My Open Review Of Big Fat Purse's Value Investing Mastery Course

First, I like to put a disclaimer here that I've attended the course by invitation but my review is as open and honest as I always do! ;-)

Yesterday (13th July 2014), I've attended the full day course, Value Investing Mastery Course, conducted by Big Fat Purse. In fact, this is the first of its kind that I've attended throughout my life and hence I will not be able to make any comparison to other similar courses. However, what I can do is to share some of the "Good" and "Room For Improvement" stuff that I've learnt from the course. Fair enough?

Prior to attending the course, I have read/learned quite a fair bit of Value Investing (the Warren Buffett style) and do find it that in order to get one of THE most important indicator i.e. Intrinsic Value, there are a lot of assumption and forecasting (on the future earning/growth) that we need to apply and hence make it a rather subjective indicator. 

After attending the Value Investing Mastery Course (VIMC), I've learnt that there are more than one way of Value Investing and the strategy that the course is cultivating is called CNAV (Conservative Net Asset Value) which is more objective and hard figures based. Of course, all strategies works as long as you apply it correctly but the most important thing is whether you personally buy it or not. 

The GOOD stuffs:

1. The trainers - both Alvin Chow and Louis Koay are able to put across the gist of their brainchild in a very systematic and detailed manners. In short, they know their stuff. Also, they are down to earth and friendly chaps whom never promise the sky in terms of what we are going to get from this investment strategy.  

2. The course content/materials - The course content and materials are presented in a very layman and step-by-step which even the newbies can understand. To the minimum, after the course, the newbies will know what key figures to look out for in the Financial Statements and don't have the phobia towards Financial Reports.  

3. The Investment Simulation Game - I believed this is the highlight of the course as we can really apply what we've learnt immediately into this simulation game. The added excitement to the game is that there are real cold hard cash involved in the game and real money are at stake! To be frank, we are all pretty noisy during the game sessions and really have fun (check out the photos below for the winning teams' photo shot)!  

The ROOMS FOR IMPROVEMENT stuffs:

1. Course content/materials - No, there is no duplication here (I am aware that the same thing appear in the "good stuff" section too). Noticed that the last two sections of the course ("Monitoring" and "Selling") are a bit too brief. Hence, it would be good if more content (e.g. with some case studies etc...) can be incorporated in the future sessions. To me, selling is as important as buying. 

2. The Ice-breaking Game - Before the course proper started, we were playing an ice-breaking game, which is a good idea, but I find that it is a bit too short and loosely arranged. Hence doesn't really breaks the ice that well ;-)

Following are some photos that I've taken during the course :

The lunch

The winning team (Buy Low Sell High) of the Investment Simulation Game 

The Runner-up team (Tua Hu) of the Investment Simulation Game 

The third team (Sure Win) of the Investment Simulation Game 

Note : I am not in any of the photos and hence, I am not from the winner teams ;-)

Investing is a life long journey (if you are serious about it), hence, it is not a matter of attending one of two such courses. But I believed that such courses will be a good starting point to expand our investing acumen and equip ourselves to chart our own investing journey!      

If you have not heard of the term CNAV and like to find out more about it and the course, check it out here : Value Investing Mastery Course 

Cheers!