Saturday, January 2, 2010

Much belated Merry Xmas & Happy New Year

Nowadays I have been working around the clock. First I dropped out from MBA school to join a publicly traded corporation. The firm regularly imports multi-million dollars of raw materials like corn and soybean from overseas. These imports are potentially exposed to price increase or change in exchange rates. My role is to assist in analyzing the commodity and currency markets and devise appropriate hedging (protective) strategies utilizing financial derivative instruments. The company is also actively involve in many investments and joint ventures with oversea firms; for example, Burger King, 鼎泰豐, and Saboten... Existing and new ventures will need sound business models coupled with in depth financial analysis and projections. Second I secured some seed money to start up my own investment fund focusing in options and futures markets. Starting from scratch to build financial models, study past few years trading records and read up on trade journals & recent analysis have been a steep learning curve. Third I am scheduled to fly to Hong Kong this Jan 6 and Jan 17-20 to take HK Securities Exchange specialist licenses in securities (股票) and derivatives (金融衍生). After HK, I plan to take up the two levels of Financial Risk Management (FRM) certification... hmmm deja vu all over again... Lastly I somehow got myself into a 24 month peak physical training program in preparation for climbing Mt. Everest. On the last stretch to the summit, climber's mental faculty supposely will decline to 30% of normal capacity, hallucinations, weight loss of about 20% and possible lose of a limp or toe due to frost bite... check, check, double checks... sounds good to me sign me up please... (sarcasm.....) But I have to say I am actually making a noticeable progress in my physical conditioning. I might actually get back to my peak shape when I was running competitively for the university.... Nah i was just teasing myself... Happy New Year everyone!