Interview with Lionel Yeo of Cheerful Egg

I am very excited to bring you folks the maiden post of my "Interview With Fellow Investors" blog series. What make it more special is that the first interviewee is not someone that I knew personally (maybe one day I should get in touch with him personally ;-))

First, let me give you folks some brief introduction to my very first interviewee. His name is Lionel Yeo, founder of the personal finance blog called Cheerful Egg (I know, what a cool name right? I leave it to you to explore his blog further on why it is called Cheerful Egg). He has written a free ebook called Small Tweaks which can be downloaded freely from his blog. 

I chanced upon his blog some time back (during the early stage of this blog, in Mar 2014) and got hooked with his style of writing and also the super clean layout of his blog. Since then, I am a regular to his blog. 

Now, without further ado, let's get to know Lionel better with the following Q&A:
 

Q1 : Can you give us a brief introduction about yourself?
I'm Lionel and I blog about personal finance for young executives. I also secretly dance in my room.

Q2 : Are you a full-time or part-time investor at the moment?
Part time - in fact, I only spend 20 minutes a month on my portfolio, as I invest passively in indexes

Q3 : When (at what age) did you start investing in shares and who has influenced you the most?
I dabbled in risky investments such as futures, commodities and forex since I was 21. However, I found that those weren't suitable for the majority of people and I switched to passive investing in the stock and bond market index when I was 26.

Q4 : Do you view yourself as long-term (holding shares in years), short-term investor (holding shares in days/months) or mixture?
Super duper long-term! I buy and plan to hold on to my indexes for the next 20-30 years, or even the rest of my life.

Q5 : What is your basis of selecting the shares to invest (e.g. basing on fundamental analysis, technical analysis or other methods/sources [share a little bit more details if it is the latter])?

I practice passive investing, which means I buy the entire stock/bond market and track its returns. Research has shown that the vast majority of investors simply cannot beat the performance of the stock market over the long-run, regardless of whether they are fundamental or technical investors. 

Heck, even professionals can't do it consistently! Therefore, I choose to track the market using ETFs instead. You can read more about my strategy in my book Automatic Investing
 

                                   

Q6 : What is your targeted and achieved annual rate of returns (%) so far?
No targeted rate of returns - How do you predict the future? As long as I track the returns of the market, I would have succeeded.

Q7 : What is your most recommended online investing resource (site or blog) to share with our readers?
My blog Cheerful Egg :)

Q8 : Besides shares, what other investment are you involved in (e.g. Real Estates, Bonds or REITs etc)?
REITs and Bond index ETFs

Q9 : What is your Portfolio Distribution like”?
Approximately 80% equities, 20% bonds. But this will change as I get older.

Q10 : If the readers what to get in touch with you, how to get hold of you? (Sharing of your website/blog/social media profile etc..)
Get in touch at Cheerful Egg

I am sure we get to know Lionel slightly better now, to the minimum, we now know that he secretly dance in his room ;-)

If you like to be featured in this blog series, feel free to email me at investopenly@gmail.com and I will get back to you right away. We all have our own voice when comes to our investing venture and I hope this blog series will make your voice louder and heard by many more people.

Cheers!