William Chong

??!

Today, aside from preparing for my exercise physiology exam,

As some of you may know, I like to think of myself as a struggler in terms of finance.  I enjoy living on the subsistence offered by my doctor-investor father (he’s recently been awarded a Malaysian National Honour, much like the New Zealand Order of Merit, or the British Knighthood System).  However, I also enjoy making my own ends meet (especially with violin lessons, petrol, food costs and amenities), so I recently tried my hand in the share-market too.  Wise investments are hard to call unless you can see the future – but my dad’s recommendation of Auckland International Airport shares are pretty good so far.

So yeah, I’m happy about how God planned it out, serving up a big market increase to offset my previous faux pas share-trading story.  Basically in that instance I invested in a company on the down, and I pulled out to cut my losses (hence the loss of value), but then took a risk in re-buying at a lower Auckland International price at the time.

Bla bla long story short I made my money back (brokerage taken into account).  Plus $14.12!  Yay that’s like, what most part-timers earn in an hour!

Anyways, hope all your studies are going well.  I know some of you are on holiday, you guys suck.

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I lost money by putting shares in a low-priced stock, where a 20-cent fall meant a 10% loss in value. Yep. I think I might stick to term deposits or something… once I recoup my losses of course. If the market value of my share holdings drop a full 10%, I think I’ll cut my losses.

Explained as follows:

$10 worth of shares. If their market value drops down to $9, I’ll sell it all and consider it a loss. I’ll take that money and put it somewhere else instead. But why did it not rise to $11, or $12? Such is the mystery of life.

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Part of the reason why I’m in a panicky mood about finances is because I’m realising that I’ll have completed my degree at the end of this year, and will need to find a job and start working. To get a foot in the property market, you’ll need a deposit lump sum as well as a regular income. Is it possible? Of course. Oh yeah, didn’t help that a sea of red arrows greeted me this morning on the NZX page. It was like, man, Alan Bollard why’d you raise the OCR? That’s not gonna stop stupid people spending. Stupid people buy huge DVD-players and flat-screen TVs and cases of alcohol with benefit money.

Maybe that’s where all our spending is coming from, the government-funded benefits. Yerr… in a roundabout way the government gives me a student loan, and I buy food. So the government is paying for my food. Except I have to pay them back.

Dammit, bring back the barter system. Seven cows for a bag of lollies, anyone?

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