Productivity tips: Midori traveler's notebook (Men's Perspective)

As y'all know, I have been using the 555-dori for awhile now. It has been great, the leather ages well and it does its job. I occasionally fall out of use of it but i do go to it once in awhile. First and foremost, this is not a post about what kind of pretty inserts is inside my midori traveler's notebook or the limited SMRT edition.

One thing I realised after using 555-dori for awhile is that given it's small size, you cannot really write alot inside the book. Now that in my new job, I'm required to keep track of more things now so with the push of my boss who said that I should stop writing on scrap paper, he will reimburse me any notebook i buy, so what other notebook to buy than the bigger grand daddy of all the notebooks that i use: the Midori Traveler's Notebook.

While i like they system, i find that most user of this notebook tend to crave for form over function. The amount of stuff people do to their MTN, the charms, the amount of different coloured pencils, writing pretentious crap inside. Perhaps their schedule should include 30 mins - 1 hr; twice a day colouring their notebook, followed by another 1 hr of therapeutic, relaxing colouring of the secret garden colouring books.

Do not get me wrong here, I do like the looks of this notebook and its form, but i value the function that this form offers, the most crafty thing i do is to make out inserts for the books as these inserts are so god-damn expensive at SGD 5 a ruled book up to SGD 12 for some others and some slots and pockets costing more than SGD 10.

The amount of 555 notebooks i can buy with SGD 5 just makes no sense and value to purchase them on a long term basis. Though I bought a ruled book with the purchase, I still see no absolute sense in bringing out 7 different highlighters and 7 different pens to write and colour and shade areas with. Maybe now you will walk out to your fixie bike and cycle to starbucks to write on your MTN but not me i guess.

I understand the beauty of hand carrying a big old luggage briefcase from a period when trolleys weren't invented, but it is just not for me.

The orange band just gives the right amount of colour splash

Usage of the notebook
Anyhow, in a sentence: i'm someone who has a lot of things to take notes off but wants to spend as little time as possible using the notebook.

Work
I work in the shipping industry in a shipowner/ship manager company, we have a lot of info coming in all the time, trust me when i say, taking care of 19 ships is like running a childcare center for children.

I scribble bits of info in that pertains to what will be important so that i could refer back to them in meetings or during weekends. They include mostly itinerary, technical/operational issues as well as upcoming inspections if i come across them.

Wedding planning
This is seriously alot of stuff to write down as you compare shops and prices. I printed a 6 month weekly planner from Ray Blake (thank you very much sire for your contribution to human productivity). But since i started using it from last week (mid september 2015) i have plenty of pages to freed up and i stirke off the date and use it to compare stuffs and take notes regarding wedding.

Weekly planner
Together with the wedding stuff, it exists inside the weekly planner insert. I keep track of upcoming events, things to do this week that could also be related to work, finances, good quotes etc.

Investments
The blank book has nothing inside and I do not sketch a lot so i use it to put things related to stocks and analyse them in my free time. on the first page, I'll write down a stock ticker symbol, then I'll go home to read its financial reports to get a good feel of it.

Abit of bullet journalling here to help

Not made in Japan from Kobe Leather???

very minimalistic

This notebook is great, it does nothing and alot at the same time. Here's a good; unrelated; helpful; tricky; simple quote: Measure twice, cut once.

Budget state of emergency

Since I've last blogged, I have been spending some money here and there. Here are some of my big/significant spends:

- resigned from my current stable job (though the job didn't pay as much i want, i resigned and thankfully, i managed to find another job paying me more in a short amount of time. thus far, work has been quite good)
- paid $2000 for the engagement ring (my ring costs slightly north of SGD 6000)
- bought a pandora bracelet mounting up to $700 for my girlfriend
- blew a bit of money on a vacation/stay-cation
- bought a midori traveler's notebook (this costs nothing to me as i bought it under company's account, but i foresee the inserts being an expense much later)
- took a few no-pay-leaves here and there. They costs  me about $100 a day
- SGD 2000 towards my hotel banquet deposit. But that is claimable from my joint account with my girlfriend


Upcoming pocket burners:

- proposal to my fiance would definitely cost me about $100-$200, i hope i can cut on this as much as i can.
- suits for my wedding (I'm planning to get a suit for my wedding. Not wanting to be sexist here, but spending $1k on gown rentals n no one bats and eye. Tailor a nice wool suit for wedding day and future use, everybody loses their mind.
-wedding bands
- furniture for my room as I'm moving house and my current furniture is all fixed


On top of all those, I maintain a monthly $200 towards investments. As of now, my rate of saving is not as much as my rate of spending. Sure, this is a significant time in my life with wedding and moving house and all, but like a company, it has to have enough cash to keep it going through certain events and even last financial crisis, so i don't see why a human being can be any lesser.


firstly i'd like to say that most of my housing and wedding expenses are also borne equally by my wife to be, but as much as possible, i would like to grow both of our wealth. As she is a  school teacher, her expenses are really very little, but i spend on necessity in 2 days, she can spend for her whole week. food prices in her school is dirt cheap.

secondly, i would like to announce that my financial department has called to order a state of emergency. austerity measures need to be in place. do not take it like bitch or whine about face or pride, there is no pride in not having any money management.

these measures are:
- budget of $15 a day, including transport and $20 from fri to sunday. that is a square $120/week; $480/month; about $6400 a year.
- i now roughly make about $38k a year after tax, so i should be able to save a substantial amount if i keep it up.
- as always, there has to be some leeway as to provide a reward. so at the end of every month, if i spend less than $400, i get to top up the balance to $150 for some leisure if i want and this leisure money is not to be given until earned. and it cannot be brought forward or excessively spent.
- NO MORE BUYING OF WATCHES (this will only have a leeway for a rolex explorer watch which perhaps i could after my wedding)
- limit to 2 holidays a year maximum spending of $1500 for both
- work hard do not get distracted by shopping
- exercise more


maybe these are some things you could do for your future as well.

Lets make some money shall we?

This isn't get rich quick scams with fake Facebook comments saying how sitting at home, working two hours a day can get you $1,000,000 in a year. If you met me face to face and asked me how to invest and why I am going to tell you in less than 15 mins. This is super vague, but this is as good of an advise you can get whilst telling people on a train ride. No need to compare figures or pull out calculators on this one.

Investing is easy to learn, easy to enjoy, difficult to choose, you will always want to get more satisfaction as you go along and you can never master it. (Sounding pretty much like masturbation now).  I'm not claiming to be an expert, I am not even a novice, I will not provide you formulas, ratios and financials to read. This is just what I have learn when I started investing.

Here are a few things investment is NOT:
- Ways to get rich quick: this is the game of day traders who work very very hard and spend a lot of money to achieve by merit. Anything less than that are just speculators no different than those queuing up to buy 4D/Toto (Singapore's lottery)

- Trying to yield better than the economy: For the people who truly invest properly or for a career, getting better yieldthan the economy is only natural. But for regular investors, remember your end goal in life is not to beat the economy, it is just to enjoy comfortably.

- To beat Inflation: When I started out, all I could think about is how scary inflation is, mongering it like the sky is going to fall. Leave the 3.5% deductions to your yield aside. Inflation or no inflation, your $5 is still going to be printed as $5, no one will re-issue your $5 to a $2.

Now that we have swept aside some fog, let's get to it.


The common things people say when asked to start investing:

- Risky
- No money
- Don't know how

Lets address them, tear them down and face them, when you are reaping the outcomes of your investments, pat yourself on the shoulder.

Risky
Honestly, if you actually calculate out the risk of everything you do, you will find that investing your money is really just a small speck compared to falling down on a slippery toilet floor, where it involves risks of injury, risks of touching someone else's pee/shit fecal matter, risk of social embarrassment, risk of damaging something you are carrying, the list goes on and you get the point.

Obviously, I am not talking about investing away your coffin money and buy high return stuff. Those are more often than not making other people rich first. Invest in only small money you confirm won't need in the next 3 years or more.

No Money
Linking to the previous, what kind of money we are talking about? Obviously it depends on how rich you are. Do not say you no money when you have $1000 rotting away in a bank and you always never touch it for the next 3 years or more. Of course if it is all you have then I think it is better not to invest at all.

But if you have a stable income, where you can afford to buy $8 lunches, ride the taxi, watch movies every Fri/Sat/Sun, I don't see why you cannot eat $4 lunches, take public transport, watch movies on weekday and download animated movies. For instance, if you do the lunch thing, every month, you will have $120 extra. For $100 a month, you can invest in POSB Regular Savings Plan/OCBC blue chip investment plan. These little money that goes away will come back in shocking amounts. Compounding will work in your favor no matter what so long you have an interest rate on your money.

Don't Know How
Here's two ways to invest that is relatively low risk, requires little to no knowledge about finance. I draw similarities to these investments towards our daily lives common occurrences and you'll see how easy it is:

1) Buy the economy
2) Be a lazy landlord

That's it, simple and the yields for these forms of investments tend to draw about 4-8% yield annually. Pretty good money for really doing nothing.

1) Buy the economy
POSB Regular Savings Plan/OCBC Blue Chip Investment Plan provides low cost dollar cost averaging (DCA) investment methods on the STI. The gist is that you just buy with $100 (or which ever you set) every month regardless of price of one share. The general principal is regardless of price, on the assumption that the market fluctuates several times a year, you just buy them, for buying low will help mitigate the high prices and vice versa, you won't buy at the best price but its better than nothing. Signing up can be done at ATM machines in less than 5 minutes.

Why STI? STI is a good indication of our economy, as mentioned earlier, no need to beat the market. So long don't under perform the market too badly or make a loss, you are already doing better than most people who doesn't invest at all. STI has been proven to always go up time and again, it is the nature of our country, it is what keeps us rich as a whole, so instead of complaining about rising prices, why not be part of the grand scheme of it all?

2) Be a lazy landlord
This requires some work to protect yourself in any case a crisis hits and the company becomes financially troubled of if business is temporarily bad, but you should read up yourself, its quite simple, you will find many of the factors similar to your own housing/coffee shops. You could buy into REIT, although right now the market is bad and seems like the general consensus is that interest rates are going up and all that, it is not wrong, but if you buy some now with some money, and when the price of the REIT drops, you could buy more right? Essentially REIT gives you money as form of Distribution (similar to dividends, since the S-REIT is traded in SGX) from the rent collected or sort of. But doesn't matter, you go read up on where that money come from yourself. Most important thing here is price and DPU, although other financials matter too, but I am not even a novice, so for now, these should suffice.

Starhill Global owns Ngee Ann City and Wistma Atria, nuff said. Of course it owns more, but what can be bigger than two of the main shopping malls in Singapore with many years of history and extremely high retail value?

Capital Mall Trust owns 11 shopping malls including: Tampines mall, Junction 8, Jcube, Bugis+, Raffles City Shopping Centre, Lot 1, Bukit Panjang Plaza and many malls next to MRT. The human traffic in these place is amazing and has extremely high retail value.



So there you have it, two simple instruments to invest in. But as simple as it may be, always approach it as you would with any other investment: Save, Research, Invest, Sleep, Repeat

One of the best advise any one can tell you about investment: You are responsible for your own investments!!!

How powerful is compounded interest?

How powerful is compounded interest? 

People keep going around saying compounded interest is very powerful, we studied compounded interest in secondary school and probably in tertiary educations (JC, Poly, ITE, Uni, etc...) How useful is compound interest to us average Singaporeans? 

This post will not teach you how to be super rich or invest, none of the posts in my blogs actually teaches you to work 30 secs a day to be a millionaire, but I want to offer a guide on one of the many ways which I have learnt and/or discovered.

Firstly, a disclaimer that this is not a promotional on the CPF scheme, like it or not, it is here and now. I would prefer to use it to my advantage and with minimal effort/calculation if possible.

My goal/target for my (and my wife's) CPF account is to reach the current CPF minimum sum. Upon reaching that goal, I would not have to worry about it ever since. 

Compound Interest

Compound interest is quite simple to understand, the interest earned adds to the principal sum and becomes the new principal sum for next round of interest calculation. 

So assuming a younger you have $100 in your piggy bank and your parents will keep giving you 3% interest at the end of every year of the money in the piggy bank as at 31st December every year.

 

If you do not take out the money or interest earned, your piggy bank's value will be like this:

Year: Amount

2015: $100.00

2016: $103.00

2017: $106.09

2018: $109.27

2019: $112.55

2020: $115.93

This is the rough concept, in schools, we did not use big numbers or higher rates or longer periods to calculate, but the increase in interest is increasing exponentially. At this rate, this $100 will double itself in about 24 years.

Compound Interest: CPF

Again, not a promotion, this is just what it is based on cold figures. 

As at 23 june 2015, the base interest rate in the CPF Special Account (SA) is 4.00%. Time to time, it is adjusted to 5.00% once every 5 years and also if it falls below a certain amount. But we will use 4.00% for calculation.

Imagine at 25 years old, you start working, making $3000 every month for the next 30 years (impossible as it will bound to increase, don't get fired or quit). Month after month, for 30 years. you contribute $180 to your special account. This is based on CPF current allocation rate of 6% of salary into SA. At the end of 30 years, your SA will reflect a whooping $121,143.27.

But wait, if you just put that same amount of money in a biscuit tin for 30 years, you will only save abit less than $65,000.00, just about half the amount of money.

This money will increase drastically under following circumstances:

1) increased monthly salary, if you do not even work hard to be better rewarded at your job, then my entire blog is rendered moot.

2) increased interest rates for CPF SA.

There are many other things, but this is the gist of the whole matter.

Time

When it comes to compounded interest, time is man's best friend. By year 20, the amount in your SA will only be $64,320.65 which means to say, in 10 years time, the sum will gain about $58,000!!!

Principal sum matters of course, but for compound interest, time is indeed the best friend. 

My Goals

As I've mentioned before, my goal is to reach the minimum sum at anyone point in time. Meaning the moment my OA + SA > prevailing minimum sum, my goal is achieved. And you will never have to worry about it unless the scheme changes.

This is the historical rate of CPF minimum sum increases/adjusts for about 3-4% year after year. The moment I hit the minimum sum, I'll take that money and dump it inside the special account. Every year, the interest given will then increase your money accordingly to meet the newly adjusted minimum sum, hopefully. Not to mention the interest rate is risk-free. It may not be a lot, but it is exactly like playing Russian Roulette without any bullets loaded.

Punch Card

I recently heard one of warren buffett's old speech somewhere some time ago. He said something about being careful when investing. Today, the market reacts to crowd mentality, its of course good for value investors. Don't get me wrong, despite the portrayal and behavior, the modus operandi is not to act in the opposite direction regardless of the endeavour. But rather, we act on our own research and findings. Just that more often than not, they seem to go in the opposite direction with the masses.

This is briefly what WB said: imagine you have a punch card, lasting ten, maybe twenty, punches. And this punch card will be with you all your life, each time you invest in something you have to punch it. We will be more careful as to how we use the punch card. We will not just buy a share because we heard someone said somethings in a party or over lunch.

If you act this way, you will know why your investments succeeds or fails and you will repeat or not repeat based on the outcome. But nonetheless, you know something.

Youths today are soft or are they always soft?

I recently saw an article titled: 20 Signs You're Just Not Meant For A 9 To 5 Desk Job. This somewhat lengthy article left me with a bad taste.

Immediately without researching much, the impression the write left on me is that he is a disgruntled employee at his job. One of those people who thinks their job sucks not because of their own doing.

FYI, I'm still mid 20s as of writing, my English is not that good, but try to see the point I'm trying to drive across rather than my grammatical prowess.

Those twenty steps:

1. You want to be able to decide when to begin your day. You want to work when you want to, the way you want to. There goes the concept of 9-5 in the bin.2. Formals? No way. You want to live in your denims - that’s who you are. Following dress codes is a ridiculous concept anyway that you just refuse to follow. 3. More than that, you’re just too restless to be seated at one place for 8 hours. It’s almost like being chained.4. You see no point sitting inside a glass box knowing there is a whole world out there. 5. Your mind just doesn’t work around those boring computer screens and a phone that reminds you of hospitals every time it rings. You want something like a whole wall to express yourself! 6. Nothing puts you off more than seeing people hate every minute of their day at work. You’d rather be around inspiring people who love what they do, because your work is your passion, not a ‘job’.7. You can’t wait to scoot out of the office the moment the clock strikes 6 and do what you love, the rest of the day.8. You hate how all offices run solely on hierarchy. You feel being pulled down by it more than being pushed forward.9. No matter how much you try, your mind just drifts away every time you begin working. You can’t be contained. You have to be set free to bring out the best in you. 10. You’re probably too outgoing and ‘alive’ to fit in to the straight faced, lifeless people at work. Oh no, no, you don’t give two hoots about maintaining the ‘decorum’, whatever that is.11. You want to create something of your own, not spend your whole life living an insignificant life, working for someone who probably doesn’t even know you exist.12. You’re a perfectionist. You need your own space to do things, at your own pace – like waiting for the sun to set for that perfect picture. You don’t believe in doing things just for the sake of it. 13. Life is too short to waste in rat races. You refuse to be a part of the herd.14. You hate Mondays, in fact you loathe ‘em. You desperately need to be in a place where you look forward to Mondays.15. Travelling is not just your passion; it is your way of life. From the depths of the seas to the thin air at the top of mountains – there’s so much to see in just one life! There is no way you’re giving up what you love the most for a desk job.16. You don’t believe in rules. No, not like a rebel-without-a-cause. You just want to figure it out on your own instead of going by what people tell you. You’re here to make your own way.17. You don’t have ‘aims’ in life. Only dreams. And you want to live them all. You owe it to yourself.18. You measure success by happiness and contentment, not by paycheques. 19. You want to earn by living, not live by earning.20. You cannot even begin to list down the things you want to do in life. What you want to be is beyond professions and careers. It’s a feeling. You want to live. That’s your calling. 

This is in fact one of the most ridiculous things I have ever read. It is ridiculous because the writer preaches this as thought it is scripture.

I could pin-point the flaws in every single 'signs' but they are just generally excuses for being lazy.

Although technology has made life easy, we still cannot be lazy, instead of thinking tech is replacing us, why not say that tech can aid us to be more efficient? 

We have to manage our expectations and always think far especially when it involves something like your career, and commitments. Think about two stories:

This is the story of the person who created this wallet. He probably felt the same way about one or more of the 20 signs above. He created this wallet, several things happened in his life and started/joint/left/closed many companies. At one point, he was sleeping at the back of his car if I got the facts right. Now, he is sleeping in a big mansion. 

He is Robert Kiyosaki and the writer of a best seller: Rich Dad Poor Dad. 

Many of you are thinking of following his footsteps, wanting to be the next Warren Buffett/Bill Gates/Robert Kiyosaki or whoever else is rich or famous.

Lets deconstruct the goal abit. Based on the above, you just want to end up being rich/famous, it didn't say how or what you are going to do. Because when you answer these two questions, you find that this 20 signs is complete utter nonsense. 

Many youths today are about being rich and famous, to travel, to buy luxurious items and stay in big houses. So by wanting to become those Warren Buffett/Bill Gates, yet you strongly believe in these 20 signs, aren't you no different from some one who is trying to be a famous star on Hollywood without putting any effort to improve on their acting skills?

Granted, they did quite badly in school, but did you know that they poured in endless hours to be at where they want to be? Not to mention they are inherently intelligent people. 

I, myself, am quite lazy to be honest. The biggest tell tale sign is the condition of my room, its in a perpetual mess. However, I felt that my career is not something I can do till I'm old as I am very family oriented, so now that I'm young, I decide to educate myself on finance, try to invest bit by bit to accumulate wealth, for my wife to be, kids, and grand kids. I'm not going to teach you how to invest as I know nothing myself. But I think we should all set out and learn and do it.

Please take time to read an abstract from the article: THE SUPERINVESTORS OF GRAHAM-AND-DODDSVILLE

I would like you to imagine a national coin-flipping contest. Let's assume we get 225 million Americans up tomorrow morning and we ask them all to wager a dollar. They go out in the morning at sunrise, and they all call the flip of a coin. If they call correctly, they win a dollar from those who called wrong. Each day the losers drop out, and on the subsequent day the stakes build as all previous winnings are put on the line. After ten flips on ten mornings, there will be approximately 220,000 people in the United States who have correctly called ten flips in a row. They each will have won a little over $1,000.
Now this group will probably start getting a little puffed up about this, human nature being what it is. They may try to be modest, but at cocktail parties they will occasionally admit to attractive members of the opposite sex what their technique is, and what marvelous insights they bring to the field of flipping.
Assuming that the winners are getting the appropriate rewards from the losers, in another ten days we will have 215 people who have successfully called their coin flips 20 times in a row and who, by this exercise, each have turned one dollar into a little over $1 million. $225 million would have been lost, $225 million would have been won.
By then, this group will really lose their heads. They will probably write books on "How I turned a Dollar into a Million in Twenty Days Working Thirty Seconds a Morning." Worse yet, they'll probably start jetting around the country attending seminars on efficient coin-flipping and tackling skeptical professors with, " If it can't be done, why are there 215 of us?"
By then some business school professor will probably be rude enough to bring up the fact that if 225 million orangutans had engaged in a similar exercise, the results would be much the same - 215 egotistical orangutans with 20 straight winning flips.
I would argue, however, that there are some important differences in the examples I am going to present. For one thing, if (a) you had taken 225 million orangutans distributed roughly as the U.S. population is; if (b) 215 winners were left after 20 days; and if (c) you found that 40 came from a particular zoo in Omaha, you would be pretty sure you were on to something. So you would probably go out and ask the zookeeper about what he's feeding them, whether they had special exercises, what books they read, and who knows what else. That is, if you found any really extraordinary concentrations of success, you might want to see if you could identify concentrations of unusual characteristics that might be causal factors.
Scientific inquiry naturally follows such a pattern. If you were trying to analyze possible causes of a rare type of cancer -- with, say, 1,500 cases a year in the United States -- and you found that 400 of them occurred in some little mining town in Montana, you would get very interested in the water there, or the occupation of those afflicted, or other variables. You know it's not random chance that 400 come from a small area. You would not necessarily know the causal factors, but you would know where to search.
I submit to you that there are ways of defining an origin other than geography. In addition to geographical origins, there can be what I call an intellectual origin. I think you will find that a disproportionate number of successful coin-flippers in the investment world came from a very small intellectual village that could be called Graham-and-Doddsville. A concentration of winners that simply cannot be explained by chance can be traced to this particular intellectual village.
Conditions could exist that would make even that concentration unimportant. Perhaps 100 people were simply imitating the coin-flipping call of some terribly persuasive personality. When he called heads, 100 followers automatically called that coin the same way. If the leader was part of the 215 left at the end, the fact that 100 came from the same intellectual origin would mean nothing. You would simply be identifying one case as a hundred cases. Similarly, let's assume that you lived in a strongly patriarchal society and every family in the United States conveniently consisted of ten members. Further assume that the patriarchal culture was so strong that, when the 225 million people went out the first day, every member of the family identified with the father's call. Now, at the end of the 20-day period, you would have 215 winners, and you would find that they came from only 21.5 families. Some naive types might say that this indicates an enormous hereditary factor as an explanation of successful coin-flipping. But, of course, it would have no significance at all because it would simply mean that you didn't have 215 individual winners, but rather 21.5 randomly distributed families who were winners.
In this group of successful investors that I want to consider, there has been a common intellectual patriarch, Ben Graham. But the children who left the house of this intellectual patriarch have called their "flips" in very different ways. They have gone to different places and bought and sold different stocks and companies, yet they have had a combined record that simply cannot be explained by the fact that they are all calling flips identically because a leader is signaling the calls for them to make. The patriarch has merely set forth the intellectual theory for making coin-calling decisions, but each student has decided on his own manner of applying the theory.
The common intellectual theme of the investors from Graham-and-Doddsville is this: they search for discrepancies between the value of a business and the price of small pieces of that business in the market. Essentially, they exploit those discrepancies without the efficient market theorist's concern as to whether the stocks are bought on Monday or Thursday, or whether it is January or July, etc. Incidentally, when businessmen buy businesses, which is just what our Graham & Dodd investors are doing through the purchase of marketable stocks -- I doubt that many are cranking into their purchase decision the day of the week or the month in which the transaction is going to occur. If it doesn't make any difference whether all of a business is being bought on a Monday or a Friday, I am baffled why academicians invest extensive time and effort to see whether it makes a difference when buying small pieces of those same businesses. Our Graham & Dodd investors, needless to say, do not discuss beta, the capital asset pricing model, or covariance in returns among securities. These are not subjects of any interest to them. In fact, most of them would have difficulty defining those terms. The investors simply focus on two variables: price and value.
I always find it extraordinary that so many studies are made of price and volume behavior, the stuff of chartists. Can you imagine buying an entire business simply because the price of the business had been marked up substantially last week and the week before? Of course, the reason a lot of studies are made of these price and volume variables is that now, in the age of computers, there are almost endless data available about them. It isn't necessarily because such studies have any utility; it's simply that the data are there and academicians have [worked] hard to learn the mathematical skills needed to manipulate them. Once these skills are acquired, it seems sinful not to use them, even if the usage has no utility or negative utility. As a friend said, to a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
I think the group that we have identified by a common intellectual home is worthy of study. Incidentally, despite all the academic studies of the influence of such variables as price, volume, seasonality, capitalization size, etc., upon stock performance, no interest has been evidenced in studying the methods of this unusual concentration of value-oriented winners.

A few things to ponder about

I know this isn't twitter, but here's a few twitter-like things compiled that reflect my cynicism these days.

"Why in this day and age, we are still afraid of insect eggs on food packaging?"

"Why we always value the opinions of the ones who treat us the harshest?"

"What is going through that person's mind when he/she decides to scold people over email or a platform where everyone can see? Does it solve issues?"

"J.K. Simmons in Whiplash: The two most harmful words in the English language is 'Good Job'."

"When someone does something to you that you don't like is bad, but if you do it back, is it revenge or giving the person a taste of their medicine?"