ANZ Shares bought!

First ever share purchase experience today!

33 ANZ shares at $28.840 each. Time to hold and watch.... for like 15 years :p

Today may just be a new first

New first for what? Well Ive been meaning to buy shares off the ASX (Australian Stock Exchange) on an independant basis. Well today I placed a conditional order to buy 33 shares of ANZ at $29.000 Had I done this just before the day began I would have got this! (Price went down to $28.40).

When the order was placed the price was $29.140. Well here's hoping it goes down a bit.

Now here's a bummer. Initially I had a the plan to invest $200 per month into stocks of my own choosing. But this is really not very feasible as the brokerage fee is $32.95. If placing a conditional order add another $7.95. Thus I've had to bump up how much I can play with each time. The larger the amount, the less the stock has to go up to be back in positive profit territory.

So roughly speaking [($33+$8)/$1000]*100 equals 4%. For me to make any positive gain (assuming my conditional order goes through), the price needs to go up 4% first, then I can start talking about profits.

ANZ has performed very well in the last 10 years. It has almost tripled; from ~$10 to ~$30.
I think that works out to be an average of 11% return P.A. Not bad.

Again, the aim is to buy and hold. I think, by 2017, price of ANZ should hit around ~$90.

How to get other people interested in you.

How to get other people interested in you; Following six taken from Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.

• Become genuinely interested in others
• Smile
• Speak their name. Everyone likes hearing their name.
  
• Be a good listener, take genuine interest in others' interest.
  
• Talk in terms of others peoples intersts.
• Make the other person feel important and do it sincerly.

Top tips! Practice daily and they will serve you well in business, career, relationships and life in general.

Self-made policy

So there is a federal election on this year. Both the Coalition and Labor party are on about their policies for this and that and whatever....

I was thinking, as a voter, as an observer to the news and events that have happened based on policy made by governments in the past, it is so easy to criticise policies and also so easy to suggest what policies should be forward to parliament.

Now apply this to ourselves. I was actually applying this logic to myself, but I believe it can generally apply to most people. We hardly ever have any policies/rules or liveby. Im not talking about basic policies, like honesty, telling the truth etc. Im talking about more detailed policies.

Take for example investing and saving for the future. Most of us want to retire comfortably. To be 'financially free' so to speak. Now wanting and knowing this, most of us know what steps are required for this to happen. I.E: start putting away a small percentage of your income and then investing that in some index fund or managed fund, not touching that amount for at least 20 - 30 years.

Take another policy example of wanting to continuously improve ourselves. A very broad statement you will agree. It requires further breakdown to help understand where we can work on continuous improvement, Toyota style!

Take as an example the following points:

1. Health
2. Finances
3. Career/business
4. Public speaking
5. Relationship

The above four points are broad areas of life that I want to work on improving. For example health: I ideally have a goal that I live past 85 years of age. I think its doable. But for me to get there, I require to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Agree?? Ofcourse you do.

So what constitutes a healthy lifestyle? Again break it down further;

1. Exercise
2. Eating right
3. Meditation
4. Take a holiday once a year/change of scenery.

Take point no.1 exercise. I have a goal where I can comfortably jog 10km. Now for me to get there, it requires I have excellent cardio fitness levels. As a result of knowing, I have been regularly skipping rope (unfortunately now as regularly as I would like as of late. Poor time management is my excuse). Once I feel I am comfortable with my skipping cardio levels, I want to do other things, like taking up bike riding to strengthen and build leg muscles. As of now, my leg muscles are almost non existent :p



So what I am trying to get at with policy?? Well once having identified how we want to live, what we want to achieve, we need to further breakdown those ideas further into attainable goals. Then work on how we can achieve them on a week by week or even day by day basis.

Working on your own policy and then investing the time required to achieved will have tremendous results come 2-3 years.

Now having wrote this, I need to work on my policy. I need to get reacquainted with my goals and then work on them. Unfortunately, motivation is not a permanent thing. We need constant reminders to do what we want to do.

I'll try and work on my policies further and then work on breaking them down. Once I have done this, I'll put it up here. Keep an eye out for it.

Death to the egg

Was running a little late to work this morning, I had an egg on boil, waiting for 3 minutes to finish so I could get it off the stove.

Anyways, random thought, while I was waiting, eating some toast, I couldnt help think wonder if Id get another cracked boiled egg. This hasnt happen to me lately, but it got me thinking, why is it that some of us (in this case me) still have a subconcious negative mentality. I mean why cant we automatically assume the best. In this case, the egg will come out boiled ok.

Ive been working hard on my thoughts and I've come a long way from extreme pessimism to relative optimism. I guess I still have some more work to do.

PS: Lack of sleep doesnt help either :p

Economics and Abstraction

I found the following joke in an economics text "Economics Principles and Policies" by Baumal et al.

The joke is filed under The Need for Abstraction;

Three people stranded on an isolated island - a chemist, a physicist, and an economist - with ample supply of canned food but no implements to open the cans. In debating what to do, the chemist suggested lighting a fire under the cans, thus expanding their contents and causing the cans to burst. The physicist doubted that would work, he advocated building a catapult with which they could smash the cans against some nearby boulders. They then turned to the economist for his suggestion. The thought for a moment and announced his solution: 'Let's assume we have a can opener'.

I find this joke hilarious. Not least because its quite relevant today with the Federal Elections coming up and the Coalition especially touting their superior management of the economy. Perhaps there is something abstract about that.

I want to win friends and influence people. :p

Yep, Ive just started listening to Dale Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People".

In the first 10 minutes he says the highest paid engineers arent those with the most technical knowledge. But those with technical knowledge who are able to communicate their ideas to their colleagues, friends, clients etc.

Brilliant. And I dont mean that in a sarcastic way.

This just tells me that Im on the right path. I have been attending toastmasters :). I reckon in about 10 months I'll be very competent. Not long then before I become a professional public speaker.

Write much and write often

An exceelentay post on Craigharper.com on public speaking.

His site: http://www.craigharper.com.au

Gives tips about speaking and I particularly like this practical advice;

Spend significant time writing, preparing and committing your presentations
to memory. You need to (1) have great content (fresh, interesting, challenging,
stimulating, confronting, funny, relevant) and (2) you need to know your stuff
inside-out.The better you know your material, the more relaxed you will be in
front of your group.Looking at notes repeatedly while you speak... not
cool.

I struggle to come up with interesting material. Now Ive been wanting to write blog posts regularly, but even when I intend to write something I struggle to come up with ideas.