I attended ATIC 2010 that was held at KLCC from 20-21 Mar, 2010. This convention is geared towards the DIY trader/investor needs and is definitely not for the mutual fund/unit trust investor. The sessions can be generally divided into 4 categories:
- General market direction
- Property investment
- Technical analysis
- Futures trading
From my observation, I estimated that about 90% of the participants are Malaysian Chinese! Are other races not interested in DIY trading/investing? How come?
Anyhow, most of the talk are packed with eager participants. Some have to stand to listen to the "experts", I guess a lot of the participants are hoping to catch a tip or two to make money. Hopefully, the organizer will choose a bigger venue for this event. The thing that I dislike about the venue is that the so called "room" where the talk are held is made of 2m high partitions. Therefore, noise pollution occurs and sometimes I didn't catch what was the speaker talking about. In addition to that, one of the room (NextVIEW room) is so small and poorly ventilated that I felt like standing in a sauna! I didn't attend any talk that was held in that room.
Most of the experts that attended the convention are of technical analysis background. For those that gave their view about the market,
all believed that the market has enough run up and will correct in the 2nd quarter.
One of the boldest call is from Dar Wong who declared that THE top has been reached and we should expect a 50% drop soon!
The following is a brief summary about the sessions that I have attended (since I'm writing it based on my memory, many details are left out):
Dividend's Don't Lie by William Wermine: A very energetic talk from Mr. Wermine. He talks about investing in companies that consistently gave out dividends. One of the example is companies that produces basic stuff (food, beer, oil) that we cannot do without. The companies that produces these (i.e Nestle, Dutch Lady, GAB) consistently pay out good dividends. In addition to that, due to the good dividends, the price of the stock will not suffer a big sell down in a bear market because of the dividend that they gave out. Of course, dividend stocks are boring, but it is good investment for those that have the patience (measured in years) to wait for a market sell down to pick up these shares.
Panel discussion: The Year of the Tiger - Roaring Higher or Slinking Lower?: I was sitting at the back of room in this talk, therefore I didn't really catch what are they talking about because there was a considerable noise pollution from the exhibition booth. Generally, the economist are optimistic about the future.
Investment Clinic: This is a Q&A session with Dar Wong, GM Teoh, Brent Penfold and Don Schellenberg. They are all technical analyst. One question from the floor is which indicator is the best. Dar Wong replies that most are useless. The important point is to only use a simple indicator. The simple indicator used by Dar Wong, GM Teoh and Brent Penfold is
moving average! Only Don Schellenberg uses EW. It is in this session that Dar Wong makes his bold call that we should expect a 50% correction soon. I asked about their trading lifestyle and Dar Wong replies that he trades using his Blackberry, and spends his free time either in the gym or reading a book. This is the life I'm seeking!
Day Trading Futures for a Living by David Lo: The speaker talks about the benefits of trading futures. They way he talks, you will think that it is so easy making a money in trading KLCI futures. Of course he did warn you about the risk, but the warning was short and brief! There after, he invites the listeners to open a futures trading account with HLG Futures. I just went over to their booth the get a free trading log book :p
How to Identify Potential Warrant Winners by Alan Voon: I am a warrant trader and I was very looking forward in hearing how Alan Voon choose his trades. Unfortunately, I was totally dissappointed! According the Mr Voon, in each year, there is only 2 chance for the warrant to rally. He then show a list of 2009 winners. I didn't recognized 90% of the counters in the list except for IJMLand and Glomac. The list is populated with penny shares warrant. Based on the list, he concludes that to choose a winning warrant that gives you 1000% gain, buy the one with the highest gearing and premium (a few hundred %) that has at least 18 months lifetime! Wah lau eh! In my opinion, his advice is more like gambling. The reason a warrant has a high premium is because it is way out of the money. So, do we just buy and wait for it to move? Do we hope that the mother share will move before the expiration is due? I strongly disagree with his advice. In my opinion, one should choose a warrant based on the movement of the mother share and not solely based on gearing and premium.
Commodities within a portfolio Context by Avtar Sandu: This is a very academic talk. The speaker cites some research papers and show some graphs on how a portfolio that includes commodities is better than one without commodities.
Magic of Property Investment by Renesial Leong: Ms. Leong charms the audience about the benefits of property investment. With a fancy intro, I thought that I was in a direct selling convention ;)
Besides the free sessions that I mentioned above, I also paid for two talks by Brent Penfold on how to trade futures. I learned a few things from him, such as that a trader needs a portfolio of techniques to trade. That means that we should not only use 1 setup to trade but have many different setups to trade. I'm currently going through his materials to see how I can apply his method to trade futures.
Among the speakers, I like Brent Penfold the most because he is very honest. He didn't sell us a dream to make easy money. He told us that trading is like a hand-to-hand battle, it is a very tough journey to climb up the mountain. But if we succeed, the rewards will be very good. He also told us that, a broker friend of his says that of the 500 trading accounts that the brokerage has, only 1 account consistently made money for a duration of 5 years! You can see how tough is trading. Our job is to survive by using proper money management technique. If you control your losses, the money will eventually come.
Overall, I'm learned a few things in ATIC 2010. I hope that I can attend next year's event. If possible, make yourself available. You will surely benefit from it.
KLCI Weekly Chart
Property Index Weekly Chart
KNM Daily Chart
Dialog Daily Chart
KLCI Weekly Chart
KLCI Weekly Chart
KLCI Weekly Chart
