Permagnus.com

Here’s my list of things I have done (for better or worse) in 2006

1. My equity rose around 30%+ this year which is not bad if considering the Fed interest rate is hovering between 5-5.25% and Indonesia’s central bank rate is somewhere under 10% (is it? Sheez… I miss using Google or Yahoo to do a little bit of research before posting…). But it is quite bad if compared to the rest of Indonesia’s capital market which grew almost 70%+ this year, that means it’s better of for me to invest in the market risk (index and the likes) rather than managing my own portfolio. There’s something wrong with my trading styles and I’m going to fix that starting next year (oops, is that a new year’s resolution?)
2. Build a magazine, resign, and then invited back, and then (wanted) to resign again. It’s not that I’m not comfortable over there, it’s just that I can’t bare the commuting level. From where I live, I have to commute at least 200KM to the work place (since they don’t support remote work — at least for now). I only work 3 days a week but still it’s taxing my overall health (especially the migrain and vertigo), not to count that I still have to do my final paper. (mind you most of the reason for me quiting the project is mostly because either it’s my health condition — I’m a bit fragile or other commitments that I can’t neglect, in this case commitments to my parents to finish my college degree)
3. Final paper (almost) missing the deadline. I aimed for a February as my graduation month but for what it seems, those target might miss the deadline. I’m currently under a lot of pressure to finish the paper before that deadline to finish a 3.5 years undergraduate degree (the standard in this country is around 4 years or more). But nonetheless, if I do miss the deadline, I’ll try May as the graduation month (because it will give me enough time to focus on my final paper research and doesn’t diverge too far from the initial deadline). By the way, the final’s paper title is “Using delta-neutral to analyze risk and return in options investment”. I’m finding difficulties on which method should I use to analyze the data (regression? Double regression? Metric?). Any idea?
4. Mac switcher. Alas, I’ve given up my long held religion of DOS…er… I mean Windows. I have a grieve problem with my previous laptop and now I’m happy to get rid of it and switch to Mac. It’s been only 4 days but I’m already in love and pretty much impressed with the slickness of the MacOS X. Sure the hardware is around $100-$200 more expensive if compared to the same machine from other manufacturer. But MacOS X coupled with dozens of built-in app such as iWork (trial), and iLife is worth the admission price.
5. Opened up my self to the world of options trading. A friend of mine asked me to come to an options trading workshop early this year. He told me that options trading can give you a greater return than a regular stock trading. After months of ‘testing’ and virtual trade, I can say that his statement is true that options trading can give you a stellar return above the market average. However, this method also holds a very risky preposition by nature and is not suitable for conservative investors. Me my self will fully pledged to options trading early next year (this year I’m only ‘testing’ the waters) since most of my equity is tied up to stocks. More after the jump
6. Never ending and seldomly completed projects might be my middle-name. Not that I want to disband a project in the middle of things, it’s just that it’s hard to find a decent developers. Take an example a blogging service that I wanted to start with 2 friends (1 is heading the business and administration side, 1 is heading the development side, and me… bossing around heheh). We are pretty optimistic at first but in the end things didn’t pan out because the developers got stuck in the middle of something (his busy schedule I think). Hopefully this project will pan out as early as January, infact, I’m meeting the devs tomorrow morning! (PS: we already have the domain, it’s www.ngeblog.com which is quite suitable for the project — and some of other alternatives domain ;) )
7. Failed attempt to create a content-driven company. I’ve tried to start a blogging network earlier last year (and through early this year) but to no avail. Probably it’s because (at that time) I don’t have a clue how blogging networks work and probably because I jump into an oversaturated market (the blog consist of marketing blog, tech blog, and entrepreneurship blog — all in English). Note to self: do a market research before you jump in on any business ventures.
8. The last but not the least, more visitors (=more support) that comes and visit (and comments) on this site is encouraging me more and more to write a better articles (be it financial, business, or other stuffs). Close to 1.4 million hits (compared to 600K last year), although pale compared to other big time bloggers, does means a lot to me. YOU keep me going and churning more articles. Thank you very much! (and yes… this is the shameless copy of TIME’s person of the year edition: YOU)

Share This