I was told by someone that when he was in University, when people talk about Finance, the immediate association would be banker. And banker here does not mean your sexy Investment Banker, but actual bread-and-butter deposit, loan etc. banking.

Nowadays, there’s a myriad of opportunities for those who did Finance or its ilk in university. Everyone wants to be an Investment Banker, and for good reasons too.

The world economy has moved beyond the simple import export of goods and services. Some very clever folks have decided that simply dealing with real, tangible products are no longer enough to satisfy their lust for money.

So they created the futures market, short-selling and other kinds of financial razzmatazz that deals not with the present, real and tangible. Instead, the vast amount of liquidity going around the world these days are based on perception, on anticipation, on hedging for the future and sometimes, just plain old speculation.

What this means is that the market is never rational and never perfect (Adam Smith would be disappointed, no?). And that means it works based on the herd mentality. Once a sign is picked up by everyone that the market is heading for a bull run, they will immediately act upon it. In other words, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.

IB folks are smart, no doubt about it. But they are also not immune to follow the herd, simply because if they don’t, and based their assessment on the plain old “boring” fundamentals, they might lose out to their peers. And losing out here means losing a huge paycheck at the end of the year.

This is what pisses me off a bit about all these Finance and Investment Bankers and Analysts. They get paid for the performance of their portfolio in any given year, and in a bull market, the payout could be astronomical. Unfortunately, the reverse is not true. If next year that very same portfolio loses value (most of the time back to square one, or even worse, a negative figure), the payout given in the earlier years would not be returned.


Some might argue that this is the same for every profession and you can only get compensated for your current performance. But actually, it’s not. If I get a bonus for sales, I have already done the sale, and I have already completed by KPI. If I manage to settle a case, I would get a portion of a done deal. There’s no more follow-up per se. But with investment, it takes years and years, so why should IB folks get compensated for an increase in value for one year when that value is not sustainable in the long run?

The yachts, the houses, the trophy wives, the fancy cars…will still remain with these guys. True, they run the risk of getting fired. But the effect of their actions affects a whole lot more people who have entrusted their hard earned savings on to this people who then proceeded to speculate and manipulate the market until one find day, and unfortunately it’s today, the fundamentals would catch up with them.

Anyway, this note is just an expression of my frustration with what’s going on with the world economy nowadays….so it’s a bit disjointed and ….well, I’m tired too with this heavy but exciting new job scope.

Hope that this does not discourage anyone from taking Finance. I might need a CFO one day for my company.

Once they were deemed forever doomed with the emergence of all the Hypermarkets. Now they’re ubiquitous with presence in almost all major townships. In fact, here at USJ, we have 1 for every housing area.

So imagine how pissed I was when I went to one last Sunday morning after futsal and found that the outlet was closed. No, it wasn’t “officially” closed. Just that the store assistants decided to “temporarily” close it (from 2 a.m – 6 a.m…).


The sign was written on a piece of A4, looks cheap and we could all see the two store assistants inside doing I don’t know what with a bunch of products on the floor at the back of the store.

I thought, okay, maybe there’s something wrong with the machine and all. But imagine my surprise that as soon me and my friend turned our back, a few more cars stopped in front of the store. I remarked, “Looks like we’re bringing in the business…”.

Imagine my bigger surprise when I saw the store assistant sheepishly calling us back after noticing that there’s going to be a sort of mini riot (hell, there’s more than 5 people out there at 3 a.m pissed about a closed 7-11).

Was there something wrong with the teller machine? Nope. Anything wrong with the air-conditioning? Nope. Were they out of stock of everything? Nope. So the only reason the two clowns almost turn away potential customers was…nothing. There was no reason other than sheer laziness.

I’m pretty sure the management would be pretty pissed if they found out about this.

The whole concept of 7-11 is that it is a 24 HOURS convenience store. Get that into the thick skull of these lowly motivated store assistants.


Here’s a business idea: Introduce an incentive scheme that is directly related to sales. For every RM 50 of sales, the person who serviced the customer would get RM 1. If you think that a normal Hotlink top-up would cost RM 30, then you’ll see that these guys could be earning a lot, IF they have the right incentive in place to promote sales.

Imagine the store assistant initiating cross-selling and up-selling. Imagine buying a bottle of Coke and the guy saying, “Hey, would you like to try cracker X, because it taste great with Coke…”. Or something like that.

In the future, advertising is no longer sufficient. You need people marketing.