Hello! Over the short run, stock prices are volatile - they could fall for any reason. This applies to Google (technically, Alphabet) and Facebook too. Their shares definitely could fall in the coming weeks, or they could rise - no one knows for sure. And movements of share prices over the short run tell us nothing about the long-run future. What we can be sure of though is, Alphabet and Facebook's share price will be higher five to 10 years from now, if their profits and cash flows are much higher five to 10 years from now. Over the long run, the price of a stock is governed by the performance of its business.

Hello! Agoda and Booking.com belong to the same parent company, Booking Holdings. TripAdvisor is not an online travel agent (OTA) - it's a travel research website. TripAdvisor's revenue comes mainly from online travel agents advertising on its platform. So, Booking is actually a customer of TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor tried to become an online travel agent a few years, but that experiment failed. Expedia is an online travel agent and a competitor to Booking. Booking is the world's largest OTA, with Expedia being second. What makes Booking's websites better than its competitors for travellers? I will say it's the better overall experience that travellers have on the website. Booking can support around 50 different languages, and recently established a payments platform that can allow smoother payment transactions (think about a traveller using a Mastercard credit card in a country that accepts only mostly PayTM, for example - Booking's payments platform can help facilitate the payment faster).

Hi Leo! That is a fascinating question you asked. My take is that everyone can be a good investor with the right behaviour, but only a few can be superior. On the first point, I had discussed why investors lose money in the stock market in an article in my personal investing blog. The TL;DR version of my article is that investors succumb to greed and fear; and investors invest without knowing what they're investing in. On the second point, I'll use football as an analogy. If everyone trains hard, they likely can be a competent football player that can pass and tackle. But not everyone can be a Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo - they are innately talented. I also discussed a similar point in another article in my blog. The relevant excerpts are below: "The analytical edge is where you’re able to process information differently and come up with better insights compared to most. I believe, like Huber does, that this is still possible. Give two investors the exact same information about a company and it’s highly likely they will arrive at a different conclusion about its attractiveness as an investment opportunity. As a great example, we can look at Mastercard and how investors Chuck Akre and Mohnish Pabrai think about the credit card company. Akre runs the Akre Focus Fund, which has generated an impressive annual return of 16.8% from inception in August 2009 through to 30 September 2019. Over the same period, the S&P 500’s annual return was just 13.5%. Pabrai also has a fantastic long-term record. His fund’s annual return of 13.3% from 1999 to 30 June 2019 is nearly double that of the US market’s 7.0%. At the end of September 2019, Mastercard made up 10% of the Akre Focus Fund. So clearly, Akre thinks highly of the company. Pabrai, on the other hand, made it very clear in a recent interview that he wouldn’t touch Mastercard with a 10-feet barge pool. In the October 2019 edition of Columbia Business School’s investing newsletter, Graham and Doddsville, Pabrai said: “Is MasterCard a compounder? Yeah. But what’s the multiple? I can’t even look. Investing is not about buying great businesses, it’s about making great investments. A great compounder may not be a great investment.” The fact that two highly accomplished stock market investors can have wildly differing views on the same company means that it is possible for us to develop an analytical edge. But it is not easy to achieve. In fact, I have a hunch that the ability to consistently produce differentiated insight may be an innate talent that some investors possess and others don’t."

Hello Jon! I wrote an article on my investing blog that describes the framework I use to pick high-growth companies. You can check it out. Article: https://www.thegoodinvestors.sg/my-investment-framework/ The TL;DR version is, I want companies that have the following characteristics: 1. Revenues that are small in a large and/or growing market; or revenues that are large in a fast growing market. 2. A strong balance sheet with minimal or reasonable levels of debt. 3. A management team with integrity, capability, and an innovative mindset. 4. High levels of recurring revenue, either through contracts or customer behaviour 5. Proven ability to grow 6. A high likelihood of being able to generate strong free cash flow in the future.

Hello Gabriel! When the Motley Fool Singapore was around (I worked there from the very beginning), we were impartial - our only source of revenue were the subscribers who paid us for our investment research and recommendations. I believe Dr Wealth and Fifth Person (I have friends working in both organisations) also have research services that earn revenue from subscribers - that's impartial to me too.

Hello! There's a caveat to note about my answer - and that is, I've never attended any of the courses that I'm going to mention. But I specifically highlight them because I think the methodology they teach is sound (based on the articles and materials they have prepared that I've come across) and their prices are reasonable (based on what is publicly advertised). 1. Dr Wealth's factor investing courses 2. The Fifth Person's courses 3. 10X Capital's courses And I agree with Jonathan's earlier response that the character of the person conducting the courses is very important.

Hello Noel! I don't know much about good ETFs to invest in to gain exposure to China's stock market. But I do have some useful things to share in terms of how we can select good ETFs: It can be found here (it's my response to a similar question in Seedly as yours).

Hello Gabriel! It will be my first time attending Seedly Personal Finance Festival. I’m attending as one of the keynote speakers. Come say hi! :)

Hello! It's wonderful to know that you already have a job that you're very interested in. That's fantastic! I don't have the right knowledge to help with your questions (though I'm quite sure that knowing how to operate a Bloomberg terminal is a big-plus for investment banks). But I have come across some really good articles that give some useful perspectives on the investment banking job: Here and here. Best of luck in your job hunt!

Hello! I think the best strategy is to write what you're really interested in writing. This gives you an authentic voice. And because the topic you're writing on is something you're interested in, you (1) likely have unique views and know more about the subject than the average person, which makes your content interesting to the public, and (2) can sustain your writing activities for a very long period of time. I will also suggest for you to actively read the articles of writers you admire. How do they structure their articles? How do they structure their sentences? I personally learnt a lot about finance-writing this way.