The flavour of life: stock market lessons from Utada Hikaru

Utada Hikaru is another jpop artist that I am listening to currently and her haunting and pure voice is simply out of this world. Utada chan is a very prolific and creative artist whose music videos blows your mind away with elements of anime, fantasy and also very real images of everday people.

Why listening to Utada Hikaru helps you in stock market investments
The recent market upheaval that has seen my stock portfolio drop almost 10% below cost made me feel scared, desperate and worried. Fear of losing the value of my stock investments was almost too much for me to bear... until I tore myself away from the poems stock screen to check out some of Utada Hikaru's videos.

Her cool, clean and crisp voice cuts through the stress, uncertainty and worries as you focus on her music and the images from her music videos, you find yourself being more centred and focussed on listening to her voice, her music, her expression of her feelings into her songs.

It is times like this where the asian stock markets are being sold down by hedge funds, fund managers and retail investors who are spooked by the sub-prime issues and possible credit crunch in the US financial markets that maintaining the rational mindset amidst the irrational fear and uncertainty that permeates the sentiments of the investor.

Maintaining your sanity in the midst of market "insanity"
In the stock market, traders make buy, sell or hold decisions all the time. As a longer-term investors, you want to generally buy and hold for the long-term, but the markets do not always keep going up in the short-term as the recent sharp corrections in the Singapore Exchange has seen a lot of the 2007 gains in stocks wiped out last week. One of the key lessons I learnt during this episode is that you cannot time the market. Hence, the ability to hold and the ability to analyse the fundamentals of the business underlying the stocks that you invest in is paramount.

During such periods of pervasive irrational sentiment, you may need to take a step back, breathe deeply and listen to Utada Hikaru's songs to clear your mind before you decide if you should continue to hold, to buy more or to sell. There is no right or wrong decisions, it's whether the decisions make you money (in the mid-to-long term) or lose you money.

May your stock investment choices be cool and rational ones. :)

Be well and prosper.