How To Be A Winner

A win is a win
The trouble is that most of us have been conditioned to regard life as a race or contest in which there can be only few winners, along with one or two runners up while the rest of us remain sad and unfortunate losers.

In many ways this conditioning is the fault of the media whose constant focusing on the glamorous big winner persuades many of us that we will never be able to compete let alone win, and that our lot in life is to sit enviously or the side lines.

This, of course, is nonsense and, if wining were confined to the small group whose triumph receive national or international acclaim, life for most of us would be intolerable. The fact is that anyone can be a winner – the scale doesn’t matter all that much, and the schoolboy who find a pound coin in his path probably feels more triumph than the multi-billion/millionaire who wins a thousand pounds at the gambling table.

If we are going to be winners, we have to fight hard against this media inspired conviction that winners are rarities or that there can be ‘only one winner’. Watch the players in the next football match you see and you’ll have no difficulty in identifying at least eleven winners when the victorious team does its lap of honor, not to mention the winning manager, the winning trainer and the rest together with their thousand of ‘victorious’ fans.

Nor does the match have to be championship game; you only have to think back to your school days to remember the joy of being a member of the school team-or merely belonging to the winning school.

People were experiencing triumph long before there was television or newspapers and long before there was television or newspapers and long before winning became the apparent prerogative of the rich and famous. Primitive tribesman, for example, who returned home from the hunt with enough food to feed their families, were winners in a very real sense and their achievements were duly celebrated by the whole tribe.

Today, we call people who come home with the wherewithal to feed their families as ‘breadwinners’ and while, for some reason, a disparaging element has crept into the phrase – perhaps because breadwinners are not regarded as being particularly glamorous – they are winners and it’s perhaps time both they and their families recognized the fact.

Buffettology

As clearly as I can remember, it was the 28^th of January, 2008. I was sitting at the far edge of the living room riding the i-Gallop while watching CNBC. My eldest uncle joined in the living room as I started enjoying myself. He lied on the sofa and flipped through the morning papers.

“Eh Thad, your not working today?”

“Yea, fed up adi ler. Eat energy you know.”

“Huhuhu…” (that’s how he laughs)

“So you like stocks?”

“Yea. Why you asked? You wanna teach me ar?”

“Do you know Warren Buffett?”

“Yea." (Duh~He holds the title for the second riches man for 13 years)

“Learn from him.”

“How?”

We chatted for quite some time, and he asked me a lot of questions regarding shares, currency index, the economy and etc. He asked questions like when should I buy this and when should I sell it.

I filtered everything and narrowed down to these two examples that I feel that it’s quite interesting in a sense.

Example 1

“Do you know TNS?”

“Yea(double duh).”

“Let’s say, TNS’s value is around RM7-8 right?”

Nodding my head, I have no idea.

“Let’s say 1 day, their company had a down turn and the price dropped drastically down to a few cents, would you still buy the company?”

“Depends.”

“It’s facing bankruptcy, make up your mind.”

“Yes!” I answered, with a background of Kiyosaki’s knowledge – buy low sell high.

“Why?”

“Cuz the government will surely do some intervention. They won’t let what they owned go bankrupt right?”

“Yea, but why.”

I was stuck, I dunno how to respond.

“We can’t live without electric?” that popped out from no where.

“This happened in LA once, where Warren invested a large chunk of money into a semi-bankrupt electric company.” “Then the company came back to life just before it faces its bankruptcy and stabilized its economic value due to the mass investment from the goverment. That’s where Warren swapped a chunk of money for chunkier chunk of money. When asked, Warren responded with a simple answer – a city cannot live without electricity.”

I’ll update the second example on the next post. This post is way too long.

"If past history was all there was to the game, the richest people would be librarians." – Warren Buffet.

How to evaluate an investment -- seven questions to ask

When you're considering an investment, here are the seven questions you need to ask. Get all the answers, consider them, and then make a decision.

1. What is my time and money investment? (Not "how much does it cost?")

2. What is the return on my investment? Is the gain sufficient?

3. What are all the upsides of this investment?

4. What are all the downsides?

5. What is the best case scenario?

6. What is the worst case scenario?

7. Can I handle the worst case scenario?

Here's a video from the Famous Robert Kiyosaki on his prediction this year.

'The problem about education is that it teaches people to be a good employee, not a good employer.'

'Do you think your plan of finding a job and investing at least 20k a year will put you in the category of the 10% investors that make 90% of the money?'