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Sometimes the best way to trade is not via technicals or fundamentals but instead the buy and forget strategy. During the dot com bubble one of my buddies (Will P.) was always talking about Oracle and how great a company it was and blah, blah, blah…So I decided to buy the stock. On Aug 21, 1998, I bought in at around USD 24 and watched it everyday. I watched it hit USD 80 and then saw it crash like Paris Hilton after a night of drinking . After that, I was resigned to the fact that I lost a boat load of cash and decided to just keep whatever was left in the portfolio and not sell. (Click on the chart to see the roller coaster ride).
Recently, I was talking to someone and they mentioned Oracle had hit USD 20 which was a 52 week high. In the back of my mind I was still thinking I was USD 3-4 away from break even. But, I decided to check my holdings and my actual cost basis was around USD 4.15 a share. I completely lost track of the shares and it had split several times after buying it. I’m pretty sure if I had tracked the shares day to day, I would have sold out for a 100% profit instead of sitting on a 350% gain as of now.

Oh, but don’t get jealous and give me your money to manage. Around the same time, I bought MicroStrategy and currently it’s down -88%. Yes, it’s still in my portfolio as well, you win some and you lose some.

It’s that time of year where Capgemini and Merrill publish their annual World Wealth Report. It’s mostly a fluff report, but I like to look through it for several reasons.
1. See the geographic distribution of the declared wealth
2. Their definition of a High Networth Individual (HNI) and Ultra High Networth Individual (UHNI). An HNI is someone with over USD 1 million in assets, to be declared an Ultra High Networth individual your assets have north of USD 30 million. Once you reach that number, every private banker is going be calling you.
3. Asset allocation for a portfolio. It’s stupid to have ALL your money in one vehicle.

Download a copy of the report in PDF.

I went to Hong Kong last week for the first time and I was blown away by the city. It happened to be the 10 year anniversary of the handover back to China, so as you can imagine a lot of festivities around that. It also happened to be the 10 year anniversary of the Asian Financial Crisis that started with Thailand.

It was tough to not draw comparisons between HK and Mumbai.  Both are financial hubs and many people live in both cities.  But, that is where the similarity ends, HK has the infrastructure that Bombay only dreams about.   Getting around the financial district was as easy as walking around the elevated walkways to shield you from the rain and the traffic down below. People were very helpful and the city was full of energy. The city is geared towards business and it shows, I can only imagine what mainland China is like.

People told me that HK has the highest number of Rolls Royce’s per capita in the world, they forgot to tell me the streets are littered with 7-series Beamer’s and S-class Benzo’s.