wealthymatters

Zhang Yin

February 25, 2011 8 Comments

Below is an inspiring story of a truly extraordinary woman.I found the original post here : http://invincibleprobity.wordpress.com/2011/02/24/the-american-spirit-now-comes-from-china/

The story is a must read for entrepreneurs and would be entrepreneurs, women and anyone interested in a human interest story.

When I have some down time I usually hang out at my home in the Rocky Mountains of northwest Montana, USA. This is a wonderful place of very few people and lots of big mountains and beautiful scenery. It’s a special region of rivers and streams and lakes … and billions of trees. As opposed to the eastern part of this huge state, where agriculture and cattle reign, northwest Montana has long depended on its biggest industry – timber and wood products. But this industry, faced with steadily increasing restrictions on logging in our national forests and steadily rising competition from cheaper products from overseas, has been in slow decline for the past forty years. It seems like another small lumber mill that had been around for a century is closed down every few months.

In 2009 even big corporate mills started closing. One of these was the Smerfit-Stone Container mill in Frenchtown near Missoula. A second Smerfit-Stone container mill also filed for bankruptcy in Canada at the same time, and Smerfit-Stone mills in Arizona and Quebec had closed earlier. The company naturally cited “the unprecedented global economic recession [which] has weakened demand for packaging”, but a major portion of the truth has been left out of the Smerfit-Stone rationalizing, including the fact that it had failed to upgrade its equipment to meet modern advanced capabilities and had retained its dependence on expensive freshly logged timber to manufacture its cardboard containers. This is another American industry that has long been locked in the past while taking profits for today and failing to improve its competitiveness in the arena for tomorrow.

Like so many American industries that were forged by great visionaries of the past, the American wood products industry is a microcosm of the nation as a whole over the past forty years. It all seems like an ingrained resistance by today’s Americans to learn the lessons of generations that went before. If perhaps not for Americans, however, the Greatest Generation definitely did set an indelible example for others. Read more of this post

Filed under Entrepreneurship Tagged with America Chung Nam inc, Arizona, billionaire, Brazil, Cheung Yan, Chinese, Chinese Billionaire, Cultural Revolution, Dongguan, entrepreneur, Frenchtown Missoula, Hong Kong, Los Angeles, Ming Chung Liu, Montana, Nine Dragons Paper Trading Company, paper, paper mills, paper products, Quebec, Shenzhen, Smerfit-Stone Container, Taiwan, US, wealthiest self made woman in the world, woman entrepreneur, Zhang Yin

The Meaning Of Wealth

February 25, 2011 Leave a comment

Following is a very interesting article from the WSJ on what wealth actually means to people from different countries round the world.It’s interesting reading why people might actually want wealth in the first place and what they choose to do once they have it.The most interesting question is ,of course ,why people choose to do what they choose to do?

Wall Street Journal by Robert Frank
Monday, May 24, 2010

We like to think the reasons for seeking wealth are universal. Humans, by nature, like to be comfortable, like to have power and like to have the choices and freedoms offered by lots of stuff and money.

Yet it turns out there are some regional variations in the meaning of wealth around the world.

The new Barclay’s Wealth Insights study, released this morning from Barclay’s Wealth and Ledbury Research, finds that the emerging-market rich view wealth very differently from the older-money Europeans and the slightly less nouveaux Americans.

The study surveyed 2,000 people from 20 countries with investible assets of $1.5 million or more. They shared some common themes: a vast majority of rich people from all regions agreed that wealth enables them to buy the best products and that wealth gives them freedom of choice in their life. Most also agreed that wealth is a reward for hard work. Read more of this post

Filed under Tidbits Tagged with Barclay's Wealth, Barclay's Wealth Insights Study, choices, comfortable, emerging market rich, freedom, Ledbury Research, power, Robert Frank, Wall Street Journal, WSJ

Psychology of Wealth

February 24, 2011 1 Comment

The question why some people accumulate substantial wealth and others struggle so much in this field has attracted the attention of quite a few psychologists.There have been many studies to correlate various personality traits and behaviour patterns, cognitive patterns , self motivation habits, moods and emotional behaviours and social behaviours with the wealth a person accumulates.

The results of these studies have been used to construct the various quizzes here http://www.marketpsych.com/personality_test.php .They are free and a pretty good way to get to know both one’s strengths and weaknesses as an entrepreneur , investor and/or speculator.

Taking these tests is a great way to get to know the strengths we can play to and the weaknesses to guard against.The results sheets also have many good psychological tips to work around our individual weaknesses.

Filed under Entrepreneurship, Paper Assets, Theory, Tool Kit Tagged with behaviours, cognitive patterns, emotional behaviours, entrepreneur, Investor, moods, personality traits, postaday2011, psychology, psychology of wealth, quiz, RandomBlog2011, self motivation, Speculator, tests, wealth

I’ve Joined Tne RandomBlog2011 Challenge

February 24, 2011 1 Comment

wealthymatters.com I’m a bit late, but I’ve decided to join the RandomBlog2011 challenge I found at http://whatsbuggingmetoday.wordpress.com/randomblog2011-challenge/. So here is what I’ll do :-

1. I will read a minimum of 2 new blog posts every day from any of the tags on WordPress.com at a blog I have never visited before.

2. I will look outside of my comfort zone and read something totally different from what I normally would. In this way I will expand my horizon.

3. I will go “Tag Surfing” on the Hot Topics page.

4. I will follow a “comment trail” – starting with a comment on a friend’s blog from someone I’ve never met and see how far it takes me.

5. I will try and find new bloggers looking for readers and leave a “like” and a “comment”and ssk them to join in the fun and check out the RandomBlog2011 Challenge.

6. I will tag my own posts with RandomBlog2011.

7. I will visit the Daily Post and read through the comments and see if I can find someone looking for readers.

8. I will specially visit and comment on blogs that may have recently joined the WordPress PostADay2001 or PostAWeek 2011 Challenge.

Filed under Tidbits

The Right Approach To Long Term Investment Success In The Stock Market

February 24, 2011 2 Comments

There are many ways to make money in stocks. But not every way works well over longer periods of time.There are people who never make any money from stocks and there are others who make significant amounts of money in the stock market only to lose it again.To understand how to make money from stocks and keep it the long term we need t0 study the habits of investors who have remained successful over a long term.Such an exercise shows that the odds of long-term investment success are greatly enhanced with an approach that embodies most or all of the following characteristics:

Thinking about investing as the purchasing of companies, rather than the trading of stocks.
Ignoring the daily noise of the market. As Graham wrote in his classic, ‘The Intelligent Investor‘, “Basically, price fluctuations have only one significant meaning for the true investor. They provide him an opportunity to buy wisely when prices fall sharply and to sell wisely when they advance a great deal. At other times, he will do better if he forgets about the stock market.”
Only buying a stock when it is on sale i.e. available at a discount to its intrinsic value.
Focussing first on avoiding losses, and only then think about potential gains. “We look for businesses that in general aren’t going to be susceptible to very much change,” says Warren Buffett “It means we miss a lot of very big winners but it also means we have very few big losers…. We’re perfectly willing to trade away a big payoff for a certain payoff.” Read more of this post