brain dump #1
a compilation of stuff that interested me this week
purpose
the purpose is to literally brain dump the stuff that caught my eye this week. i aim to start a discussion and it also helps me figure out what you guys would like to see. any specific topics, etc. feel free to tell my directly by filling in a survey.
finance
first off, finance topics.
investment strategy.
i learned of two different strategies. DCA (dollar cost averaging) or CA (cost averaging) and lump sum investments.
DCA - invest a set amount of money regardless of the price of the stock. the idea is that by investing regularly you will eventually buy the dip. this works the other way around as well. you’ll also end up buying the peak.
lump sum - if you got money, dump the entire thing instantly.
if you have 500RM set aside, you’d drip feed the 500 over time if you prefer DCA. For lump sum, you pick what you wanna invest in and dump the 500 across the things you wanna invest in instantly.
”lump sum in this context refers to the amount of money you’d get from big events such as the sale of a small business or inheritance. dropping money in from savings you’ve set aside just for investment is not lump sum, it’s basically just DCA by necessity.” - Ben Felix
according to vanguard and this wiki and this video lump sum investment is the way to go. in full transparency, i do not understand half of the words in the video mentioned.
i’m personally interested in this, so, i’ll definitely do more research.
how to be aware of stocks.
this is a very insight post by Prayukti and i do suggest you read it, i made a very surface level comment on it when i made a repost. but given that it has been roughly a week, and i’ve applied the concepts, it made me more aware of the things he suggested.
the main lesson in his post is to identify profitable stocks by seeing how well they perform in person. the main effect it has on me is that i am more aware of the supply and demand of things.
i hadn’t been back in my hometown for a good 6 months and i took a look at the mall i normally frequent. there were two changes. firstly, a bookstore there used to be there is now replaced by a nail saloon. meanwhile another bookstore is still there, literally no changes. unfortunately, that bookstore is not publicly listed.
when i went to the bookstore that was still standing, there were a lot of pen brands. faber castell, pilot pens, whatever and they were very much in stock. i could see books that were still in stock and publishing houses they made them available for purchases. i pretty much wasted half a day in a book store not shopping for books but companies who were responsible for bringing these products to the shelves. unfortunately, none of them are malaysian so womp womp.REIT (real estate investment trust)
i’ve always liked the idea of buying a property and renting it to some dude and earning basically free money. i am obviously not able to purchase a home because i am a student, and i managed to find a book by malaysian authors on investing in property by going through a REIT. I am currently a quarter through the book, and i will make a post on it when i am done.
basically, when you buy a REIT you are indirectly an owner of all the properties the REIT has bought. there are REITs which specialize in retail land and others in residential. pick and choose depending on what you want, or don’t give a damn and invest in everything lol.
business
two people in particular Alex Hormozi and Simon Squibb. they both have very similar goals which is to help people get rich. interestingly, my knowledge of Alex is through third-party sources. i watch people that talk about him, not videos he makes himself. Simon on the other hand is someone i watch myself, i follow him on his social medias and i just am quite updated on him in general.
let’s talk about Alex first. i watched an analysis of him, that’s right literally just one (this one specifically). and i’ve decided that i like the guy already. his business model is very smart and simple.
“it’s so simple, it’s complicated” - Nicholas Cole
the main idea is he gets ownership of a company he does marketing for and does three things
makes it his own by buying out the remaining equity.
exit by selling his equity.
the way he does it is by providing marketing campaigns and instead of being paid hourly or by commission he instead gets paid in equity. how exactly does this work? no clue. then he can let his holdings company, manage the entire thing. and if he doesn’t want it anymore, he can sell it.
Simon and Alex and a friend of mine does surprisingly the same thing in getting customers which is: 0 initial capital by making their earnings tied to the success of the client. so, my friend has a marketing agency, and he does marketing and he gets a percentage from the sales made. this means that he earns only if they do, if the companies do go with him, they can only win. this is easily my favorite business model by far. i don’t know why, i just really like it.
i came across a video by Simon where he basically gave away all of his business knowledge in 2 hours. i am currently in the middle of formatting all the notes because there is just so, so, so much. if you’d like this out sooner rather than later, make sure to tell me via the survey (your email is not collected). i’ll release this eventually though, no worries.
AI
ai is pretty cool and i watched a quick video by Tina Huang about Google’s 9 hour ai prompting course. watch the video if you’d like, or you can download the summary which is available for free here.
conclusion
wow. i am really addicted to money. i am also reading another book called Unstressable by Mo Gawdat and Alice Law. this has nothing to do with business and i’m having a decent time reading it. what really put me off was the fact that page 10 was them selling a community and then Mo over-complicating simple things. it isn’t anything ground breaking but it is interesting information. would i recommend you buy it? no, not really, well not yet is more accurate. if you’d like me to make a non-finance of business post, be sure to let me know in survey below, i don’t collect emails so your privacy is maintained.
thanks for reading thus far!