Conrad Alvin Lim @ InvestFair 2007 - organised by ShareInvestor.com @ Suntec

Got to know that InvestFair 2007 is held this weekend at Suntec. This investment event is organised by ShareInvestor.com. According to the ad, there will be information about equities, ETFs, Forex, Futures, Funds, CFDs, Options, Wine Investment, Property Investment, Land Banking, etc...

There are more than 50 free seminars including one by Conrad Alvin Lim on Candlesticks.

I will visit the event on Sunday morning. See you guys there!!

Setup Stop Loss

I had always wondered if POEMS has a feature to create a Stop Loss. Was kind of disappointed to learn that the basic POEMS can any allow simple Buy/Sell. Although POEMS Pro-Trader has this feature, it means that we had to pay more for Pro-Trader's subscription ($80 for 3 months).

I have not tried other trading platform for Singapore equities. Anybody has some experience on setting up a Stop Loss using POEMS or other local trading platform?

E*Trade set up shop in Singapore

I learned from Channel News Channel that online trading provider E*Trade is launching its Singapore trading website to give Singapore investors direct access to the US market.

This should give OptionsXpress a run for their money. OptionsXpress already has an office in Singapore.

Anyone can tell which online trading platform is better ?

Useful Links:

E*Trade Singapore - https://global.etrade.com/e/t/intl/page?nav=1&subnav=1&screen=1&language=en&country=sg

OptionsExpress Singapore - http://www.optionsexpress.com.sg

Channel News Asia report on E*Trade - http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporebusinessnews/view/295423/1/.html

I started my First Passive Income Stream!

My Google Adsense generated earnings of US$7.64 since the inception of this blog 3 days ago!!!

Today alone, the earnings was US$1.63.

This is my first passive income stream. And hey, I am another step closer to be to Financial Independent.
Watch this space as my earnings grow!

Short Sold by mistake

My phone ringed early in the morning, at about 8:30am. I wondered who was calling. I answered the call, and it was my broker! My broker hardly calls my as I do all of my SGX transactions using POEMS.

Then something that made scratched my head. My broker wanted to get my clarification on the 2 lots I sold by cash yesterday. This was because according to their CDP record, I was holding only 1 lot of that stock. This means that I had shorted 1 lot which was never my intention!!

I told the broker that I saw that my PEOMS record shows that I had 2 lots of the stock in cash and that is why I sold 2 lots. The broker mentioned that the number of shares seen in PEOMS may not accurate reflect the actual shares I hold under CDP. I went back to check my last CDP statement and true enough I only had 1 lot for that stock.

My broker offer me 2 options:
1) Do nothing and let CDP do the share buy-back after T+3. This means that I will not know the price that I buy back until this Friday.
2) Fortunately, I have another lot of the stock bought using CPF. Hence, my contract to sell can be amended by splitting the contract into 2 ==> One contract to sell 1 lot using cash and the other contract to sell 1 lot using CPF.

I chose option 2, of course.

I learnt today that :
1) CDP statement only reflects holdings using CASH
2) Agent bank's statement only reflects holdings using CPF
3) PEOMS cannot accurately reflect our holdings accurately

I took profit on Mon 21 Aug when SGX soared

Singapore share prices soared after the US Federal Reserve cut its discount rate to ease sub-prime credit fears. I grabbed the opportunity to sell some counters and take profit. I still keeping some penny stocks which had already gone under..... It's hard to tell what is going to happen next in this volatile market.

As of now (1250am SGT), the DOW, S&P and NASDAQ had all dipped below its openning mark. We could expect SGX to gap down at its opening if the dip in US markets continues throughout today.

Technical Analysis Course organised by SGX

Last Saturday (18 Aug), I had to wake up at 7am to attend a SGX seminar on Technical Analysis. 7am on a Saturday morning is VERY early by my standard. But unlike waking up to get to work on weekday, I was full of vigour that morning knowing that I am going to be another step closer to my goal of beem financial indenpendant.

To get a place in the seminar, I had to register for it way back in June 2007 (This was before I attended Adam Khoo's Wealth Acadamy in July).

The 2-hour SGX course was conducted at a SMU lecture threatre. The course focused mainly on:

1. Candle-Stick Basics (reading candles and scenerios like Shooting star, Hammer, etc)
2. Indicators like Moving Averages, RSI, Stochatics
3. Case studies on SGX stocks like Noble, Hyflux, Creative, etc

Overall, this 2 hours was more like a refresher for me as I am familiar with most of the concepts introduced. Had I knew nothing about Candle Sticks and Indicators, I think I will be quite lost since the trainer didn't to indepth in explaining the concepts. The materials provided are also of poor quality because it contains screenshots of full-page charts with very little explanation on how to interprete them. I guess its a case of paying peanuts and getting monkeys. The course fee is just $25. Having said that, I still think that the course is a good refresher for me.