Writing Again and Creating New Content

Back before COVID. A trip to Japan for snowboarding. Last leg of trip in Tokyo.

 

 

Thanks to all readers who are still visiting this blog to read. I thought Google would have ranked this blog poorly due to the lack of new content and that there would be no more traffic but surprisingly, there are still hundreds of thousands of readers even with no new content in the last three to five years. Thanks Google(Alphabet, ticker GOOGL), this is why I love you and why I invest in you. You show a lot of love for content that is genuine and keep bringing it up in your search results which is why this blog still has traffic in the hundreds of thousands. 

I hope you guys are okay and I know life is tough and depressing to some extent due to the coronavirus pandemic, but I believe in our strength and our ability to overcome this pandemic and come out stronger on the other side. It's all a bit frustrating to have no deadlines and see no end to this tragedy but being constantly frustrated isn't good for our health so we all need to try and see the positives given this current state of the world.

I haven't blogged in a long time due to several factors. Life has been really busy and hectic with so many events and functions. With COVID and lock downs, all those events are pretty much all cancelled, so now I find the time and freedom to actually do other things that I haven't had time for such as writing, reading, trying out new food recipes, practicing piano and bingeing on TV shows and movies. It's strange to think that I now have freedom to do what I want when in reality the physical freedom to go anywhere and do anything has been curtailed severely due to restrictions and lock downs. Socialising is great but I'm also such a homebody at heart. I can be completely and overly entertained just being at home and will never run out of things to do while being home. Especially if I have books, computers, devices and an internet connection.

I have also been working on other e-content(unrelated to finance) and was also hoping to register a domain for personal finance blogging instead of using blogger as it will be a lot of work migrating the content out of the blogger infrastructure and having to work on all my back links and tagging. Even though I barely blogged in the past five years, I have so much content and thoughts on finance. 

The investment landscape has changed significantly over these five years. There are so many new companies, new unicorns, new green technologies, new speculative investments and derivatives(cryptocurrencies and the multitude of trading platforms, listed funds trading on the cryptocurrencies and tokens etc). 

Personal finance, finance and economics, investing and property are all still very exciting for me even though I have been immersed in this landscape and this context for over two decades now. I feel that all my investment goals have been achieved and it wasn't overnight. It was a steady process of setting goals, working towards them daily and yearly and then suddenly upon reflection, realising that I had achieved everything that I had always wanted, that the early retirement was now possible and that I could pretty much bum around and spend my life chasing the winter ski seasons or sit on a beach sipping coconut juice for the rest of my life without working and be fine. I can't tell you how exciting that was. The icing on top would be to buy a ski chalet and then I'd be completely aimless haha. 

Luckily I still enjoy working and the topic of finance is still just as fresh and intriguing to me as it was from so long ago. I still remember the feelings I had when my Mum taught me about term deposits and interest rates and returns back when I was 13 years old, when at kickboxing classes, I met a guy working at the Reserve Bank of Australia at 15 years old(thanks Dave) and he told me he was an economist and it inspired me, it introduced me to a whole new world to be passionate and obsess over. I was living in this small world until then and when he taught me about economics and spoke about his work, it broadened my horizon so much that I would count that as a turning point. Like a fish trapped in a fish bowl that has been turned out into the ocean and discovers a huge and exciting new world. It has consumed me for so long, the world of finance and economics is so intricate and endless, there are so many inter dependencies, inter related issues due to globalisation and also the advent of new products and new technologies have also meant that investing has changed significantly every single day and every single year. 

New stock apps have enabled a broader population to engage with the stock markets, new technology have enabled hedge funds and investment banks to beat the ordinary folks with their cutting edge programs able to scan through financial reports within seconds and start executing trades while the ordinary folks are still scratching their heads over the reports and trying to decide what they will do. This field of finance and economics is dynamic and that is why it will never get old and boring.

Anyway, get ready for new content coming!