The Little Prince and Equity Investment

When I read The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery, it taught me a lot of important life lessons. I believe we will learn something new when we read The Little Prince at different life stage.

Little prince was first published in 1943 and the fourth most translated book in the world! The book also make several observations about human and life which I found interesting!

One of the Key Lessons that We Could Learn from the Story?

During the Little Prince's adventure to explore planets around him, he came across a geographer who refuses to explore his own world because he is too busy in conducting geographical research. The Little Prince asked him whether there are mountains or oceans on his planet, the geographer has no idea. 

Geographer told the Little Prince that he is a geographer, but not an explorer. He will only talk to explorers and record what they say!

Sometimes, we might fall into the trap of doing analysis on places, but without exploring the places. Sometimes, we might invest into companies' equities based on financial report analysis without exploring the company's product or services.

This part of the story taught me an important lesson.

While financial analysis or number crunching is important to aid our equity investment decision. The following is very important too so that we could explore and understand the company further.

1) Dutch Lady - be the consumer and explore products of Dutch Lady to gauge if the products are up to par or even better than competitors.

2) Lonpac Insurance- be the policyholder of Lonpac Insurance and gauge the quality of its customer services or claim process etc.

3) Old Town- breakfast or lunch or just try out Old Town's food and beverages and gauge if you think their businesses will prosper in the long run.

4) Retail REIT- go shopping at the malls parked under selected REIT and form an opinion if you think the malls will prosper in long run.

5) Hospitality REIT- Let say YTL REIT owns resorts such as Pangkor Laut and more. You can make a trip Pangkor Laut Resort as well and gauge if the resort is doing well.

6) Padini Holdings- buy Padini's shirts, pants or shoes and gauge the comfort and quality of its wear to form an opinion if you think Padini can continue to prosper.

7) Berjaya Food- visit Starbucks or Kenny Roger and gauge if these divisions will perform well in the long term since Starbucks and Kenny Roger form a big chunk of its revenue. You might also want to study the competition threat from Nando's!

The moral of the story: 

Be an explorer and geographer at the same time! Be a business analyst!

Note: The companies mentioned above are merely for illustration purposes.