Mr. Fong Siling's speech in a forum (held on 16 March 2013)

Yesterday (16 March 2013) I attended an investment forum held by Nanyang and Hong Leong Bank. The speaker of the forum was Fong Siling, who is a famous and successful Malaysian share investor. The forum was held at the Nanyang's office at Kelana Jaya and it commenced at 2.15pm. There were approximately 1,500 to 2,000 audience present at the forum.

Long story short, I was disappointed with the forum, I would only rate the forum 5.5 out of 10. The 1st reason of my disappointment was that despite Mr. Fong is very knowledgeable and willing share his opinion experience to everyone, but he is not a good speaker. Probably due to time constraint and Fong had a lot of things to tell and share, so he did not simplify and convey most of his message in layman term and this could be quite difficult for those investment amateur to understand what he was trying to convey.

However, there were few worth noting points shared by Fong. Fong has been invested in the market for 40 years. He was very humble to tell the audience that he is not a smart investor, but through his hardwork in reading annual reports, doing investment research and never distract from his long term value investing framework, eventually he ripe a great achievement from his investment. He had been emphasising in order to be successful in shares investment, ones must not have the attitude that assuming investment in shares is akin 'playing stocks' nor short term speculating. It is all about knowing the business and investing part of the shareholding of the business, understand the valuation of the business and invest at the right time with cheap cost. His five yardsticks on selecting stocks are shown below:

1. Return on Equity ("ROE")

2. Cash Flow ("CF") and Free Cash Flow ("FCF")

3. Price-to-Earnings Ratio ("PER")

4. Dividend Yield ("DY")

5. Price-to-Net Tangible Asset ("P/B")

The second problem was that the organiser, Nanyang did a very poor arrangement in avenue and MC, as the avenue were overrun by excessive crowd and was very stuffy, and THE MC did not conduct properly for the protocols of the forum.

Last but not least, the quality of the Q&A session was very poor. I strongly believe that when we are investing, we should emphasise more on the process of investment instead of the outcome of investment.With the right investment strategy and framework and execute this strategy and framework disciplinarily (which is the process), and the desire outcome will come along the way of the process. But I observed that most of the Q&A raised by audience were too outcome oriented instead of seeking advice from Fong on how to improve their investing skill in accordance to their risk return profile and investment time horizon.

This proves the quote from Warren Buffet is right that "...Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace， and those who read their Graham & Dodd will continue to prosper...". So I regret that investing community in Malaysia is not as educated and matured as other developed countries, and to be thankful of the existence of this group investors so I could continue to grow my fortune via value investing.