DB Brazil ETF - Part II

The second risk is China's decreasing steel consumption.

The last five years saw China's big ambition to develop its infrastructure and mass market condos for its people and hence steel consumption went through the roof, resulting in the bull market in steel and shipping (of iron ore to make steel). That party is now probably going into its 11th hour and Cinderella is ready to drop her glass shoe.

China needs to shift its economy from manufacturing to services, which would need less steel and hence less iron ore. Not to mention that after getting squeezed by the Australian and Brazilian iron ore producers for so many years, China is also aggressively pursuing new avenues of supply in other regions like Mongolia and Africa. This means new supply, less pricing power. So the iron ore story might not have a happy ending.

The saving grace for the iron ore producers would perhaps be bargaining power. With 3 guys controlling 80% of the market, basically they call the shots. They manage the supply, make sure there is always just enough. They manage the spot market, make sure that it stays elevated, then the contract pricing would have to follow.

In the longer run, it is also worth noting that steel consumption is very much integral to the development of our civilization and it will continue to grow. China may have peaked, but S.E. Asia needs a lot steel in the next few years. Not to mention Latin America would probably step up, which will benefit Vale. After that we have India. So maybe there is still hope.

To sum it up, the Brazil ETF makes a lot of sense, especially for the long run. Pricing wise, it is currently 25% below its all time high. It is likely to surpass that in the next 5 years.

As to downside, well, there is about 70% to its Lehman low, but it's not likely to go there bcos there is some valuation support. I would say it might go to 1.3x PBR or PE of 8x, ie 30% decline from current levels. But if that happens, then it's time to buy more!

Well just to sum up here:

Pros:
Exposure to Energy, Iron Ore and Brazil
Cheap valuation at PER 11x with 3% dividend yield
High single digit long term growth rate
Often at discount to NAV (due to tracking error - see below)

Cons:
Replacement of oil and China's slowdown
Low liquidity (10,000 shares traded per day only)
High tracking error (does not track the index well)
70% from absolute low

DB Brazil ETF - Part I

Last checked, there are now 75 listed ETFs in Singapore. As blogged a couple of times, ETFs present an easy way for lay people to invest into stocks and shares without having to put in too much effort (ie do a lot of study and research). Basically, you just buy into the regional/sector growth of the ETF. To learn more, simply click on the ETF label at the end of this post.

Today's post is about Deutsche Bank's Brazil ETF listed on SGX. It seemed like this might be one of the cheaper ETFs out there amidst global bullishness on Emerging Markets.

Brazil has the 8th largest economy in the world and it is projected to be in the top 5 in the next 20 years. GDP growth should be a high single digit for the foreseeable future, although a tad weaker than China, its cheaper valuation more than make up for it.

The Brazil ETF trades at a PBR of 1.7x, 1 yr forward PER of roughly 11x and gives a dividend of close to 3%. Although not as mouth-watering as in early 2009, I find such valuations quite acceptable, given its growth profile. And definitely cheaper compared to China.

The components of the ETF are basically just 4 items.

1. Petrobras, the oil giant with its mega oil-field currently under-development.
2. Vale, the iron ore major, which depends on China's appetite for steel.
3. The banks, which basically mirror the growth of Brazil.
4. The consumer staples, discretionary and utilities sector in Brazil, ie the Brazilian economy.

These four sectors roughly make up 25% each of the ETF. So basically, for every dollar put in, 50c is betting on Energy and Resource, and the other 50c on Brazil itself.

The first big risk here would the replacement of oil. As we all know, when oil hit $150 per barrel during the heydays, it really gave a wake-up call to the guzzlers of the world (which is pretty much everyone), reminding us that being held hostage by the Arabs is no fun and we better start to reduce our dependency on this energy source derived from the remnants of the dinosaurs.

And so, the techies of the world started their engine and ventured out there looking for new energy sources. We are now going big into nuclear, wind, hydro, oil sands, shale gas, solar and even human dynamo in Africa. Of course, we are also trying to use less at the same time, ie more hybrid cars and EVs. Now this is definitely no good for Petrobras.

Well, fortunately, I think the mitigating factor would be that it takes a long time for these alternatives to actually come to the market and finally free us from the Arabs. So meanwhile, we want to develop other big oil fields to limit their market share of oil. And this is where Petrobras and its mega oilfield comes in. And it is in the interest of the world to develop this and make it work.

Next post, we touch on another risk and round-up this topic!

Habits and Snowballing

The Snowball, the much talked about book on Warren Buffett sits on my shelf waiting to be read. It would probably take me some time to get to it, as my reading list is so damn long, with at least 10 books on it. Not to mention the other big book that also lies in waiting: Poor Charlie's Almanac.

The concept of the title was made known by its author, again both simple and insightful and really apt to describe Warren Buffett. Perhaps you might already have heard of it. Anyways, here is my interpretation of it.

Basically, the idea is that something which starts small can grow very big given enough time, consistency and momentum, just like a snowball. When you first push a small snow ball, it rolls and gathers a bit of snow with every turn but stays small. It takes a while for the consistency to set in, more effort, and finally the momentum kicks in and it can cause an avalanche if you want it to.

It also reminds me of this mass email that basically transpired the same concept. A picture showed a beautiful field of tulips, or was it lavender? But anyways, what was interesting was the signboard next to the field which says:

Who: A woman
How: 1 tulip a day for 60 years
Why: For everyone

Or something like that.

Value philosophy shares the same idea. It is not about quick profits or the next trade of the year. It is consistency, patience, effort and time. One angle of it is about identifying companies that are basically doing that. These are the great consumer staples that basically keep growing their markets by selling the same products with the same strategies. Look at Coke, just do the same thing over and over again in different parts of the world, and the earnings will follow. They were in Asia long before we started talking about it. Now they are in Africa!

One big plus why these companies can do it is because they have planted enough seeds such that their brand is entrenched. Just like the field of tulips that take our breath away when we see it. It is also about mindshare - market share of people's minds. When it's as big as Coke or the tulip field, it's difficult for you and I to start a new drink today to compete. The snowball just keeps rolling until it causes an avalanche.

The other angle is how we as investors exercise and implement this idea thoroughly. That is how we consistently implement the same investment process, find good stocks, at a very cheap price, wait for them to grow and see the return compound to some astronomical number. It is not as easy as it sounds. The big hurdle is, as usual, ourselves. Or more specifically our emotions which inhibit our ability to make rational decisions.

This is the habits part. Good habits adopted at an early stage bring profound results over time. Think about exercising just 15 mins a day, or saving just $20 a day. Bad habits ruin lives: smoking, drinking alcohol. Investing is then also about adopting good processes or good habits.

I would say some important do's would be like reading a couple of newspapers daily, talking to at least a few experts per week. Specifically when looking at stocks, it would involve pouring through at least of couple of years of the firm's financials, trying out the products, talking to other users and finally waiting for the right price.

Don't's would naturally be don't buy on tips/rumours, don't look at the share price daily, don't sell to take 20% profits.

With good habits cultivated, it would then be applying the same processes over and over again when buying each and every stock or investment, for many many years, and hopefully the returns will snowball into something big and meaningful.

Steel Industry

After 186 posts about value investment philosophy, I think it’s about time to write about something else. Well, after all, value philosophy can actually be surmised into just 3 words. So, I am actually quite amazed why I could write so much. So going forward, hopefully I can write about industries and individual stocks. As and when new ideas hit, I will still talk about value philosophy and the big picture. Ultimately, that is what’s most important and what will drive long term return for investors.

In this post, I would like to talk about the steel industry. Steel is a basic commodity used by humans and has been pretty integral throughout the development of our civilization. Sadly as a business, it sucks. The industry as a whole doesn’t really create much value for shareholders although there are periods where it churns out enough cash to whet some appetite.

Today, about 1 billion ton of steel is consumed every year. China accounts for half of the usage. Outside of China, Asia including Japan, accounts for bulk of the rest. Well, this is unsurprising as steel is mostly used in construction and infrastructure which Asia needs, a lot.

The business model is simple enough. Buy raw materials like iron ore and coking coal, throw it into a blast furnace, out comes molten steel, add some other metal to make it better (like nickel for stainless, or zinc coat it for shine) and process it into sheets or beams etc. This in itself is not bad. What is bad is:

1. Both the input and output prices are uncontrollable.
2. Competition is very, very tough
3. It is very capital intensive

Raw material prices are controlled by the ore majors: BHP, Rio Tinto and Vale. Specifically, they dominate the spot market and use the spot prices to determine contract pricing. So the steel makers have no say in pricing. The final product prices are also determined by the spot market. There are international market prices for a variety of steel products including the most famous hot rolled coil (or HRC), for H-beams used in construction, for pipes etc.

The reason why such spot markets developed is probably bcos there are simply so many players in the market that is just have to be done for the benefit of both the steelmakers and their buyers. With such markets, products could be standardized, distributors can handle them easily and lengthy negotiations could be avoided. But that’s bad for profits.

But why are there so many steelmakers globally? Well, in the past, it was a country’s ambition to have its own steel mill. It’s a symbol of strength for the nation. The western countries had it. Japan still has it. Korean has it and now China and India are building theirs. What’s worse is when the various provinces or prefectures also decided that they should have, hence you have all these few hundred steelmakers all over the world, each having less than 1% of the global market.

In the middle of this decade, someone decided to restructure the whole industry. His name was Lakshmi Mittal. So he started buying small steel mills all over the world. But he realized that wasn’t enough. There were just too many. In a move that shocked the industry, he decided to buy over one of the biggest steel players globally. Today, his company is called ArcelorMittal and it has capacity of 100mn tonnes or 10% of the market.

But still, 10% is nothing in a world where the suppliers and customers are much stronger and you still have over a few hundred competitors. ArcelorMittal, amazingly, has been able to generate good cashflow by squeezing cost and investment. Unfortunately, the money has to be used to pay down debt and it will take another 5-6 years to bring debt down to a comfortable level. Not to forget, by that time, it probably needs to resume its capex plans as well.

Which brings us to the 3rd point. Steel is insanely capital intensive. It takes USD 1,000 to bring 1 ton of new capacity on. For ArcelorMittal to increase capacity by 10%, it will cost USD 10bn! That’s one sixth of its equity base today. Most other steelmakers are not even that half its size and a new blast furnace project almost always means new financing.

So in short, the steel business, though integral to the development of our civilization, is bad business. There is usually nothing left for shareholders, after everything is said and done.

Well, that is the big picture. Value investors are also stock pickers and hence the dynamics can change for individual companies.

Buffett had a stake in the Korean steelmaker POSCO for the longest time. The story for POSCO is that the company is the No.1 leader in a country that is perpetually in short of steel despite being one of the biggest exporters of steel intensive products like ships, cars, and consumer electronics. What is more amazing is that POSCO is also one of the world’s lowest cost producers of steel. It can achieve this bcos it has the most integrated high capacity steel mill in the world and it also attracts the best talent in Korea to work for the firm. To that end, it even has its own university!

Hence the firm consistently generated free cashflow and paid dividends while having a clean balance sheet with no debt. Having said that, the wheels of fortune might be turning as Hyundai tries to break its monopoly in the Korean steel market while the company had also tried unsuccessfully to expand into the Indian market. In recent times, the dividend has fallen to 2% while free cashflow yield is also below 5%.

So that’s a short summary of one of the oldest industry on earth. In short, it’s best to avoid, as the industry had not been very profitable for shareholders except for the 5 years starting 2003 when the whole world got into a once in 30 year situation whereby there was a shortage of steel. This happens when a big country industrializes after a long drought and no new investment was made in steelmaking. The last country before China was Japan, which started the steel boom in 1970s.

Next on the list is India, but that might be 2030, if we use the once in 30 year rule.

A Girl in the Convertible

There were some academic studies done on capital structure some years ago by two professors. I only remember the study as the M&M theory. M&M being the initials of the two professors. Both professors subsequently won Nobel Prizes! The same theory also talks about dividends, and I thought that the conclusions are worth sharing here.

According to the study, in a perfect world where there are no taxes, no legal or accounting fees and stocks are infinitely divisible, then it doesn’t matter whether stocks pay dividends or not. Bcos investors can just sell part of their holdings whenever they feel like paying themselves some money.

In the bigger scheme of things, it also doesn’t matter what the capital structure of the company looks like. The firm’s capital can be 100% debt or 100% equity or any other makeup, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the firm will only be able to generate enough profits to keep it from going bankrupt, and the market price of the firm is always the right price, ie its intrinsic value. And this is the basis of the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

Luckily the world is not like that and dividend matters. A bird in hand is worth two in the bush. Or as Warren Buffett puts it, a girl in the convertible is worth five in the phonebook. So as investors, we want some dividends to come to us, regardless of what Nobel Prize winners theorize.

Hence, I personally like to find good dividend stocks, and hopefully the firm also enjoys a bit of growth over time. The Dividend Aristocrats of the S&P500 is really a good hunting ground for high quality global names. As for Singapore, I have generated some dividend stock lists in the past couple of years. The most popular one is at the right column of the blog.

Some would question why this huge emphasis on dividends? If a high quality firm can compound its growth much faster, it would be wise to let the firm keep the money and use it to grow. This is the excuse most growth co.s don’t give dividends. Even after they become ex-growth, and they happily squander the cash in stupid ventures or M&As.

Perhaps the best positive example is actually Berkshire Hathaway. Since Buffett can compound growth much better than most people, it doesn’t make sense to pay dividends to his other shareholders. However it is difficult to find managers who can efficiently use capital to compound growth better in the first place. So returning excess cash to shareholders or doing share buyback when the stock is cheap is what a good CEO would do.

Paying an ok dividend also signals that the management have shareholders in mind. (This is also called the signalling theory). Ok being like 2-3% dividend yield, which is whatmost of the Dividend Aristocrat stocks are paying currently. The thinking on this would be something like: Well we don’t need ALL the money to grow, bcos we are in such a fabulous business, we can still grow with limited capex and can generate good cashflow too. And so we would pay our shareholders some dividends, while we continue to grow. Just as we did in the last 25 years.

The long and short of this all is that a stock has a good track record of growing its dividend payment is probably one of the best deals out there (if you can grab it at a reasonable price). Which is probably why Warren Buffett holds quite a number of Dividend Aristocrats like J&J, P&G and Becton Dickinson.

From Free Cash Flow to Willingness to Pay Shareholders

A while back, I wrote this post about stocks that have good record of free cash flow and naturally they also gave a lot of dividends. I thought I would just delve a bit deeper into how free cash flow affects dividend while also looking at 1 or 2 other factors.

Basically, to determine whether a company can consistently pay dividends and grow them, we need to know:

1. The firm's balance sheet, esp the size of its debt
2. The firm’s ability to generate good cashflow or even grow it
3. The top management’s willingness in actually paying dividends
4. If it actually gets paid out, what is the yield?

The first thing I usually look at would be the firm’s long term track record in generating free cash flow, which is operating cashflow minus capex, ie the cashflow that is left after deducting money invested in new equipment, new plants etc. The thinking is that the remaining cashflow can be used to pay down debt or pay out dividend. If the firm has no debt (that’s why Criteria 1 is there), then the money should logically flow into dividends.

On the same post, I only managed to screen out 30-40 companies that have consistently generated positive free cashflow. This is out of 700 listed companies in Singapore. This shows how difficult it is to actually produce enough cash to give out dividends.

However, even if the firm can generate cash, if the management is not willing to pay them out, then there is no point talking about it. To check this, we look at the dividend track record. If the firm consistently paid dividends or even increased dividends, then we are going somewhere.

An interesting case in point would be Yeo Hiap Seng (YHS). The free cash flow track record is stellar but it stopped paying dividends since 2006. It looked like they over-invested in the earlier part of this decade and is now using the free cashflow to pay down debt. But what is the management’s stance on dividends? Will they resume it after the debt issue is resolved? Or are they gonna invest into stupid ventures again?

Let’s look at the previous case study: Starhub. The operating cashflow on average is about S$600mn. The capex is about S$200mn. So FCF is close to S$400mn. The firm has been paying around S$300mn in dividend every year. So that’s very good! There is still S$100mn of buffer for it to grow its dividend.

However there is always the lingering debt issue. Starhub has roughly S$600mn of net debt, and equity in the latest quarter is a miserable S$60mn! This explanation on Drizzt’s blog explains that it’s due to some accounting after they merged SCV. The actual equity is S$1bn. So S$600mn of debt is no big deal. Not to mention, if the S$400mn of FCF is used to pay debt, it will take only 1.5 yrs to clear it.

But still it doesn’t make sense. Why does merging with SCV reduce accounting equity by 90%? Was SCV a negative equity entity? Even if there is no actual impact on every day operations, the book value is something that all investors look at. Can something be done to resolve this?

Well, perhaps it would be resolve in time. Meanwhile Starhub gives close to 8% dividend yield.

Which brings us to the last point: the dividend yield. Is it a reasonable yield? For every dollar buying the stock, are you getting enough back in dividends? But the yield is also a function of future growth expectations. A high yield usually means lower growth expectations.

Starhub’s yield of 8% can mean that there is very limited growth left. Or it can mean that investors expect the yield to fall in the future, ie dividend cut. Or it can really be a steal right now, and over time, the stock rises to $5 and makes the yield more reasonable at 4-5%. Which means you will double your money by buying now.

If you ask me, I think the former reasons look more likely. The market is not stupid, bargains like this don’t last long enough for an amateur blogger like me to blog about it. Not to mention that I am definitely not the first one blogging about it.

The best investment, obviously, is a high yield stock that can sustain or even grow its dividend over time. But high yield with growth is an oxymoron. If the firm can grow, it will keep the cash for growth instead of paying it out to shareholders. High dividend yield and growth cannot go hand-in-hand. But for some value investors, the goal might just be to find 1 or 2 of these high yield growth stocks, buy them and hold forever!

Payout Ratio

Payout ratio is simply Dividend Per Share (DPS) divided by Earnings Per Share (EPS), which tells you how much buffer does the company have for it to increase its dividends. E.g. EPS for Singtel is about 22c and DPS is 11c on average for the last few years, so the payout ratio is 50%.

But what is a good payout ratio?

If the payout ratio is 30-40%, which I would say is probably below the global average, then you know the company has some room to increase dividends.

If the payout ratio is close to 100%, ie the company is paying everything that it earned as dividends, then we cannot expect a lot of growth in dividends unless earnings is going to grow significantly.

In Singapore, sadly, a lot of high dividend stocks also have very high payout ratio, ie no further room for dividend to grow unless earnings can grow. But if earnings can grow, then the firm would want the money to invest in growth and not return them to shareholders. Hence high dividend plus strong growth is an oxymoron. These stocks don’t exist. Or they are very rare.

When dividend and payout ratio both gets too high, dividend cut becomes inevitable.

However, cutting dividend is a big deal for many companies in Singapore, bcos a lot of shareholders buy Sg stocks mainly for their dividend and if it is cut, it means disappointment and selling pressure. Of course it also shows that management is not capable of steering the business well enough to pay their shareholders.

In fact, it got so important to the extent that some companies actually issued debt to pay dividends!

The two prominent cases being Singpost and Starhub.

In the early years when Singpost was listed, it was obligated to pay a high dividend yield for some reason that I forgot. So while Singpost’s net profit was just over S$100mn, it has to pay S$300mn in dividends! So bo pian, raise debt to pay dividend. However, that only happened more than 6-7 years ago and the company hasn’t done anything stupid like that ever since.

Ok let’s talk about Starhub.

For the past few years, Starhub generates annual net income of roughly S$300mn and pays roughly $300mn in dividends as well! At the same time, the firm increases its debt holdings almost every alternate year, in 1 year by as much as S$600mn! So people asked questions like why do they raise so much debt when they could have cut the dividends to save money?

Well I guess there are no easy answers. But if we analyse the cashflow statement of Starhub, we can see that perhaps the situation is not as bad. So it might be worthwhile to look at free cash flow vs dividend paid instead. Which is what I would do in the next post!

Singapore's Dividend Aristocrats

The S&P Dividend Aristocrats is a list of stocks in the S&P 500 index that has increased dividends for at least 25 years. As you might guess, this is definitely a very tall order and as of 2010, if I remember correctly, only 10% or 50 stocks made it to the list. It is expected that the list will further dwindle to 40 stocks or so which prompted some to ask whether the criteria is too stringent.

Well, that is the way with our world, I guess, when we don't make the cut, we can always lower the bar ourselves. Haha!

Anyways, some of the names on this prestigious list are very well known, like 3M, Johnson and Johnson, Becton Dickinson, Coca Cola and P&G etc. Thet last four are also famous holdings of our hero.

Intrigued, I went to take a look at which Singapore stocks had a good track record of increasing dividend. Well as our history is not as long, I used a looser criteria of increasing dividend for at least 8 out of the past 10 years.

Here is the list of stocks.

Well, I guess you are as disappointed as I am. Only 8 stocks made the cut. Of which 3 pays a miserable 2% dividend. 2 are in property and construction, a treacherous sector. Another 2 of them belong to the same group entity. And 1 of them is not even a Singapore company.

There are 2 banks, but value investors are very wary of banks bcos there are just too many moving parts to get a good read on these financial beasts. Even Buffett had his fair share of trouble with Salomon Brothers 20 years ago and now Goldman Sachs, which is being criticized for screwing clients left right centre.

Raffles Medical, one of the 2% yield stock, might be interesting but its valuation is way too high at 26x. Might be worth doing some research now and wait for a good entry point.

The truly investable Dividend Aristocrat of Singapore might be SPH but it's main business is in a declining franchise and its high property value is based on frothy valuation in a flood infested shopping district.

In a nutshell, using the dividend arisocrat criteria cannot help us find good stocks in Singapore. We might have some luck elsewhere in Asia.

What constitute an investment?

The way I see it, an investment has to be something that can generate cashflow. Stocks give dividends, bonds give interest and real estate gives rental income. These are real investments.

However in the strange World of Wall Street Craft, anything and everything becomes a feasible investment, an asset class of its own. The recent boom earlier this decade being commodities.

But if you think about it, commodities shouldn't be considered an investment bcos you don't get a cashflow. Holding a ton of copper, or a ton of wheat doesn't give you cashflow. The whole premise is based on prices going up. And when it's based on just prices going up, then it's dangerously close to the idea of the Greater Fool Game. Where you can only make money by selling something that is worth very little, at a higher price, to a greater fool who is willing to buy.

That is why value investors are not interested in price, we are interested in value. Price merely tells us if we can get the asset below its value. If there was no transparent price on the asset, we are happy as long as we have cashflow. But if there is no cashflow, you cannot calculate an intrinsic value of the investment. And in that sense, commodities cannot be classified as an investable asset class. Needless to say, a lot of the newly created asset classes like art, wine, vintage watches and other funny stuff cannot be called investment.

However, if those above mentioned can somehow be construed to generate cashflow, then the story becomes different.

For e.g. if a couple of artworks can be put together at an exhibition hall, and the owner can charge fees for viewers, then we have a cashflow, and the whole business can then be valued. In the same vein, wine is not an investment but the vineyard is. Copper may not be a true investable asset class, but a copper mine or a mining co. is definitely investable.

Similarly, traditional assets that count as investments may not be such if it doesn't generate cashflow. The best examples would be perennial loss making companies. Think Chartered, NOL and the likes.

As the saying goes, cash is king. Well if cash is king, in my opinion, cashflow is then the true master of the universe.

The Story of Bak Kut Teh

Just heads up, this is a post with very little value add. I thought about this while eating Bak Kut Teh. Just for entertainment. :)

For the non-ASEANs reading this, Bak Kut Teh is a Chinese dish that originated in S.E.Asia that is made up of spare pork ribs cooked in traditional Chinese herbs and served in a soup. It is also usually served with rice and soy sauce. You can take a look at my half eaten set below.

There is an interesting urban myth about the origin of the dish. Coolies working in Singapore and Malaysia earlier last century had to do tough work like carrying heavy goods at the ports for the whole day. As they were very poor, eating meat was not an option and eating food lacking nutrition ultimately resulted in poor health, sickness and weak bodies and their ability to work to generate money.

So Bak Kut Teh came to the rescue. The coolies would buy ribs that nobody wanted from the butchers at a cheap price, mixed with simple herbs (also cheap, I think) and then eat with rice and soy sauce. Simple as it is, this dish gives them strength, helps to prevent sickness and allow them to work all year long.

Of course today Bak Kut Teh has evolved into a popular dish that actually costs more than normal hawker food and it is usually served with spare ribs with lots of meat, You Tiao (or fried dough) and other stuff.

So while eating Bak Kut Teh, I thought about investing and realized a few analogies which could be drawn.

1. Value for money

Obviously, value investing is about buying more for less. Buy a good company at a reasonable price. Buy things cheap. Bak Kut Teh stands for this. Well at least during the coolies' times. Cheap but nutritional, helps the coolies stay healthy, get work done, earn more money. Today it is a bit different lah.

2. No Fat

In investing we want to buy companies that are lean and mean with no fat. That's Bak Kut Teh! Companies must understand that they have to stay lean in order to generate good returns. Actually, we ourselves strive to stay healthy and keep those cholesterol away so that we can fend away the harmful effects of metabolic syndrome right?

3. Innovate in changing times

The origin of Bak Kut Teh crystallizes the spirit of innovation. First, the coolies or whoever working with them came up with this spectacular dish that helped improved lives. Then, over the years, the dish itself evolved to fit into society. Even today, it's a highly popular dish. In investing, we must also be on the lookout for companies that can keep re-inventing themselves. As we speak PC and PC related companies are dying, big names like Intel, Dell and Microsoft are going all out to re-invent themselves. Although I must say, it's very hard to predict which companies can successfully evolve.

As with individuals, a lot of people struggle to stay relevant in society bcos things are moving so fast, it just gets harder and harder. Perhaps the story of Bak Kut Teh is really about evolution and how we should always re-invent ourselves to be useful.