This week, we are please to introduce MusicWhiz..

Investideas: You have a very special nick. Why are you using this nick and what does it mean ?

When I was in my teens, I was very fanatic about music, charts and lyrics ( by the way, the nick is NOT related to my ability to play musical instruments – in fact I probably suck at them).

In my free time, I would keep track of music charts through radio (no internet at the time), pen down lyrics of my favourite songs by taping them on cassettes and playing them back 10 times over; and also record my favourite music videos on tape.

I now have a collection of about 45 3-hour tapes filled with music videos, mostly from the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. I also know and memorized lyrics to thousands of songs spanning from the 60’s to the present. Trivia regarding singers, charts and details of LPs and singles released were also part of my obsession.

This continued till I was in my mid-20’s and this is how my nick came about. My favourite artistes are Heart, Richard Marx, Chicago, Survivor, Bryan Adams, Bon Jovi, Foreigner, Peter Cetera, Belinda Carlisle and 1927 (Aussie band) just to name a few.

I have since switched my obsession from music to value investing; but still retain much of the old knowledge I have, and am very proud of it (though it did cost me quite a few dates with girls because none of them wanted to talk music the whole night!).

InvestIdeas: What can you tell us about your background ?

I was a “pure” local graduate, in that I had all my education from local institutions and never ventured overseas for further studies. I got my basic bachelor’s of Accountancy from NTU and then went on to do an MBA at NUS; and I am happy to say that being equipped with the knowledge on how to view businesses had allowed me to get a better view and understanding of how real businesses function. This has also helped me in my analysis.

I worked in audit for a while but decided the long hours were not conducive for a healthy social life, even though the money was good if you managed to retain your sanity for the next 6-8 years. I worked as an accountant in various companies but am now working as a financial analyst, which is a job I enjoy as it allows me closer access to companies in order to analyze them.

Nothing too spectacular about my background. During my secondary school and JC years, I had dreams of becoming a doctor in order to save lives and help people, but realized I could also do that by donating to charities and avoiding the associated job-related risks!

In the end, I followed the footsteps of my father and became a full-fledged boring accountant. But being the restless spirit I was, I was not content to remain as the guy who looks at history all the time, so I now prefer to project into the future instead.

InvestIdeas: How long have you been investing / trading ?

I had started “investing” in the stock market since the Suntec REIT’s IPO in December 2004. During the entire 2005 I was trading like a headless chicken – directionless and clueless. Through sheer luck alone and because of the bull market at the time, I did not lose a lot but hardly managed to break after transaction costs.

2006 arrived and I continued behaving like a blur toad, But by the time I had already started reading up on the rudimentary aspects of investing and meeting up with a group of 3 other friends to discuss stocks and investing. I was also an IPO fanatic at the time, and was very lucky to get IPO stocks of companies such as Olam (which has since quadrupled from its IPO price of 62 cents).

Through 2007 I was on a steep learning curve and reading up on value investing, and that’s when I “saw the light” in terms of my investing philosophy. Never did a method of investing sound so clear, concise and which made so much sense.

Throughout my investing journey, I had always had a disdain for charts and graphs and value investing described a methodology which required patience, fortitude and a lot of research and hard work to perfect.

Relying on my passion and rigorous record-keeping for music from my teenage years, I happily dived into the deep end and have remained a value investor to this day (though still making mistakes and learning, no doubt!).

Continue reading at the forum about MusicWhiz’s investment journey

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