Busy September

It has been a hectic month till date, but I'm enjoying it though.

Commenced on my swimming class and just completed my stock trading class last saturday.

The stock trading class has been pretty intense and useful.

I had been buying stocks since 2012 but had no idea of how to properly evaluate a stock to make sure it is good, and no idea of how to take profit, when to enter and exit etc. I had made profits and losses over the last few years without knowing why.
As the common saying goes: "What you don't pay in school fees, you will pay a bigger amount through losses"
Since the biggest paper loss that I had made was more than the course fees itself, I thought that I might as well go learn how to do trading and investments properly instead of continuing to deceive myself that I'll do enough self study on the various free online resources and I'll be one day become a God of Stocks.
Time to grow up and face the reality.

Sure, I had took Biz Minors in NTU, and went through classes on understanding the stock markets, but back then, it was all theoretical stuff without solid hands on and quantitative analysis done, so it was all talk in the air without working on any examples.
It was akin to finishing my 1sr read on "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" and then declaring that I'll reach Financial Freedom by 40 years old, without the know how or plans on how to do that.

Burnt a few weekday nights and 2 saturdays for this short and intense course, and I'm pretty satisfied with what I had picked up so far, and signed up for the advanced class without hesitation to extend my knowledge further.
The only downside is that I have to sacrifice time with Ryan & Dear to attend these classes, but it is temporary and I know that the future payoff will be much bigger than the small sacrifice now.


Also commenced on my swimming classes this month.
Actually I started the 1st unofficial class last month, before the OD race, where I picked up some tips on the optimal swimming technique, but was insufficient to make a significant way to my existing technique.
After attending a few classes, I can tell that my technique is gradually improving, and I'm starting to be able to swim faster with less energy expended.
Of course I did my own homework and watched lots of training videos to improve my understanding as well, to accelerate my progress.
Swimming has now become more of a relaxing exercise than a strength training session like what I used to do in the past.
It seems that I am doing more swimming than running these days!


Picking up new knowledge has always been enjoyable for me, and it continues to do so with the swim and stock classes. Free online education materials and videos really make it much easier to learn, absorb and reinforce new knowledge.

I guess these courses can fulfill my goal for this year for learning new stuff, since I'm going to continue with the stock class, and probably with the swim class as well, so I won't have time to go for martial arts and will have to delay this till next year.

Learning new stuff is always good!