I am now at another reflection point in my halftime journey. I want to take stock of what I have done and decide on what is next on my plate. It is also timely because I will be heading for a lovely trip to South Italy with my better half to attend a fantasy wedding celebration on the lovely island of Pantelleria next week. It will be a time for self review to better understand what I want to do next.
For this weekend, I will be submitting my final project for the evening class I have been attending for the last 12 months. This evening course’s aim was to graduate with a Specialist Diploma for Business Analytics. I have learned so much new data mining technology to upgrade myself and done lots of assignments, projects and tests. My hope is that I can leverage on my past banking experience with this new big data analytics skills to pivot into a niche sector that will provide me with an edge.
On the intention to give back to society, there is the Myanmar micro finance firm that I have been providing financial consultancy advice for the last 8 months. I am energized to see that the senior management team have done tremendous work over the last 7 months, strengthening their core infrastructure and achieving new business records. The end clients are the farmers and small business entrepreneurs (vendors like push cart food/vegetable sellers in wet markets and micro SME loans). These people have no access to banking and lending facilities and hence a small loan can help them to climb out of the poverty cycle, to provide funds and cash flow to stabilize and grow their business while weathering emergencies beyond their control like natural disasters.
It has been rewarding to see them grow and I hope that my guidance was helpful to the firm. The next few months will be interesting as we embark on bringing in an international name as an equity partner and doubling our loan portfolio by adding new lenders.
I have also been on the look out for investment opportunities while seeking to learn about new things that interest me. The signing up of a course on Aquaponics had led me to one such investment proposal which I managed to bring in a few friends to look at. Hopefully, we can some tangible results early next year.
With my monthly trips to Myanmar, I am also evaluating if we can bring a S’pore spa concept into the country. There are also a number of import/export possibilities between Indochina and China that I can explore and they pertain to raw materials.
There was a consultancy firm I was also talking to, to see if there are project based opportunities that can tap into a ready pool of PMETs like myself in order to leverage on our experiences in various fields, to provide a comprehensive report at a fraction of what the global professional multinational corporations charge.
For my personal stock portfolio, I have also been adding more US REITs that are linked to the retirement and medical concepts for dividend plays. I have also opened another OTC cryptocurrency account and added more positions, though prices remain soft. Blockchain is the way to go and cryptos are a by product that may benefit. Pretty much loaded on most of the FAANG tech stocks too.
What’s next? My Italy trip will be a good time to reflect on what I want to do next. We also have an Alibaba related business trip to Hangzhou booked for end Oct to understand how their online retail platform works. That should be very interesting to see where the China market is heading. Amazon is also trying very hard to muscle into Asia now. The next stage of growth for the Myanmar firm will be very exciting and challenging too.
Should I continue to seek investment opportunities as a full time career or should I start to look for a full time job in 2019? I want to continue to learn and acquire new skills. I am lucky to be financially alright with the kids education taken care of. I am too young to retire but what should I do for the next 10-20 years? I aim to seek answers soon to gain further clarity into my halftime journey.
Leave a Reply