Rambling

#1

As my first week back at work is coming to a close, I guess my long vacation is officially over. As I battled with the shells of a particularly resistant crayfish on a busy street in Shanghai, discussing the ousting of their prime minister with a table of Australians, I suddenly remembered the date, and happily yelled “happy Independence Day!” Only to be reminded that I’m the only American present and no one was eager to celebrate with me. These are the same people who were enthusiastically discussing Canada Day just the weekend before! I thought ruefully. But then again, I wasn’t inviting them to a free-flow booze event.

It did not occur to me, until later, that my identity has changed from a Chinese in America to an American in China. When you are called American Chinese instead of Chinese American, you realize that the order of things do matter. As lucky as I am to have grown up in both cultures, there are things that people expect me to know that I don’t, while other times I still manage to surprise a few with knowledge of something completely obscure.

Those moments make me feel proud, and accepted.

#2

This past weekend I volunteered at a career day event for Shanghai Sunrise, an organization that provides scholarships to underprivileged high school and college students in the Shanghai surrounding area. The event consisted of a couple of workshops and panel discussions where volunteers spent a few minutes describing their own work experiences to students and offer a few words of advice. A few of the volunteers touched up on the topic of following one’s dreams rather than just doing things for the money. I cringed a bit at this, since these students come from some of the poorest families (with household income of <1500RMB per month), and for many, their dream is to find a decent job that will allow them to support their families.

The job outlook for Chinese college graduates is probably worse than the situation for their American counterparts. For years kids from the countryside have strived towards a college education, leading to a white collared job and coming home loaded with pride and most importantly, money. In today’s competitive economy, just the brains and hard work may not get you to a decent job anymore. Especially for these kids, who have no connections to speak of, their struggle is even tougher.

To be able to dream is a luxury to many. As a first generation immigrant, I too can tell the story of how my parents sacrificed so much to bring me to America so I can get a good education and the chance for a better life. What I’m grateful for most of all, is that they never expected me to fulfill the dreams they couldn’t live themselves. Instead, they gave me the opportunity to choose a dream of my own. So perhaps many of these students won’t be able to fulfill their own dreams either. Dreams take many steps, and sometimes those steps take generations. The inability to reach a goal may cause much pain, but the hope in seeing it come true can sustain a lifetime of struggle.

#3

Then the next day, I had to provide my stock holdings to work to make sure I don’t have any independence issues. As it turns out, I will need to sell half of my stocks, and a few at a loss. In hindsight I should have probably sold those a while ago, but as a lazy investor, I decided to keep my holdings until I found something else I liked better. Also, I never really liked the idea of short term investing, because it goes against the original concept of companies offering shares to the public. I always thought it was more of an excuse for my laziness, but after reading a couple of articles (see here and here), I feel a bit better.

During my gruesome months of studying for the CFA (I stopped myself at level 1), I was reintroduced to the idea of technical trading, a topic I left in my undergrad classrooms. For those of you lucky enough to not know or care, it’s the concept of studying graphs and charts when it comes to stocks, and basing investment decisions on market movement rather than the performance of the underlying company itself. I’ve read the success stories of some of these traders, and agree that there’s great money to be made this way. I tried it for a while, buying and selling commodities every few days and making a great profit, until the price just started dropping non-stop one day 😛 Then I looked back at my portfolio performance, and realized that the stocks that I had bought because I liked a certain company and/or its product/service, and held because I believed in the company, had actually performed much better.

So I went back to my old lazy style of investing. Buying stocks of companies I like and keeping them. I’ll probably never become rich this way, but I don’t think I’ll go broke, and I’m satisfied that I own a piece of a company that I believe in.