A friend asked me to share my investment blog so that she can start learning about investment. I hesitated for a moment. Not that I am feeling shy or uneasy to share with someone I am familiar but I was thinking what can she learn from my random musings. Does my journal benefit someone who is just starting on the journey? Or would it cause even more confusion? With the thought in mind, I decided to write this post to compile a few websites and books that I have benefitted from in my own investment journey. Hopefully this can serve as a good reference for readers who would like to learn more about investing.
I am acquainted to the team from The Smart Investor since the time they were from the now defunct Motley Fools Singapore. They are genuine in their sharing and I have benefitted much from their thinking on investment. This particular page https://thesmartinvestor.com.sg/category/getting-started/page/3/ contains quite a number of articles which are beneficial for beginning investors. You can also explore their other free articles and if you enjoy their writings, then you can consider subscribing to their services. Besides stock recommendations, their services also provide educational materials on portfolio construction and understanding of certain business sectors. They also have regular Q&A sessions (about once every quarter) which is recorded and posted on the site.
Recently, I am reading more articles from seedly.sg I don’t really visit their website but searching for particular finance topics online, it is one site that appears in the search results with relevant information. This particular page https://blog.seedly.sg/ultimate-personal-finance-guide-to-investing-singapore/ provides a good introduction guide to various investments.
FSMOne and Endowus are the two platforms which I use to invest my US counters and unit trusts. To be honest, I have not visited their education portals until I am writing this post. The following are the links where you can learn about investing. Some of the articles do look interesting and I will probably spend some time there too.
https://secure.fundsupermart.com/fsm/fsm-investor-academy/school
https://endowus.com/financial-literacy-and-investing
If you enjoy longer articles and something more cerebral, you can’t miss Howard Marks Memo. Often insightful, his memo is always a good reminder on the mindset that an investor should adopt. Quoting from his latest memo What Really Matters?,
“What really matters is the performance of your holdings over the next five or ten years (or more) and how the value at the end of the period compares to the amount you invested and to your needs. “
This undergirds how I see my investment. While I track my portfolio’s quarterly and annual performances, what I achieve in 3, 5 and 10 years is much more important to me.
As for investment book, my favourite remains Peter Lynch’s One Up on Wall Street. Easy to read and commonsensical, it provides a simple approach to investing. There are many others including The Warren Buffet Way by Hagstrom, Robert G, Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip A. Fisher, and of course The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. Examples from these classics are dated but the principles remain relevant.
Jim Collin’s Good to Great and Built to Last are not really investment book per se. The author and team analysed how some companies were able to make the leap but not others. If you believe in the idea that investment is about ownership of the underlying business, then this is a must read. The key ideas from the book have acted as a beacon for me when I am deciding if I should invest in a company.
There are umpteen resources out there but the above is what came to mind. Enjoy the journey and I am ever willing to chat more if you are keen about it.
Towards Financial Independence 