Beberapa waktu lalu saya sempat membaca buku filsafat, yang salah satunya membahas mengenai kebahagiaan. Sebelum memulai pembahasan mengenai kebahagiaan, dibahas terlebih dahulu mengenai karakter-karakter dalam kehidupan.
Karakter hidup itu sejatinya berubah dengan durasi sementara. Jadi, bersikaplah santai dan fleksibel. Manusia tidak mungkin dapat mengontrol kehidupan, tetapi bagaimana manusia memandang hidup masih dapat dikontrol oleh manusia itu sendiri.
Pemahaman manusia sifatnya adalah abu-abu, yakni pemahaman akan kebenaran dan kebaikan yang kita pahami hanya sebatas kemampuan kita. Oleh karena itu, manusia tidak boleh kaku. Apa yang dimengerti dan dipahami oleh manusia akan begitu terbatas, bukan karena kebenarannya yang terbatas, tetapi kapasitas manusialah yang sejak awal sudah dibatasi. Oleh karena itu pemahaman manusia harus selalu bertumbuh sehingga dapat menyeimbangkan karakter hidup yang sifatnya berubah-ubah.
Tubuh manusia sifatnya melemah. Seiring dengan berjalannya waktu, semakin melemah tubuh yang manusia miliki. Jika manusia berpikir tubuh yang saat ini dimiliki akan selamanya membersamai kehidupannya, maka manusia tersebut tidak akan siap menerima keadaan dan akan selalu kesultan menjalani kehidupan.
Karakter utama jiwa seorang manusia adalah kebingungan. Jika seorang manusia tidak memiliki pegangan atau prinsip yang kuat, jiwa-jiwa tersebut akan selalu mudah dipengaruhi karena sejatinya mereka selalu ada dalam kebingungan.
Takdir sifatnya ialah tidak dapat ditebak. Oleh karena itu, reputasi, kekayaan, pasangan, hingga akhir kehidupan pun tidak akan dapat bisa ditebak. Meski suatu hari manusia diberi keberlimpahan, tidak ada yang tahu kapan keberlimpahan tersebut akan bertahan lama. Perputaran roda takdir tidak akan mundah untuk ditebak.
Hidup ini fisiknya terlihat seperti sungai. Jiwa manusia digambarkan bagai mimpi dan kabut. Pada akhirnya, manusia menghadapi hidup bagai berada di medan perang atau berada di sebuah perjalanan yang begitu jauh dari rumah. Takdir akan menjadi bekal, pemahaman akan menciptakan strategi, prinsip akan membantu dalam bersikap.
Pada dasarnya, manusia tidak pantas untuk bersikap sombong karena bagaimanapun, manusia diciptakan dalam kondisi yang selemah-lemahnya. Meskipun demikian, lemah bukan berarti tidak dapat bahagia. Kebagiaan hidup bergantung pada kualitas pikiran. Kondisi apapun yang dialami manusia, cara berfikir manusia dapat menjadi kunci kebahagiaan. Sangat sedikit hal yang dibutuhkan untuk hidup bahagia karena semua kunci kebahagiaan itu ada di dalam diri sendiri.
Kebahagiaan untuk manusia yang ingin populer, akan sangat bergantung pada orang lain. Jika sandaran kebahagiaan yang dipilih manusia adalah bahagia yang seperti ini, maka manusia tidak akan pernah menemukan kebahagiaan.
Sandaran kebahagiaan yang diikat oleh suatu kesenangan atau reputasi juga tidak akan pernah membuat manusia bahagia. Karakter hidup yang berubah-ubah tidak dapat mempertahankan takdir yang sifatnya berubah-ubah dan tidak pernah diketahui ujungnya.
Jika ingin bahagia saat sedang senang, maka kebahagiaan tersebut tidak akan pernah bertahan lama. Berbahagialah seperti bagaimana orang bijaksana memperoleh kebahagiaan mereka. Karena bahagia adalah kebebasan dari segala keterikatan. Kebahagiaan yang hanya ditemukan dari dalam diri.
Disclaimer: I used the available market data during Bearish Market in 2019. However, these techniques can be applied to other market condition as well. The tutorials referred were mostly performed using MS Excel.
COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected since the end of 2019, has knocked out capital markets around the world, including in Indonesia. Also during the pandemic, I heard people start competing to offer various safe investments. Considering to its impact to Indonesia economic, my benchmark is naturally directed towards investments in capital markets. On the other hand, stock market movements could also represent future economic prediction.
Indonesia economy is currently projected to shrink about 3.1 percent in the second quarter. In line with the current economic circumstance, exchange markets experienced weakness and stock prices plummeted (bearish market) for months ever since the outbreak. Thus, the assumption of risk and return of stock portfolio will be slightly different from the assumptions under bullish markets. During the bearish market, diversification of portfolio-forming stocks must succeed in reducing the risk level.
Picture 1. Stock Indexes, Currency Spot, and Bond Indexes (HPEI) from 31 August – 30 September 2019
Reflecting on Investment during the pandemic, I can only perform the simulation based on last year’s data since I do not have fully access of daily returns of Indonesian Stocks. The market was down on September 2019, making most of stock prices LQ45 Index dropped. Although the market crash happened and psychological effects were not as bad as during the pandemic, the simulation will show same pattern as in other bearish markets.
Portfolio simulation: Why behavioural approach is necessary
Often times investors prior decision were made through their own information bubbles. Their tendency to only choose familiar stocks to form portfolio is called salience. At first, study on the formation of a stock portfolio based on salience was conducted by Da Silva Rosa and Duran (2008), which is based on the number of times a stock is reported in a major national newspaper. In his study, it was found that even rational investors rely on salience to conduct portfolio formation.
During the post-truth era, facts and evidence have frequently been replaced by personal belief and emotion. The development of digital technology, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), helps us to filter zillion of news on the internet and tries to recommend us news related to our preferences. This personalization makes us rarely receive news that we do not prefer to see.
Indonesia by any chance is one of the countries with high internet growth. A survey conducted by We are social (2019) showed out of a total of 287 Million Indonesians, the number of internet and active social media users were about 150 million each. Based on Indonesian Digital Report 2020, Indonesia already has around 160 million active social media users (59% of all Indonesia population). Internet used for digital economic activities are dominated by price searching activities (45.14%), helping jobs (41.04%), buying information (37.82%), electronic buying transactions (32.19%), job search (26.19%), banking transactions (17.04%), and online sales (16.83%).
To add the urgency, many investors in this social media generation, are not equipped, or even are not interested, with news literacy to understand the news with critical thinking, to analyse and judge the reliability of news and information and differentiate among facts, opinions, and assertions in the media. They tend to invest the stock based on their own familiarity. Hence, I will also add salience criteria in forming portfolio instead of only using rational decision. Based on OECD’s Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) score, adults in Jakarta show low levels of proficiency in literacy compared to adults in other countries and economies that participated in the same survey. Hence, Indonesia is in an emergency to handle the massive spread of news circulated through social media
Portfolio Formation
The timeline I used to observe the stocks during portfolio formation is devided into 1,2, and 3 months observation with the assumption that the longer the period, the higher the returns of investment. Since I can only observe salience effect at November 2019 while the Bearish happened at September 2019, my aim is only to get insights about performance simulation of portfolio formed through salience then compare its results to rational portfolio (Mean-Variance Markowitz) in hoping that data processed could give abnormal return far from the actual return.
Picture 2. Portfolio formation
Both portfolios will get the same treatment. The only difference is the method of selecting portfolio-forming stocks. Rational Portfolio will be formed based on P/E Ratio of all stocks listed at Indonesia Stock Exchange. Salience portfolio is formed using data from Twitter (Total company post, Total company followers, Total number of mentions) and SVI (Search Volume Index) of Google Trend. Performance simulation is based on market data collected during September 2019 when market was bearish. Last, the data are tested three times, 1 month observation (during Aug 2019), 2 month observation (Jul-Aug 2019), and 3 month observation (Jun-Aug 2019).
Table 1. Rational Portfolio formation based on P/E Ratio
I am selecting 10 company stocks listed at IDX sorted by lowest P/E ratios, as a proxy for risk-to-return ratio, still with positive average return in order to form rational portfolio. Three criteria of stocks are considered only if 1) stocks must be listed at IDX during Portfolio formation. Each stock must have lowest Price to Earnings (P/E) ratio and positive returns for 1, 2, and 3 months of observation. Of the ten selected stocks, several industries related to this portfolio include the infrastructure, property, manufacturing, services, agriculture, energy and financial services industries.
Required behavioural aspects on portfolio formation will be conducted mainly through Google Trends and Twitter. Since I am going to utilise two tools, there are more criteria needed on selecting the stocks. Since I dont have a tool to screen hundreds of company’s website and social media, I will limit stocks observation to only those which were a part of LQ45 Index during the portfolio formation. Of the 45 stocks, the stock must have the highest Google Trends’ Search Volume Index (SVI) and official Twitter Account. Both observations of google trends and Twitter are conducted during the period of one week, from 23-29 November 2019.
Google trends analysis is conducted by inputting the issuer’s code in the search term column as the keyword. Search Volume Index of each issuer was then sorted from the highest to the lowest Index. Meanwhile, Twitter activity analysis is carried out by utilising a trial version of TweetBinder. I input each company name as keywords to analyse the conversations occurred on Twitter.
Table 2. Portfolio Formation based on Salience
Of ten stocks, five companies are from financial service sectors. Also since I used the trial version of Tweet Binder, Maximum Twitter Mention calculated are 500 mentions. The table shows that generally SVI of Google Trends and Twitter Activities of Banking Industry are higher than those who are not.
Both portfolio returns are calculated for a period of 1 month, 2 months and 3 months before the bearish market. Stock Returns were collected from Thompson Reuters. I decide to collect daily returns of the chosen stocks in order to minimise standard error during statistical calculations. Then the covariance and variance of the two portfolios are processed using data analysis tool in MS Excel. In order to create optimum portfolio returns, stock weights will be calculated by Solver.
Optimum Returns of Rational and Behavioural Portfolios in Bearish Market
Table 3. Sharpe Ratio and Cronbach’s Alpha
In order to gain higher returns, the above table shows that sharpe ratio of salience portfolio averagely higher than rational portfolio. The longer investors hold the money on markets also potentially give higher returns. However, bearish market cause abnormal returns depicted on Cronbach’s alpha to be negative, meaning that investors will gain negative returns instead of positive returns. Also the longer the period observation, the more negative the returns. Salience portfolio also gives higher negative abnormal returns compared to rational portfolio.
Table 4. Portfolio Weights for Optimum Returns
Table 4 shows risks could be minimised in rational portfolio for portfolio-forming stocks are well-diversified . In contrast to salience portfolio, structured stocks do not offer diversification, causing a greater negative return compared to rational portfolio. A well diversified portfolio shows low covariance. Stocks which have high covariance tend not to be considered in the portfolio, causing the portfolio not to be “robust”, although it has better performance than rational portfolio.
How to avoid high loss
There are some strategies which can be considered in order to reduce risks in Bear Market.
Defensive strategy. Consider to start investing in large company with strong balance sheet and long operational history i.e large market capitalization and stable growth. Defensive stocks also involve products which could be consumed over times such house hold goods, toiletries, medicines, etc. By investing in this company, no matter how bear the market is, people will never stop buying these products.
Buying more stocks at much cheaper prices. This decision must be defined based on investors financial constraints. During the bear market, moreover crisis caused by pandemic, cash always become a king. Even tho the price would rise after the crisis, making sure that they have stack of cash is mostly very important.
Investing at more stable instruments such as Government Bond and Fixed Deposit. In Indonesia, I personally will choose Government Bonds rather than fixed deposits since most of the time the returns of Government Bonds are higher than Fixed Deposits. I cannot recommend investing at company’s bonds even tho most of the time the returns are not that higher compared to Gobernment Bonds, the risks usually are much higher.
In my experience, I also do not recommend investing in Gold for its price tend to peak higher during the crisis while in the same time, buyback is not easy due to the more closed store and so it becomes much less liquid.
References:
Asosiasi Jasa Penyelenggara Internet, dan Polling Indonesia. (2018). Laporan Survei Penetrasi & Perilaku Pengguna Internet Indonesia 2018.
Bank, S., Yazar, E. E., & Sivri, U. (2019). Can social media marketing lead to abnormal portfolio returns?. European Research on Management and Business Economics , 25 (2), 54-62.
Barber, B. M., & Odean, T. (2001). The internet and the investor. Journal of Economic Perspectives , 15 (1), 41-54.
Bodie, ZVI, et al. 2014. Investments, 9th edition . New York: McGraw Hill
Da Silva Rosa, R., & Durand, R. B. (2008). The role of salience in portfolio formation. Pacific-Basin Finance Journal , 16 (1-2), 78-94.
Lately has become strange weeks to me and everyone around me. I spent three weeks between Semarang and Magelang for I was about to check on the new asset my company plan to purchase and getting a semi locked down since it is much better to stay at the city rather than travelling back to back from Jakarta.
For some reasons I manage to find, again, comforts in reading. On a serious note, I enjoy reading but a few years back I am trying to change my reading habits into something more meaningful for not only myself. Usually I read for fun, sometimes I want to read for learning. I have break down the lists on my twitter but here I want to write a much simpler recommendation.
The evolution of desire. I am actually reading this book which is about various research on human mating that had ever been published. The author outline the structured idea with the support of the already exist research so readers will grasp the messages he is pointing out. It starts with the women and men preferences. It is funny that somehow the common logic always wins, maybe because they simply portrait the human raw natures
Girl, Woman, Other. This is a good novel and it raises timeless issues like how do feminist women have relations with men? How did women adapt over times or in a patriarchal world that was so massively believed. All the time, the construction of gender bias have become normal issues talk by women. People are growing over times, however, I do not understand why women in specific are still facing the same problems. With the beautiful narration written in a fiction form, this book is not only entertain me, but also remind me of the constantly same probs faced by women in society.
Digital Minimalism. Again, this is a popular book which is suitable for people who want to reduce the use of social media. Or those who want lifestyles that don’t really often exposed to digitisation. the author himself is a professor in computer sciences so it should be pretty much describe the current circumstances well without adding unnecessary infos. Since I am not someone with an IT background, this book is quite giving me some inights I have never known before.
In the mean time, I am also considering reading the following books for the next two weeks:
The age of surveillance capitalism. Briefly I got from reading its excerpt is this book maybe will answer why and how we readily give up our personal information for ‘simply’ the sake of business. In the end, our privacy must facilitate digital interaction and it also has capacity to change the economy.
Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. With all the fuss of COVID-19, I am reminded of the book that had been a part of my piling lists back then when I was still a freshman, which is, abour 10 years ago. Everyone always says that swans are always white. This is an undeniable fact based on hundreds of years experiences plus even maybe researches. When the Australian continent was discovered, people discovered the existence of black swans. It turns out that indeed there is very rarely a black swan, one in a million. This discovery illustrates how insular we are in our observations and the vulnerability of science. All that is needed to prove the theory of the all white swans, is only a black swan.
I should say, I don’t do WFH. There are some days I am still needed to go to office. Things won’t be too strict in term of the government policy it seems, so as long as there are some cracks and the potential of employees to keep going for works, there won’t be WFH for me LOL. Only I take a mental note that I wouldn’t be able to meet my family for the time being.
FEATURED PICTURE IS NOT MINE
Of all the many photos during graduation, I think this is the only acceptable taken photo. Since I am a natural awkward and a camera-shy, I prefer selfie for I don’t trust people to take my picture. I love the makeup, even though the price is considerably expensive for the only graduation ceremony. Anyhow I was very happy.
It was sad that I didnt take proper family photos due to the heavy rain. Well I did have some, yet they were not as good as this one maybe for this scene has pink nuances and taken by a pro bahaha! Duh, this made me miss them already.
Mumpung sedang booming Spotify Wrapped 2019, berikut ini kira-kira laporan tim data spotify tentang musik-musik yang dalam satu tahun belakangan ini paling sering saya dengar.
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Melihat laporan mereka, baru sadar kalau saya semakin menggandrungi K-POP kira-kira semenjak Juni 2019. Padahal selama ini saya jarang sekali dengerin K-POP kecuali K-POP jaman DBSK, Big Bang, dan Girls Generation. Sampai akhirnya, genre musik klasik dan folk yang biasanya menjadi urutan teratas genre favorit akhirnya tergeser oleh genre Pop. Saya juga sering bertanya-tanya sendiri kok saya bisa suka banget sih dengan KPOP, padahal dulunya gak suka-suka amat. Untungnya, pertanyaan saya tadi cukup terjawab semenjak tanpa sengaja nemu artikelWhy So Many Former Emos Are Now K-Pop Fans. Menurut artikel, ada dua alasan yang menyebabkan fans-fans musik Emo kenapa akhirnya bisa sangat menyukai KPOP. Yang pertama ialah karena kedua genre sama-sama merupakan musik anti mainstream yang mana kitalah yang harus berinisiatif untuk mulai mendengar jika ingin mengenal musik mereka, namun di sisi lain memiliki basis komunitas fans yang kuat. Yang kedua adalah karena kedua genre sama-sama menyuarakan emosi secara jujur. Ada masa-masa ketika Linkin Park menjadi begitu terkenal dengan lirik-lirik mereka yang menginspirasi dan mampu menyemangati remaja-remaja galau pada masanya. Kalau sekarang, coba deh cek salah satu lirik lagu BTS misalnya yang berjudul Not Today. Kedua lagu tersebut sama-sama memberikan semangat emosional yang tinggi.
Musik sebenarnya memegang peran penting dalam kehidupan saya. Sampai-sampai, saya beneran gak bisa kebayang kalau saya gak dengerin lagu tuh rasanya pasti ada yang kurang. Karena alasan itu juga sebabnya saya sering bertanya-tanya dalam hati kira-kira ada faktor individu seperti apa di dalam diri saya yang mungkin memengaruhi preferensi musik.
Iseng, saya nemu artikel soal preferensi dalam bermusik individu di sini. Menurut riset, orang seringkali bersikap defensif dengan mengatakan kalau selera musik tidak ada kaitannya dengan kepribadian seseorang. Alasan orang terkadang merasa defensif tentang selera mereka dalam musik mungkin terkait dengan seberapa banyak hubungannya dengan sikap dan kepribadian. Peneliti juga menyarankan kalau biasanya orang-orang akan mulai mendefinisikan kepribadian mereka berdasarkan genre musik yang sering didengar hanya sebagai sarana untuk menghubung-hubungkan dengan kepribadian orang lain. Misalnya saya yang senang dengan pop folk biasanya sering mengira-ngira kalau mereka yang menyukai genre musik yang sama dengan saya barangkali juga suka musik setipe berjudul X dan Y. Kalau memang orang-orang itu terbukti suka, saya langsung mengira-ngira tentang alasan mereka suka. Apakah sama seperti dengan alasan saya? Penelitian North tadi menunjukkan hubungan yang sering dilakukan orang-orang antara siapa mereka sebagai individu dan selera musik mereka.
Lanjut ya, uniknya lagi saya nemu beberapa peneliti yang mulai berani mengkategorikan tipe-tipe kepribadian seseorang berdasarkan genre musik yang didengar. Jadi kalau berdasarkan riset ini, ini, dan yang tadi, kira-kira gambaran kepribadian seseorang berdasarkan genre musik seperti di bawah ini.
Pop: Katanya sih penyuka Pop dianggap sebagai pekerja keras dan memiliki harga diri yang tinggi. Peneliti juga menyarankan bahwa mereka cenderung kurang kreatif dan lebih gelisah
Rap: Penggemar rap cenderung memiliki harga diri yang tinggi dan biasanya lebih outgoing.
Country: lagu country sering berpusat pada cerita-cerita tentang patah hati. Uniknya orang yang condong menyukai genre ini dapat dikatakan lebih stabil secara emosional. Mereka juga cenderung lebih konservatif dan memiliki tingkat keterbukaan yang lebih rendah terhadap pengalaman.
Heavy Metal: Berbeda dari anggapan banyak orang jika mereka yang menyukai Heavy Metal atau Rock adalah intens dan agresif, mereka sebenarnya cenderung lembut, cenderung mellow, dan memiliki elf-esteem yang rendah.
Klasik: Musik klasik dikaitkan dengan sifat-sifat seperti rasa ingin tahu, nilai-nilai politik liberal, dan kecerdasan
Jazz/Blues: Jazz adalah genre musik yang luas dan beragam, terdiri dari beberapa subgenre, dari Dixieland, swing, dan bebop, hingga modal, gratis, dan fusion. Ada juga konotasi sosial yang didefinisikan dengan jelas, atau stereotip, yang terkait dengan penggemar musik jazz: pendengar jazz diyakini kreatif, santai, dan introspektif.
Meskipun genre musik sebenarnya mewakili artis/musik yang kebanyakan dikenal, terkadang kita masih suka bingung sendiri kalau diminta untuk mengkategorikan genre. Misalnya, lagu-lagu yang dinyanyikan oleh Frank Sinatra dapat digolongkan ke dalam salah satu kategori seperti Populer, Vokal Pria, Band, Swing, Broadway, atau Jazz. Ada juga AC / DC dan Van Halen yang pernah dianggap sebagai Heavy Metal tetapi sekarang mulai dianggap sebagai Classic Rock. Mungkin ini juga yang menyebabkan pengukuran/penilaian kepribadian yang semata-mata didasarkan pada label genre akan cenderung vague sehingga dirasa tidak terlalu tepat.
Nah, menurut kalian setelah melihat musik yang belakangan saya dengar dan penjelasan singkat dari hasil studi mengenai kepribadian dan preferensi musik, saya memiliki tipe kepribadian yang seperti apa?
I sometimes wonder if I die one day, will people notice that I am gone istantly? I can be quite sure that there will be only a small number of people who will realize my existence. I am working at a company where people are hardly ever heard. I keep my special people few. Even though I am trying my best to maintain my relationship with some colleagues at work, this doesn’t mean my presence is that impressive to stay long enough in their memory. I am living as a mediocre. I dont like crowd. I am also not comfortable with too much attention. That is being said, maybe one day if I die, I will die alone for none will even realize I am exist.
My besties sometimes jokingly ever said that I could be famous only if I let myself being known. However to be perfectly honest, I realize the reason is not because I never let anyone knew me further, but for I am hardly comfortable to show who I am to the just anyone. Damn for my social awkwardness.
Aforme 