) by Scott Galloway – a first audiobook I borrowed since I listen to podcasts all the time. 3 hours. Lotsa charts for factual explanations of the state of America and its problems, especially of white men falling behind, which is his favourite topic. Most of his observations align with what I see too, like USD printing, military push, education issues etc. He suggested a few big-picture solutions at the end of the book.
6 – Ikigai- The Japanese secret to a long and happy life – Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles – Find passion and meaning, stay healthy, connect with others, and lifelong learning. The authors summarize 1. Stay active, 2. Take it slow, 3. Don’t overeat, 4. Be with good friends, 5. Get in shape, 6. Smile, 7. Connect with nature, 8. Give thanks, 9. Live the moment, 10. Follow your Ikigai with passion and meaning.
7 – The Most Important Thing – uncommon sense for the thoughtful investor – Howard Marks – A few things highlighted to watch while investing. Manage and understand the risk. Markets always move in cycles. Markets swing like pendulums. Avoid negative influences, contrarianism, and patient opportunism, know where we are now, invest defensively, avoid pitfalls, and add value.
8 – ChatBot – The New Future of Content Creations – Dwayne Anderson – Short 88-page book written in 2022 on how to use ChatGPT for various marketing and chatbot functions, training it and making the process more efficient for areas like blogging, education and learning tools creation.
9 – Chip War – The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology – Chris Miller – Better understanding of the rise of chips and countries like Japan, Korea and Taiwan. How strategic it has become to the global economy and the decentralization of the supply chain. The complicated manufacturing process between mass producers like TSMC versus the chip designers is mainly from the USA. Interesting new information read.
10 – Lee Kuan Yew, the grand master’s Insights on China, the US and the World by Graham Allison – interesting take on LKY views over the years as the book was written in 2013. Most of his views still ring true today after 10 years, about the US-China conflict and tension, plus many other observations of various nations. Worthy to reread in a few years to reflect on his wise words again.
11 – Small Actions – Leading your career to big success – Eric Sim. He was my ex-colleague in Citi and we worked together so I was able to read the book while cross-checking against what I know about him. He has successfully managed to pivot himself to this new coaching role which I am learning from. His idiosyncrasies aside, it was a well-thought-out guidebook to help the young navigate their careers in this ever-changing work landscape via 66 different teachings and observations in bite-size chapters.
12 – Scary Smart – Mo Gawdat – 2021 book on the inevitable advancement of AI and its impact on us, before ChapGPT changed the world in late 2022. He builds a picture of AI that can be bad or good for us and frames a possible solution that all of us can participate in and train AI by being happy and showing it on social media – his One Billion Happy goal ties back to making AI a positive impact. Show AI love and it will develop in the right direction.
13 – Going Infinite – Michael Lewis. His latest book on FTX. Effective altruism EA motives that shaped SBF behaviour. A real shit show waiting to explode that lasted so long due to Covid and people turning a blind eye to so many red flags, including professional investors… Interesting psychoanalysis of SBF and his thinking. Unexplained end on whether the money was missing or that it was always there. No idea until the court case unravels further.
14 – Number Go Up – inside crypto’s wild rise and staggering fall – Zeke Faux. A mishmash of stories around crypto and various characters like SBF, Tether and various scams. All over the place at times making it quite hard to read, like magazine articles being strung together to make this a 200+ page book. Some insights but generally a light read.
15 – Elon Musk – Walter Isaacson. 2/3 way through the 600+ page ebook. Great insights of the mind of Elon doing the crazy things he did and the reason behind the madness
2. Complete at least 10 online courses
1 – Did ACI one-day sake course 2 – Did ACI one day whisky course 3 – Google Introduction to Generative AI
3 – Edit videos – I have a backlog of 2 years+ of raw video footage data from 2020 till today which I need to edit and compile to create summarized finalized shortened versions
4 – Develop my consultancy pivot
Started consultancy with L-energy in Oct 2022 for MAS application of LFMC/CMS license in Dec. Eventually started fulltime in Sep 2023 when the In Principal Approval was obtained
5 – To create a personal GitHub page
6 – To constantly remind me of my life motto: to stay healthy and happy always
Since it was confirmed that my older son would start his first job in HK earlier last year, we decided to plan a year-end overseas trip to see him since he might not be able to take long leave.
The dates were from 22 Dec to 01 Jan so that he could join us for both long weekends as he had limited days of leave. We decided to bring my in-laws along and break up the trip to spend the Christmas period in Macau for 4 nights and the remaining 6 nights in HK from 26 Dec.
The trip went well and I am glad to report that we had a lot of quality family time together over many sumptuous meals, activities or just hanging out together in the room discussing the latest season 3 of Single’s Inferno K-Drama. We cherish the moments of laughter and bonding over special events like the escape room, the 4 hours three Michelin stars Robuchon lunch and walking the streets of HK.
Exactly a year ago between Christmas and New Year, we were also together in France travelling to Paris, Marseille and Lyon and cooking our meals while overwatching the great harbour view from our apartment balcony. That was just before my son graduated from Oxford a few months later.
It was our boys’ first time in Macau to discover the casino city. We rented an MPV car transport from the HK airport to the Sheraton Grand Macau hotel. There was only a limited number of sights to see as Covid had hit them hard and some attractions had closed permanently. Other than gambling, there is not too much to do. The Christmas Day 40-minute night lights bus ride around Cotai was a highlight for the final night we were there. The following morning, we took the direct HK ferry from the Cotai ferry terminal on 26 Dec.
There is so much great food to enjoy in HK too. A simple meal could be had as I experienced during my daily morning walks around the hotel in nice chilling temperatures. We went to the Peak in the tram car and even did some trekking at Aberdeen. My wife introduced us to some hip bars around town as we went for drinks after dinner. These will be useful for my older son as he just completed his 6th week of working in HK.
Very soon, it was time to say goodbye to my son as we returned home on the morning of New Year’s Day. We will see him again in about a month as he heads home for the Lunar Chinese New Year holiday for a short break.
I went back to work on 02 Jan energized as we moved into the next phase of our business planning. 2 new colleagues joined our small team and we had our first 2024 team meeting. We will be preparing for a social media viral marketing campaign next week as most people will be back in the office by then. We plan to use the professional LinkedIn platform to introduce our company to the world to tell them what we will be doing, purposeful sustainable investing. We will also spread the word via our social networks and Whatsapp chat groups.
It will be an exciting week ahead as we discover the possibility of viral marketing to help us get new Accredited Investor leads. We can then selectively sieve out the higher probability names to make introductory calls to an expanded network of interested Accredited Investors. This will help us build up a list of potential investors when we launch our funds in Q2 as well as gather market intel on funds pricing and gauge funding demand.
The sky is the limit and we will all give it our best shot to make it a success. This will be my final career push as I reach my work-life finishing line. Wish me luck!
