It's the Blue Ocean, not the Blue Whale Game!

I felt very compelled to write this post as I believe this would save lives. If readers here ever feel there is a need to repost this, tell someone about this, please do so asap. Our lives are very precious and there is never, I repeat, never a good reason to end it prematurely. We are connected to everyone (and all animals and all of nature) the day we are born. Every connection is very important. You are very important. More than you know it.

The blue whale is the largest animal that has ever lived. It is a highly intelligent animal and has been able to bounce back from the brink of extinction despite humans hunting them for food. Blue whales can sing and this fact was featured beautifully in Pixar's Finding Nemo and Finding Dory. Hitherto, it is not known why they sing but I would speculate that they sing because they are happy and they want to communicate their joy, just like we do. Blue whales sing a lot! They sing when they find food and they sing to impress other blue whales. As they are connected to Mother Earth as we are, blue whales' songs are heard by other blue whales and sailors and other sea animals. Blue whales then repeat the same nice tunes, resonating across the oceans.

The blue whale, one of the world's most amazing creatures

Hence it is beyond me that a suicidal game could be named after such an amazing creature. For the un-initiated, there is a dangerous, detrimental game called the Blue Whale Game that is being downloaded all over the world causing teenagers to commit suicide. The game starts innocuously by asking the gamers to do some simple tasks like listening to music or to write an online status, it then gets crazier and crazier until the last task - to commit suicide. The gamers are held ransom as the game hacks into their phones and the curators would threaten to wipe their phones or reveal embarrassing pictures or videos if the gamers do not complete the tasks.

Do not download this game.

Here's a sample list of the crazy tasks:

• Listen to music the “curator” sends. 
• Write a status online about being a whale.
• Watch scary videos all day.
• Draw a whale on a piece of paper 
• Write “yes” on the person’s own leg if ready to be a whale. Otherwise, they should cut themselves multiple times. 
• Wake up at 4:20 a.m. and watch a scary video (sent by the curator.) 
• Make lengthwise cuts on the person’s own arm.  
• Get up at 4:20 and go to the roof. 
• Carve a whale on the person’s own hand.  
• Sit down on a roof with legs dangling over the edge. 

Even if you have downloaded a game, there is always a choice to quit. So what if the phone get wiped. So what if some photos or videos are revealed online? It is not the end of the world. But suicide is, for the person. Nothing can be worse when life ends. Majority of people who tried to commit suicide actually regret at the last moment bcos deep down, they knew there is always another way out. Suicidal people tend to think that the pain ends with death.

However the pain doesn't end because we are all connected. The loved ones continue to bear the pain of the person who committed suicide. Suicide family survivors bear the pain and guilt of losing someone to suicide for the rest of their lives. They will forever ask why? Why didn't they manage to stop the person? Could they have done something better? Could they be more caring? It is a like a broken link in a web. Suicide doesn't solve anything. It amplifies the problem and passes it on. 

Broken web

It is said that 90% of all suicides are actually caused by depression. Depression is a serious sickness not unlike other major illnesses such as dementia, strokes, cancers and heart problems. It requires medication and treatment. However unlike most other illnesses, it is a sickness of the mind. Depressed people cannot snap out of sadness. The negative thoughts in the minds circle around over and over again. The thoughts lead them to conclude that the only choice to make in order to escape the pain is suicide. Hence medication and therapy is needed to overcome this highly dangerous sickness.

There's an analogy here with investing. In investing, it is always a multitude of choices. However most market participants are inclined to think in very limited scenarios. This is very rudimentary and is often proven wrong. For example, when TV first came out, people believed no one would ever listen to radio again. Sorry we still do, every day, in our cars. Today, it's about disruptions. If Amazon is going into groceries, then Walmart is going downhill. If Tesla grows big, all traditional automakers will be bankrupt. Sorry, wrong. The world is never so binary. Walmart is going strong and Costco is at all time high despite Amazon's onslaught and BMW is going from strength to strength. Look at its long term chart!

Tesla or not, BMW just powers on!

The investing world is always about creativity. This is because businesses are run by smart people who adapt and change, just like our ancestors for millions of years. Hence people who think in binary terms or have tunnel vision approach will always be constrained and their investing returns mediocre, very very mediocre. Ever heard stock critics talk about how this industry is gone because of that, how margins must be so and so, using deterministic language as if they know the future? That's tunnel vision and tunnel investing. We have to break away from that. 

The Blue Whale Game is the complete opposite of creativity and coolness. It locks people in, limiting choices, using threats and peer pressure to achieve its tunnel vision mindfuck. I have to emphasize again, do not download or play this game. It is even worse for people suffering from depression. Depressed patients need help to break away from the tunnel vision that lead them to only one outcome - suicide. This game exacerbates that. It does not help.

Depression requires doctor intervention. Often times, depressed people do not know why they are depressed. It's could be trigger by anything. They then get worried, unable to sleep, cry for no reason then seek to escape reality. They also have this perpetual feeling that they are worthless or helpless even though it's not true. Everyone has value. Even a business that has already bankrupted will always be able to buyers. Depression is a serious illness. Do seek professional help if you think you are suffering from depression.

Are you depressed? Seek professional help.

The world actually needs the other type of game, a Blue Ocean Game - a positive achieving game where anything becomes possible and we become the best that we can be, helping others and saving the world. We start with simple positive tasks but grow to complete a list of wonderful projects and then make the best deal ever - never ever commit suicide. Here's a list of tasks:

• Look in the mirror, smile and say, "I love you."
• Hug your mum, dad, partner, spouse, sister, brother, dog, cat, kids, any other loved ones and tell them you love them.
• Wake up at 6 am, have a good breakfast and then go out watch your city/town/neighbourhood waking up.  
• Say sorry for wrong things you have done someone by texting him or her. If you are up to it, ask them out and say sorry in person.
• Forgive someone who had done wrong to you in the past, text him/her and tell him/her that if necessary.
• Try to talk with at least 5 different unknown people about something for at least 5 minutes each.
• Meditate for 10 minutes.
• Eat no meat for a day.
• Exercise daily for 10 days.
• Say,"I can see, hear, feel better and I know that I am full of love and I will make this world a better place." x 1000.
• Make this pact with someone or with yourself - you will never take your own life and you will help make this world a better place for all sentient beings.

By completing these tasks and making meaningful pacts, we can then understand that possibilities are as limitless as the Blue Ocean and the world is our oyster. We are only limited by our own barriers and the tunnel visions that we had imposed on ourselves. We have to regularly connect with positive-minded friends and with Mother Nature to move out of tunnels and into the light. That's when we free our minds and execute the blue ocean strategies to live our lives to the fullest extent possible.

Book Lessons #3: The Selfish Gene Part 2

This is a continuation of the Book Lessons #2: The Selfish Gene Part 1. Unfortunately, I cannot find any investment lesson in this post, only life lessons!

In the later part of the book, The Selfish Gene, the author Richard Dawkins introduced how altruism sometimes work in nature as it becomes beneficial to both the giver and the taker. The simplest example is what we had learnt in Biology 101 - symbiosis, the direct opposite of the parasitism. It was a good reminder that in struggle between good and evil, there are always examples of good triumph over evil. Though strictly speaking, the main theme of the book is to really move the argument away from good vs evil but rather to think in terms of evolutionary stable strategy or ESS.

Faces of Mother Nature I

In short, there is really no good and evil in the real world of Mother Nature. Is the cuckoo bird evil because of her parasitic way of breeding? What matters is whether evolutionary strategies would achieve stability i.e. the genes would be able to propagate into many future generations. Similarly, in our own lives, rather to think in terms of good vs evil, sometimes it is about having better strategies and think about what's the final endgame that matters for us and for future generations. Having said that, we surely must refrain from deploying too many "evil" strategies! We are here do make the world a better place, not turn it into hell!

One example that brings this out well is the story of the Tit-for-Tat strategy. This strategy became famous after in won over all other strategies in the famous Prisoner's Dilemma game when two prisoners are caught and they can choose to betray the other one or not to. As a reminder, the payoffs are as follows:

1) If A and B each betray the other, each of them serves 2 years in prison.

2) If A betrays B but B remains silent, A will be set free and B will serve 3 years in prison (and vice versa).

3) If A and B both remain silent, both of them will only serve 1 year in prison (on the lesser charge bcos there is not enough evidence).

In just one game, betrayal is always the logical outcome unless you know 100% that the other guy surely won't betray you. However when the game becomes iterative, things get very interesting. We can devise as many strategies as we like. So when competitions for multiple strategies were played via computers, it was discovered that the best strategy is actually the Tit-for-Tat strategy which means that we only betray when we were betrayed previously. In some cases, Tit-for-Two-Tats also work. 

This has found to work in nature as well with birds (again). Birds usually have ticks growing in their feathers and they can pick them off with their beaks but not those ticks on their heads. So birds rely on other birds to help and usually this works on the tit-for-tat basis. If you help me, then I will help you. A bird that keeps betraying would soon realize no one will help it get rid of ticks. Its head will get so itchy that it fails to procreate, or explode, or whatever. Just kidding. But surely they have less energy to procreate when they are always itchy.

Faces of Mother Nature II

Similarly a bird that keeps helping might find disappointment from time to time if the other bird betrays by not returning the favour. The tit-for-tat works because it helps to figure out who the betrayers are and hence avoid them. When it finds a nice guy, it would continue to cooperate as long as the other guy cooperates which works out well and both would live happily ever after, walking into the sunset.

In life, most of the time, it doesn't pay to be the good guy. Hence the phrase, "good guys finish last". Nature has also shown that evil does triumph 58% of the time as shown in the last post (in a population of hawks/aggressive and dove/docile, 7 hawks to 5 doves being evolutionary stable i.e. the ratio of hawks to doves will not change after many iterations) but there is always room for good. In fact, the moral of the story seemed to be that we should be good when it pays to be good and we should fight evil with evil when the situation calls for it.

Interestingly, the Always Betray strategy can beat Tit-for-Tat sometimes when many iterations of the game is played. There seems to be a knife edge whereby Always Betray will win and become evolutionary stable on one side and Tit-for-Tat on the other side. This knife edge depends on how the strategies evolve at the start, if the bad strategies become too populous, then Always Betray will come out winning.

However, once a population succumbs to Always Betray, it will always remain there. If we think back in terms of the jail sentences, everyone will be getting the same sentence. There is no room for "upside" anymore. The Tit-for-Tat strategy is different. Even if there is just a tiny portion of the population that continues with Tit-for-Tat, usually in a local cluster with no Always Betray strategies around, it can grow again and in time crosses the knife edge and converts the whole population to Tit-for-Tat.

The author further explains why Tit-for-Tat is so powerful. First, it is nice, it always begins by cooperating. Second, it is forgiving, it betrays only after being betrayed and it never remembers beyond the last betrayal. Third, it is not envious. It doesn't care if the other guy gets more money or a lesser sentence. Hence it is a strategy that strives to beat the system, not just the other guy. Perhaps that should be the motto how we should live our lives too! 

Faces of Mother Nature III

The truth is, Tit-for-Tat happens a lot in human societies and in nature as vividly illustrated by the author using how the British and German soldiers behaved during WWI and also in vampire bats. Not knowing when the war will end, British and German soldiers started cooperating rather than fight and die in the cold winter. They even celebrated Christmas together! On the other hand, vampire bats are known to donate blood to their kins and sometimes to stranger bats too when these poor bats did not find enough blood to fill their stomachs on unlucky nights.

To end this post, here's quoting the author,

Vampire bats rise above the bonds of kinship, forming their own lasting ties of loyal blood-brotherhood. They could form the vanguard of a comfortable new myth, a myth of sharing, mutualistic cooperation. In fact, they could herald the benignant idea that, even with selfish genes at the helm, nice guys can finish first.

Happy CNY!

It's the Year of the Earth Dog! But this doesn't mean markets cannot go up! According to internet predictions, this year will see resource industries doing well with oil and gas leading the way! Also, Donald Trump, born in the year of the Fire Dog in 1946, will set everything ablaze!

Dingyi Music Group

The God of Wealth is also looking to bestow on Earth his blessings in 2018. Hence Dingyi Music Group is presenting this beautiful 财神到 (God of Wealth arrives!) played with traditional Chinese orchestra insturments. With the God of Wealth's arrival, this means that property, gold and other stores of wealth like jewellery and watches would see their value appreciating! This is the year to seriously think about buying properties after years of weakness. For those who had bought, the following pic is for you!

The Dab Dog

Regardless of what Feng Shui predicts, fundamentals remain strong although we are no longer in the first innings of a bull market. At some point, the party would end. So be prepared! While there are opportunities in the markets, we should also be looking at trimming expensive names and raising cash. Meanwhile, for 2018, let's Huat Ah!

Happy Chinese New Year!

How To Live Longer

This would probably be my first non-investment related post. Well, it’s sort of related bcos in order to reap the full benefits of value investing, time is a terribly important component. So by living longer, your investments can compound for an extended period of time and you get richer! Remember Warren Buffett only got famous around 1980s when he was already 60 plus. Then finally attend icon status after the dot com bubble burst, when he was closer to 80 years old!

Btw, much of what’s below is lifted out from some CLSA report. Much as I dislike having non-original content, this list is too good not to be shared around.

Anyways, here is real deal:

A researcher called Dan Buettner spent a lifetime studying people living in what he called Blue Zones where the population life expectancies are much higher than average. Here are the things that he found out:

1. Exposure to sunlight: his studies showed that people living in places with a lot of sun tend to live longer, like Hawaii, Okinawa, Mauritius whereas people in Norway, Siberia are not so lucky.

2. A little alcohol every day. But not too much. I think this is quite well-known.

3. Big breakfast. Not too sure why is it so impt, but I guess all those diet programs emphasizing less food during dinner do ring a bell here.

4. Eat more vegetables. Not exactly zero meat, but more vege definitely do our bodies more good than bad.

5. Eat a lot of tofu. This is the only food that can slow aging somewhat. There are 99 processes that age human beings and no one pill, food or treatment can reverse all of these processes. Tofu comes up top though.

6. Have a social circle. With a group of close friends or relatives looking for one another definitely helps to improve life expectancy I guess. And this is not about your 501 Facebook friends, but real buddies and kakis that you really like to hang out with forever.

7. Choose your friends well too. No point if your best friends are thugs or serial-killers I guess. Even obese friends are not so good.

8. Get married. Married people significantly outlive singles. But not sure about those who are married multiple times though.

9. Sleep 7 hours a night. Not too much though. 10 hours apparently doesn’t help. But 4 hours is the other extreme. Napoleon died at 52.

10. Have a purpose in life. Retiring is not a good idea, statistically the year you retire is one out of the two years in life that people are most likely to die. The other being the year you are born!

11. Be optimistic.

What not to do:

1. Exercise too vigorously – like going for marathon every week. Moving naturally is good enough.

2. Smoking – Takes 8-10 years of life away.

3. Diet programs – doesn’t work. What is needed are long term changes to eating habits, eat more veges and less in total.

I always believed in the Grand Theory of Balance. Basically, do everything in moderation. For each of these points, you cannot overdo or underdo. Like alcohol, sleep etc. So to live longer is then really about living life in moderation.

Stock vs Spouse

If you are really into value investing, you should, hopefully by now, understand that buying and owning stocks can be akin to marriage. It is not about buying today, selling tomorrow. Or instant gratification. Or short term happiness. It's about long-term commitment, going through thick and thin together, sharing your lives.

Here's the list of comparisons. Enjoy!

Stock and spouse

1. Both are meant to be enduring life-long affairs.

2. Both require a lot of due diligence before committing to achieve happiness.

3. If you have made a good choice, the relationship only gets better over time.

4. You wouldn't admit it's a bad investment until it's too late.

5. If you've got a real gem, you can always show your friends and feel proud.

6. It's always better to start looking early in life. But not too early, teenagers reading this blog, sorry teenage = too early.

7. It's unwise to dismiss potential targets when there are only minor flaws bcos good ones are hard to come by.

8. And really, the super good ones are very hard to come by.

And here's the treat of the day!

Stock vs Spouse

1. A stock doesn't care if you surf net all day and didn't spend quality time with it.

2. A stock won't leave you for another sweet young thing.

3. A stock doesn't care if you look at other stocks.

4. A stock doesn't occupy 70% of your bed and SNORE.

5. A stock always look good in the morning, without make-up or grooming, even after 10 yrs.

6. A stock is never interested in how many stocks you have in the past.

7. You can still buy a stock even if you don't have a car, 2 condos, 3 country club memberships and 5 credit cards, well you do need a few thousand dollars though.

8. A stock doesn't need a diamond ring (with increasing carat) every 24 months.

9. A stock doesn't throw a big tantrum if you forgot the 15th anniversary of the day you two first met.

10. You don't have to visit the stock's Mum, Dad, 3 Aunties 6 Grandmas and 14 Uncles EVERY WEEKEND.

11. A stock will never complain about your cooking or your spending or anything about you for that matter.

12. A stock doesn't care if you make more money that it does.

13. A stock gives you dividends every year, usually you give your wife shopping allowance every week.

14. A stock gives you dividends every year which usually grows even bigger over time. Chances are not high to find a husband who can match that, esp if he is reading this blog.

15. When you decide to part ways with a stock, it doesn't go around bitching about you.

16. When you decide to part ways with a stock, it doesn't claim ownership of 50% of your OTHER ASSETS.

But a stock cannot give you a massage when you need it, a shoulder to cry on, share your joy and laughter, love you and care for you in sickness and in health.

And that's why Spouse still wins.

About the Blogger

This post is updated in 2023.

Thank you for wanting to know more about me. If you made it to this hidden post, you really tried hard enough. Much appreciated. I am Jay Chan. I am this half-hearted blogger, who had been doing this for a while without much success. Check out the following bloggers who have much more to offer:

• AK71
• Compounding Quality
• Loo Cheng Chuan of 1M65 movement
• Punchcard Investing
  

My interest in investment started in my university days and I have invested in stocks for more than 20 years. Being a typical Blood Type B (i.e. disorganized but passionate), I have not tracked the performance of my stock portfolio and it could be a Herculean task to try to that now since the number of transactions are probably in the hundreds and some of the records are probably gone. 

My long term goal will be to be able to sustain my lifestyle with dividends and for my portfolio return to achieve 8%pa, the original name of the blog. I have also thought deeply about Singapore's education system and our property market and written some posts on these topics.

8% Value Investhink, a new name adopted some years ago, comes from the components: 1) 8%, 2) Value, 3) Invest and 4) Think. It incorporates the philosophies of value investing and critical thinking which I hope can help us navigate well in today's world of short-termism. In 2022, I also created a team and put this platform on 8percentpa.substack.com. 

I have been asked why the low hurdle at 8%? In reality, to achieve 8%pa over very long time frame like 20 to 30 years is a very tall order. It means increasing the original capital by 10 folds or more. Warren Buffett has failed to beat this criteria as a result of his large portfolio (now a few hundred billion dollars) over the last 20 years.

8% is just a number and today, the relevant objective is to continue writing to help readers apply the concepts of value investing to make good investments and avoid bad ones. This is especially crucial in the Singapore when it comes to property. I hope to help more people avoid overpaying for one of the most important purchases of our lifetimes. The Property label contains some of my views. It is my belief that investing and in the broader context, financial literacy is something that everyone can learn and master. 

This is me.

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