It's my life

I am going to take it very light and easy today. One thing I learned from my decades of experience in global financial markets is that rational investors should never over-react to anything. I have met many new people in the last couple of months in my continuing effort to expand my business empire. I can tell you that some of them are the coolest people I have ever met. They are very successful in what they are doing. Yes, I have learned a few tricks from them. Their faith in me is rather touching. In some meetings, I was asked about my background.

I would consider myself as an investment practitioner, a consultant for individuals and private institutions and financial writer – stuff that were completely unimaginable when I was a kid growing up in a small town. My job can feel very easy especially when and where even garbage stocks just continue to go up. I started from the rock bottom and I did not have the backing of some well-connected half-baked politicians. I eat my own cooking. It was during the Asian financial crisis in 1997 and backed with little capital, I made money for myself for the first time and I bought my first Nokia mobile phone. Thank-you my mentor, George Soros.

Armed with a degree in Finance from Michigan, USA, I started my career 22 years ago with a management consultancy handling research work. It was still an on-going experiment for me and I landed a new job as an analyst at an investment advisory firm two years later. Although it was different from what I had originally signed up for, I learned a lot about why some local investment products were for the losers or idiots. I wrote regularly for client publication.

I left the position after two years. I chose not to accept a sweet deal from one of the top investment banks in the region. I decided I wanted to make my work more rigorous. As a giant step towards that, I began talking with some people and we ended up setting up a new advisory outfit. The writing and analytical part of my career expanded as I moved into a more prominent role of someone who could turn research into opportunities. My role allowed me to deal with even the big boys managing billions of paper money. I did not have a marketing quota to hit to placate anyone. There were times when my out of consensus views and bluntness turned out to be bad for my own business.

As a student of markets, I learned from some of my mistakes and then moved forward. My first public article on “Time to worry about a falling US dollar” hit a popular financial magazine in 2004. After more than a decade in business, I chartered a new journey more than two years ago and set up an offshore consulting shop with a good friend of over twenty years. Working with other talents, I am also currently leading a private investment office.

In a world full of damn lies, I pay more attention on real stuff. A couple of big names or “connections” and fancy presentation might get us interested, but it is not enough. Ladies, if you will permit me a rude analogy, it is like someone who is only focused on the short skirt, not paying attention to the rest of the women. They are doomed to be involved in some very unhappy and probably short and expensive relationships.

I am not as crazy as Trump or Kim but I am not afraid to pin shameless and conscienceless salespeople to the wall in meetings. Do not challenge me on this. Rules of thumb, in the real world, are at best worthless.

The future does not always respect the past. Human species has unprecedented access to technology and opportunities that were literally inconceivable just a few decades ago. In my personal life, I am married with two little monsters. I have always been interested in a great many things – music, mixed martial arts, and movies. There are many great investing books which I will share in my coffee talks. I could never play as well as Jim Brickman. Yeah, all the hard training in mixed martial arts did not turn me into a Hollywood star years ago.