Recently, a friend of mine asked me, ‘If I have debt, then I also have an investment vehicle that can make a decent profit when I invest my cash, which one do you choose?’
Then, I asked him back, ‘What debt is that and how HIGH is your rate of return on your investment?’
He explained to me, ‘It is my mortgage, an adjustable mortgage rate, at current market rate, repayment tenure is normal which is maximum 25-30 years. My investment is giving me a return that is quite high which can cover my mortgage is I do invest. I can even pay back my mortgage within 5-10 years only. But the question is which one do you choose? Should I prepare my defense or should I go aggressive, playing offensive in investing?’
When I heard about the investment, I was wondering what kind of invest that he talked about. I know stock can give you such return if you carefully trade, forex and some derivatives instruments can give you such return as well. On the mortgage, that is kind of normal mortgage rate and repayment period. Generally, after settling it, we will realize that the actual house price that we bought will become double or about 2.5 times. Further, there is a big risk that you have to bear. Due to its nature as debt to bank, the bank will confiscate the house if my friend fails to serve the loan of about 6-9 months. In many cases, any financial planner might advice you to pay off your debt first before considering any investment as a frugal way of living. However, in this case, if the investment vehicle can give you return high enough until you can settle you mortgage payment within such period, offensive strategy is better than being defensive. If I were him, I will do this.
However, if the investment is not certain, if it fluctuates where one year you can have high return the other is not, it is better to build you defensive strategy before you attack. By the way, in war, this is what we call building our defense before building an army equipped with latest technology.
In ancient time, notable warlords would built their castle complete with archery ready at the top of the castle wall, a very thick wooden main door complete with advance locking system and for the army, the best protective shield they could built. Then only they’ll go out and conquer other civilizations. When they go out, equipped with the best and advance weapon they able to built, with long range capability and as stealth as possible. This is the offence.
In today’s modern world, we can see a lot of examples whereby a party build-up their offensive strategy without considering to build up their defensive strategy. This is a recipe for disaster. I give some example which I am aware of, ranging from sports to financial institutions. In sports, in Formula 1, in the year of 2006, Mclaren Mercedes built up and engine that is super fast. This is the offensive part. While on the defensive part, they’ve never consider on the reliability of the engine. Year 2006 became a year of disaster for Mclaren. The car retired more races than winning racing. Football clubs are the same.
In financial world, recently many big corporations in the US had invested heavily via their hedge funds. They over-leverage on the capital so many times until a meltdown happened and they did not have enough time to recover. This is a case of considering only offensive strategy without defense at all. A recipe for disaster.
