My Very First Blog

Is it possible to achieve a 12.08% annual returns from your investments risk free?

At 12.08% per year, your money is doubling every 5.96 years and RM1,000 invested a month would grow close to RM1 million in just 20 years.

Most of you will probably think like this.

12.08%? Maybe.

Risk free? Impossible! No investment is 100% risk free!

Well, according to Adam Khoo in his book “Secrets of Self Made Millionaires”, it is entirely possible!


However, you cannot achieve this by investing in individual stocks, or simply choosing any unit trusts funds. Instead, Adam Khoo suggests this - invest in the whole of the US stock market!

"What?! Are you nuts?" you exclaimed.

Well, here’s a fact. The US stock market averaged an annual return of 12.08% per year for the last 20 years. This of course does not mean that every single stock in the stock market went up by 12.08%. It’s the average we are talking about.

For the uninitiated, stock markets are actually measured by an index. An index is a portfolio of stocks that is designed to represent the whole market. The US stock market is represented by many indexes, but the most popular is Standard & Poor 500 Index (S&P 500). This index consists of 500 of the largest companies in the US stock market and represents over 80% of the total stock market value. So, this index actually indicates the average price of all 500 largest companies in USA and can be said to represent the overall performance of the whole US stock market.

If we look at the S&P 500 index graph from year 1952 to 2003, we can see that it keeps moving up over time. Yes, there were some ups and downs, there were bulls and bears, but overall it keeps going up.



This could be due to inflation as prices always increase over time, and this include stock prices. Secondly, due to the inevitable population growth, companies will always have more and more people to sell to so there will be increase in profits and therefore, an increase in stock prices too.

Adam Khoo says that if we were to invest in a mutual fund that tracks the S&P 500 index (aka Index Fund) and keep investing, in the long term, we will have 100% chance of gain and zero chance of loss!

The key word here is LONG TERM. And long term means at least 10 years and above.

It seems the longer you invest, the lower the risk. If you invest for one year, you have 20% chance of losing your capital. If you invest longer for 5 years, your risk of loss is reduced to 10%. But if you invest for 10 years and more, the chances of losing is virtually zero! In other words, you can only gain and profit by investing for 10 years and more.

According to Adam Khoo, you can buy the US Index Fund through online brokers available at Ameritrade.com, OptionXpress.com, or etrade.com. Just open an online account, send them the necessary documents and transfer funds into your account from your home country.

Another alternative is to buy Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that tracks the S&P Index 500. ETF is a kind of investment security that is constructed like a mutual fund but trades like stocks. It charges lower fees and can be bought or sold anytime of the day. You can buy ETF through online brokers at interactivebrokers.com.

Well, what do you think? Would you want to invest in the US Index Fund if you have that extra cash every month? With the stock market falling to an all time low, this may just be your golden opportunity to buy cheap and make huge profits in later years.

Now I am not an expert on investments. I only learnt about this from the Adam Khoo's book I mentioned above. If you are an expert on this, please comment and share with us your opinions and suggestions.

I have a confession to make - I am not a big fan of tags and memes.

But I have received 5 awards for the past two months and have been tagged by quite a number of people I'm feeling a little guilty not responding to them.

Actually, I'm pretty lazy to tag others. However, this does not mean I don't appreciate all those awards I received. In fact, I would like to apologise to all those who had tagged me and sent me the awards for responding this late!

Since I am pretty free today, I decided to gather all those awards here on this post. Yes, everything in one single post!

Since some of the awards I received are the same award but from different people, I'm going to do this just once.

Well, let me start with the awards.

The first award is the Brillante Weblog Award, which I received from Monica, Two Superheroes and Tekkaus. Thank you, guys!


Here are the rules:
1. Put the logo on your blog
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4. Add links to these blogs on your blog
5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog

I am nominating Johnny Ong, Keeyit, Life Ramblings, Low Han Yew, Khengsiong, Babette, Pete and Nkw@i.


The second award is the Butterfly Award from Tekkaus (again!) and Suituapui.



Same rules as the above award:
1. Put the logo on your blog
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4. Add links to these blogs on your blog
5. Leave a message for your nominee on their blog

I'm nominating Cbenc12, Faisal Admar, Health Nut Wannabee Mom, Molly, Pikey, Two Superheroes, Day-dreamer and Jam.


The third award is My Blogging Friends Forever BFF Award from Low Han Yew.



Here are the rules:
1. Only five people allowed
2. Four have to be dedicated followers of your blog
3. One has to be someone new or recently new to your blog and live in another part of the world
4. You must link back to whoever gave you the award

I'm awarding this award to Lina, Suituapui, Monica, Bengbeng and Tammy.


The fourth one is Kick Ass Blogger Award from Babette.



Do you know any bloggers that kick ass?

Maybe they've got incredible, original content. Or they're overflowing with creativity. Is it someone that helps you become a better blogger? Or a bloggy friend you know you can count on? Or maybe it's someone who simply inspires you to be a better person... or someone else who sends you to the floor, laughing your ass off.

Whatever the reason may be, I'm sure you know at least a couple of bloggers that kick ass. Well... why not tell 'em so?

LOVE ON 'EM

• Choose 5 bloggers that you feel are "Kick Ass Bloggers"
• Let 'em know in your post or via email, twitter or blog comments that they've received an award
• Share the love and link back to both the person who awarded you and back to www.mammadawg.com
• Hop on back to the Kick Ass Blogger Club HQ to sign Mr. Linky then pass it on!

I'm giving this award to Gallivanter, Nick Phillips, Neo, Eiling and Falcon.


Finally, the last award is from Health Nut Wannabee Mom who presented me the Uber Amazing Blog Award.



Uber (synonym to Super) Amazing Blog Award is a blog award given to sites who:
~ inspires you
~ makes you smile and laugh
~ or maybe gives amazing information
~ a great read
~ has an amazing design
~ and any other reasons you can think of that makes them uber amazing!

The rules of this award are:
* Put the logo on your blog or post.
* Nominate at least 5 blogs (can be more) that for you are Uber Amazing!
* Let them know that they have received this Uber Amazing award by commenting on their blog.
* Share the love and link to this post and to the person you received your award from.

This award goes to QuaChee, Tekkaus, Eastcoastlife, Mariuca and My Bug Life.

Now, if you don't want to pass on these awards or post them on your blog, I can understand. It's perfectly OK to me because as I said earlier, I am not a big fan of tags and memes and awards! I have already passed you the awards - you decide what you want to do with them!

So which of these awards I like best? I think I like them all! Thank you guys for giving me these fabulous awards. I am just so honoured and grateful that there are people who appreciate my blog.


OK, now for the tags.

First "tag" I received from Rebecca.

Here are the rules:
1. List these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog.

3. Tell 6 unspectacular quirks of yours.

4. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

5. Link the person who tagged you.

6. Leave a comment for each blogger.

Ok, the 7 facts about myself which is easy...

1. I can play the piano quite well and I can play for hours and hours!

2. I am a huge fan of Mariah Carey.

3. I prefer to sms rather than call someone.

4. I am a night owl. I sleep late and don't like to wake up early.

5. I can't drink to save my life.

6. I don't smoke.

7. I enjoy watching "The Amazing Race" reality show.

Now comes the hard part about the 6 unspectacular quirks about myself....

1. I like all kinds of music except heavy metal. You can almost say I'm eclectic.

2. I like to exercise and enjoy the muscle soreness after that. In fact, the muscle soreness is what keeps me motivated.

3. I eat fruits for breakfast, and ONLY fruits. No toast, coffee, nasi lemak, roti canai, or chow kuay teow for me.

4. I always get up on the left side of my bed, never the right side.

5. I don't like to wear a watch so I don't wear one. I refer to my handphone, which is always with me, for the time.

6. I hate cockroaches and must kill if I see one!

And I'm tagging the following 7 people.....

EastCoastLife

Mariuca

Tekkaus

Faisal Admar

Bengbeng

Suituapui

Nick Phillips

Oh, if any of you not listed here want to do this tag, go ahead! I would love to read the 7 facts and 6 quirks about yourselves!

The second "tag" is from Babette.

Here are the rules:

1. Each player starts with eight random fact/habits about themselves.

2. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

3. At the end of your blogpost, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their name.

4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged and to read your blog.

Now, this one is almost similar to the first tag above, so there might be some repeats of the above.

Here goes...

1. I am sweet toothed person and love cakes, ice cream, and all types of desserts!

2. I like nature and must connect to the trees, rivers or forests at least once a week.

3. I like to watch clouds in the sky and daydream.

4. I enjoy watching horror movies and they must be really scary or I won't enjoy them.

5. I like to go karaoke although my singing is not good, though I'm never "pitchy".

6. I like to play the piano and can play for hours. I once played for 6 hours straight!

7. I cannot survive without my handphone when I'm outside my home. I will feel lost and handicapped.

8. I don't like bloggers who don't reply to my comments on their blog unless they have over 100 comments or they have a very demanding day time job. Bloggers who don't reply or respond to my comments after a few rounds can be quite certain that I will never leave my comments on their blogs again!

Well, that's it!

Now I would like to tag the following 8 people...

My Bug Life

Keeyit

Monica

Cbenc12

Johnny Ong

Jam

Levian

Acura

As usual, if you don't want to respond to these tags, it's perfectly fine with me. But I would love to know your random habits and quirks about yourself. So maybe you would like to blog about that even if you don't plan to tag anyone.