Coronavirus has hit the whole world badly with almost a quarter of the population in lockdown and that includes myself. It’s day 16 of the lockdown since 28 March and I’ve decided to start writing again to kill some time. I don’t know whether this journal will get abandoned later but at least not for the next 12 remaining days of the lockdown.

A lot of things have happened in the past 2 weeks, with the tumbling of the stock market capturing most of my attention. I re-visited a lot of value investing materials which I delved into more than 10 years ago when I was still working in the United Kingdom. Most of the ideas centre around “Value Investing” championed by the world-renowned Warren Buffett, which is the only investment philosophy I believe in. It is also the only method that generated positive returns for me as opposed to some dumb speculations I did in the past by acting on stock tips from questionable sources.

One thing I observe is that great investors are usually brilliant writers apart from being voracious readers. I strongly believe that once you can put your thought clearly on a piece of paper, you have successfully mastered and internalised what you have learned. I’ve always been a voracious reader but I don’t have a yardstick to measure how much knowledge I’ve mastered. This could be the best avenue to test it out. Apart from that, I hope that this can be a great album to capture my thoughts at a particular point in time, just like a photo album that serves as a memory lane.

What kind of topics I should write about? It will not run too far away from current affairs, business and finance as these are the only areas I pay attention to apart from politics, which I have no intention to write about. To be fair, I enjoy other things in life too, such as cooking and sports but I don’t want to make a mockery of myself by talking about that because I have absolutely no idea what to say.

As usual, just like the beginning of each book with an Acknowledgement Page, I start mine by thanking the government of Malaysia for imposing a 28-day lockdown to control the spread of Covid-19. Without this, I wouldn’t have the time to start writing again.

Right now, my thoughts and prayers are with the medical frontliners battling the current crisis.