International Pricing Arbitrage

At the checkin counter there was a fellow passenger who randomly started talking to me. Let’s call him, Passenger A. Passenger A happens to be one of the most interesting individual’s I have met on a flight. If I could sum up his nature of business, it would be in international pricing arbitrage for (any) products. Passenger A, was very chatty and somehow ended up at the table next to me at the airport lounge in Dubai.

A definition of arbitrage is: Attempting to profit by exploiting price differences of identical or similar financial instruments, on different markets or in different forms (from Investorwords | What is arbitrage?). Arbitrage is not solely for the financial instruments, it is for products, commodities, etc.

Passenger A, was a former air crew member, who worked a good 20 years upwards traveling with Thai Airlines. During his transit times and layovers in different countries, he noticed that the pricing of products varied from country to country. This is where the international pricing arbitrage comes into play. He would exploit the price differences on similar products in different country markets.

For example, if Product X, was selling for $50 in Country A and for $200 in Country B. He would go and exploit the price difference of $150 for Product X and figure how to get Product X over from Country A to Country B and make his profit.

He now imports and exports large quantities of products internationally through his network of business associates throughout the world. The majority of his business associates were all made when he was traveling as an airline crew member. You can image with an airlines, such as Thai Airlines, he was able to travel extensively to many countries.

Passenger A, now, jets around the world conducting his business (buy and selling products taking advantage of international pricing arbitrage), travels business class and from his stories, parties like a rock star. We actually know all of this international pricing arbitrage exists, it just depends if one wants to take advantage of it. Passenger A did, and kudos to him.

To success,

Robin

16/8 Intermittent Fasting – Day 29

Day 29 of 16/8 Intermittent fasting – who would have guessed it. It’s been an amazing and insightful journey. Starting from my Intermittent Fasting 16/8 Trial – Day 4 and the Intermittent Fasting 16/8 Trial – Day 8 posts, all the way to where we are now. I was purely testing it out with no real goal in mind, yet, this is a deceptively simple plan to follow and here we are at just under the one month mark. It is something that I will definitely be carrying on a daily habit.

Day 29 – 16/8 Intermittent fasting feedback & thoughts:

  • I automatically drink lots more water (minimum 3 litres a day).
  • No lack of energy at gym training.
  • So far, it is too early to see any form of gym results. I will give it a good 1-2 more months to see the gym training results with intermittent fasting.
  • I do sometimes get hungry around the 11am mark of the day. The hunger degree is much less now. I can now go a couple hours past the 16 hour mark of fasting, if I wish (I confess, I do lose track of times at work!).
  • Skin complexion is much clearer.
  • My body is much leaner. Comments on my face looking leaner from a few friends (they were not aware I have been doing intermittent fasting).
  • I rarely reach for snacks and am more aware of my food choices (leaning towards whole & healthier foods).
  • I have to think about food or where to eat or what to eat – much less – as I am eating less meals and snacks.
  • I do have to juggle my social times of having dinners with friends/family, or lunch meetings etc.
  • If was more serious, I would have done some form of body check up pre and during doing the intermittent fasting, to be able to compare body statistics.

Intermittent fasting is definitely a protocol that I would recommend to family and friends. Play around with it, and feel what works best for your body. I am pleased I am eating much less and have no lack of energy. That was one of my main concerns – how wrong was I. As mentioned at the beginning, I will be carrying on with the 16/8 Intermittent fasting as part of my daily routine. I may tweak the times and if I do, I’ll update you of the progress.

Robin

Intermittent Fasting Trial 16/8 – Day 8

Intermittent Fasting Trial 16/8 – Day 8… damn, that went by quickly. Slightly over one week since the start of my whacky idea of experimenting with intermittent fasting trial 16/8.

How is it going?

It’s been challenging at times, especially in social situations. For example when you get invited for brunch or a breakfast meeting and you have to either decline the invite or, sit there looking a bit off not eating. You do become more anti social, especially at dinner time. I have scheduled most of my dinner meetings to be lunch time meetings.

I did have to fly from Dubai to Bangkok. That was a real challenge of having to resist the food offerings in the airport lounge and the airplane itself.

Apart from resisting food, I’ve been feeling rather fine and much lighter. Maybe there is something to this intermittent fasting protocol?

Intermittent fasting trial –  changes? 

  • On the physical outlook, nothing major to report. A friend did mention, that my double chin looked smaller… why thank you?  
  • When I wake up, I have no cravings for food immediately. I go up to midday with relative ease, surviving with my faithful companion H2O – water.
  • It’s amazing, in my previous post (Intermittent Fasting 16/8 Trial – Day 4) I spoke about the thoughts on me questioning, WHY was I eating. Following up, I realise that:
    1. I habit ate, and it became automatic (grabbing for snacks, meals, desserts, cakes etc).
    2. I have surprised myself that I don’t have eat that much to get the energy required to work, exercise and live. I do feel like we are programmed to eat much more than we actually need.

Overall, I am very happy with how everything is going. Do note that it is only day 8, so let’s see what else happens.

Until next time,

Robin

Intermittent Fasting Trial 16/8 – Day 4

My test on intermittent fasting, day 4. I am a health nut, I love to exercise, and move my body and on the flip side I love to eat. The justification for all the eating is with all the training I have done – it balances out (sort of, right?). In the back of my mind, I always questioned do I really need to eat all of this food / training supplements.

We’ve all read we must:

  • Have 3 full proper meals a day
  • To have 6 small meals a day
  • That you must take 1 g of protein per kg body weight or lbs per body weight (Up until this day, I don’t know which one is right.)
  • To never skip breakfast, as it is the most important meal of the day etc.

There is a great deal of contradicting information. Hence why I like to test these ideas out myself and my interest with intermittent fasting.

At first I thought the concept of intermittent fasting was a fad. As I was coming from the view that we need to eat a decent amount to have enough energy to train, for our muscles to grow and to have the nutrition to maintain a healthy body. Then, it hit me, one day, whilst I was reaching over for a mid morning snack, I asked myself;

  • Do I really need to eat this or is this a habit?
  • Am I addicted to the habit of eating?
  • Was my mind programmed to eat all the time?

Serious, food for thought. I then wondered what if I ate “less” (vs compared to all the time or whenever I felt “hungry”)? Would I be able to still train, keep my body healthy and my physic? Then began my journey and research into intermittent fasting.

What is intermittent fasting (IF)? It is not a diet, it is purely restricting your eating times. For example, you can skip breakfast, and start eating from midday 12pm up until 8 pm. That is a restricted eating window of 8 hours (I have 2 meals in between, lunch and dinner), and for the rest of the time you don’t eat at all. You can drink water, teas or black coffee, there is no hard fast rule. This one is called 16/8, you don’t eat for 16 hours and eat for 8 hours. You can do this occasionally or all the time. There are many variations of the IF timings the 16/8, 5/2, 20/4, 36 etc. These are all different timing restrictions of when you can and can’t eat.

Feedback so far from the 16/8 intermittent fasting trial?

  • I am amazed at how I can train without food. I start training at the gym around midday after having a black coffee. No lack of energy at all.
  • The challenging times are in the morning when I crave for some scrumptious breakfast or brunch! I switch this up by focusing on work and drinking some hot water.
  • I am drinking bucket loads of more water.
  • Feeling “much lighter” with less eating.
  • More free time, less eating or thinking of what to eat.

I was surprised on my research to find that two of my heroes, Georges St Pierre and Hugh Jackman, both do intermittent fasting. GSP goes as far to say as it changed his life. Here is the link for GSP on the Joe Rogan podcast (click here) and for Hugh Jackman (click here).

It is only day 4, early days. Let’s see how this goes.

Robin

Forest for the trees

“Forest for the trees”. I remember first hearing this when I was much younger from a family friend of ours. I knew this quote and thought I understood what it meant. It’s all about looking at the big picture and not getting bogged down into the minor little details because in the end, it’s all about the result. It appears in Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise, with his witty comment “Forest for the trees, detective, forest for the trees.”. How true.

I am always reading, and lately it’s been all about mental models and human behaviour. With the aim of understanding myself better (Isn’t that a paradox, using my own mind to understand myself more.), people and the world in general.

Going back to knowing the “forest for the trees”, it dawned upon how much I do, at times, get stuck into unmeaningful minor details. By stuck, it may be mentally “brooding” over or having to “fix” or be “busy” with this minor detail. All of them are equally as bad, as it robs one from precious time and energy.

This applies to forex trading as well. Have you ever let one trade impact your trading psychology and your future trades? I continually remind myself, one trade of many for each trade I take and to focus on the process of trading well.

There is a huge difference between knowing and truly understanding. Remember, to keep focusing on the bigger picture.

Forest for the trees Robin!

Credit to https://www.pexels.com/@markusspiske for this wonderful photo. 

What insight about life have you acquired that seems obvious to you…

I read a great deal and through various AMA’s, podcasts and articles.. a common question is “What insight about life have you acquired that seems obvious to you, but might not be obvious to anyone else?” (This sounds like a job interview question!)

What would your answer to this be?

Mine would resonate with Derek Siver’s post titled “Obvious“..

Hit songwriters often admit that their most successful hit song was one they thought was just stupid, even not worth recording.

We’re clearly a bad judge of our own creations. We should just put it out and let the world decide.

How very true.

One answer that caught my attention that goes deep into the midst of life, death and our significance is from, Naval Ravikant, CEO & Founder of AngelList and his podcast interview with Tim Ferris (link here).

This is a tough one. It’s a deep question. I do have one fundamental recent belief that I’ve acquired in the last few years that I don’t think most people would agree with. It’s such a personal thing, and it came about in such a personal circumstances that I’m not sure anyone will get there in the same line of reasoning. That said, I’ll lay it out anyway, which is, I’m not afraid of death anymore.

I think a lot of the struggle we have in life comes from a deep, deep fear of death. It can take form in many ways. One can be that we want to write the great American novel. We want to achieve something in this world. We want to build something. We want to build a great piece of technology, or we want to start an amazing business, or we want to run for office and make a difference. A lot of this comes from this fear that we’re going to die, so we have to build something that lasts beyond us.

Obviously, the obsession that parents have with their children. A lot of that is warranted biological love, but some of that is also the quest for immortality. Even some of the beliefs of some of the more outlandish parts of religion I think fall into that. I don’t have the quest for immortality anymore. I think I came to this fundamental conclusion. I thought about it a lot. The universe has been around for a long time, and the universe is a very, very large place. If you’ll study even the smallest bit of science, for all practical purposes we are nothing. We are ameba. We are bacteria to the universe. We’re basically monkeys on a small rock orbiting a small backwards star in a huge galaxy, which is in an absolutely staggeringly gigantic universe, which itself may be part of a gigantic multiverse. This universe has been around probably for 10 billion years or more, and will be around for tens of billions of years afterwards. Your existence, my existence is just infinitesimal. It’s like a firefly blinking once in the night.

We’re not really here that long, and we don’t really matter that much. Nothing that we do lasts. Eventually, you will fade. Your works will fade. Your children will fade. Your thoughts will fade. These planets will fade. This sun will fade. It will all be gone. There are entire civilizations which we remember now with one or two words. Sumerian. Mayan. Do you know any Sumerians or Mayans? Do you hold any of them in high regard or esteem? Have they outlived their natural lifespan somehow? No. I think we’re just here for an extremely short period of time. From here, you can choose to believe in an afterlife or not. If you really do believe in an afterlife, then that should give you comfort and make you realize that maybe everything that goes on in this life is not that consequential. On the other hand, if you don’t believe in an afterlife, you should also come to a similar conclusion. You should realize that this is such a short and precious life that it’s really important that you don’t spend it being unhappy. There’s no excuse for spending most of your life in misery. You’ve only got 70 years out of the 50 billion or so that the universe is going to be around. Whatever your natural state is, it’s probably not this. This is your living state. Your dead state is true over a much longer time frame. When I think about the world that way, I realize it’s just kind of a game.

Which is not to say that you go to a dark place, and you start acting unethically and immorally. Quite the contrary, you realize just how precious life is and how it’s important to make sure that you enjoy yourself, you sleep well at night, you’re a good moral person, you’re generally happy, you take care of other people, you help out, but you can’t take it too seriously. You can’t get hung up over it. You can’t make yourself miserable and unhappy over it. You just have a very short period of time here on this earth. Nothing you do is going to matter that much in the long run. Don’t take yourself so seriously. That just kind of helps make everything else work.

That’s an insight about life that I’ve acquired that now seems obvious to me, but it’s really not obvious to most people.

All food for thought.

Here’s to the good life.

Robin

Forex Millionaire Trader Slack Community

Why hello there,

It’s been close to a year since my last post. Much has happened in both my personal life, trading life and the financial markets. The biggest craze and talk in the financial markets is all Bitcoin FOMO and talk. I could write a very long post about this (I plan to touch upon this in a later post).

What have I been up to? I am still traveling extensively – for both work & pleasure. My last leg was around to the UK, France, Germany and then to Taiwan. “Work” wise, I am trading, investing and running business. Nowadays it’s more towards the investing into businesses rather than running them (I guess it’s a natural progression?).

I do have some news for this site.

I present to you the Forex Millionaire Trader Slack Community. You have to apply, as we do not want this to be a spammy / useless Slack Forex Community.

Get to meet and share ideas with fellow traders.

The discussions covered (for now):

  • Forex Trading – self explanatory.
  • Broker Accounts – filtering out the good from the bad.
  • Internationalism – For the international jet setter / digital nomad / nomadic trader. Discuss, flag theory, perpetual travel, international business and lifestyle.

How to apply?

Use the contact us page. And submit your details and in the comments section answer,

  1. “Why you should be part of our community?”
  2. “Tell us about yourself”

Who is this for?

  • Forex Traders
  • Digital Nomads
  • Forex Nomads
  • Internationalism Followers

What’s the cost?

Currently, it’s free. The questions is, will you be accepted into the Forex Millionaire Trader Slack Community.

You can find more about it on this page: Forex Millionaire Trader Slack Community

Until next time,

Robin

A hiatus

Ahoy!

I will be taking a hiatus from this website. I like this site, however I have too much going on to dedicate posting here.

Do you want to be a forex millionaire trader? Or even better, why not be a millionaire trader? That is more skillful. For those who are looking for the Holy Grail system of trading to reach that figure, well, simply put you are the Holy Grail of trading – let that sink in for a bit, and then repeat it to yourself again. Once you understand that you’ll become pretty much or less unstoppable (And that applies to any endeavor in your life).

For those who are unprofitable traders, stop system hopping. And really understand WHY are you taking a trade.

You can really make bank in this game (Go read this Can you live off forex trading?). I do it, and I know many others who do it as well. To add, don’t limit yourself just to forex, a good trader will be able to trade any financial market, whether it be commodities, stocks, cryptocurrencies (the new hot buzz word) etc. (A side note: Admittedly when I started I was narrow minded and only focussed on forex, until a fellow trader asked me “Why was I limiting myself? When there is an abundance of opportunites and markets to trade on” – sometimes it’s the seemingly obvious things in life.) A chart is a chart, the market auction and order flow is all there for the trading.

You can still contact me, and I will respond – the only question is when! 😛

Have a wonderful December and year end!

To our success!

Robin

P.S. Hope you aren’t having Bitcoin Fomo – it’s just under $10,000 USD. Where will it go next? Who knows! 😛

Bitcoin Wealth Distribution

Following on my Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency & FOMO post. This seemed very approriate. I stumbled on this whilst doing some cyrpto reading. Bitcoin Wealth Distribution conducted by Howmuch.net (https://howmuch.net/articles/bitcoin-wealth-distribution). Assuming their calcutions are correct, it represents a very interesting side of the (bit)“coin”. Obviously the Author puts disclaimers on data accuracy etc. However, I do believe it is food for thought, especially comparing with the original concept of Bitcoin. Even if you take it at a loose 5% of addresses own 90%, it’s eye opening.

 

Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency & FOMO

I love the markets. The volatility and the endless opportunity. I rarely read the news, I do get sent a great deal of information from fellow traders, friends and business associates. Right now, it’s all about Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency, ICO (Initial Coint Offerings) and Alt Coins. I see a lot of people suffering and jumping in the markets due to Bitcoin, Cryptocurrency & FOMO. For those who don’t know what FOMO is, it stands for fear of missing out. A new age term (as Google put’s it: anxiety that an exciting or interesting event may currently be happening elsewhere, often aroused by posts seen on social media.).

It’s quite fascinating to see, the mental dynamics. No doubt there are many people who have made millions from Bitcoin and other Cryptos. Just have a gander at the Bitcoin chart. If you bought some at the start of the year, and gotten in at about the $800 mark, you would then now be sitting on over 9 fold that (9x! / 900%) call that for yield. It is just under $8000 and who know’s where it will go next.

There are many who have been holding Bitcoin sub $50. You’d be an extremely happy person, if you happened to be one of them. Or even when it first started and the super nerds & geeks jumped on the bitcoin bandwagon, without caring about the price, they purely liked the technology (note the buzz word of the moment – blockchain) and ideology behind it. That’s the reason why it was created – a distributed open ledger, not for investment speculation.

My word of advice to those who want to get into this game are:

  1. Don’t trade Bitcoin, Crypto’s (or any investment for that matter), out of FOMO. You’re investing with your emotions and out of fear (that’s a killer, right there).. and chasing a trade. Don’t be a Bitcoin FOMO trader.
  2. If you do opt to trade these, make sure you have damn well done your research and understand what you are getting into (and more importantly how to get out unscathed, if it doesn’t go to plan). Understand the concepts, the workings of these ‘coins’ before trading anything.
  3. If you are looking at ICOs.. be extremely careful. There are many scams, and if you look at the charts, they have a similarity to “pump & dump” / penny stocks / some IPOs. Don’t get caught on the wrong side.
  4. For coin storage, please use a ‘Cold Wallet’ / offline wallet and don’t leave it on the Coin Exchange / Online Wallet. Many of these have vanished over night or have been hacked.
  5. Understand the risks –  this is an unregulated market after all.

Happy Trading,

Robin