Ben Felix, CIO in PWL (Canadian financial firm) regularly posts Youtube videos on personal finance and investing stuff.
Here is a video of his discussing about
- Renting vs Owning
- Income Investing
- FIRE
The video is quite enlightening for those not familar in the above topics.
Purchases
The sky is always there, regardless rain or shine; good or bad.
Cloud comes in different sizes and shapes. Like randomness, impermanence in the world. Also reminds one of different people, characters of all kinds.
People may think grey cloud is bad, because it implies incoming rain. But rain fills up reservoir and provides water to fishes in rivers. A person may look haggard and older than his/her age, perhaps because he/she worked hard to support family.
Grey cloud implies incoming rain. Later it rain, even though the weather forecast says no rain. Don't trust forecast 100%. The forecast may be inaccurate or too general to be applicable to your situation.
Sky does not judge. It does not care whether there's cloud or blue sky, rain or shine. We may need to exercise judgement in our work, our life. Should we be like the sky when there's no need to judge?
Post-note: Sky reminds me of a Chinese saying: 天有不测风云，人有旦夕祸福 (source)
1) Total Asset Growth
Total asset growth is 15.1%, mainly boosted by equity returns.
2) Asset Composition / Allocation
Allocation-wise, I stick to mainly 60% equities - 40% non-equities over the years.
Lesson
1) I did not buy significantly during the Apr 2025 market decline. I was waiting for 20% decline but the market only decline 19%. For the next decline, I will start to buy significantly when market declines by 15%.
2) I bought Chagee earlier and broke my rule of not buying stock that are within 1 year of its listing. Subsequently, I sold Chagee at 35% loss. This teach me not to break my rules.
Diversification vs Concentration
3) I start to buy ETFs to diversify into other geographies such as Latin America and Emerging Markets. I am not familiar with markets outside Singapore and Hong Kong market. Hence, it is safer for me to buy into other markets via ETFs when I find their valuations good enough.
I also bought small positions in a few Singapore Reits as proxy diversification to real estate, as I do not own any property.
I also bought gold, silver and copper ETFs in 2Q 2025 for diversification in precious metals. However, I sold them in 4Q 2025, as their prices have run up and I am not sure if the price run will continue. On hindsight, I sold them too early, as their prices have continued to rise.
4) I had re-think my view on portfolio concentration. In 2021, I wanted to be more concentrated and own great business. However, it is hard to find enough number of stocks of great business to buy at reasonable price. In past few years, I manage to buy a few stocks that are good/great business. But most of the times, I find the stock price of good/great business too expensive for me, given my value investor mindset.
Maybe my nature is not inclined towards concentrated portfolio. When I buy a stock, I will often ask 'What happens if I'm wrong?'. This prevents me from buying heavily into any one stock.
In addition, as I stop working, I become slightly more risk-averse. An Acadian post 'Concentrated portfolio managers: Courageously losing your money' noted the danger of concentration. As such, I decide to reduce the probability of bad outcome by being more diversified.
Sima Yi was a great military strategist in the late stage of the Three Kingdoms.
I always find Sima Yi's philosophy useful for investors / traders.
Below is an interesting video on Sima Yi's philosophy (in Chinese though):
This is Morgan Housel's plan for deploying $1,000 during market crash, noted in 2013 Motley Fool article.
Brian Feroldi has a video on it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af16HSn3aa4
Morgan Housel's allocation plan is pretty good. One can use it as base template and modify it to suit one's preference.
Ben Felix, CIO in PWL (Canadian financial firm) regularly posts Youtube videos on personal finance and investing stuff. Here is a video of ...
