On 30 Jan 2010, a Financial Planner, Christopher Tan, CEO of Providend shares the virtues of staying invested.

Actually, 99% of all Financial Planners will sing the same tune, asking clients to stay invested. However, if I had stay 100% invested through 2007 to year 2008, I would have seen most of my earlier Gains wiped out in the Stock Market Crash.

So my personal Real Life experience of selling most of my stocks in year 2007 helped me "lock in" 200% Gains from year 2002 to year 2007. Later, after the stock market crash, I started buying in Oct 2008 again and becos I have Opportunity Fund, that is why I have money to buy when prices are low.

Again, this strategy of buying during a Crisis (something I share in all my seminars) helped me see my stock portfolio gaining 40% by end 2009.

The posting below was written by me in Jan 2008. At that time, people were arguing that we should stay invested and not sell away stocks.

History speaks for itself.

Those that think this way saw their stock portfolio falling over 50% in year 2008, while becos I sold out most of my stocks in year 2007, I avoided the stock market crash and kept my wealth intact when the Global Financial Crisis hit in year 2008.

Observe nature, nature has its 4 seasons, its Sun Rise and Sunset. Similarly, the stock market has it Bull and Bear Markets. If during Summer (Bull market) you did not try to sell out and build reserves, when Winter (Bear market) finally comes, you might not last through the Winter and might be "frozen to death".

29 Jan 2010 - Those who are rushing to buy HDB Resale Flats should take note of this latest announcement by Minister Mah Bow Tan that HDB might review rules to weed out speculators and rental investors, this might cause a dip in the demand for HDB Resale Flats.

Another thing to note is that HDB Resale Flats' prices are now at Historical High. HDB recently also announced that it is ready to build more HDB flats to meet demand, and with total of over 20,000 units of condos to be completed in year 2011 and year 2012, supply of properties (both HDB and Private condos) are going up in the next 2 years, if supply goes up and demand comes down, prices are likely to come down as well.

Looks like "High Home Prices" is one of the main concerns of Singaporeans. My personal hunch is that a General Election is coming soon, and they would like to keep prices stable or even slightly lower to win the Young Singaporeans' votes.