Aug 2022 - Strong Convictions, Loosely Held (on giving)
Though not in Aug 2022, I am writing this article and wanted to give a shout out to the UNSW Investing 4 Charity students I volunteered with at Our Big Kitchen in Bondi last Sunday on 11/09/2022. We prepared 138 meals for the homeless around Sydney. I also got to practice my knife cutting skills!
Hi friends,
📣 Public service announcement
I will be a guest speaker in City Bible Forum's "Headstart" program on next Monday, 19 September 2022 at 7pm-8:15pm (Sydney time) to kick start term 3! That's in 2 days. Looking forward to sharing my thoughts/research/experiences on how young Christian workers should think about money in light of the Bible in an interview mode, with my experience as an Investment Analyst at a Hedge Fund, but also as Head of the Investment Committee at my church. This is a topic I care deeply about, and this will be my first time speaking at City Bible Forum, a Christian organisation that I regularly attend. Appreciate all those who can come or tune in (there should be a replay too, but message me later if you want it)! You can register to attend in person or via zoom at the link: https://citybibleforum.org/civicrm-event/2809.
📆 Back to my monthly newsletter...
Welcome to my 8th monthly email, in this segment called “Michael’s Monthly Musings”. If you missed my earlier monthly newsletters, please refer here.
Remember to add my email as a legit contact! Otherwise, my email may go to your spam folder... I’m thankful to all the friends, family, and readers of this newsletter for the support and replies via email I got from my last newsletter. We’re now >120 email readers! Feel free to share this with friends who may find this interesting or may want to meet/know me.
Last month's newsletter was some serious reflecting on the past. I've also been encouraged by the few friends who reached out directly to me and called me or had coffee/lunch with me. Been very surprised by the feedback people have been giving me, and really appreciative of it all.
Apologies all for the slight delay. I typically get my monthly newsletter out in the first few days after the month's end but this time I was a bit slack. I would be lying if I didn't say that I was not busy. Don't get me wrong, I am thankful for the "busyness" and it has been more productive than usual. But it has meant less time to take a step back and reflect on the month that was.
⏱ I'll keep this one short, but may flesh out more in a future article if time permits. These are just my 2c thoughts for now, which are constantly evolving. A lot of my colleagues reading this newsletter will know I have a phrase I use a lot. I quite often say these days, "strong convictions, but loosely held". That's a mantra I regularly adopt now.
Some family/friends/colleague who've known me for a while ask me I am involved in giving back to community/charity. I had a call with a close old high school friend, Luke, about the topic of "secular giving" (i.e. not just at church giving) in particular, and how I thought through such matters.
❤ Giving should reflect what your heart cares about.
In other words, it is an outward expression of your internal priorities. It was hard to think of a story for this. I think my age has now given me enough of a time series to start looking back at history and trying to piece thematically what all these charities/societies I am involved with in giving have. I realised all roads lead to education (not Rome in this case!). To no surprise, that is something I am deeply passionate about, and continue every day to think is a high priority for future generations. I'm reminded by my mentor, Albert, who once said to me back in 2017 when I first met him, "give a man a fish and feed him for a day, but teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime". That quote stuck me, and I continue to believe education remains a big north star for me. I'm still trying to figure out what that looks like in the next 5-10 years for me, but all I know is wherever I can continue to "give" that is directionally towards that mission of education is a good starting line for me.
🌈 Giving is not just about money (as many close friends/family have reminded me in the past), but about time, energy, love, etc.
In essence, it can be expressed in a lot of different ways. When I think about Investing 4 Charity (I4C), the university society as an example, I started as an Education Director, giving up time in my last year of university to teach students how to analyse charities and stocks. See more of the I4C story from my perspective here. At that time back in 2017-18, I was not giving money, but I found another way to give back as a final year student, to the younger students. I am thankful that I4C still keeps in touch with me. I recently just volunteered in "Our Big Kitchen" in Bondi with a group of I4C students last Sunday (see pic above!). It's hard to describe, but in fact actually volunteering with the students together felt more meaningful an experience to me than just the cold giving of my annual donation to the society.
🎓 Giving for me, means going for meaningful impact.
Now some may ask, what is "meaningful". It is different for everyone. But it probably would not surprise people as an investor, I tend to think in a "return on investment" perspective as a measure. In simplistic terms, I often ask myself how much output for every unit of input. But you'll quickly realise the defining of the numerator and denominator get very subjective very quickly. I have as such strayed more away from that thinking (not that I don't see merit in it however), and asked myself the question why does giving to this organisation/charity/society matter to me? It's a lot more philosophical, but I find being able to test myself and articulate as if I was giving an elevator pitch, crystallises the meaning of why I give to a specific entity. I tried to do that here for every charitably cause I give to here.
🎯 I personally believe in selective support over ad hoc/sporadic giving.
That is not to say you can't have inspiration in some random circumstance to give. But my personal view is that I want to be intentional with how I give. There is research that goes behind who/where/when/what/why I give to different entities. That is not to say it is necessary to conduct due diligence on every possible charity that comes your way which you may potentially donate to. An outlier example but one I love to use is Sri Lanka's Foundation of Goodness (FOG). That is a charity that provides educational services for the rural and disadvantaged people in Sri Lanka. My "due diligence" was actually spending 1 month having the privilege to volunteer on the ground there back in July 2016, and seeing and meeting first hand the inspiring volunteers who made the organisation run. I got very close with the former Chief Operating Officer, Saman, during my time when upgrading the IT class rooms, fixing broken PCs, and giving talks to the IT students. That relationship continues today, where I make an effort to still do calls to get updated every 6 months to know what is happening in the IT centre. So whilst I continue to give cheerfully to this cause, I do continue to maintain my relationship with several people in FOG, as a form of diligence to understand what is happening and where my money is going. It is very intentional in that regard. But I've also had the pleasure to maintain good relationships with people because of this focused way of giving.
📜 No doubt, a lot of my thinking in secular giving, is in fact similar to how I think about giving at church (i.e. The sacred, if you will).
I leave with a Bible verse, from 2 Corinthians 9:6-8, "Remember this: Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously. Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver." Whatever your views of faith, this is just my personal sharing of how I think about giving in principle for those wondering. Happy to explore this idea another time.
👍 To conclude for now…
Thanks for reading my ramble if you got this far for my August 2022 thoughts. Please do hit <reply> to this email if you have anything to add / any questions. I quite enjoy replying to comments/emails as a source of procrastination. Please share this email with others if you found it value-adding.
Thanks for reading,
Michael
🚀 Some of my favourite memories from August 2022
Watched "Bullet Train" with an old high school friend. Give it 6.5/10. Lots of fighting, but that's about it.
Got to try Jimmy's Falafel in Wynyard for the 1st time, when celebrating a friend's late birthday! Would give it an 8/10.
Got to witness the entire Bulb team (which I invested in for earliest funding round back in Jan 2022) give an annual FY22 investor update viz zoom. Was really excited seeing some of the numbers like the fact they've now reached >1k writers, and >1.7k posts. Awesome work to the team, and whilst still early days, the future looks bright for this crypto based writing platform that is growing slow and steady. Check them out here if you haven't already: https://www.bulbapp.io/
Got to visit my old church (St George Anglican in Hurstville), that I used to attend back in 2015-16, thanks to an old youth that I used to teach for Sunday school back when he was in year 9… He's now in his final year of UNSW. Time truly flies. But it was great to revisit some old friends from that church and they remained very welcoming to me.
Nigel Ng (aka Uncle Roger) comedy show in Enmore theatre was my 1st ever comedy show. Loved it and would go to these kinda shows again. Shout out to the City Bible Forum friends who went with me. Easy 9/10.
Judging the finals for the NSB BSOC "SOAR" competition, where the 3 finalist groups of NSB students (from my old high school) pitched their hypothetical strategies for what they would do at Woolworths to drive growth given the current macro issues of supply chain, COVID costs, etc. Some pics from the event here. Was thoroughly impressed given these were just students. I've agreed to donate a cash prize. I continue to support NSB BSOC in my industry mentor role.
NSB BSOC and me and a colleague (PN, another alumni), decided upon the best team (a group of 3 year 10s) to represent the school at the Sydney Grammar stock pitch competition, where they pitched a long idea on Nickel Industries. Whilst they did not win, and my heart felt for the group who spent so much time preparing despite their year 10 exams happening simultaneously, I know they will only come back stronger, and this is a humbling lesson for them, and myself.
Got to attend CBS (Campus Bible Study) Grad Partnership dinner, and catch up with a few familiar faces from my old Christian group back at UNSW. Was convicted with the idea of investing in the next 50 years and doing that through purchasing a property that would be a future Ministry Hub for CBS. Donated myself. More details about the project can be found here: https://campusbiblestudy.org/hub/
Explored Brooklyn, near the Hawkesbury River (up north, 45 mins drive from my home) with a friend. Got to rest in the quiet, and enjoy lunch and coffee in the local area. Would recommend checking out the King Tide Café and Brooklyn's Corner Café. We walked part of the "Great North Walk" in Kuringai National Park - I hope to do the entire walk some day…
At Macquarie Baptist Church, we are starting a new course (I just finished the Growth Group leading course in the last 4 weeks!) which is more up my alley it seems, and the timing was great for the next 5 Thursdays (started on 25 Aug). The workshop is on systematic theology, and we're reading "Everyone's a Theologian" by R C Sproul. Incidentally he's one of my favourite authors, having written "Chosen by God", a book I read back in 2013 that wrestled with predestination. One of my favourite Christian books. As I currently write, my final assignment is to write an article on the topic of “What do we need to know about angels and demons?” I’m excited to push myself out of my comfort zone to do this.
📣 Special shout out for the month (new section!)
To my work colleague, Anthony, who requested his name be included in the next newsletter. I've enjoyed learning how "alternative data" can inform making investment decisions on stocks from him. The process has come a long way from our cave man tactics of trading a single quarter in a stock. I confess I was sceptical at the beginning, but I can now appreciate there are many ways to skin the same cat. I've seen him evolve into this role over the ~3 years I've had the pleasure of knowing him. It's been very humbling, educational and enjoyable with him.
