For those who are still visiting this blog.

I guess many who have visited my blog will be wondering what happened since I did not update my blog for almost a year already. I have been thinking that blogging takes up time and I wanted to put my time to other uses. I want to thank those who are still dropping by now and then, and hope the blog articles I wrote a year ago are useful to you. The investing concepts put across in the articles did certainly served me well over the past 2 years plus of my investing journey. My portfolio size has since grown steadily by virtue of value investing and also idea of compound interest growth. I am looking to more learning and confirming of the value investing philosophy moving forward to see how it works in my portfolio investment growth.

The stock market is now moving into higher grounds. It is now time to plan and consider strategies to prepare for the next bear market, of which no one knows when it will come (within next one year or perhaps more than one year's time?). In value investing, I firmly believe one need not sell off all the shares and completely move into cash upon the onslaught of bear market. It is all about prudent judgement of how much shares to sell in proportion to one's portfolio size. Ideally, the value investor should sell only when shares are overvalued and there is not much more premium for share price appreciation resulting in more capital gain based on fundamentals of a company. However, there is also the consistency of dividend income yield to consider. If the shares of a company in one's holdings are generating more than 10% of stable dividend yield, then it may make sense not to liquidate the shares or only liquidate part of the shares even during a bear market. Notice I use the qualifier "may". It all depends on the investing objective and time horizon of the investor whether he is financially able to ride out the bear market and still enjoy the dividends while watching his shares depreciate in value temporarily, but not necessarily below his original holding value since he may have bought ages ago at a much lower share price.

So, for a value investor who choose to ride through the bear market, does that mean he can do nothing and only watch the value of his portfolio depreciate. It may not be so. There are some strategies to navigate the bear market (e.g. tools like put option, CFD and other investing methods). The true test of an investor is not during the bull market when almost all shares appreciate in value and any investors (whether educated or not in investing skills) can easily obtain his/her returns from the market. The true test for an investor is during a bear market when he/she can still make returns participating in the bear market while others are fleeing into safety zone or watching their portfolio bleeds and can do nothing much about it.

Let's see how much more legs this bull can have to still run. Meanwhile, let's continue to watch the game while preparing oneself emotionally and mentally (with strategies in place) for the next bear to come.

True investing is mechanical and boring, seeking to make stable consistent returns over a long time frame in all conditions of the markets, running on the engine of compound interest growth.