Bamboo Innovator Daily Insight: 26 Feb (Thurs) – What to Expect From Buffett’s 50th Anniversary Letter; The dark side of achievement culture; FOMO (fear of missing out) is the enemy of valuing your own time. Value yourself for things that don’t appear on your resume. Find something to believe in; Experience Is Measured In Stories, Not Year

Life

  • The dark side of America’s achievement culture; FOMO (fear of missing out) is the enemy of valuing your own time. Value yourself for things that don’t appear on your resume. Find something to believe in. Quartz
  • Experience Is Measured In Stories, Not Years: Forbes
  • I Don’t Have a Job. I Have a Higher Calling; Some employees balk as many firms-from motorcycles to accounting-step up talk about changing the world: WSJ
  • Reforming the Bar Exam to Produce Better Lawyers; A recent overhaul of the test deserves a flunking grade. How about focusing on skills like factual investigation? WSJ
  • The personality types of all 50 states: BI
  • HSBC, tax and why good companies do bad things; There is a pattern to companies that employ decent people and fall into disgrace: FT
  • When Customers Will (Willingly) Pay More for Less: HBR
  • Heads of large public firms can avoid responsibility, and keep their bonus: SCMP
  • Warren Buffett’s Transparency Problem: Newsweek
  • The ‘Big 3’ Mistakes (And Their Fixes) For First-Time Entrepreneurs: Forbes
  • Wake-up Call: Why Everyone Needs More Sleep; productivity, creativity and workplace morale are all taking a hit as a quickening capitalist society and the human need for getting to REM jostle for attention. K@W
  • An Interview with The Outsiders’ William Thorndike: Motley Fool

Books, Investing Process

  • What to Expect From Buffett’s 50th Anniversary Letter: Bloomberg
  • The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business; Why getting drunk is so important in Japanese business relations: Amazon, BI
  • Buffett sets sights on German companies: Reuters

Greater China

  • Corrupt officials sought sniper kills of Xi Jinping, Wang Qishan: Boxun: WCT
  • Hong Kong and Singapore plot divergent fiscal paths: FT
  • Rumors of major SOE mergers do the rounds in China: WCT
  • The long history of China’s obsession with numbered policies: Quartz
  • Closer Look: Local Officials Have Little Love for National Hukou Reform: Caixin
  • Minsheng Tries Weathering a Maelstrom; A new shareholder has stepped in and a president has been forced out as winds of change blow through the bank: Caixin
  • China drops leading technology brands for state purchases: Reuters
  • Forecasting China’s Oil Buying Grows Harder: WSJ
  • Communist Party Mints Xi-Branded Slogan: WSJ

India

  • Vijay Govindarajan: We need big, bold ideas; This is a make-or-break budget for India. Game-changing innovations to boost the economy are the need of the hour: Forbes

Japan & Korea

  • Chinese Tourists Take South Korea’s Jeju Island by Storm: WSJ
  • South Korea toughens up on chaebol law breakers: FT
  • Lessons from Sony’s fall: Japan’s situation clearly demonstrates the limits of winners who were followers rather than creators. JA
  • Samsung gobbles up tech start-ups: KH
  • Samsung Electronics and its affiliates are using mergers and acquisitions (M&A) as a new growth tool, a change of strategy pursued by its Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong: KT
  • Under Japanese law, breaks are sacred and standby counts as work: JT
  • The Humble Light Bulb Helps Japan Fill Energy Gap Left From Shutting Down Nuclear Reactors: Bloomberg
  • South Korea’s Household Debt Balloons on Cheap Credit: WSJ
  • Mobile Chat Service KakaoTalk Faces Growing Pains: WSJ
  • In Japan, robot dogs are for life – and death: AsiaOne

ASEAN

  • The legacy of its founder looms over Singapore; A palpable sense of dissatisfaction exists among the island nation’s citizens: FT
  • Thai graft regulator expands its influence: FT
  • Forbes Malaysia’s 50 Richest; Oil Burns A Hole; Malaysia’s Billionaires Reel As Ringgit Slips: Forbes
  • Kossan’s Lim Kuang Sia Has A Head For Science And Heart In Glovemaking: Forbes
  • Jakarta Govt Vows Tough Action on Bootleg Alcohol Producers: JG
  • Indonesia Should Find Its Own Educational Path: JG
  • Japan’s E-Commerce Giant Rakuten Trains SMEs in Indonesia: JG

Macro

  • Crispin Odey “I Am Amazed To See So Many Are Fully Invested Given That Equities Are Already Fighting The Downtrend”: VW
  • High costs warning for EU failed trade rules: FT
  • Smart beta chipping away at Barclays’ bond index dominance: FT
  • Yes, the World Is Out to Get Active Managers: bloomberg
  • A dangerous revolt: People are refusing to pay back student loans: WaPo
  • Barings’ collapse was the start of the City’s cultural decline; The cultural DNA of the City changed to one that favoured transactions over relationships and short-term results over sustainability: Telegraph
  • Should You Cash Out, Like Private Equity? A report that Blackstone and other buyout firms have made huge payouts should give stock investors pause. Barron’s
  • Special FX Should Scare Asia’s Borrowers; With 28% of Asia’s corporate loans denominated in U.S dollars, a close eye should be kept on the rising greenback.: Barron’s
  • Negative Is the New Zero; Germany sold five-year government debt with a negative yield for the first time; in the longer term, it is storing up problems for investors; the bigger price falls could be in the future if rates ever rise.: WSJ
  • Buyout Shops Keep Skin in the Game; Firms increasingly accept buyers’ shares as part of price when selling companies they own: WSJ
  • Downgrade of Brazil Oil Giant Stirs Wider Concern: WSJ
  • SEC Probes Companies’ Treatment of Whistleblowers; Agency Officials Concerned About Corporate Backlash Against Whistleblowers: WSJ
  • Morrison Foester: Overview Of Insider Trading Law: VW
  • The corporate watchdog has revealed it exercised “formal legal powers” as part of an expanding investigation into National Australia Bank’s under-fire financial planning division.: TheAge
  • Lightning strikes twice: $7m fraud at firm controlled by family of late BRW Rich Lister Allan Scott: TheAge

Energy & Commodities

  • That sinking feeling: North Sea oil was a challenge before prices halved. Now the UK industry fears a fatal blow: FT

Healthcare

  • So-called basket studies, which group cancer patients in a new way, could revolutionize the path from the lab to F.D.A. approval and market success. NYT

TMT

  • Once a pioneer, Google’s now playing catch-up to Apple in mobile payments: Quartz
  • Researchers Find Way to Harness Brain to Control Bionic Hands; Fitted With Robotic Hands, Three Austrian Men Are Able to Perform Tasks Such as Buttoning a Coat: WSJ
  • What Clever Robots Mean for Jobs; Experts rethink belief that tech always lifts employment as machines take on skills once thought uniquely human: WSJ
  • Why Robots Still Can’t Fold Your Laundry; Machines struggle to match a human’s dexterity and problem-solving skills: WSJ
  • Here’s what google’s super-fast flight search reveals about its product strategy: BI
  • One of the smartest VCs of all time says Silicon Valley is in a risk bubble; Investors Beware: Today’s $100M+ Late-stage Private Rounds Are Very Different from an IPO: BI, Abovethecrowd
  • Auto Trader plans IPO after massive online success: BI
  • YouTube: 1 Billion Viewers, No Profit; Revenue growing at Google video site, but still limited by narrow audience: WSJ

Consumer & Others

  • Whiskey’s domination could last for decades: BI
  • Lego enjoys record year and gets closer to reaching ‘every child in the world’: Telegraph
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About bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

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