Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Interview with Mr Butterfly from Bully The Bear Blog

Interview series
Hooray! Just clinched another interview with a fellow investor. My next interviewee (which happens to be my twelve) preferred to remained anonymous and hence I am calling him Mr Butterfly. Why so? Continue reading to find out the reason for yourself ;-)
I am treating every single interview as an achievement (or milestone if you like) as being a new blogger in the local online investment community, it might be a challenge to get more interviewees on board. But I am doing pretty fine so far and definitely hope to keep the moment going.
Without further ado, let's the drum roll begin and check out the story of....Mr Butterfly:

Q1. Can you give us a brief introduction about yourself?
I’m a financial blogger who goes by the name of La Papillion, better known simply as LP. It’s French for butterfly. Why butterfly, you ask? It’s my wish to see myself metamorphosize from a newbie, earthly caterpillar to a financially free butterfly. I’ve special interest in personal finance and I contribute every now and then to IM$avvy by CPF board.

I’m also a full time tutor, which means that I’m free when most people are not, and busy when most people are. Being a full time tutor means that I’ve to learn how to take care of myself financially, because there’s no one to manage that for me but myself. In other ways, I live accordingly to what I blogged about. My skin is in the game.

For those who want to know more about my self-employment as a full time tutor can read these two posts:

1.
http://bullythebear.blogspot.sg/2010/12/interview-with-lp-part-i.html
2. http://bullythebear.blogspot.sg/2010/12/interview-with-lp-part-ii.html

Oh, and I love cats. Cats rock. If you want to be financially independent, adopt a cat as a pet. 

Q2. Are you a full-time or part-time investor at the moment?
Actually, who is a full-time investor? It’s an occupation that I’ve seen written in the papers when reporters ask random questions in the streets for public opinion in their articles. Hence, I’m a part time market participant. I don’t know what a person who speculates, trades, and invests at different times is called, so I shall call myself simply as a market participant.

Q3. When (at what age) did you start investing in shares and who has influenced you the most?
I first bought my shares around the time when I started blogging, which is in 2006. So, I must have been around 27-28 years old. (Teaser question: so what age am I now?) However, I only started investing maybe around 2010. Before that, I was just fooling around. Maybe I’m still fooling around, but it’s a more professional kind of fooling around now.

I don’t have family members who can introduce me to investing. None of my parents dabble in the stock market. I can only read what others wrote, and therefore books are what influenced me the most, not any particular person. And I’ve read a lot of them. Three stands out among all the books read: Alexander Elder’s Sell and Sell Short, Pat Dorsey’s Five rules for successful stock investing and Mary Buffett’s Buffettology are my Polaris in the sky that I look for guidance year after year.


Q4. Do you view yourself as long-term (holding shares in years), short-term investor (holding shares in days/months) or mixture?
A Mixture. I’ve held shares for 10 yrs to a few minutes and anything in between. 

Q5. What is your basis of selecting the shares to invest (e.g. basing on fundamental analysis, technical analysis or other methods/sources [share a little bit more details if it is the latter])?
A mix of both fundamental analysis and technical analysis. If it’s the market downturn, I’ll first do a TA scan to filter out stocks that have a higher probability of rebounding. Then I’ll look through their annual report and do a brief Graham-style crunch of numbers. If I feel the market is trending upwards or at a high, I’ll do a FA scan first, then check their TA to go ahead. There’s no reason not to do both, at least for me.

Q6. What is your targeted and achieved annual rate of returns (%) so far?
I’ve no targeted returns. My achieved rate of returns is overall negative. I’m still paying my student loans from the market’s education fees. From a drawdown of nearly 60k, it’s now negative by about 10k. I’ve come a long way. The point when I recover all my losses will be a great point to begin calculating my returns from a fresh start. If you started off losing a lot of money, you’ll have a healthy respect for your achievable yields. You’ll have a healthy respect for risk. You’ll have a healthy attitude towards losing insane amount of money and being able to pull yourself out from depression. I can’t say for everyone, but I think starting off from the wrong foot in my investing journey is the right journey for me. 

Q7. What is your most recommended online investing resource (site or blog) to share with our readers?
TheFinance.sg – it’s still the best blog aggregator of all the interesting blogs in Singapore. I refresh several times a day to check for fresh updates.

Q8. Besides shares, what other investment are you involved in (e.g. Real Estates, Bonds or REITs etc)?
I’m in bonds and REITS too, besides shares. I’m very involved in investing in myself, as should everyone else. Read like crazy, exercise and eat healthily, but still die anyway. Oh well…
Q9. What is your Portfolio Distribution like”?
About 50% in stocks, a small % in bonds and the rest in investible cash. I’m actually building up my cash reserves to build a sizable army to take over the world. My cat friends are all going to help me achieve that.

Nah, I’m kidding. My cat friends can’t be bothered.


Q10. If the readers what to get in touch with you, how to get hold of you? (Sharing of your website/blog/social media profile etc..)
They can use a specially modified Klieg searchlight with a symbol of a cat attached to the light and project a cat emblem on the sky. Or they can find me at my blog, Bullythebear, at this website: http://bullythebear.blogspot.sg/

From the wicked and funny answers from Mr Butterfly aka La Lapillion aka LP, there are at least two things we knew about him now :

1. He is an hard-core cat lover
2. He seems to be a funny guy (at least his online personality)
By the way, if you are a retail investor and would like to be featured in my "Interview With The Fellow Investors" blog series, please feel free to email me at investopenly@gmail.com

For the complete list of my previous interviewees, do check it out here

Cheers!

8 comments:

  1. LP tuition fees alone can replace many of the active income that other people earn in a corporate world. Big respect for him ;)

    ReplyDelete
  2. You see many tutors driving big cars and quite number of them driving sport cars too. Right?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am not so sure about that.... but I guess that happens to all professions.. ;-)

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  3. Hi B,

    Of cos it had to be able to replace income earned from corporate world! Otherwise I eat grass lol :) but nothing to be respectful about lah.. I'm just a normal person trying to earn a living doing my own thing.

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    Replies
    1. Butterfly, as long as this is your passion and you are following your passion, you WIN liao! ;-)

      Delete
  4. Hi bro8888,

    Actually Nope. I see them driving normal cars or just taking public transport. A car would be perfect sense because it broadens the reach and mobility to earn more income. It's a capital investment for revenue increment! Lol

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    Replies
    1. I also think so..but I guess CW8888 saw too many tutors in big and sport cars near his house lol

      Delete

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