Yew Jin's Blog

Money blogs

2009-07-03T14:25:00.000-07:00

Personal finance blogs that I find interesting

A short note about growing old

2009-06-14T21:55:00.000-07:00

As you grow older, you

1. realize that you are at the age at which you were 12 and exclaimed, when I grow up, I will XXX. Well you haven't done XXX yet.

2. realize that you don't recover from being sick as quickly as you used to. That bites.

3. begin to think birthdays aren't all that great.

4. really hate being sick (see point 2). I am sick and I hate it. Now get off my lawn.

5. forget stuff. So when I grow up and reach 40, make sure that I have already read Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letters. All of them. And try not to fall asleep while reading them halfway old man. [http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html]

6. think it's really cool that you are old, because you can now say things like, "you young people", and when you do something wrong, you just go, "meh, what do I know? I just a grumpy old man."

7. worry about becoming a grumpy old man.

8. think it's best to not count based on absolute age and we should be counting based on relative age. So from now now, my age is TBD (to be determined), but when I die, I would have been (current_age / age_of_death * 100%) old.

Money tools used

2009-06-04T22:21:00.001-07:00

Just Thrive - Online money management. Pro: Nags you a lot. Con: Nags you a lot.

Mint - Online money management. Pro: Has alerts when bills are due, checks are cleared, etc. Con: Not great for investment monitoring.

Yodlee - Online money management. Don't know. Have not tried it yet.

Credit Karma - Free credit report supported by ads. Pro: Free credit report score! Con: Score only comes from Transunion and site is ad-supported.

Cake Financial - Investment portfolio management. Pro: Great analysis tools. Con: Only investment portfolio management (if that's a con).

Overheard today

2009-05-29T21:01:00.000-07:00

Bad Joke of the Day

Question: How do Microsoft employees greet each other lately?
Answer: How have you bing?

Awesome Google Finance Discussion

2009-05-13T08:56:00.000-07:00

Discussions for OceanFreight Inc. (OCNF)

muzz...@gmail.com
In just about a week I lost half of my bankroll. Between commissions
and a nasty hit from OCNF stock, and now with CVM on a downturn I
need a big turn-around, otherwise I'm toast. I've got to be very very
careful from now on. I still feel OCNF should pay me the .77 dividend
after all it's posted on the GOOGLE finance chart, that would help out
a lot..

srt4r...@gmail.com
[some advice]

muzz...@gmail.com
I know but CARRIER said I should sell my 100 shares of OCNF and buy
CVM, and I would make a lot of money. I'm not listening to him
anymore.

ac36...@yahoo.com
[some advice]

carrier...@gmail.com
Muzzie, OCNF will not pay a dividend until 2015 they relased that
document a while back... If you did your research before you bought
OCNF, you most likley would not have bought it for the dividend
because there is none, and will be none. This stock is now trash! Im
sorry that you think CVM is on a downturn... But the downside risk is
to .25 and the upside risk is to $1 . Now if you want a greater risk
to reward ratio than that, may I suggest these stocks NM CPE WRES CEP
UYG FBR and if you really want to get risky BCON PAE.

muzz...@gmail.com
To arse36...@yahoo.com, You also should have listened to CARRIER,
take a look at OCNF pre-market, All you who have been bragging about
the multi K shares you own and making fun of my 100 shares, do the
math and see how much you're going to lose today I'll bet you wish
you only had 100 shares. My advice to you guys is to go on E-BAY and
type in "CRYING TOWELS" in the search box.

bmy1..@aol.com
LOL............ Ask your monny to change your diaper.
I leave tips for waitresses after dinner bigger than your 100
shares.......... Get a job! Save some cash! And then come back to the
stock market with a half way decent bank roll. You're waisting your
time with what your doing.
muzz...@gmail.com
I bet; you're probably a waitress at that diner. OCNF still going down.
I got out at $1.6, you should have listened.
rickharrison
are you seriously whining about losses and you only had 100 shares?
studwilli...@gmail.com
It's not a loss until you sell.
carrier...@gmail.com
It's not nice to make fun of Muzz because of the little bit invested!
Maybe $100 is all he has to invest...
muzz...@gmail.com
CARRIER, I checked out all of the stocks you listed, every one of them
are DOWN, don't you know any good ones, I'm
looking for stock that goes UP. I want to make money not lose money. I
got hammered with OCNF, I don't want that to happen again, It would
wipe me right out..
muzz...@gmail.com
That's correct; about $100 left but I started with $211and look how
fast I went through that. That's why I keep telling you guys I need a
good stock so I can make myself whole again.
greg.o.roo...@gmail.com
muzz, you make it interesting to be involved in this company's stock.
it makes things way more interesting.
everyone else, you keep it up too, it is entertaining.
bmy1...@aol.com
idiots.

Ah yes. Internet forum humor.

My Top Two Purchases from Amazon.com

2009-05-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

I did not think much of white noise as a sleep aid. But since I am a sleep deprived parent willing to try anything. I figured I would just buy some white noise MP3s with the cutest album cover - Yes, that was how I decided. I was that skeptical about the effectiveness of white noise that I figured I would get more utility out of deciding which album art was cuter.

Combined with a cheap MP3 player, and spare computer speakers. Bam. My own white noise machine that also plays classical/jazz music on the side for the cheap.

It's not a panacea for cranky baby, but it sure helps me go to sleep. That's why this is my top two purchases. I now get solid 6 hours of sleep. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

You Don't Need to Know That

2009-04-13T21:32:00.000-07:00

Overheard in a cubicle.

B is trying to help debug A's code, and is soliciting some explanation.

B: "What does this chunk of code do?"

A: "You don't need to know that, because I don't understand it myself."

B: "..."

In Challenging Times, the Tide Changes

2009-04-12T14:56:00.000-07:00

Geeks are So In

In the early 1960s when he was choosing a career, Professor Chamberlin recalled, technical people were respected and well paid. Money, he said, was part of the equation. “But the bigger part of the motivation for me,” he said, “was that I would be doing exciting and important work and that my contributions would be appreciated.”

--With Finance Disgraced, Which Career Will Be King? [nytimes.com]

The universities in Singapore have release information regarding the grade profile of students entering each course of study. [NTU] [NUS] [SMU]

A comparison between common courses at the various universities at the 10th percentile (letter grades are for GCE A-Level grade combinations, and floating point numbers are the polytechnic diploma GPAs):

Course	NTU(H2/H1, GPA)	NUS	SMU
Accountancy	AAB/B, 3.71	AAA/B, 3.64	ABB/A, 3.60
Business	AAB/B, 3.63	AAB/B, 3.50	ABB/B, 3.49
Economics	ABB/B, 3.48	BBC/C, 3.39	BBB/B, 3.30
Law	-	AAA/A	AAA/B
Information Systems, NTU Comp Eng, Computing (IS)	BCC/C, 3.38	BCC/B, 3.54	BCC/B, 3.16
Social Sciences, Psy, Socio	BCC/B, 3.39	BBC/C, 3.39	BBC/B, 3.28

Reproduced from [Jay Lim's Blog]

Some observations: Computer Science/Engineering has the one of the lowest admission cut-offs, except when considering polytechnic diploma GPA for NUS (at which point, CS actually has a more stringent requirement than even Business).

It is true - we simply do not get the best and the brightest in Computer Science. And while I imagine it would be very difficult for an entrepreneur with solely non-technical background to create the next big thing in software and Internet technology. The faculty in NUS routinely relies on foreign students to prop up the quality of the student base - an illustrative example is a fellow Singaporean in Google who had my PhD supervisor as his supervisor for his project. In the first meeting between the professor and the student, the professor simply assumed the student was not Singapore and asked, "so, which part of China are you from?".

Geeks make money - No?

Do not fill young people's heads with too much nonsense like how they have to look cool. Sell the cool ideas they work with. Teach them to see that you can make money and be rich only if you have something worth selling, and that is where engineers come in.

Years ago, engineering was the top school to go to.

Today, everyone wants to be in business and make money and that is why our young flock to anything and everything to do with business, finance and economics.

-- Straits Times Forum Comment - Focus on engineers' 'cool' ideas, not their image [straitstimes.com]

As my colleague (in Google mind you) likes to quip: "If you are in software engineering for money, you are in the wrong business."

If you are the gahmen, hear my plea

Singapore might want smart and hardworking generalists to be to civil servants by enticing them with extraordinary salaries. But if you want a striving science and technology sector, specialists have to be nurtured. And my last rant: uhm, propping up A*Star scholars like trophy dogs is not the way to go, simply due to the overemphasis of look-at-my-scholars-with-their-high-grades, aren't they adorable sense of it all.

Rejected by Harvard? Not a problem. You're in good company.

The list is, well, impressive. Investor Warren Buffet, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass,
Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner, NBC "Today" show host Meredith
Vieira, former "NBC Nightly News" anchor Tom Brokaw, New Yorker magazine
editor David Remnick, CNN founder Ted Turner, folk rock legend Art Garfunkel,
Matt Groening, creator of the animated television series "The Simpsons," Sun
Microsystems chairman Scott McNealy, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
president Harold Varmus, and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger
round out the list.

-- Non Ivy League Graduates

My Erdös Number

2009-04-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

My Erdös number is 4.

COMPUTING TIGERS AND GOATS
Y. J. Lim, J. Nievergelt - ICGA Journal, 2004

Jürg Nievergelt coauthored with Komei Fukuda MR1708017
Komei Fukuda coauthored with David M. Avis MR1130229
David M. Avis coauthored with Paul Erdös MR0949289 (90b:05068)

A few thoughts here and there

2009-04-05T19:23:00.000-07:00

I think that:
1. After seeing the disintegration of Wall Street, I am less inclined to consider pursuing a MBA.

2. After being disabused about how flawed financial modeling and short-term trading can be, I believe that a logical person can read the macro-economic signs and deduce a trend that can result in a successful long-term investment plan. You too can be Warren Buffett.

3. The latest bull run is a technical rally, and we will see a bearish market soon. Perhaps even matching the March lows.

4. In light of the presumed bearish market, I am waiting (and evaluating if it's worthwhile) to contributing more to my Roth IRA before April 15, the last day to contribute for tax year 2008.

5. A 529 plan seems like a good plan, except that we might not be staying in US until DJ enters university.

one arm blogging

2009-03-28T17:03:00.000-07:00

Baby is sick. Wife is sick. I am sick. Maybe i should switch to twitter.

Cake Financial

2009-03-24T16:50:00.000-07:00

Even with a brokerage account (especially a low-cost one like Zecco), I have found that stock and financial analysis and reporting to be dismal at best.

Just like how mint.com has made financial planning easy and streamlined, Cake Financial does the same for portfolio analysis. You enter your brokerage account info (WARNING: Only for people who believe in the security of 128 bit cipher keys), and Cake Financial downloads your positions and transactions, and compares your performance with a benchmark group that have a similar profile as you. I have tried Covestor, but have found it less intuitive and user-friendly. (Think big pretty icons, clean design and nice charts)

kaChing!

2009-03-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

I decided that it was better to gamble away virtual money - my family will sleep much better at night that way. :)

[My kaChing profile]

The power of a million monkeys

2009-03-11T10:12:00.000-07:00

When a million monkeys play Go, they win.

Enter the Monte Carlo method, named by its Manhattan Project pioneers for the casinos where they gambled. It consists of random simulations repeated again and again until patterns and probabilities emerge: the characteristics of an atomic bomb explosion, phase states in quantum fields, the outcome of a Go game. Programs like MoGO and Many Faces simulate random games from start to finish, over and over and over again, with no concern for figuring out which of any given move is best.

--Humans No Match for Go Bot Overlords [wired.com]

Woah

2009-03-04T16:13:00.001-08:00

Woah. In so many ways.

Woah. So much work (but exciting!)

Woah. What's up stock market?

Woah. DJ is coming over tomorrow. In fact, double Woah.

Woah.

Brain turning to mush

2009-02-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

My life has been a little topsy turvy over the past few weeks - Dominic had to be briefly hospitalized. Rest assured that he is doing well now and is on scheduled to fly over to the States soon. (yeah, except for the onset of sleep deprivation)

In other news, my mind is a chaos of mush - I just realized how fast you forget things once you leave school - my colleague is taking Probabilistic Graphical Models course in Stanford. Flipping through his quizzes, I realize I cannot remember the nuances of loopy belief propagation and details of message passing algorithms.

I now go to bed with my graphical model notes beside me.

Investing without paying attention

2009-01-16T04:52:00.000-08:00

I have continued to invest in various equities in the midst of the current economic turmoil. My core investment philosophy has being unchanged (spend less than I earn, and invest the rest).

I bought my first investment-linked policy (ILP) in 2001. Yes, you can only learn from experience, and I have learnt not to buy ILPs anymore. I believe life and medical insurance should be separated. I have sequentially purchased appropriate medical insurance for the future.

With multi-year lows being reached on a regular basis, securities valuations seem very favorable to individual investors. If you invest in the stock market right now, you will walk out with great returns in 5 to 10 years. I make the maximum contributions to 401K on index funds (40% international, 50% US, 10% Bonds), invest regularly in Asian mutual funds, and buy individual stocks on the US market. That's my allocation of retirement, investment and speculation.

And in worst case, I have several verbal agreements with friends to bunk in their balcony if things don't work out. :P

Scatterplot of IQ and Financial Worth

2009-01-11T23:07:00.000-08:00

I just came across a figure that comes from a paper published in the journal Intelligence - a scatterplot of IQ and financial worth.

Eyeballing the plot, the only plausible relationship might be lower IQ and lower net worth.

I am just surprised that the lowest financial worth is "only" -$20K.

Baby events!

2009-01-10T02:52:00.000-08:00

Dominic John Lim's Baby Registry - A man can hope. Can't he?

Next promotion: If I can this, are you willing to donate $10 for every mile I ran in the event I .. ahem .. don't make it? I shall call it the "Give-my-son-an-education-coz-I-am-crazy Fund"

I am a new father, and I miss sleeping

2009-01-04T01:09:00.000-08:00

The purpose of this study was to describe the sleep patterns and fatigue of both mothers and fathers before and after childbirth. The authors used wrist actigraphy and questionnaires to estimate sleep and fatigue in 72 couples during their last month of pregnancy and 1st month postpartum. Both parents experienced more sleep disruption at night during the postpartum period as compared to the last month of pregnancy. Compared to fathers, with their stable 24-h sleep patterns over time, mothers had less sleep at night and more sleep during the day after the baby was born. Sleep patterns were also related to parents’work status and type of infant feeding. Both parents self-reported more sleep disturbance and fatigue during the 1st month postpartum than during pregnancy. Mothers reported more sleep disturbance than fathers, but there was no gender difference in ratings of fatigue. At both time points, fathers obtained less total sleep than mothers when sleep was objectively measured throughout the entire 24-h day. Further research is needed to determine the duration of sleep loss for both mothers and fathers, to evaluate the effect of disrupted sleep and sleep loss on psychosocial functioning and job performance, and to develop interventions for improving sleep patterns of new parents.

Sleep Patterns and Fatigue in New Mothers and Fathers

Offerings for the Dead

2008-12-13T01:46:00.000-08:00

We are waiting with bated breath for the birth of my son. I want to incorporate my vist back with the video of his arrival using my new toy - Flip Mino HD.

Video editing is pretty tedious (and thankless IMO), but here's a preview video which I create which highlights the quirky things you can burn as offerings. See Ancestor Worship [wikipedia.org]. Check it out.

Back in Singapore

2008-12-09T18:35:00.000-08:00

I am back in Singapore for a vacation but recovering from jet lag. I flew United back which has terrible in-flight entertainment (but at a price that can't be beat!), so I finished all the books I bought (and then some!). Here are quick reviews for some of them.

"The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing" provides an excellent concise overview of financial definitions and tools. Kelly also provides introductions to trading strategies tied to investors such as Graham, Buffett, Lynch, O'Neil, etc. The writing style is conversational and easy to follow. However, it serves as a purely introductory text to each topic, and the reader is constantly advised to pick up the relevant book for more details. This is not necessarily a bad thing - just don't expect this to be the only stock-trading book you should be reading.

"Clean Code" talks about fundamental software engineering practices that one might pick up when working collaboratively over a long period of time. It covers programming style, refactoring and patterns. The coverage is fairly basic but it is light reading, so a seasoned software engineer can cover it in less than a day, while more novice individuals can read this over a few days to allow the ideas to sink in. The style suggestions given in this book (useful comments, meaningful names for functions and variables, etc) are all standard advice, but the examples given in this book illustrate the usefulness of following these basic guidelines. The examples are all in Java, but it should be easy to extrapolate them into general principles for any language.

Google has style guides for every language we use in projects, and this book is not as useful to me, since I am better off following the style that everyone else is following. However, if you work in a company with no style guide for the programming language you are using, you cannot go wrong applying the principles advocated by this book, and then enforcing this style onto everyone else who works in the same project.

"The Productive Programmer" covers an interesting aspect of programming - the tools and tricks that seasoned software engineers use to understand and test their programs. It covers code coverage tools, debugging tools, code analysis tools and text editing tips. I can see how useful if you work in an environment where the tools you use are not standardized or set up for you. Again, at Google, there is already a lot of foundation work done to prepare software engineers with tools that others have found useful, together with documentation or courses to enrich software engineers on how to utilize these tools.

I am not sure if this is praise for Google, or for the book. :)

I voted him in for his big brains

2008-11-28T09:10:00.000-08:00

I just read a poignant blog article on the psyche of Singaporeans' political soul - We like big brains.

Question

My biggest (and potentially most sensitive) question: Do Singaporeans actually support their uniquely efficient policies? An earlier study found that Hong Kongers are statist at heart; are Singaporeans any different? My suspicion is that the source of Singapore's success is not the public's unusually high economic literacy, but its unusual deference to economically literate elites. Will experience confirm my suspicions?

Answer

Admittedly, this informal survey suffers from potentially severe selection bias. Perhaps civil servants exaggerate the incompetence of the public to make themselves feel important. But I suspect that if selection bias plays a role, it goes in the opposite direction: Civil servants are more likely to exaggerate the popularity of their policies to make themselves feel well-liked. The fact that "resignation" remains a popular answer is telling: The architects of policies like ERP might like to fantasize that the public loves their work, but daily experience gets in the way.

My philosophy of running

2008-11-27T10:05:00.000-08:00

I have this strange relationship with my running partner, Ben. As we do our morning runs (8 miles), I incessantly complain about how tiring the pace is (well, it is to me), argue about how many hills we are doing (it's becoming a monotonically increasing number), and question why we are even running (actually I do want to run).

Ben just laughs and reminds me that I am constantly the one who is suggesting that we do this or that. Like how right after we did a 10km competition, at the finishing line as I am panting and cussing, I add, "So we do a half marathon next?".