Dec 27, 2014

How Xiaxue vs Gushcloud Saga teaches People to Set Up An Investment Scam

Some of my friends are curious about why I am so interested in the recent Xiaxue vs Gushcloud Saga. (Here is a good summary by Online Citizen ). One of my friend even thought that I was part of Gushcloud.


My blogs are not affiliated with any organization even though I somehow got lucky and my SG Unfit Runners blog managed to get into the finals of Singapore Blog Awards.  What I blog about (Running & Finance) is too niche for these social media organization to take notice. When's the last time you hear a financial blogger being headhunted by Nuffnang or Gushcloud? Nerds (There! I said it!) like us don't make very good influencers (We don't look good in our #OOTD) though we do know how to make money from the financial markets.

Dec 22, 2014

First Shipment of Wongamania 1st Edition Arrives in Singapore!


2 years of cumulative work and Wongamania 1st Edition reaches Singapore shores at last! We have air flown in our first batch of 150 Wongamania sets in order to sent out all our available stock to our Crowdtivate crowdfunding so that receive it before Xmas! We are shipping the rest of the stock in batches in by truckloads and the entire stock is expected to reach Singapore by 30th December. Thank you to all for your support and patience!

Dec 16, 2014

Wongamania's Crowdfunding Campaign Ends. Thank you Supporters!

Our crowdfunding campaign at Singapore crowdfunding platform has finally ended on Monday (15th Dec 2014). Even though it is a pity that we fell short of our crowdfunding goal of $10,000, we learn a lot about the ins and outs of starting and executing a crowdfunding campaign and what are some of the improvements that we can include in our next crowdfunding campaign.

What? Another crowdfunding campaign? Are you going to relaunch Wongamania again?

The Wongamania Design Story: Trimming the Fats and Game Balancing (Part 3)

Here is the story of how Wongamania came to be:
Part 1: The Genesis of Wongamania 
Part 2: Concept to Prototype


In Part 2 of Wongamania Design Story, I was elaborating how I realized that I had stuffed too much contents into the game and I had to trim the number of card designs from 100 to around 50.

Game mechanics testing using pieces of paper.

The first thing that I needed to do is to cut down the number of card categories in the game. The current card categories at that point of time were: Health, career, law, incident, global, professional and assets.

Dec 8, 2014

The Wongamania Design Story: Concept to Prototype (Part 2)

Here is the story of how Wongamania came to be:
Part 1: The Genesis of Wongamania


Initial blueprint of Wongamania


 When I first came up with the initial concept of Wongamania, there is so many cool stuff that I wanted to implement.

The basic concept of Wongamania works like this.

1) Players are given a basic income every turn to help them build up their resource. The currency system and the action cards draw from the same base. Meaning that by taking action, you are losing out on money, while if you try to accumulate money, you will lose out on actions that can potentially earn more money or slow down your opponents.

2) The players are suppose to make more money through investing and taking risk by navigating through an economic cycle that goes through Recession, Recovery, Growth and Stagnant phrase and investing in assets

3) The asset cards consist of stocks, properties and bonds. However, each of the asset class has a different buying price and income flow at each different phrase of Wongamania.

Dec 3, 2014

What Will Happen when Financial Insitutions Reveals the Truth of their Advertisements?


Protecting Wealth for Generations... Until 2007...
 I am sure that we have all been bombarded by advertisements from financial institutions with a beautiful family in a beautiful room looking at their beautiful investment portfolio and smiling happily with a beautiful advisor.

Nov 30, 2014

Who Knows which Industry is worth 35 Trillion dollars?

It's a lazy Sunday morning and I am doing my usual stuff, eating breakfast and surfing facebook.

I came across this sponsored post that screams

TIRED FROM YOUR CURRENT JOB?

How to start a business with low start up cost in a 35 Trillion Industry


Well, I am pretty happy with my job, but I don't mind another business whereby people slave away doing the hard work for me. Wow, a 35 Trillion Industry! Does the ad means 35 trillion dollars or 35 trillion people or 35 trillion planets.

Nov 28, 2014

The Wongamani Design Story: The Genesis of Wongamania (Part 1)

After graduation, I didn't want to follow the same corporate path taken by most of my friends. I always wanted to start my own company. It was 2003 and Singapore is just starting its evolution towards a financial hub after experiencing a deep and long recession. I have some ideas to start a children financial education company with a good friend at that point of time. However, we were concerned that we have no money, no connections and no knowledge at that time and we decided to work in the corporate work briefly before coming back together to start the company. He went on to join a marketing and event company while I joined a wealth management firm.

My friend enjoyed his work in the corporate world so much that he decided to stay for good. We never got down to starting that company. On hindsight, we should have started the company there and than. Who knows, we may have already established a pretty good brand name by now.

Nov 25, 2014

Why Boardgames in Asia are Old and Tired

When I was developing the Wongamania card game, I did a short google search on "board game" "card game" "Asia". The first few hits that I have gotten were on the traditional Asian board games such as "WeiQi" and "XiangQi". Other top hits include Asian inspired board games designed by western board games designers. There seems to be a lack of table games designers and Asian designed board games. Everybody in Asia seems to be obsessed with video and mobile games these days, when the trend is reversing in US and Europe, where board games are on the rise.

Sales of board games are on a rise in United States at a rate of 15%-20% in the past few years. More money is raised from tabletop games via crowdfunding programs than digital games in 2013. Top digital mobile games like Angry Bird and Candycrush are creating their own board games. One of the top reason for this reversal of trend, is the new wave of young people, whom decided to unplug from their mobile devices and social media, and engage in more sociable activities, like board games. This is an interesting article from New York Times on the rise of board games.

I did a simple Google image search and these pictures will tell you all about the state of table games industry in the different parts of the world. 

Board Game Industry in Asia. Stuck in Ancient Times
Board Games in US. Bright and Fun looking. They still love Monopoly!
Board Games in Europe. Strategic thinking needed.

 What's the reason for such a low interest in tabletop games in Asia? 

Nov 24, 2014

5 Ways Investment Scams Gain Your Trust ... and Money..

Financial products and money making opportunities are exploding across the world as investors look for new avenues to grow their wealth in this low interest rates environment. One of the most prominent bloom is the rise of the unregulated High Yield Investment Products (HYIP). These products typically offer high "guaranteed" returns of 20% or more and are often associated with a Ponzi Scheme. 

The recent explosion of a $1 Billion Ponzi scheme, SecureInvestment in America has hit the headlines of Bloomberg again. Forex Investors May Face $1 Billion loss as Trade Site Vanishes.
Here is the corporate video for SecureInvestment.


What is interesting is that the people behind SecureInvestment (The name itself is a big red flag!) are so marketing savvy that their website is more popular than forex.com, one of the world's largest forex trading platform, at one point of time. This Bloomberg article exposed some  of the marketing gimmick behind this Forex Trading Scam which they used to gain investors' trust... and their money.

Here are some of the tactics they used:

Nov 14, 2014

How to make a Suspected Scammer Wash Dishes at a Restaurant

This post was first posted on Recollections of a Money Manager during March 2014. Recollections is an online diary of my journey in the wealth management industry since 2005 and I decided to turn that site private since I prefer to keep the musings to myself. However, there is quite a few interesting articles which I thought I should repost at Xeolyenomics. Here is one of my favorite article.

Today, I had an interesting meeting with a suspected scam artist.



How I Blew $2,000 on a Forex Workshop

Creating Millionaires... Through Forex Trading... Hopefully?

Recently, I was reading a Bloomberg article The Lure of Forex: Conflict, Debt and Loss in a $400 Billion Market .

It's an interesting article that explores the Forex education workshops in America and how these firms market their workshop to get students to pay a few thousand dollars to learn about Forex trading.

Nov 3, 2014

Wongamania around the World - The Story Behind...

Many of you are fascinated on the reasons on why I have been putting Wongamania on my head while traveling around Europe.

Now, everyone is demanding that I put Wongamania on my head when posing with the box game. OMG!

Here is a short history how it came about.

One fine evening, as I was making the movie for the Crowdtivate campaign, I got so bored and decided to take a few crazy poses with Wongamania.

Fooling around with Wongamania while filming for the Crowdtivate Video


Oct 3, 2014

Review of 5 Elements of Successful Investors by Big Fat Purse

A big thanks to Big Fat Purse and Alvin for reviewing my book. 5 Elements of Successful Investors. You can buy the book from all Kinokuniya Bookstore in Singapore and all major bookstores in Malaysia or you can get a discount by supporting our crowdfunding campaign at Crowdtivate

You can read about the review here.


Sep 16, 2014

Wongamania @ Bursa Malaysia with Sunway University


The Wongamania team, in collaboration with Bursa Young Investor club and Financial Youth Intelligence, conducted the 2nd Wongamania event supported by Bursa Malaysia. We hosted 160 students from Kuala Lumpur's Sunway University. Here are some of the photos and Instragram pictures the students have taken. 











A Funny Episode while Planning for our Wongamania Crowdfunding Campaign


Our Crowdfunding campaign kick off officially on 15th of August.

Setting up the entire campaign is a pretty intense experience. Here is a breakdown on the amount of time I took to setup the entire campaign.

Sep 8, 2014

Yeah, I am going to get a high powered, high paying job in the 2nd largest bank in Hong Kong! Or not?

One fine day, I received an invitation for a request for connection at LinkedIn.


Wow. Looks like a big shot from Hong Kong based Hang Seng wanted to make an acquaintance with me! Does she by chance is entranced by my sterling resume, superior writing skills and wanted to offer me a high position job in one of the biggest banks in Hong Kong?

Or she is memorized by my good looks and wanted to be a "friend"?

Sep 6, 2014

5 Elements of Successful Investors - Book Review by SG Young



Thank you SG Young Investment for reviewing our book and giving it such a good review!

I always have much respect for this young gentlemen as his articles are a honest and thoughtful reflection of the money problems of the new generation. It is not surprising that he is able to garner the attention of the young adults as he is able to address their hopes, concerns and problems. I am a regular reader of his blog myself.

Do drop by his blog and take a look of some of his interesting articles at sgyounginvestment.blogspot.sg

Aug 23, 2014

Wongamania@Bursa Malaysia with UTAR Kampar

The epic selfie with the students from UTAR Kampar!
23th August marks the first major Wongamania workshop, in collaboration with Financial Youth Intelligence and Bursa Malaysia, to host 130+ students from UTAR Kampar. The event was held in the prestigious Listing Hall at the stock exchange, the auditorium where successful Malaysian enterprises take journey from private companies into publicly listed companies.

The students have a great time learning about economics and bankrupting their friends through unexpected economic crisis. Morale of the day: Always be prepared because you never know when an economic crisis will strike.

Congrats to Munnychan who won himself a limited launch edition of Wongamania as part of the instagram selfie competition. Look for #wongamania in your instagram for more creative selfies that the students took!

Staff from Bursa Malaysia and FYI setting up the tables the night before

Selfie with the hardworking staff from FYI

Adele Tang, the workhorse of FYI explaining the rules of the game
 
A Paranormal view of the entire Listing Hall

Winner of the Instagram Selfie competition! Congrats!

Aug 17, 2014

Wongamania Preview Session with Big Fat Purse

Guess who dropped by during the Wongamania preview session?

The entire team from Big Fat Purse came by to try out the game on their own! Glad to meet some of the most prominent and insightful financial bloggers in Singapore!


Aug 13, 2014

Interview with Big Fat Purse

I have always been a big fan of Big Fat Purse and I am pretty honored to be interviewed by them.

You can read about the interview here: Fun Games to Teach You About Finance and Investment

Aug 8, 2014

Launch of Limited Edition Wongamania with Bursa Malaysia

Team Wongamania and Team FYI
From Left: Oliva Florence Sengkey. Made Lidya, Sam Chiang, Xeo Lye, Teng Hau, Siew Ming, Adele Tang

Today marks the launch of the Limited Launch Edition Wongamania, together with our partners, Bursa Malaysia and  Financial Youth Intelligence (FYI)  at the Bursa Malaysia Building at Kuala Lumpur

We had the chance to share the game with the staff of Bursa Malaysia and a few selected student leaders from major universities in KL. They were among the first people in the world to try out the Limited Launch Edition Wongamania. Everyone I spoke to praise the breadth and depth of Wongamania and many people were asking us when are we going to officially launch the game. I aim to see the main edition of Wongamania to be out by the beginning of November! Stay tuned!


Here are some of the feedbacks on Wongamania posted on Instagram!



Aug 7, 2014

Wongamania Rendezvous with the FYI Team

Met up with the Financial Youth Intelligence Team and delivered the Limited Edition Wongamania. We decided to take a picture while sorting out the game sets and certificates.

Stock checking time! Not forgetting to take a picture during the handover event.

Limited Edition Wongamania Packed and Ready to Go

Here is a snap shot from our game manufacturer on the progress of packing of Wongamania. Here are some of the scenes behind the manufacturing of Wongamania.

Sorting the cards into the boxes

Wongamania game tokens!
Packed Wongamania Game Sets

Jul 30, 2014

BFM 89.9 Interview Podcast: 5 Elements of Successful Investors







Success in investing requires much more than just knowledge in what you invest in. You need to also be able to identify and overcome your own psychological weaknesses. The same investing strategy and product that suit one may not suit another. We speak to authors of “KISS - 5 Elements Of Successful Investors”, Xeo Lye and Jonathan Quek on the study of the 4 elements of psychological astrology and investing to translate into investment success. 
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