I Have Completed Stock-Take of My Investments To-date

Investment guru, I am not. In fact, I was quite a moron when it comes to investing matters. I was just plain lucky not having enough cash to buy into the Minibond and the DBS High Notes.

Like most retail investors, I did buy into some structured deposit which I was quite ignorant about. I have also dabbled a bit into stocks but they really quite minimal. With a 9-5 job and a family to take charge of, I have little time to monitor the market, let alone be prolific in it. So I have relied on recommendations from friends and/or relationship managers for my investment decisions. Especially the latter, afterall, they are the experts or supposedly so.

My Investment Journey Until Now

When I first started work and managed to accumulate some money, I did my research at the point of purchase to ensure that the company stock was rock-solid. Later, I realised that monitoring was such a chore, I have decided to buy unit trust. Just pay the experts for them to work for you. Afterall, I will still get to pocket the profits after commission is deducted. In no time, I became a stock/unit trust "collector".

I knew that this was not the way to go. Hence, I went for financial courses to brush up my very lacking skills. Magazines and books on investing made it to my reading list staple.

In a sense, the global financial meltdown coupled with the Minibond and DBS High Notes Series that accelerated this process. Never before have I been bombarded with so many news articles written with the layman in mind.

As I pored through the news, one thing stood out loud and clear "the importance of being self-reliance". If a more than a century old bank like Lehman Brothers could go belly up and the experts also go wrong with their bets, I will need to do more monitoring. Afterall, it's my hard-earned money.

So, monitoring I aspire. For the past few weeks, I have digging through my un-filed documents (oh, my goodness) to take stock of the investments I have made thus far. I have even created an Excel template to key in the investment and work out the average yield for my investments made.

For the first time in my life, I see for myself the haphazard investments I have made. Now, I have a faint understanding of what the experts say about asset allocation and the talk about re-balancing your portfolio.

I shall continue to work on my investment knowledge and pen it down in my blog. Like most people, I would want my money to work hard for me.