PEOPLE TO WATCH
Hong Kong's 'young stock market
whizz'
Investment contest winner wants to teach
teens how to invest
By LI XUEYING
HONG KONG CORRESPONDENT
Mr Simon Siu Fai, 24, has a program he designed to
calculate stock market trends, which helps him to manage his
family's money on the Hong Kong stock exchange. -- ST
PHOTO: LI XUEYING
HONG KONG - Standing at a gangly 1.8m, Mr Simon Siu Fai looks
like a typical undergraduate who enjoys playing basketball and
fiddling around on his computer.
But it is not computer games that he is playing as
his fingers flash across the keyboard.
The 24-year-old is managing his family's money on
the Hong Kong stock exchange - to the tune of HK$1 million
(S$157,000).
Asked how he feels about doing that, he says with a
shrug: "People feel that it is exciting, like gambling. But if you
follow strict rules on how one should trade, investment is actually
very boring."
Not quite the kind of answer one expects from a
"young stock market whizz", as Mr Siu has been called since he
triumphed over 1,000 other university students in an investment
contest in March. It won him HK$13,000 in prize money as well as
accolades in this city that runs on the adrenalin of moneymaking
and deal-cutting.
Mr Siu, who studied financial engineering at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong, used software he had developed to
calculate market trends and time trades during the competition.
The top 10 finalists were each allocated HK$20,000
and given two months to grow that money. Mr Siu finished at the top
when he increased that sum to HK$32,624.
He's had plenty of practice at investing.
He was only 13 and studying in Fuhua Secondary in
Singapore - where his parents had sent him to get a bilingual
education - when he began reading up on investment, his interest
piqued by the Robert Kiyosaki bestseller, Rich Dad Poor Dad.
At 16, he opened an account on Fundsupermart.com,
an online trading platform, with his mother's help as he was
underage.
He started with $20,000 from his parents - Dad is
an engineer and Mum owns a trading company. He doubled it to
$40,000 by the time he was in Jurong Junior College, but the 2007
financial crisis left him with just $10,000.
After his JC studies, he returned to Hong Kong but
did not stop investing. Today, that pool is worth HK$1 million.
The lesson he has taken away from his early
setbacks is a simple one.
"Always follow the trend. It doesn't matter if
you're not ahead but you must be in the right direction," he
says.
"And if it's not big enough, don't go in. If you go
in, hoping it will go in the direction you want it to, that's
gambling, not investing."
It harks back to his basic philosophy about
investing: that it's a mathematical puzzle that can be solved using
a formula based on historical performance data of stocks and market
trends.
This underpins the computer software he designed as
part of his university thesis, and which he monitors every day to
analyse the market.
His dream is to perfect it so that one day, he can
be a Warren Buffett reaping the fruit of his investments.
He is not interested in starting and managing
profitable companies and becoming a business tycoon like Mr Li Ka
Shing, and has turned down job offers since he graduated in June,
preferring to focus on his investments in a study room at his
family's apartment in Lantau, and getting a master's degree in
finance.
"I don't want to work at a job until I retire. I
want to have the time and financial freedom to do what I like. I
want to give something to society."
And that "something" is to start a social
enterprise, a business with a heart.
His idea is to create what he calls "wealth
management classes" aimed at students between the ages of 11 and
16.
"Many parents know how to invest, but they don't
teach their children how to," he explains.
Some may wonder if such classes will end up
teaching impressionable teenagers the wrong values and to be
fixated on money.
It cuts both ways, says Mr Siu, who points to the
trend of bankruptcy among young working adults who overspend and
max out their credit cards because they are ignorant about managing
money.
The classes will teach young people "about the
importance of saving and investments", he says, as well as an
understanding of money flows and the role of governments and
banks.
He intends to start wealth management classes after
completing his master's programme next year. Such classes are
already being taught in Taiwan.
"We are a major financial centre. We should be
better at this."
Asia, The Straits Times, September 17 2012, Pg A13