imperfect information

i have not read many economics books lately. i have not touched my economics text lately. all i know is that i'm subject to imperfect information. and so are the best investors amongst us.

so what do i prescribe to? maybe it's fate... the blindest of all beliefs. 0% rationality. 100% confidence.

will you stay afloat after your bubble bursts? it's all up to you.

don't just be a good investor. be a good participant of life.

After the Bubble Bursts (CBD Yeo, 2006)

So let's say the dot.com has been struggling to overcome its initial capital outlay for a while (amazon.com) and has no real earnings to match its extravagant share price save for the prospect of hypergrowth. Let's also assume a rational investor.

What happens after the bubble bursts?

The investor is shaken by reality, reviews his annual reports to decide if the company's market value is justified by its intrinsic value and consequently to make his sell or hold decision. And since intrinsic value is measured by the sum of all future cashflows into the company, discounted at an appropriate rate, a stock that constantly brings negative returns should warrant a negative valuation.

There is no reason for the investor to hold his stock, regardless of how much he has fallen in love with it during the period of "irrational exuberance". After all, past performance says as much of future performance as share prices say of intrinsic value.

But let's assume he does. This implies that, given the unenthusiastic short-term prospects of the company, the investor forsees extraordinary medium to long-term cashflows that, when discounted to present value, negate all negative cashflows and give rise to a positive NPV. (We haven't even factored in opportunity costs yet!)

People will laugh at that: they don't believe in giant reversals, they don't believe that fallen dot.coms will ever rise again. But investors don't just think what people think, they don't care what others think! They decide for themselves. Nevertheless, the intelligent investor is attracted to value - he only buys when he sees a margin of safety.

franz ferdinand

When I woke up tonight I said I'm
Going to make somebody love me
I'm going to make somebody love me
Now I know Now I know Now I know
That it's you
You're lucky lucky you're so lucky

::Franz Ferdinand - Do You Want To

Don't you think those lyrics are damn cool? Well, too bad cos Alexander Kapranos is going to sing to us tomorrow and you aren't gonna be there!! But you must be thinking "so what?" because 1. you don't think the lyrics are cool and 2. you have no idea who Alexander Kapranos is. Neither did I a day ago!

Hopefully the superband judges think our lyrics as cool as I think franz ferdinand's (for that matter, our song's tune and all too) because then we'll be very excited people on sunday by about 3pm, jumping around in PS!! And many people reading this blog will become very excited friends ready to make fun of five of their friends who are going make a fool of themselves on TV starting from April.

But the possibility of the above happening is about 18/94, assuming that the judges make decisions randomly or assuming that the bands look and sound the same. Not a useful calculation I know, but the point I'm trying to make is that we might get eliminated. So if I don't make a lot of noise on sunday, it means that we didn't get in. Try not to ask if that happens because I will feel like an idiot for hyping it up now. Instead, patiently wait till April nevertheless because you'll be in for a good laugh on TV!!

thinking twice

ok not only am i thinking twice.. i'm blogging twice. my affinity with clubemo is really bad.. maybe someone up there wants me to stop all this blogging. i can't seem to get a post down, although i'm the spirit of emo (something's haunting me man. har har.)

but yah, as i was saying, ok i mean blogging, watching matchpoint (by woody allen, dark movie about marriage and the implications of not making right decisions and the effect luck has on life) has made me think so much deeper into my whole idealic outlook of having a wife, kids, all that kinda stuff which will happen in a few years time..

i really hope we all meet the right ones, or go after the right ones, and to make sure that we are sure, cause it's a terrible thing to marry someone you don't truly love. i really hope luck comes my way someday and i can find the right girl... haha. the spirit of emo emo-ing. i live up to my name.

University Life

Wow, I'm on a roll. It's a wonder I even managed to find time to blog, seeing as how packed my schedule is. Last week was especially bad...waking up at 6am and jogging down to the river for 2h of rowing in the freezing cold, then a quick breakfast and cramming some studying before lectures at 11 (of which I ended up only going for 1 this week, bad boy me). Then there were rugby cuppers on Tue and Thu, we lost to Teddy Hall but they're defending champions, and we won Christchurch anyway so that was okay...except that after both matches the team insisted on going out for dinner. I left early for Tue (crap, couldn't enjoy the famous Mitre Special dessert) for pool cuppers (we won!) but joined the boys at the bar later on. Unfortunately I had to totally miss the Thursday one, cos there was a committee meeting for PPE soc that night, and obviously it wouldn't be right for the president of the com not to come. Then there was TGM for IMTCSoc as well, and apparently the proctors weren't very happy with some stuff Antony had done so President of Asian Cultural Affairs Assoc Jane and I had to troop down to the office to explain things - what's with Wk3 man? Plus Terry wanted to see me about my article for the magazine to make some changes...I mean, wtf, he wanted to meet just to correct my bloody grammar, which wasn't even wrong in the first place - and I thought he had something to say about the ontological basis of the popular sovereignty, which was (imo) the controversial point in the article. Sheesh. To think I rushed over from Faiz's tuition session (he's really quick, making great progress in English, I'm really proud of him) for that.

And to make things worse (or better?) Xiaoming (ho bor, buddy!), James Terry (love ya bud) and Nancy Gallagher (love ya gal) all had their birthday parties within the week too - Xiaoming and James both on Saturday. And there was the incredible (k I'm not really complaining) Student Night thingy at Filth - music was good, crowd was good, drinks were good. Geez. So I don't think you'll be surprised to hear that come 3am on Sunday morning, while getting wasted, I was howling about how much work I had (or had not) done. I'll upload the photos as soon as I can. Not very flattering though. Thankfully I managed to finish my pol theory essay by Sunday night, and macro on Monday, and even more thankfully, the tutors didn't say they sucked! Hooray me!

See, I haven't forgotten clubemo at all...still squeeze time out for you guys even though I really should be getting down to some serious studying (the first in a long time) now. Sigh, I guess that's uni life for you. Anyway gotta rush off for the meeting for the EP4W (End Poverty in the 4th World) programme I'm doing over the vacation now...what to do man, damn busy. Seriously need to cut down on commitments.

Hollywood and Homosexuals

YO dudes...i'm back from bangkok.

I was groped by a gay at hollywood, a club at Ratchada, the MS of BKK. All of us kenna!!! It's crazy man...they just come up to you and grab your ass.

(I also kenna at the tiger show by this girl working there. Tiger show is damn traumatic to watch. It's crazy how the girls degrade themselves in hopes of freeing themselves from the trappings of their complicated backgrounds. But watch it anyway. It's super disturbing to watch btw..)

[Hollywood is a club for middle aged people with trannies performing on a stage (you seriously cannot tell that they are trannies, we didn't know until the stupid gayboys told us. Even when they sing, they sound like girls and they are super pretty.)]

Thais are crazy. Gays are everywhere. And she-males too. Damn gross. Super scary. You never know whether it's a pretty girl or a pretty mangirl you're looking at...There were pill-poppers and even people using stringes, gays, shemales...everything mann!! The girls around us super fat and ugly and kept grinding against my friend!! HaAHA luckily I managed to escape most of it...but still kenna grabbed in the waist by this fat girl.

mad..

57ar5 War5 1337

Just a quick non-emo post, I think you guys (actually only dave, cos I think only he can understand/appreciate it) should check this out: Episode III trailer subtitled with 1337 (leetspeak, the language cool dudes use). Damn funny. You can either search star wars l33t on video.google.com, or you can go to www.mrbrown.com, a funny singapore blog which I think is quite funny. If you do the latter, check out the ann kok clip as well. Sorry for spamming, actually this applies only to dave cos the others are probably n00b.

King of Sudoku

K I know this isn't a very funny or witty or scandalous post or whatever, but as of late I've been playing quite a lot of sudoku. Actually I started last term - that was mad, I was playing like 3-4h a day, sometimes 2 sessions. But as I improved the time I took got shorter and shorter. This term I play less. My goal is to break 4min on sudokufun.com. It's quite an intense site, cos you don't get to make notes so you have to remember all the numbers. I started off on websudoku.com, and actually the evil setting is very hard, much harder than sudokufun, but sudokufun has the timer setting so it's more fun.

Anyway the point of this post is to ask if anyone has strategies to share so that I can achieve my goal. Dave told me some but it turns out there was some miscom and actually I know those already.

Now I'll move on to boasting. My best time is 4min. I've got a couple of 5min (keep in mind this is sudokufun, for websudoku my best time is like 14 or something, damn slow). In effect, I think I'm the fastest online sudoku player I know personally. So whoever can beat me will get a prize. All you need to do is tell me what your time is, where you played, and what your basic strategy is (if you could provide a run-down on your best games, it'd be great as well).

Now for some emo. I've been playing sudoku to the detriment of my social and academic life. I can't stop, I just keep playing. I have no friends. I'm damn sian. I hate my life. Sudoku is all I have to live on by.