Tong's Portfolio 2: It's All a Matter of Trust - Tong Kooi Ong - 9789672642237 - Gerakbudaya

When Tong Kooi Ong and Asia Analytica started Tong’s Portfolio, a weekly column in The Edge, in 2014, the objective was simple. They wanted to share their views (often differing from mainstream news flow) on developments in the financial markets to help fill knowledge gaps, and help the public make informed decisions and invest better. In 2021, Tong decided to collate some of the articles over the seven-year period (2014 to 2021) into a book, Tong’s Portfolio: Investing Can Be Fun and Profitable. The articles were not just educative but, taken together, they offered a fairly comprehensive volume of analytics and tools for readers to apply. The book you now hold in your hands — Tong’s Portfolio 2: It’s All a Matter of Trust — is the sequel. Why a sequel? The world has changed greatly in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. Investing has become more challenging. The financial markets, for one, saw a reversal in major secular trends that has upended the investing landscape. Slowing economic growth and rising inflation fuelled by supply chain disruptions; escalating geo-political tensions and the Ukraine-Russia war; and the increase in black swan events produced unprecedented volatility. These, in addition to the synchronised tightening of monetary policy globally to fight inflation, have converged to create an extremely testing time for investors. Against such a backdrop, knowledge is king. This is where Tong’s Portfolio has become even more relevant for investors today. The fact that the authors are radical thinkers who enjoy going against the crowd with their analyses and contrarian views is what makes this compilation a compelling read. This second edition is quite different from its predecessor. For one, the authors have grouped the articles, published over a two-year period, in chapters based on topics, instead of in chronological order. Throughout the seven chapters, the emphasis is on, as far as possible, accurate and unbiased information. After all, accurate information should top the list of investors’ priorities, so as to minimise risks and prevent unnecessary losses. An observation made by the authors is that one of the biggest causes of market implosions is the lack of trustworthy literature in the public arena. This trust deficit is created more often than not by, among others, misleading corporate disclosures, research reports that contain biased views and news flow that fails to reflect the whole truth. Perhaps, in the post-pandemic world, what investors need is the kind of frank, cutting-edge and incisive analyses of developments that have had an impact on the financial markets that can be found in Tong’s Portfolio 2: It’s All a Matter of Trust.