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Jazreel Low only got back $2,000 from her $200,000 stock investment in 1997

Me and My Money is a section in the Sunday Times where they interview many successful people so that readers can perhaps be, inspired to learn from them.

Often I find that most of the successful people are property agents and business owners. It shows how difficult to become successful in life as a person building wealth with stocks and bonds.

This week they interviewed ex-actress Jazreel Low who was part of the first Star Search with Zoe Tay (if my poor memory serves me correctly)

Jazreel is more of a business owner nowadays and a pretty successful one at that.

We try not to post the full article but perhaps I can summarized a few interesting part of the interview

  • She came from a big family where she had to help up in the family’s bicycle manufacturing business. Money was hard to come buy and they can only spend on the necessities. She went through the same experience as a lot of us, teaching tuition, taking on part time jobs, even the ones I did before, hamper packing
  • She is more of a spender instead of a saver. The thought of saving only entered her mind when her daughter was born 11 years ago, at 36 years old
  • She got started investing with the influence from friends, where a couple of them were remisiers. She suffered her worse loss (she described that she lost her life savings) in 1997 which coincide with the Asian Financial Crisis where she put in $200,000 and only manage to get back $2,000. She says “I realised that unless you have the time to monitor and know what you’re buying, don’t go in. I was just following my friends, not knowing what I was doing.”
  • She also shared her bad experience with investing in properties in China, investing in an apartment after hearing that there are easy money to be made. “Strangers just took over my apartment and lived there, squatted there. I wasn’t familiar with the legal system, and somehow we couldn’t get them to move out. So I had to sell it, at a loss. I just wanted to get rid of it.”
  • Due to the trauma she have not held any stocks and shares since. She prefers to stick with things she knows and more “passive” things like property and endowments which she can monitor
  • She did very well in business, selling off successful bridal shop and music production house and currently operating a spa chain and eateries in Bishan
  • She doesn’t have the luxury handbags indulgence of most ladies but instead are rather weak against gadgets which she has to hid how much she spent from her husband
  • She lives in a semi detached house bought 7 years ago at 1.5 mil which is likely to worth 3 mil now. She also owns a three bed apartment at The Lakefront Residences with her mother and sister and drives a Mercedes Benz A Class Hatchback

 

I find that there are a few take-away from the article.

Fear of bad memories

Many people steer clear of traumatic events in their lives. After it, they want nothing to do with it. It is not just restricted to wealth building. My colleague refuse to eat sweet potatoes after being forced since young by her mom to eat it to the point of vomiting. No matter how we encouraged, she won’t eat it now. Same for bad experience with dogs when young.

It must be real bad to see all you own dwindle from $200,000 to a fraction of that. Those that have been through some of the bad crisis would tell you it is very difficult to prepare for it.

But it might make you steer clear from it. Never to touch it again.

Some of the worse outcome is that it might create some fundamentally flaw plans due to this experience or plans that are not well thought out, such as “Next time to be safe, I will move 100% to cash and then get back in, instead of stupidly holding and watching it go down”

The bad experience not just affected single individuals but also the people in tune with the topic. Those that did not suffer also learnt from it, and it would seem, lost a bit of rationality there.

The rationality is that it is difficult to predict the magnitude of drawdowns, or for the matter when they will happen.

It resulted in the best case study in 2011, where due to the European PIIG crisis, the local market dropped 19%.

Due to how close this even was from the 2008 crisis, every big drawdowns of 10% magnitude, which normally looks okay, looks like the beginning of a 50% drawdown.

Many were sure the magnitude of the drawdown would be like the 2 crisis: at least 50%.

Many were happy that they are in 100% cash.

Turns out the market didn’t go any lower than that. The biggest mistake that people failed to learn is that you can be overweight in cash, BUT you cannot not get back in at good prices. This second part is about magnitude and its hard to tell.

Perhaps a more systematic plan would help better. Read the important part of a market crash.

Knowing what you are doing (really)

The temptation of easy money is hard to avoid and we hear this even in office as the society gets more sophisticated.

To put almost all your savings into stocks and shares or something that builds wealth, say Land Banking, Property, Startups, you need to know what you are channelling to well.

Often, do have a hard reflection and assess if you have achieve a level of competency to divert such a large amount of your wealth building fund to a single endeavour.

We do not know Jazreel well, but from the account given, she might not have a good investing system to begin with, garnered by investing time and effort to build up knowledge to implement the system.

Most would advocate diversification, but I disagree to a certain extend that if you felt that you really have a competency, then go ahead, proceed with a good system

People look at a Stock Market really differently

Jazreel have shown to be a great business owner and operator. To be successful in not just a single business type but as diverse as Bridal, music production, eateries and health related is astonishing.

I wonder why she couldn’t look at stocks as how she would look at businesses. Perhaps without the right mentor and guidance, she would not have awaken to look at stocks as similar to how she would run her businesses.

Or perhaps the market is as treacherous as she make out.

There are traders, short term and long term, they are the fundamental investors, but mostly they are made up of people with hased up plans or lack of any plans.

Its never too late to get started

She really got started at 36 years old, but i wonder if that is a bit misleading since, how did she lose 200k in 1997? Perhaps memories are faulty.

I have friends who realize the virtues of savings or wealth building late, and they lamented that they should have started some time ago.

We can’t always turn back time but take the cue from Jazreel who showed that starting late but with good perseverance can still be rather potent. If you start at 31, you do still have a good 30 years to go.

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Kyith

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Dumpty

Saturday 2nd of April 2016

I am very appalled by your article regarding Jazreel not knowing what stocks she buys and also no longer hold any equities today. If memory did not fail me, shes an oil trader at goldman sachs as soon as she exit showbiz, how could an oil trader not know what she is buying when she needs to be equipped with plenty of quantitative and stats knowledge on top of keeping abreast with the current macro environments. Either shes talking nonsense or you are talking nonsense. And nobody can invest in Chinese property unless you are a Chinese national, and unless your house is a brick house in a village like some squatters, then will the migrants without a hu-kou shifts in and live in your place, otherwise it is almost impossible for someone to move in like this.

Kyith

Saturday 2nd of April 2016

hi Dumpty, i am not sure if she is an oil trader, but she certainly doesn't say that she is one. She said that herself in the Me and My Money article.

Andrea Kennedy

Thursday 31st of July 2014

if she had chosen dividend paying blue chip stocks she would have recovered all her investment and then some. people who invest to just flip are naive/immature in their investment attitude and need to understand that all assets move in cycles and as such investors who really invest for the long term should seek yield and capital gains instead of just capital gains. this is total return.

Kyith

Thursday 31st of July 2014

Hi Andrea, thanks for providing your perspective. Agree here and we have more in common in the way we build wealth there. still it depends on your mentors or who you seek wealth building advice. we can't always be privileged to meet the right folks, but she definitely met the right network in terms of business.

Viewing

Tuesday 29th of July 2014

Jaz started and accumulated cash amt to $200k due to her acting work before the Asian crisis 1997. But lost them all then. Well, she is just more 'cut out' to do business instead of 'learning & studying shares'. Each is playing to their strengths. Who knows these businessmen & women are laughing at our efforts in undermining the market when their wealth are pouring in through trading?

After all, these 'stocks' we are looking at are after all, still 'businesses' owned by someone(s) riding high at the pinnacle of them.

Just like you who might prefer to play your best in providing advice and spotting gems in shares' picks than venturing in businesses.

Kyith

Tuesday 29th of July 2014

Hi thanks for contributing . I tend to agree with most you have stated that they could b laughing at us due to trading and making a large portion of it. That if I am not wrong is the underlying message I felt from your comment .

But what we read is more of a narrative of being rather turned off by it. We can only work with what we have .

I doubt its appropriate that all business are sold at a high or con jobs (even though I am more skeptical usually)

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