Thoughts in 2022

As the time goes by, my conviction on certain things validated. It seems that it is worthless to elaborate on them early until the event confirm my thoughts.

Marketing - Advertising

All of us probably discover that FTX used well known names to advertise its services. I am not sure who or what kind of people listen the FTX advertisements and use their services. Assuming that there are a certain portion of people (the one who want to be rich quickly), they probably saw their (principal amount of) money vanished.

With the poor internal control, and non-existent check and balance, any cryptocurrency exchange don't look good at all. Auditors are starting to distance away, learning that its (validation) reports are not effective without any suitable methods.

Charlie Munger gave crude verdict that we should never invest in cryptocurrency. It takes a long time until this FTX drama validated him. I wonder what mental models he use to analyse it very quickly.

Back to the main headline subject title, I do hope that the average person should spend more time to think before considering it. It is much simplier to restrict all financial institutions to advertise their products and services. However, it can be argued away with 'trustworthy' banks. How many banks will become Lehman Brothers in the future?

In the similar vein, can the average person rely people who work in the financial industry? Just because they are professionals? When I encounter this train of thought, I feel uneasy. Granted that it is not easy to find reliable one, it is scary for an average person's money to be managed by another 'Madoff' person.

End of the day, it is much better to see how one operate the investment management operation rather than numbers itself. Good return in a year don't mean much if one's thought is not great enough to go through years and years. That is why Warren Buffett is able to generate decent return for many years.

Japan Airport Terminal Co

Its stock code is 9706 in Tokyo Stock Exchange. On 16 September 2020, I purchased it at JPY4,700 per share.

I visited Japan in 2014 (stopover), 2016 (first full trip), 2017, and 2019. With that experience, being familiar with Narita Airport and Haneda Airport, I was sure that the airports would be back in no time with high crowd turnover and Tokyo Olympics 2020. But I didn't realise that COVID-19 restriction last longer than SARS.

Eventually, I sold it at JPY6,200 per share on 16 September 2022. The absolute return is approximately 31.4%. Actually, I didn't time my sale. I just feel that there is not much room to make more profit if i were hold it longer. It is because youtube videos about airports show that the shops are not fully operated or not opened.

When Japanese government removed the restriction on 11 October 2022, the upside is still limited. I went Japan in November 2022. I saw that shops are not fully opened on the departure floor in Narita Airport.

At this point, it may not be related to investing. I loved departing from Haneda Airport. Due to the obvious reasons that impact on the ANA's air tickets, I arrived at and departed from Narita Airport with Zipair Airlines.  I cannot believe that the circular layout - 4 departure gates - in Narita Airport is quite bad. It is definitely no way to tell whether the queue is for gate 23 or gate 24.

With 2 years investing in 9706, I will find out what its share price will be in 3 years later. I still have a lot of things to learn despite of many successes and few losses in my 10+ years.

Disclosure: No position in ANA, Japan Airport Terminaal Co, JAL, and FTX.