Yep, no kidding. I did go for a retreat for one week without looking at my phone in Forest Island, Bali (it was confiscated at the start of the retreat). And all participants were barred from talking to each other. We are not allowed to read books and not allowed to write. Anything that is too stimulating to the mind is not allowed.

To make matters worse, you could take a guess who’s my room mate (all not intended), who I am not allowed to talk to. Go on, take a guess.

Well if you guess Budi Ryan, then you are correct 🙂

Obviously as Recompound Co-Founders, our lives are very plugged in:

• to WhatsApp groups (each of our customer has their own private WhatsApp group with us)

• to the markets (we have to take a look at the market when we want to buy or sell stocks)

• to the internet and AI (need to read a lot, and write a bit of blogpost)

So why are Toby and Budi doing this to themselves?

The short honest answer is because we want to take a holiday (a break) from Recompound. And it is especially timely because during the Idul Fitri period in Indonesia, market is closed and it tends to be more quiet.

Another benefit that we’d like to get from this holiday is a stronger mind.

See, I believe that our mind loves to wonder around thinking about the future, and dwelling in the past. Not fully connected to what’s happening in the present moment. Especially because we are investors. We spend a lot of time thinking about what the companies we invest could become in the future. What’s the price going to be. We also unavoidably spend time dwelling about the past. We should have bought this later, sold this earlier. Hindsight bias tends to be a thing for investors. I don’t think there’s any investor who’s immune to hindsight bias, including ourselves.

So going for this retreat is an attempt to develop a stronger muscle of our mind. Exactly like going to the gym.

So why not just go to the gym to develop a stronger mind? Yes, going to the gym counts as a tool to develop a stronger mind. In the gym we have to focus on progressive overload and focus on feeling the muscle groups that we want to train (back, chest, shoulders, legs). Then a stronger mind that comes out of it is definitely a good bi-product. But I believe there’s an even more specialised tool to develop this stronger mind, which is the main focus of this retreat:

meditation

Yes, so for 7 days 6 nights, Budi and I did nothing but meditation. The retreat fortunately, is designed very nicely for us to learn about meditation step by step. Because I don’t really do meditation at all before the retreat. So it is very noob friendly.

Btw by no means is this an article to ask you to meditate every day. I think going to the gym is great for the body, but I don’t go around and force people to go to the gym. In the same spirit, I now think doing meditation is great for the mind but I will also not go around and force people to meditate ;)

If you are curious about what comes out from the retreat, you could read on. But in this article I will be talking about the core learnings of developing a stronger mind through meditation and how it is extremely related to value investing. It is so friggin related that I wonder if the Founder (Pak Merte Ada) of the meditation retreat secretly read up books on value investing and applied the learnings to the meditation course that he designed some 30 odd years ago.

Hopefully, this article would be helpful to pique your interest to get to know of a tool to actively train your mind to be stronger. Let’s get started.

Four core components of a strong mind

In the retreat, strong mind is communicated as a harmonious mind with four core components. Some people are weaker in one component and stronger in another. So you can choose which core components you would like to train. Really like going to the gym right?

Some people have weaker legs so they can do leg day and do those squats. Others want to train their back a bit more so that they can get that macho V shape look. You get the idea.

Now these 4 components that enable stronger harmonious mind to be developed, I argue, are also core ingredients to be a good long term investor.

First component

First component is focus, or concentration really. During our meditation, when we close our eyes, a key item that we have to do is focus on a single object. That object is usually our breathing. In and out, in and out. If we don’t have a strong focus, we tend to feel other things outside our breathing. For example, the itchiness on the neck. The numbness on the feet. Or the loud sound of birds chirping at the background. When we observe that our focus is scattered, we have to bring it back to our breathing. A single object that we have set our intentions on.

Now isn’t this exactly like value investing?

When we want to analyse a company A for example, we need to direct our attention and focus to one company. There will be temptations or noise from our neighbours about company B, company C and so on. Investment ideas nowadays seem to be quite scattered on social media. Influecer A will say that this stock is good. Influencer B will say another stock is good. As a good long term investor, we’d want to focus our analysis on one particular stock at a time. Because if we hop around (we are definitely guilty of this as we are never perfect investors), the quality of the analysis can get compromised.

So having focus, is ideal for us to understand a company better, filtering out plenty of noise that is circulating out there. With this ingredient developed, we can be a better long term investor.

Second component

Second component is being at the present. In the retreat, this is called being mindful. Because it is no surprise that when we close our eyes and meditate, we would think about what I look forward to eating after I come out from this jail. Or “ah darn it, have I done this or that before coming in for this retreat?”

When we feel that our mind wanders to the past or to the future, we invite it back to be in the present.

Well this is, again, exactly like value investing. We absolutely have no idea what the price of a company we invest is going to be tomorrow. But we tend to think about the future so much.

“Will the stock price plummet because of the war tomorrow?”

“Will IHSG benefit from increase of oil prices?”

“Will government policies like free meals affect foreign investors confidence in the future?”

And don’t get me started talking about thinking excessively about the past.

“Ah, I should have bought more of that stock. It should have 20% allocation instead of 10%!”

“Why did I not sell the stock when the margin of safety is already reduced?”

“I should have never diversified to foreign markets!”

You get the idea 🙂 We tend to think so so much about what will happen in the future and what we should have done in the past. So much so that we can sometimes forget that

“hey we are now invested in a good company, with good management, good product and great competitive edge. We bought it at a good price, but the price has not moved. So we wait.”

Or

“hey the companies that we invested is already priced at a premium by the market. So we can sell now. We don’t have to be greedy about the price going up further in the near future.”

That my reader, is what I learned about developing a more mindful mind which is anchored at present. By anchoring our decisions based on the present moment and the information we have today, we’d develop to be a better long term investor.

Third component

Third component is being gentle. The word that the retreat uses is developing love and kindness. This again makes so much sense because when our minds start to wander, we tend to be hard on ourselves.

“Toby, why are you so easily distracted?”

“Budi, why can’t you stay at present?”

Negative talk is real when we inadvertently fail to focus, and being gentle to ourselves is a potent antidote. Particularly for me, when I notice that my mind starts to wander, I now view it as a training opportunity to bring my mind back to the present and the area of focus.

Again I believe that being gentle to ourselves is vital to becoming a good long term investor. Because investments is never perfect. Things that happens outside of our control can happen both in good and in bad ways. In a good way, the company we invest in can suddenly be acquired by another company and the price could go up like crazy.

It is easy for us to be greedy and forget about our investment thesis when such a positive event happens to the stocks we invest. In a bad way, the company we invest can also underperform relative to our expectations and then the stock price could take a hit. Again, it is easy for us to fearful and forget about our investment thesis.

We can be harsh on ourselves and end up making impulsive decisions. But what I think is more helpful is if we could accept the things happening outside of our control as a given. Then we can treat uncontrollable events as an opportunity for us to respond in a calm and gentle way, instead of treating it as an evidence that we are foolish investors.

Do we buy more? Sell? Or do nothing. With gentleness on our minds, the answers will be a lot clearer than not. With more clarity, I believe this would help us to make better decisions and become better long term investors.

Fourth component

Fourth component is seeing the truth. A man who sees the truth as it is, without adding much salt or sugar on top, is said to be a wise man. In the retreat, there’s one universal truth that we are invited to experience. That truth is the truth of impermanence. Things are constantly changing and in flux. We could observe and experience our breath changes from inhalation to exhalation and then back to inhalation again. We could observe the heat on our chest cool off gently. We could experience the itchiness on our skin that gradually subsides. Everything on our mind and body changes.

When we see that our mind and body is in constant state of flux, we are seeing the truth as it is. We’d grow our hair, we’d grow more muscle, we’d become older and so on. That’s the truth. And when we see this truth as it is, we develop wisdom.

Relating this concept to investing for the long term, the companies we invest are also constantly changing. Their sales would grow or decline. Their assets would get sold. Their debt will get bigger or lower. Their management would change from time to time. Heck their business models can even change. Seeing that a company is like a breathing organism that is never permanent allows an investor to be wiser.

As a result, we don’t have to pretend that we have to be a shareholder of a company forever. If we don’t like the new management or if we are not satisfied with their growth, we can always sell. Or if we think that the company becomes better, gaining more market share, while the price is still well below its intrinsic value, we can always increase our ownership and buy more.

This adaptability and non-attachment, I believe, is developed overtime with a wiser mind. Therefore I believe that seeing the truth (as it is) is also, an essential ingredient to be a good long term investor.

Closing Remarks

Thank you for reading this exposition thus far. I hope that you could see how a long term investor could be better overtime through the lens of a person who practices meditation. It all starts from having a strong harmonious mind.

Are our minds perfect and are we the best long term investors? No and no. Developing our minds to be stronger and our skills to be better long term investors are always a work in progress. There are always others with stronger minds and better investing skills. But we believe that the retreat carries genuine benefit in increasing our resolve to have stronger minds and be better long term investors.

We are definitely not paid to mention the meditation retreat. But if you’d like to challenge yourself to go on for a retreat like what Budi and I did, feel free to check out Bali Usada. If you end up trying them out, I hope that you will find it useful to develop a stronger mind and a healthier body. May all beings be happy!

Cheers.

We were supposed to catch up with him after Budi’s wedding in March 2025. We caught up almost a year later. I am ridiculously horrendous at these things, I know.

It was a weekday afternoon in a dimly lit restaurant. Budi and I sat next to each other across a cinema owner whose family runs theaters across Java. He has an air of calmness that he exudes all around him. So calm that I myself get nervous. But then I told myself “get yourself together, Toby. You got this”.

And I was genuinely eager to learn about his experience in the rapidly changing entertainment industry. I have been seeing more and more people (including myself) consuming AI-produced entertainment, and I figured someone running cinemas across Java — competing against the biggest player in the market — would have a sharp perspective on what’s happening.

Until he said something absolutely shocking.

His eyes lit up, almost like wanting to share a big announcement of the birth of a first son.

Guys! I am using the terminal in my computer for the first time to build an application for my business.

You can imagine this being said in the most calm yet energetic manner.

I know for a fact that this person is not technical. Furthermore, he does not at all have to concern himself with how to use AI to build applications. Yet here he was, showing us a web application he had built, hosted on Github. He built an interface that allows his company to ahem, trade secret ;)

He demo-ed it to us with the kind of pride you see in someone who has discovered something genuinely new about what they’re capable of.

He even recommended me and Budi a podcast: Naval Ravikant’s Motorcycle of the Mind. His message was simple. Use these tools. Use them aggressively. Don’t wait.

So his enthusiasm naturally left me wondering. He was someone with every reason to be defensive about what AI means for his industry. But he’s excited. This cinema owner sees AI as a revolution, while many others see them as the mother of job/industry destroyers.

Why is this? Two intelligent people can see the same tech and arrive at completely opposite emotional responses.

So I reflected deeper and remembered something I had been reading.

The narratives that we’ve been consuming

But before making sense of the optimism with AI, let’s have a sense of the fear first. The book that’s highly useful is Robert Shiller’s Narrative Economics.

Shiller needs no introduction, the Yale man is a Nobel Prize winner in economics. Let me flex a bit because I cannot help it, I also went to Yale. For a semester exchange. But hey stop judging. Pauli Murray College woop woop. Ok I am done.

The fascinating thing about the book is that it doesn’t sound like the economics we used to learn in high school. Scarcity, unlimited wants. Demand supply. GDP, Inflation. It doesn’t even look like the economics we observe on social media lately which is Game Theory.

The book looks like the spread of diseases. Yes, epidemiology.

The central argument that Shiller makes is that

economic narratives - the stories people tell each other about money, jobs, markets, the future - spread exactly like diseases.

They have contagion/recovery rates, they mutate, they go dormant for decades and they flare up again when conditions are ripe for flaring. Most importantly, they influence economic behaviour that household data struggle to explain.

The part that is most striking to me is what Shiller describes as “perennial narratives”. Stories that keep coming back across centuries. Every time they come back, the stories told from the narrative are different. But they are the same narrative. That narrative is: Machines will replace human labor.

Shiller traces it all the way back to the 1800s. The Luddites smashing power looms in 1811, the Swing Riots against threshing machines in 1830s. The depression of the 1870s where labor-saving inventions was the top of mind as a cause of mass unemployment. The 1930s, when “technological unemployment” started becoming a household term. Want to guess what was the terrifying new machine back then? Dial telephone.

What I have noticed is that the narrative has the same structure. Every time.

1. A new technology appears,

2. people fear it will destroy livelihoods on a massive scale.

The story spreads not necessarily because it is true, but because it taps into the very core of our emotions: anxiety. Every time, it would mutate just ever so slightly so that we can say this time is completely brand new. This time is different. This time humans are going extinct for real.

Well I believe AI is the latest mutation.

But what makes this particular mutation unusual, and this I believe will get relevant to how we are all feeling about AI, is something Shiller calls “constellation” effects. Narratives don’t operate alone, instead they cluster. Right now “AI will take your job” narrative is running alongside the AI bubble narrative and the AGI narrative. They stack on top of each other as one narrative makes the others more contagious.

If you want to see what a narrative constellation looks like in practice, look at what happened with Citrini Research a few weeks ago. They published a thought experiment on Substack imagining what the economy might look like in 2028 if AI displacement accelerates. I feel that what made it so contagious was not any single claim.

It was a brilliant piece that wove together:

• the labor replacement narrative,

• the bubble narrative,

• the financial contagion narrative,

• and the knowledge worker being automated narrative

into one vivid, emotionally coherent story.

As a result, markets moved quite wildly. Software stocks had a free fall. Bloomberg even linked the selloffs to the report. Let me repeat this one more time, a thought experiment on Substack shook Wall Street. Not because it contained new data. But because it bundled fears that were already circulating into a single story that hit harder than any of them could have alone.

Well folks, I suppose that is the constellation effect at work.

So if you are feeling anxious about AI without knowing clearly why, this might be it. It is not one story that affects us. It is a cluster of narratives hitting you from every direction. Social media, Dinner table, Cocktail party, Family gathering.

Now what’s the point of all this? Well it does not mean that the fear is wrong. The fear inside us is very real. But rather, the point is seeing the structure of fear more closely. Once we see the structure, we are no longer just inside the narrative, we are observing it.

Like a person watching a movie at the cinema, noticing not just the story in front of them but seeing how beautifully the actors act out a scene. How well setup the lighting is. How crafty is the script writer in playing with our emotions.

Note that I am not at all sharing this to trivialise the gravity of what is currently happening. I believe that disruption is very real and is underway. I see it in my own work every day and I imagine you see it in yours. But there is a difference between experiencing disruption and being swept up in a narrative about disruption.

Shiller helped me see that difference. And I hope you do too. Because it has now been easier for me to ask a more useful question. Instead of asking

“should I be scared or excited”

we can nudge ourselves to ask

“what’s in front of me now, and what can I do with it?”

Just like how the cinema owner has been doing just that, genuinely curious how he can use new technology to his advantage. He probably does not need to read Shiller. He seems to be asking the right questions already.

I have been learning a lot about what happens after you ask that question too. About what it actually looks like to work with AI in my line of work.

But first, that would involve Claude and an 80 year old man (almost).

To be continued

Sunday is a family day.

My parents are 60 years old and getting older by the day. My dad suffered a mini illness recently, which has made Sunday an even more sacred day to dedicate time for my family. We’d go “hunting” for new coffeeshops or Kopitiam that just opened in Jakarta and my Mom always has a new place in mind (Instagram victim) that inevitably offers a more attractive place to hangout and drink coffee on a Sunday. And let’s not forget that peanut butter toast with butter (extra emphasis with the butter). Please don’t tell me you have not tried that one yet, although make sure you get your exercise down too.

But obviously with every Chindo (Chinese Indonesian) family, lunch is never just a family lunch for us to chitchat happily about life and spend quality time. It is also a war zone.

The children (in other words me and my siblings) need to fight a psychological battle with my Dad in two crucial battle fields:

• Number one, who made better progress in their business (i.e. making money). How much is your revenue this month? Why does it sound low?

• Number two, who sounds more intelligent in their knowledge about geopolitics or macroeconomics. Hey, I bet that the invasion of country X to country Y is going to cause the oil prices to rally. I managed to sell put options and make a profit from the premiums!

• [Optional - sometimes discussed] Who lives a healthier lifestyle, day to day.

Boy, it is a brutal battle. And usually a losing one.

Especially for me because I run Recompound. You might be thinking, hey isn’t Recompound a good business? Well yes, but not a good one to brag to your Chindo Dad. Let me explain.

The fee structure with customers we handle is on a monthly basis. So if there’s no fee that we charge, because our customers’ portfolio don’t surpass previous all time high, there’s literally nothing to brag about. Not that I brag about our performance to people, which you will find out why later.

Furthermore, we don’t look at macro. If you are a potential customer who are hoping to get macro analysis to predict movements of the market, we will surely disappoint. So don’t come to us if you are looking for macro analysis cause-effect → prediction. Find someone else.

The last banger is that the way we do investing is hyper boring. No promises, no hype, no multibagger rallies. Just investing in earnest businesses with good quality management and healthy cashflow. Helping people hold for the long term. We lost against the index in 2025 as our performance was about 18%.

I mean, who in the right mind would brag about 18% returns to their friends over coffee? 😂 The brags I hear on coffee shops nowadays is 50% profits, minimum.

So during these psychological wars vs my Dad, I’d often stay silent. I’ll be vague about how the business is going. I will also just nod my head about money flows from US to Japan to Gold to Bitcoin and to my pocket. Not because I am an obedient son, but really because I have no idea about the development of geopolitics and international macroeconomics, unless it is a key business variables for the companies we look into. I do not want to pretend to know. Let alone make predictions out of it.

So what’s the emotion that usually come about during these conversation to me?

Well, to be frank, I’d feel that “I am not good enough”.

Now you might be thinking, but you have achieved this and that and yes I am very proud of the achievements that we have managed to earn thus far.

But feelings of being “not good enough” is as real as it gets. Feelings of fear when markets crash after the recent foreign selloffs or after seeing a long post about how the future of the country is bleak is real. Feelings of greed when everything seems up, like there’s no way that your investments are going to suffer from drawdown or there’s no way that target price is not going to get hit, such that you want to topup with more funds — is also very real.

These feelings from my experience almost cannot be controlled or suppressed. They surface whenever they want to. They never ask for permission to appear because we are only human from the way our brain is structured.

But the odd thing is that I keep doing what I do. Even when I feel that “I am not good enough” every weekend during this psychological war. Why?

Because it turns out, by investing in stocks in a conservative way, we get two things in return:

One, our customers’ and my ability to focus on our craft. Our customers are as sharp as a knife when it comes to looking our investment thesis document. They question fair payback period, industry assumptions and diligence that is done on the companies. But, once those are done, they get to focus on their work and career accordingly.

Two, we get to experience lucky breaks, during which we always practise gratitude. From day 1, we’d want our customers to have as low of an expectation as possible. Our team expects very minimal returns from capital appreciation. We carefully assess the quality of company earnings and likelihood of dividend yield. The buying opportunities become a conservative bet to get good earnings via higher dividend yields.

So when companies get appreciated through things that we don’t expect — buybacks, tender offer, or we don’t know, other people noticing how good and cheap the companies really are — we get to practice gratitude.

So yeah, not everything is about returns although returns is a very important component. But the manner in which the returns are produced turns out to be very important for these high achieving individuals.

But I suppose my experience running this thing called Recompound has made me realise that I am most proud of doing what I do because our customers can continue focus on building their career, giving value to other people through their businesses and developing their craft. I realise that feeling of being a “not good enough” son is a potent fuel to push me into action. Even though I may never be good enough of a son, I think my actions and intention allow me to say that “I am good enough” of a person 🙂

Now get your grenades ready.

Disclaimer

The performance figures presented in this article are provided for informational and educational purposes only. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

While we strive to ensure accuracy, the data shown may contain minor inaccuracies due to rounding differences, timing differences, or variations arising from trade confirmation documents.

This content does not constitute financial advice, investment recommendations, or an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities. Investment decisions should be made based on your own financial circumstances, objectives, and risk tolerance, and—where appropriate—in consultation with a licensed financial advisor.

It’s that time of the year again, although we are a bit late this year due to some travelling and time off from work. The close 2nd order of priority is to shave down excess weight accumulated during the holiday period. But 1st order of priority is, you’ve guessed it, review our own performance. Mostly for our own evaluation so that we can do better, but also to satisfy the curiosity of some (kaypoh) clients.

In the last 2025 meeting with our investors in December 2025, our investor made a remark that truthfully made me slightly sad.

Seems that the growth in 2025 is a bit slow ya

Even after the call ended, that remark kept ringing in my head. I had mixed feelings about all this, which I don’t really know exactly how to describe. On one hand, our books were in the green. But it still fell short of the 10x expectation that a freshly injected start-up has to bear.

Rather than wallowing in sadness or trying to comfort myself by telling myself that “at least we grow”, I think what is most helpful is to evaluate objectively what happened, what went well, and what fell short of our own expectations.

So here comes the juicy part.

Soft New Customer Acquisition

The number of new clients in 2025 was rather muted, especially in the first half of 2025. If you look at the chart on the right, we get 50% of our clients within the first year of our operations in 2023. In 2024, we acquire about 30% of all our existing clients. In 2025, we only acquired 20%.

The first half of 2025 was rather brutal for us. If you recall in your not so distant memory (although perhaps it’s better that you don’t keep in your memory anymore), it was the period where Trump announces trade wars with China, the times where Indonesia’s youths saw the country as dark and hopeless, and the era where companies with real business and solid financials were deemed repulsive. Capital market participants way prefer companies with narrative plays.

We would actually count ourselves as extremely lucky to still be able to acquire that 20% of customers. So thank you to all those who still chose to join us despite all the signals to do otherwise.

What about churned clients?

So far, out of all clients who signed up, 26% ended up leaving us.

Among those who churned, the median length they stay with us is 319 days or about 10 months. The average length is 351 days or close to 12 months.

There are some common reasons people leave us. One of the main ones is needing extra cash for their life circumstances, such as capital expenditure for their new business ventures, house renovation, wedding expenses, big ticket items, etc etc. When clients leave us for these reasons, usually we are extremely happy for them because most of the time, they leave with positive growth in their portfolio. This makes us happy because we feel that have done them right, playing a small role in giving them additional funds for their life milestones. We are altruistic in some sense, but I suppose we are ultimately self-interested, because we feel good when others feel good.

The second biggest reason is usually feeling dissatisfied with the slow and boring growth of their portfolio. And we cannot blame them for feeling so. Usually, our clients’ portfolio will take some time to show significant price movement. For 80% of the time, their portfolio will look like a straight horizontal line. Meanwhile, if these people are active on social media or on trading groups, they will see their friends bragging multibagger returns of 100, 500, or even 1000%. Some will inevitably boil with the envy of those who flex their rolexes and lambos. And so they leave us in the pursuit of these rolexes and lambos, both of which Toby and Budi have yet to have.

Committed fund growth

Despite the slow client growth, 2025 has taught us an important lesson. When market is pessimistic and fearful, there lies opportunity. We are very fortunate that our existing clients know not to be fearful when the market seems gloom and doom. Rather, they inject more capital. Kudos to them really for having a steel and contrarian mentality. We are even more honoured to serve those who stick around and had the courage to believe in us in difficult times.

The first half of 2025 saw our clients topping up the most. This is a good practise that we hope to keep.

Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful.

Special Client Shoutout

I have to give a special shout out to our scariest client CS (or ChaoS, if you remember from our previous blogpost) also known as the VVIP Client (yes, the title belongs to you sir). On top of being awarded the most chatty and demanding client, he also won the award of the largest number of topups, at 91 top ups over the course of his 959 days with us. This means that he topups almost every 10 days. I know this guy is crazy, but I did not know that he is this crazy.

Performance

Since our inception in January 2023 until December 2025, 91% of our clients’ portfolio are in the green, while 9% are still in the red.

Although fast forward to today (as this blogpost is posted), I am happy to say that 100% of our customers are in the green, including those who just joined most recently. Yep, thanks to unexpectedly large interim dividends from companies that we invest in 🙂 We keep boxplots like below to keep track of our customers’ performance by cohort since their join date. Oh and it is updated live too at our landing page. We think that this type of performance chart is superior to the simple line chart that most funds use.

Why? Because our income largely relies on each and every one of our customer’s performance. So we are not interested in “aggregated returns” if on average, our customers are not making money. Also, 1 customer not performing to us is 1 customer too many. We want all of our customers to profitable for as long as possible, not because we are saints, but because we are self-interested. We want our customers to be grow their portfolio again and again so that we can be earn again and again.

Our profits come from yours.

Furthermore, the chart above tells us a really important information. It manages expectation of our prospect customers because it most likely would be sucky if a customer only has been active for a month. But on the flip side, the longer the customer wait, by and large would give larger and larger returns. Again, we are self-interested: we want our customers to recompound their wealth so that we can recompound our profits (very much pun intended).

Did we beat the index?

Actually in 2025, we did not beat the index. Boohoo.

Despite the crazy saga that happened to Indonesia in early 2025, IHSG grew by a whopping 22.1% in 2025! Even more difficult was the driver of growth happens to be stocks with narrative plays, having large market caps that are beyond our risk appetite. I.e. fundamentals do not match the prices that these companies were trading at. So we sat the narrative stocks rally out.

But does it matter though? Nope, because our performance was about 17.5% in 2025. Not stellar, but pretty decent. To us, all that matter is consistent performance rather than beating the index. If one year the index is -10%, we won’t be happy beating the index with a -9% performance. We’d be a happy with a +10% performance. Although that probably would be a super hard year.

Closing Remarks

What’s up on 2026? Well, we have written about that. In a nutshell, it contains our thoughts on Artificial Intelligence and how our investments are uniquely positioned to capture its growth. If you are curious, you can always read it here. I promise you it is interesting 🙂

When I introduce myself to strangers at a dinner party in Jakarta and mention that I work as an investment advisor, I usually get a very specific reaction.

They nod knowingly and assume my life is a high-octane montage of staring at flickering stock tickers, obsessing over price charts, and frantically watching red and green candles form on six different monitors, 24/7.

But here is the boring (or perhaps, exciting) truth: contrary to popular belief, we rarely look at candle charts during market hours. In fact, we sometimes barely look at the stock price at all.

As a matter of fact, Toby sometimes get confused as to when are the holidays and the opening hours of the market. Because to be completely frank, he could not be bothered looking at the intraday movement of the stock price.

We Buy Businesses, Not Tickers

At Recompound, when we invest in stocks—even the public ones listed on the IDX—we view it as buying a piece of a business. Naturally, this means the current stock price is less interesting to us than the value behind it. We care about the price only relative to the company’s ability to produce future earnings.

Instead of asking “where will the chart go next?”, we spend our days asking:

• How does this business actually make money?

• What new developments are shifting the tectonic plates of their sector?

• Is the management prudent with their capital allocation?

We recently deep-dived into this philosophy in our Investing Manifesto (go take a look if you haven’t yet!).

So, if I’m not staring at charts, what does a “day in the life” actually look like?

The Closed-Door Meeting

Recently, it looked like sitting in a meeting room with the management of GMF AeroAsia (GMFI)—kudos to our friends at Stockbit for the opportunity.

For context, GMFI is currently navigating a significant turnaround. Due to the pandemic, the company has been operating with a capital deficiency (negative equity).

To fix this, they are executing a Rights Issue (PMHMETD II) where Injourney Airports (PT Angkasa Pura Indonesia) will inject capital via an “inbreng” of land assets worth roughly IDR 5.66 trillion.

The goal on paper is simple: turn the equity positive so the company can improve its financial standing and eventually distribute dividends again. But during the discussion, we uncovered a much deeper insight that you won’t find on a candlestick chart.

We learned about the shifting landscape of State-Owned Enterprises (BUMN) under the new Danantara agency.

The Engine Under the Hood: DAM vs. DIM

We know that Danantara is divided into two distinct arms with very specific mandates to drive national growth:

• DAM (Danantara Asset Management): Its job is to manage the existing portfolio of BUMNs. The mandate here is ruthless efficiency—streamlining the structure (e.g., consolidating 1,000 entities into 200) and optimizing assets to maximize dividend payments.

• DIM (Danantara Investment Management): Its job is to take those cash flows and reinvest them into new, strategic national projects for future growth.

This creates a powerful, self-reinforcing incentive loop.

DAM has every incentive to force its BUMNs to be profitable to fuel DIM’s investments.

Not Just “Omon-Omon”

You might be thinking, “This sounds good on paper, but is it just omon-omon (empty talk)?”

According to Andi Fahrurrozi, the Director of GMFI, this shift is real and proven firsthand.

He shared a candid story that highlights the difference: This Rights Issue scheme involving the asset inbreng wasn’t a new idea; GMFI had actually been trying to execute this since 2023.

Back then, however, they hit a brick wall. For those newer to stock investing, Rights Issue is a corporate action, that is inorganic, partially as a solution to add equity to the company (note that the company’s operating with a negative equity). Now because it is a state owned enterprise, management of the company would face a number of blockers that are usually not faced by a normal non-state owned company.

Number one is bureaucracy.

You might think that if you have a state-owned enterprise wanting to do a corporate action like rights issue, you would require the approval from the ministry of State Owned Enterprise. Well, it turns out, back in 2023, they also had to get the approval from DPR (House of Representative) due to the complex ownership structures. Which ultimately failed.

Fast forward to today: under the Danantara framework, what was once an impossible bureaucratic climb became a super-quick execution. Because both entities now sit under the same “parent,” the transaction didn’t need to jump through the old political hoops. It became a streamlined process of moving assets from the left pocket to the right pocket to unlock value.

This proved to us that the “Danantara Effect” is not just a slogan—it is already actively de-bottlenecking the state’s most sluggish assets.

Your Edge vs. “The Sudirman Boys”

This brings me back to you.

At Recompound, we serve hundreds of clients who are high-performing professionals across various industries. Believe it or not, your edge is often much sharper than that of the professional fund managers sitting in high-rises on Sudirman Street.

Why? Because the big institutional firms often cannot—or will not—invest in smaller-cap companies that haven’t yet hit their radar.

Furthermore, the “Sudirman boys” often flex their expensive Bloomberg Terminals, assuming that a $24,000-a-year subscription gives them an insurmountable advantage.

But here is the funny story: no amount of satellite data or premium news feeds can beat info lapangan (first-hand, on-the-ground intel).

While they are looking at spreadsheets and terminal screens, you are looking at the reality of your industry.

You know the supply chain bottlenecks before they show up in a quarterly report. You know which competitors are cutting corners and which are truly innovating. You understand your sector’s business process end-to-end.

That is a proprietary advantage that no machine can replicate.

So, if you have a unique business insight based on your professional experience—whether it’s a shift in consumer behavior or a new regulation impacting your field—don’t be shy. Please share it with us in your WhatsApp group!

We are always happy to learn from you, because at the end of the day, the best investment insights don’t come from a terminal; they come from the people building the businesses.

⚠️ Important Disclaimer: We Are NOT Telling You to Buy GMFI

Before you rush to your broker app, please pause. While the turnaround story is fascinating, we are not insinuating that you should buy GMFI stock right now. There are still significant uncertainties and risks that need to be resolved before the company becomes an investment-grade dividend payer:

1. Retained Earnings are Still Negative: Even after the Rights Issue improves the equity, the company still holds a massive deficit in retained earnings. By our calculations, it would take approximately 15 years of organic earnings just to clear this deficit and turn it positive.

2. Dividends are Far Away: By law, a company cannot pay dividends while its retained earnings are negative. Unless there are further inorganic corporate actions (like a Quasi Reorganization) to wipe this slate clean faster, shareholders will be waiting a very long time for cash returns.

3. Execution Risk: The “Quasi Reorganization” path is complex and requires further regulatory and shareholder approvals. Until those are concrete, the timeline remains speculative.

Based on the risks that we have identified earlier, you might be questioning “Why are we playing it safe?” It might be the case that there will be significant upward price movements tomorrow, no?

Well, we believe that playing it safe, at least in the stock market, is the single most important attribute that allows compounding to do the heavy lifting over time.

We wrote a separate piece explaining what “playing it safe” actually means in practice—and why most investors misunderstand it entirely.

If you’re curious, you may find it worth reading.

{Read why we play it safe}

P.S. There is another BUMN with much less execution risk compared to GMFI, is still largely unnoticed by the market, its existing business valuation is already cheap and we are currently actively studying it. It has the potential to benefit even more from this Danantara restructuring wave, with much lower risk compared to GMFI.

Visit core.recompound.id to learn more.

Most investment content focuses on what to buy.

At Recompound, we focus on how to think.

This manifesto sets out the core principles that shape our investment philosophy—especially for busy professionals who want long-term, rational outcomes without constant market involvement.

If you understand these ideas, you’ll understand how we invest.

1. Investing vs Speculating

Core idea

Investing is about owning productive businesses for long-term value creation.

Speculating is about predicting short-term price movements.

Most people believe they are investing. In reality, they are speculating—often without realising it.

Why it matters

Speculation amplifies emotional mistakes. Investing reduces decision frequency and behavioural risk.

2. Margin of Safety

Core idea

Margin of safety is the gap between what something is worth and the price you pay—designed to protect you from uncertainty, mistakes, and bad luck.

It is not about pessimism.

It is about survival.

Why it matters

The biggest risk in investing is not volatility.

It is permanent loss of capital.

3. Asymmetric Bets to the Upside

Core idea

An asymmetric bet is a decision where the downside is limited, but the upside compounds over time.

You do not need to be right often.

You need to avoid being wrong in a way that ends the game.

Why it matters

Most investors chase upside without understanding downside risk.

Asymmetry flips that logic.

4. Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

Core idea

In investing, being wrong is inevitable.

The goal is not perfect prediction, but decisions that remain acceptable across many possible futures.

Good decisions prioritise process over outcomes.

Why it matters

Greedy bad decisions often come from overconfidence, not lack of intelligence.

Fearful bad decisions often come from past trauma, not willing to explore asset classes that pays a handsome risk to reward ratio and willingly choose to park funds in instruments that guarantee loss through inflation.

5. Behavioural Risk

Core idea

The biggest determinant of long-term returns is not intelligence or access to information.

It is behaviour.

Fear, greed, impatience, and over-activity quietly destroy compounding.

Why it matters

Most investors do not fail because they pick bad assets.

They fail because they abandon good decisions at the wrong time.

6. Financial Freedom as a By-product

Core idea

Financial freedom is not the absence of work.

It is the freedom to do meaningful, value-creating work without financial anxiety.

When pursued directly, it often disappoints.

When it emerges as a by-product, it tends to last.

Why it matters

Chasing early retirement often leads to loss of purpose—and poor investment decisions.

7. The Indonesian Context

Core idea

Long-term investing in Indonesia comes with specific realities:

• Currency depreciation

• Market structure constraints

• A low-trust financial environment

• A strong culture of short-term speculation

Ignoring these realities leads to frustration and sub-optimal outcomes.

Why it matters

A strategy that works in theory but ignores local context often fails in practice.

8. Global Thinking, Aligned Values

Core idea

Good investing principles are universal.

Markets, instruments, and geographies change—but decision-making values do not.

While we operate with deep awareness of the Indonesian context, we are open to ideas, partners, and investments globally—as long as values are aligned.

What aligned values mean

• Long-term orientation over short-term performance

• Risk management before return maximisation

• Transparency over storytelling

• Incentive alignment over asset gathering

• Process discipline over prediction

Why it matters

Limiting thinking to a single market or asset class limits opportunity.

Expanding without shared principles increases risk.

We prefer global collaboration with local understanding—not blind diversification.

How to Read This Manifesto

This is not a list of tips or predictions.

It is a set of beliefs about how compounding actually works.

Use it as an extra filter:

• For decisions

• For partnerships

• For whether values align

Good investing is less about doing more. It is about avoiding the mistakes that break compounding.

Further Reading

If you want to see how these principles are applied in practice, the articles below expand on each idea in more detail:

• Investing vs Speculating

  Everybody Is Doing Short Term Stuff

• Margin of Safety & Risk Management

  Why We Play It Safe

• Decision-Making Under Uncertainty

  10 Days to Optimise your Decision making

  How to Turn Around Your Investment Portfolio

• Behavioural Risk & Investor Mistakes

  Rookie Mistakes

• Financial Freedom as a By-product

  Financial Freedom Might Be the Wrong Goal

• Investing in the Indonesian Context

  Navigating Indonesia’s Investment Terrain

• Global Thinking, Aligned Values

  Introduction to Recompound Global

It is 5.00AM, on a Sunday morning and I am not happiest to say that I don’t usually wake up at this hour. Hint: I wake up much much later than 5.00AM. But I have made a promise to a client, David, to run with him at 5.30AM. I certainly do not want to let him down. David is a professional consultant who’s been in the industry for years. He’s also crazy disciplined, not having missed a single day of work out since 2019.

But no, his last name is not Goggins.

So at 5AM when my alarm rings, I take the next logical step which is to snooze it and go back to sleep. Then I wake up for real at 5.20AM. I swear I am faster than Usain Bolt when I have to reach the fridge to drink some left over coffee (200ml) and I quickly don my Recompound running T-Shirt. After changing and doing speedy toilet things, I eagerly wait for David to arrive at my front door.

So David arrives on my front door and here’s a warning. This probably will sound like a major flex, please try your absolute best not to hate me.

Yes, even a flex that is even more major than showing off your Ducati Panigale, McLaren or crazy expensive wedding in Bali. I don’t know about you, but Ducatis gets old after a while.

Here is the flex:

David and I will be running for 78 minutes at 5:40 min/km pace and 12 minutes at 5:10 - 5:15 min/km as the last push.

That amounts to around 16km of running in one and a half hours.

But this run is really important because it has been advertised in Recompound IG that I will have a 5K challenge against David. He takes on the Air Force 5K on December 7th; then I will be running a Parkrun in the UK and we will see who gets the better 5K time.

At the time this post is written, we don’t know the outcome of the challenge yet. So that’s the fun part. You probably will never find out the outcome. But here are the stakes.

If David manages to beat me at a 5K, he will get a 10% off from his next invoice. Which means if his portfolio hits an all time high value and let’s say the fee is Rp 10.000.000,- then he only needs to pay Rp 9.000.000,-.

But that seems small isn’t it?

Well that’s because it is only half of the story. If I manage to beat David (which is unlikely), he will commit double the amount that he’s already committing. David has already committed a big amount. So if Toby wins, David will commit double big.

So off we go into the first 5K of the run.

David is a consultant. A smart one. The biggest job of a consultant is to ask good questions to a person who’s helping him with his investments. He also had to get his questions across, fast (ideally in the first half of the run). Because at the later half of the run… I wouldn’t be able to talk.

David: How did you start Recompound?

How did you come up with the idea?

What does it feel like running the company day to day?

The morning run session that was an active physical session quickly morph into an active running my memory session about the journey I have gone through building Recompound.

I recounted the story about the lows of a Co-Founder break up, the highs of getting our first customer, the lows of market uncertainty, the highs of getting investment from an external investor, and the highs of building a team and a solid customer base.

As I recounted the story, a part of me felt this immense sense of both pain and pleasure.

But I realised that through this roller coaster journey, I have been feeling rather lonely. My journey to lose 18kg from an overweight 93kg was lonely. Running everyday alone. Going for those long runs alone.

My journey to run Recompound also feels lonely. Going to the office alone when we were still a 2 man team. Yes, Budi is always besides me and he’s doing some coding work right now at the time I am writing this blogpost. But sometimes it feels like the journey is just me and Budi against the madness of the people in the market.

The worst part is hearing the painful story of people losing all of their hard earned money. Not just from stock market. But from crypto, from poorly managed family business, for example a Dad just gave the son a stupid amount of money. And then the son opened up some unprofitable business for the sake of “looking cool” on social media. The Dad’s money ended up down the drain. The worst part is, the Dad only got to know about the son draining his bank account when he wanted to commit and register to Recompound...

He was telling the son to use a bit of the money he gave to join Recompound. And the son was: “Tapi pa.. (But Dad...)” (the money was gone basically).

Of course, the Dad and the son do not talk about finances.

Hearing that classic example of poor capital allocation stings really badly.

So naturally I’d question my own sanity and the worthiness of going through everything. Why are we acting responsible when everybody else is trying to “game” the system. Why are we trying to be intelligent when everybody is gambling their money away?

Then it hits me

David: TOBY stay with me. Last push! Just 10 more minutes of running and we’re done.

We are at the home stretch. Come on bro. Just stick with me.

You got this.

Don’t give up on me bro.

Come on Toby!!

Haha at that point, I was almost done. My vision was a bit blurry from trying to keep up with David. I went silent and all I could focus on is keeping up with his legs being a couple of meters behind.

After a gruelling 10 minutes that felt like forever, we eventually finished that 16K run and I felt happy running with David. It was bliss + happiness that I rarely feel in my life. But after grabbing coffee, sitting down and have a nice morning chat with David, finding out that he speaks pretty darn good Spanish, I can’t help but wonder.

Toby asking himself:

Why the heck am I so happy?

Why do I feel so blessed?

The harder and the longer I paused to answer the question. The clearer the answer became. I guess the run with David is one culmination of the work that I have put in in this crazy journey. That run meant so much more to me than a “run”.

It was the exact representation and the exact outcome of being better and being more consistent in growing my business. It was a firm reminder that feelings of questioning my sanity when building my life and my business is dead wrong.

Because running with David is a living proof of how everything I have done is absolutely worth it.

Without the unseen work, the lonely journey, the tiring review of investment materials for customers, coding, answering client questions, running; I wouldn’t be physically able to run with him. Heck, he wouldn’t be a client! We won’t cross path on our lives had I stayed in my cushy job a couple of years back.

For the longest time I have always wanted a running buddy.

I’ve always thought that it is because I needed someone to challenge me to be better physically. But it turns out, David, my running buddy has given me happiness that acts as a reminder in making all the pain of going through life and business, worth going through.

Something so much more precious than a running challenge.

If you vibe with the story

It has ended for this time, but the effort of building a business and progressing to be better people is definitely ongoing. It usually requires plenty of decision making under uncertainty.

How do should we think about making our judgements better? Is there a way to optimise our decision making skills?

I believe there is! Not just in investments but in life in general. You can click the below button for us to give you ways to optimise your decision making over the next 10 days.

10 Days to Optimize Your Decision Making

You work hard, you save diligently, you invest in the Indonesian stock market... and your wealth shrinks. You’re not alone. This is not bad luck; it’s a feature of the terrain we are playing in. (Un)fortunately, Indonesia is an emerging market that is characterised by:

• Depreciating currency against the US Dollar

• Low trust society

• Declining equity market for the past 12 years in USD terms (I believe LQ45 more, not IHSG)

This piece will attempt to describe features of the landscape in a clear manner so that we know what might be a reasonable game play, if you’d like to invest in Indonesia.

hint: buying low cost index fund is likely not the answer. Because no body here, at least per this post was posted, wants to buy the index.

I am sorry foreign reader or average investor in developed countries, your solution wouldn’t seem to work here.

Let’s begin

Picture yourself as a working adult in your late 20s to mid 30s in Indonesia. Let’s say your name is Bob.

You’ve been in the workforce for a while and perhaps have taken a managerial mid position in your career. Or a business owner who’s business is starting to take shape. Aside from quarter life crisis after asking yourself about what you really want to do, you have found yourself in a uniquely tough spot.

Without you noticing, your life is starting to pull you from so many directions.

• Your boss gave you a new unrealistic target to achieve for the next year

• Your subordinate (if you are no longer an individual contributor) is not working up to your standards

• You start to get piled up with familial obligation such as birth of a new child or marriage

• You suddenly have to take care of your parents more. Maybe not financially if you are fortunate, but mentally and physically, as they are getting older by the day

• You see your friends getting laid off and having to fight hard in a competitive job market

Maybe a list of hobbies that you had when you were in your early 20s were:

• learning Spanish because you watched a bit too much of money heist on Netflix

• cycling and participating Tour de Samosir in the beautiful lake Toba because you saw Tour de France on Television as a kid

• collecting Pokemon cards

• learning and watching educational lecture videos from top universities or top YouTube educational channels like 3blue1brown or Veritasium because they are genuinely interesting

• studying a macroeconomics. Studying geopolitics → what is China’s big move in the wake of the COVID lockdowns

• stockpicking powered by the internet. Follow an investment discussion about a once in a life time opportunities → decide if that makes logical sense → if yes, buy!

All of the sudden, in your late 20s, your hobbies shrink to:

• Maybe run a bit? Do your 1st marathon to prove yourself that you are physically and mentally strong enough to succumb any challenge.

• or Padel

• And… probably Netflix in the evenings which you might come to regret the next day.

So that’s you.

You are a responsible adult living in an unprecedented age of rapid technological change in a rough emerging market terrain.

How rough? Let’s describe the landscape.

1st Feature: Low Trust Society

For us locals, it needs no explanation that Indonesia is a low trust society. We just get it. But to my foreign friends who are privileged to live in a high trust society, I will give some examples and maybe contrast it a bit between high and low trust societies.

In a high trust society, launch of a sovereign wealth fund will be seen as a prudent decision. For example, if you are a commodity rich country like Norway who sells oil as one of the main source of economic output, you wouldn’t want to have a recession because Donald Trump tweeted “drill baby drill” and the price of oil plummets the next day. So a sovereign wealth fund that acts as an investment vehicle to stabilise GDP growth would be seen as a much welcome strategic move.

In a low trust society, however, launch of a sovereign wealth fund would cause a huge public stir and induce people to suddenly want to migrate out from the country. Saying that the country is dark (have a bleak prospect).

Yup, on X (previously Twitter), there were as many as 104,000 unique accounts using the hashtag #IndonesiaGelap (#DarkIndonesia) with more than 2.5 million mentions. This was during the week of the launch of the sovereign wealth fund, Danantara.

Now, you could ignore the numbers — they don’t really matter.
But even a single scroll through those posts is enough to make anyone feel like the government is a group of bandits scheming to rob the nation’s wealth.

And to this day, some people genuinely still believe that.

So to conclude, description one of the low trust society terrain:

A guy who does good or wants to do good will be met with heavy skepticism. People will try hard to figure out: what’s the catch?

2nd Feature: Depreciating currency against the US Dollar

Let’s raise the difficulty level a notch — life in an emerging market isn’t meant to be easy.

Indonesia’s currency has steadily depreciated against the US dollar, by roughly 3% per year since the early 2000s.

That’s not unique — many emerging markets share the same pattern.

But it’s worth thinking about what this means from an investor’s perspective.

A weakening currency implicitly encourages Indonesians to invest locally — in businesses that earn and spend in rupiah. Why? Because if everyone were encouraged to buy stocks like Apple or NVIDIA, capital would quickly flow out of the country.

So, the government naturally shapes incentives to keep money at home.

One example: the tax-friendly policies of the Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX), which make investing in local companies more attractive.

3rd Feature: Bearish IDX Market (LQ45)

enough said.

So Bob (yes remember your name is Bob), what is your response to all this?

So as a Bob, it is like going to a restaurant called “Investments in Indonesia” and then being handed a menu like this:

After browsing the menu, you probably realise that you are not that hungry. You must be thinking that there must be an alternative! Let’s go to YouTube. Then being handed another menu like this.

A landscape of choices each with very very convincing arguments from probably very respectable sometimes reputable individuals also that has an incentive to make you more money grab attention. I mean if the arguments are not convincing, they won’t get that many likes subscribes and views.

So Bob turn to his friends and look for other options. Maybe something that is better than the options above. Indeed there are other options:

• Padel courts

• Cafe

• Financing a small farm or garden that sells produce

• Kos2an (boarding house or rented room)

On the surface

Bob feels like oh boy that sure does look easy. just buy a conglomerate stock and I could have been up 2 - 3x. What’s the point of locking my funds in time deposits?

Or Bob will be amazed. Wait what? You only put Rp 3.5 billion ($200,000) into 6 court padel?? You could break even in less than a year! Who doesn’t play padel nowadays?

And Bob realizes something.

He feels a bit discouraged.
“Why am I working so hard? Everyone around me—at least on my screen—seems to have it so easy. Am I even moving in the right direction? Am I working smart enough?”

Questions like these pop up from time to time.

“Damn it, I could’ve just bought the S&P 500 and earned 15% a year in USD over the last decade. What am I doing here?”

But in that moment, he casually forgets that even the S&P had to survive through wars, presidential impeachment, a global pandemic, massive debt, and a Federal Reserve running at a loss.

Then another realization hits him.

Even the highly educated, rational ones are starting to question the point of long-term thinking.
Maybe, in a rough terrain like this, the only play is to chase whatever’s hot.

If bubble tea goes viral again tomorrow, maybe you’re supposed to drop everything and catch the wave.

But with every wave comes the crash.
Riding it requires a strange mix of art, skill timing, and luck.
And at the back of your mind, you have to ask — are you ready to take the hit if you catch the wave too late?
Or are we still early enough to ride it?

It sounds logical — to just become a great wave surfer.
But is that really a good strategy for Bob?

Remember, you don’t have a lot of time. Your responsibilities are piling up, your hobbies are shrinking, and your time scarce. It doesn’t feel like uni days where you can conquer the world. What to do?

This post is getting a bit long, so let’s pick this up next time :)

We were trying to construct a pitch deck for an investor. For those who are not familiar with fund raising, it is a 10 slides of hell that we have to make to convince investors to give us money, in exchange for more money in the future should our business succeeds. It was a hard sell, especially during tech winter in Indonesia, with news of massive layoffs and down-rounds.

Building the deck was not hard, but convincing investors was a big challenge. I am more a person who enjoys thinking about building products, new features, thinking about investment opportunities for customers rather than making huge promises to skeptical investors who’s already was having a hard time raising money from angry LPs. So it certainly felt like playing a losing game.

Plus the stakes were high. Budi was stressed out. We were taking minimum wage salaries for months and some of our clients grew impatient due to the lack of movements in the Indonesian stock market. It felt quite dysfunctional because there were so many dirt cheap companies with attractive valuations, yet all the stocks that saw a price rise were the crazy speculative ones.

But anywho, what I heard from our client who’s an executive was to tell good stories. Find a narrative he says. Narrative convinces people.

But how? We are literally just helping people to invest in the stock market in Indonesia. This is very similar to what a lot of people are already doing. What sets us apart?

So I turned into social media of course and searched for “investment” related posts.

For active individuals, there are loads of information out there, many conflicting, and some plain weird. There is even a YouTube channel about predicting the stock market movements by observing the motion of planetary bodies! Today mercury is going to be aligned with Venus, so tomorrow the market will go up. And you should exit your position when Earth’s moon is at a 45 degree angle with Mars. I am definitely no astronomer, but these guys are convincing. I even ended up trying out the course offerings that they sell to the public. Of course, with little luck.

But for some reason, watching these “investment courses” online is such a triggering experience. It causes a deep seated anger as our family (my dad) has bought these courses, met new “investment experts” loss countless of dollars in search of just growing our wealth better.

So I was thinking with the Recompound system:

• Only charge a success fee

• That’s extra safe because the money is not transferred to us

That really is going to be super appealing to people. Because you don’t have to trust us 100%. Just trust the system that is working right in front of your eyes. And the central thesis was that when this system is established, we will be able to “destroy” the scammers, the fake gurus and put them out of business.

We are disrupting the investment education and advisory space in Indonesia. With the latest AI technology and LLMs deployed in the cloud for maximum scalability and market penetration.

It has a nice ring to it as well. Isn’t it?

Until my Dad (yes my very own Dad), unsubscribed from Recompound. Yep, the worst part? His portfolio was up like 50%+ after 2 years joining in support of his son. Clearly the math is not math-ing. I mean like, what do you really want from an investment? More money? No? The worse part is, I can’t really convince investors if I can’t convince myself. How am I suppose to disrupt the space if my own Dad buys these crazy expensive courses with dubious and unrealistic promises??

In YCombinator (a super respectable startup investor based in the US), startups need to pass the Mom test by gathering honest feedback. Because your Mom will always literally back your idea up. Saying that it is a good idea even if its not.

Well, the Asian (or Chindo) Dad test is basically saying that all of your ideas is sh*t as Chindo Dads are usually just out there to win arguments against their own children to safeguard their ego. It is a force of nature. But if you still think that the idea makes sense as they will poke as many holes as possible, you might be onto something.

But what became clear as day after the interaction with my Dad was that I cannot force people’s behaviour onto them. People who want to gamble, want to fomo, want to speculate will always be doing it as they please. I can’t change their behaviour. Same thing like I can’t tell people not to over consume sugary drinks to avoid diabetes. But I can build the gym for people to exercise. I can organise running events. I can endorse sugarless healthier options.

So what I can do is to build a system to people to get investment advisory in a smarter, more transparent, and most importantly sustainable way. The bet is more and more people will grow to fall into this category. That is when I realised that the goal is not to disrupt. Not to destroy and hate on all the scams, marketing gimmicks, cheap tricks. The goal is to build. That’s one hell of a narrative.

If you’d like to start growing, perhaps you can start from building a better mindset by seeing what we’ve learned in helping high achievers invest better for the long term for years. Just let me know by putting your best email and we’ll send you the materials over the next 30 days.

Here we go again, call with an Urologist. Onto yet another quest to get a client. For those new here, we usually have calls with people before they sign up.

I have not had a Doctor consultation in a long time, so I couldn’t remember how a consultation should typically go. But I could never forget my half horrid and half pleasant experience getting a vaccination as a child. The consultation room itself usually has an intimidating aura with bright lights and white sheets. The metal railing with light green curtains act as a cover as the Doctor uses a stethoscope on my chest to check my breathing. When he does that I should never screw up by accidentally coughing.

Because if I cough, especially with a phlegm-ish sound, it would invite an unnecessary attention as the Doc would press on and ask.

Are you cold??

Do you need more injections? muahahaha (evil emoji)

I was a scared little boy. I would fervently hold my breath so that I didn’t cough. Terrible. You can imagine after I exited the Doctor’s room and I just let my cough go wild (AAHEEEMMM). But also pleasant, after the session I would earn candies and cake (kue serabi) that is freshly sold at the hospital canteen for my bravery of getting injections. To this day, I still go to RSPI canteen to buy some of their small food. It brings back happy memories of having finished a tense Dr session.

—

Back to this call with urologist prospect as I secretly reminisce my bitter sweet memories of going to the Doctor. Of course, I expected a tense beginning because Doctors are usually critical. But also a sweet ending because some of them are, ahem, quite well paid.

The Doctor opened by saying:

I start work at 5:30AM and I finish at 10PM from Monday to Saturday. I absolutely have no time in investing. So could you explain to me what is your service?

Easy peasy. I have explained our service thousands of times to people. But it is a bit of a mouthful though so I did try to keep it brief.

“We help people invest in the stock market with peace of mind.

We charge people when their investment portfolio grows so we are responsible to look for undervalued companies that could be invested. Budi, licensed investment advisor, will help you down to the allocation, max buy price as well as notifying buy and sell as and when it is needed.”

I could tell the Doctor is not convinced, he started to be a little bit more chill though. At the very least, I knew I got him intrigued about the product that we offer. Not getting convinced straight away is perfectly normal. We have just met 5 minutes ago. So he continued to ask about how does it work exactly?

Another easy question:

“We create personalised WhatsApp group for each of our client. Budi, OJK certified investment advisor, will be there. I will also will be there to assist your needs if any. You could monitor the growth of your investments that we record by looking at our dashboard. We populate the data from Trade Confirmation (TC) documents you send to us.”

Of course I explained how our fee structure works to be clear on how we align our incentives with our customers’. He nodded quietly, without making too many remarks. He seems to be processing the information as it comes. Silence is a good thing so I also paused to let the information sink in. In his head, I knew that all the information I gave him adds up really well.

Until he finally said:

So how do I know that you will not run away with my money?

I had a feeling that this is going to be the final rebuttal. The room was still a little tense, but I have a knack of keeping an upbeat attitude. Further, I have thought through our processes 1000x over.

“Yes Pak, we don’t hold your funds. You keep them to yourself. We don’t even have access to your sekuritas. You execute transaction yourself once you review and approve the investment thesis.”

I got him. Of course I was expecting him to be mind blown. This is a full proof way that we will never be able to run away with people’s money: By not having access to their money at all. I was expecting him to comment:

Wow that’s really cool. Is this is the first time in Indonesia a business with such kind of services?

Like a normal person, who spends an inordinate amount of time in front of the mirror, I was ready to congratulate myself. I was already thinking about saying good news to the team saying yes we got another Doctor customer!

But not so fast. He went straight for the kill.

No. I meant, when I transfer you the registration fee, how do I know that you will not run away with my registration fee?

Now that’s a question that I have never heard before. My body froze and I started to stammer. I didn’t know what to say to him, not because I want to run away with his Rp 2 million to sacrifice my hard work, reputation, and other things I have given up to start this business, but I just didn’t have a good answer…

So I said

Huh… I never thought of it that way. You’re right. How do you know that I won’t run away with the money?

But of course, as I stammered and stumbled, I wasn’t convincing. I felt terrible after the call, I didn’t know how I lost my confidence just like that. When he pressed on asking hard questions about the product, investment outlook, market etc it felt easy for me to answer. But when it comes to asking a very simple question: “Hey mate, can I really trust you?”

I stood still and froze. It was deeply unsettling for me for not having a good answer.

That’s when I realise that I might have an impostor syndrome. I can doubt my own trust worthiness when others are deeply skeptical, even after helping serve hundreds of people and see them be successful in the capital market.

Perhaps the investment world to say the least is unkind and competitive. People from all walks of life and different knowledge levels trying to be the next hot investing guy. It often comes as people flexing their returns. Flexing their investment methodology. Creating curiosity of a “methodology” that global top fund managers would use.

It is very similar to the fitness industry. You could see fitness influencers flexing their inch perfect body and muscle that has an unintended consequence of jeopardising your self confidence.

At that point I didn’t have a good answer to the question:

Are we good enough for this guy?

After the call, and looking at the investment thesis, the preparation that we did for our customers, I realised that of course we are good enough. This guy spends 12+ hours a day in the hospital. I don’t think his due diligence is going to be as thorough as ours. I don’t think he will be able to stay logical when he’s tired handling patients and when he looks at how volatile the market could be. We take care of those things for him. So of course we are good enough.

But that’s when I also realise that the effects of “expert invetors” flexing and looking down on other people for being ignorant in the investment space is more pernicious than I thought. Even if I can feel this way, let alone others who have never had the experience of being in the capital market at all.

That made me think that maybe, a person who wants to learn about investing could benefit from our experiences in running Recompound and seeing hundreds of people be profitable in the stock market with a peace of mind.

So I condense those years of experience into 30 days worth of lessons about investment without financial jargons and in a language that you and I can understand. Each lesson is short and sweet intended to take as little of your time as possible. Each day’s knowledge will build up to the next.

The goal is simple: clarity as to what investing to us really means. And how to invest with a peace of mind.

Without a foundational knowledge on investing, often times I see people having an unmanaged supermarket portfolio, being traumatised by their investing experience, and envious of others who speak about investments. I believe these lessons will help.

If you want me to send you over a free education material over the next 30 days, I’ll need your email to learn that you want to receive those materials and send them your way. Oh and of course, it is free of charge. So I cannot run away with anything ;) I truly wish it would be of use to you, dear reader.

P.s. In case you missed the hyperlink above, there’s a button below.

30 Day Free Lessons

I woke up at 5:30AM in the morning today. Not because I am a super disciplined person but because frankly I have been travelling and there is a 6 hour difference, yet I have to take Jakarta time afternoon client calls. So 1pm in Jakarta was 7AM here. With me still wanting to go back to bed and be in one with that soft pillow, I begrudgingly decided to drag myself and make a cup of coffee. I just had to caffeinate my body before the call. After that’s done, I sat down, opened my laptop getting ready for the call and hoped for the best. What a huge mistake, hope that is.

If I were to be honest, the reason to have calls with potential customers is “to convince” them to sign up. Simple. Of course we want customers so that our business can stay alive. So I would listen to them and see their predicaments, their area of their problem and see if we could be of help or not. But sometimes the conversation could be… well amusing. Or maybe a musing.

One that makes me go into a state of a lot of musing. Amusing.

I said hello, my name is Toby while waving my hand cheerfully and nodded. I introduced myself as the Co-Founder of Recompound and I am very thankful for the person’s time. I also always add that the call is intended to get to know each other to see if they need our help in their investments or not. The moment I mentioned investments, he stared into my face, without any expression. Dead cold and said: “hello”.

In my mind, I was like oookay. Let’s move on! So I mentioned, how can I help you today? Maybe you could share a little bit more about your investing experience.

So of course he mentioned that he has been trading on and off for more than 10 years. He is really proud of his trading methodology, mentioning that trading is incredibly superior to investing. The reason is really simple yet powerful. Trading has all of the data from volume, moving averages and all of the indicators that could be used by the trader to gain an edge and therefore profits in the market. Investing relies on shoddy and incomplete data in such a way that making decisions from those data is not helpful. He went on further saying and emphasising quite a few times that…

Trading is not equals to gambling.

Which I genuinely agree as long as you have a proper trading plan. By the sound of his confidence, he sure as hell has a proper trading plan. But I still got puzzled. I never mentioned that trading is gambling to this person, yet he got really worked up when explaining about his trading experiences. So I mentioned simply, it seems you have been able to be profitable in your trading endeavours which explains your confidence.

But then he said he would have made money if:

• he could control his emotions when trading.

• he could react fast enough to market moves.

Ok so despite his proud assertions about how trading is the gold standard, he claims that it is actually costing him money. To his disappointment, I quickly mentioned that we don’t help people trade investment instruments. We help them invest better for the long term. Which he absolutely detests. But somehow he decided to “learn more” about investment because he says:

“I have traded options for multiple years in the past, but I don’t understand stocks.”

Which again, is frankly quite odd. To me it sounds like: I have been doing a lot of multiplication, but I don’t understand how addition works.

But that’s fine, I mean we encounter strange things on our day to day lives. So I patiently explained how stocks work. We treat them as a business and understanding its quality to be able to obtain a slice of ownership at bargain prices.

So he immediately cut in: “What’s the difference between you and WhatsApp groups? They give free analysis. Why should I pay you?”

I asked: “Free analysis?”

He said: “Yeah, with all the deep analysis, charts and stuff. They frequently posted it for us to see for free. There are loads of them!”

I know that we Indonesians are known to be generous (one of the top countries with most donations in nominal terms if I recall correctly), but I am pretty sure that those WhatsApp groups are not doing charity. So I just highlighted several key differences:

• legality

• professionality

• personalisation

• etc

But up until now, no matter what I said, it felt like it was “wrong” in his eyes. Every answer got a pushback. It was like he cared more about proving he was right — or smarter than me — than actually listening. Which is fine; plenty of people are smarter than me.

Then I mentioned, almost in passing, that we actually select our clients and turn away many who don’t align with us. Then suddenly… he changed. His tone softened. His face relaxed. He leaned in a little, like he wanted to show he was the kind of client we’d want.

So to recap:

• This Bapak glorifies his short term trading strategies

• Then reveals that his glorified trading strategy is costing him money, but still glorifies it

• Then wants to “learn” what is stocks and how are we different from other groups that give recommendations

• Then is not convinced by the fact that he has to pay for our service because others give for free

• Then becomes genuinely enticed to learn more about us after learning that we are selective of our clients.

I got confused until I decide to pen down my thoughts here. Still am confused. But I suppose that is when I realise that I can’t please everyone and I don’t have to.

Hi 👋 welcome to Recompound Blog - The Investment Mindshift. We help you better your mindset on investment and economics one article at a time. More: Our Values | Advisory | Get to know us | Picks

Disclaimer: this post is meant for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

I recently noticed about a movie that got popular these days which is Sore. Many of us would wonder:

If only I had a “Wife from the Future”

Imagine if I have a spouse (oops Gracia) who travelled back in time—like the meme taken from the movie Sore: Istri dari Masa Depan.

She leans in and whispers to you in 2018, “Just go all‑in on BTC—your money will rise 30×,” and I hit buy without a second thought.

I would be so rich that I might not need to work anymore. But that seems so easy isn’t it? Just hold BTC for a 7 years and my money will rise 30x. And I know that most of you who missed the opportunity to hold BTC for 7 years (including me) might feel unpleasant. But why?

I think it is because of one emotion

That emotion is regret that is amplified from hindsight bias. I have known about BTC for so long. But why do I not have the conviction to do a simple damn thing and hold it for 7 years and be rich? Although I also know that very very few people have done this. But that’s besides the point.

The point is, when we make a decision under uncertainty, we definitely will make a mistake at some point. And it sucks, it really does.

For example, I sold stock A at a 10% profit to switch to a different stock which I feel have a much better prospect. Then that stock A continue to rally. And I would feel:

I should have not sold that damn thing…. #taugitu

But whenever I feel this way, I will ask if I want to be regretful and let this emotion take over me. Then, I will start thinking about my favourite investment guru. Yes, Mr. Howard Marks. He never fails to remind us: the future cannot be known; our job is to act under that cloud of uncertainty.

We never truly know what any asset—stocks, bonds, gold, or crypto—will be worth, especially in the short term. So here are the three things I think about to make myself feel better and act rational again.

Number One: Investing Is a Probability Game

Every decision is a probability, not a certainty. Things that should happen do not always happen. All we have is a range of scenarios, each carrying its own likelihood.

Investing isn’t binary. You have to allow for multiple outcomes, each with its own probability.

When you view the world this way, you often discover a scenario you are unwilling to accept—maybe a 50 % price drop, a debt restructuring, or a regulatory change. That is the starting point of risk management: make sure your portfolio survives if that worst‑case shows up.

Number Two: The Danger of Averages

Howard Marks jokes about the six‑foot‑tall man who drowned while crossing a river whose depth averaged only five feet.

Averages deceive; they blur the extremes. Market charts of average returns look smooth, but in reality they are a collage of very good and very bad days.

Your portfolio has to endure the bad days so you don’t panic‑sell at the bottom, and your decisions need time to prove themselves.

Number Three: Opposite of Regret is Gratefulness

I might sound super woo woo saying this but I believe that gratefulness is the opposite of regret. Whenever I make a decision, especially to sell, I will remind myself to be grateful. I am in a privileged position to pursue my passion to becoming an exceptional stock investor. I am in a privileged position to help other people invest, better.

Do I have to be bogged down by regret for a thing that is beyond my control? Of course not.

As long as I keep my focus on long term survival

I know that I am already doing my best and I am already happy to keep doing what I do. But how do we do this?

Disciplined risk management

We demand large margins of safety in stock selection. To put our challenges into perspective, September 2024 to March 2025 put that belief to the test: the Indonesian equity market fell roughly 35 %. Our portfolio’s drawdown was far smaller. And we managed to stay afloat and survive.

When the market rallied to new highs, we were still on the field to collect the upside.

Hunt for under-appreciated assets

We’ve also learned that the greatest risk‑adjusted returns rarely come from the headlines. Assets that are still under‑appreciated and underestimated by the crowd usually trade at valuations that leave room for pleasant surprises.

Conversely, buying whatever everyone is already talking about often means paying a price that assumes perfection—and perfection is rare.

Put bluntly, the ugly truth of markets is this: the biggest gains come from purchasing what the majority dismisses, while the biggest losses stem from chasing what the majority already adores.

That principle guides our allocation decisions every day.

We avoid overpaying for the latest market darling.

Performance-based, not pay per post

Our approach is simple: we only win when our clients win. Why? Our readers might think that this is done only so that we are fair and so on. But it also serves another purpose. So that we don’t become complacent.

If the portfolio is up, we share in the upside; if it is flat or down, we earn nothing - and have to scramble and think hard into making your portfolio goes to all time high again.

Our compensation is performance‑based, so not only our incentives are perfectly aligned with yours, but also so that we are always on our toes.

That philosophy is the exact opposite of the typical “fin‑influencer” model—creators who charge a fixed subscription or sponsorship fee whether you make money or not, and who disappear when their investment tips go south.

Because our livelihood depends on long‑term capital growth, we cannot afford blow‑ups. Avoiding catastrophic loss is not just a principle; it is a business necessity.

Key Takeaways

I am a human. I do feel the regret for making decisions that turn out to be incorrect under uncertainty. When I feel this say, I stand on the shoulder of giants:

1. Respect probabilities. Stay humble; even the most likely scenario can miss.

2. Know the full distribution—not just the average but both the left and right tails.

3. Be grateful. Regret is real, being grateful allows us to stay sane and rational.

I will then continue to prioritise long term survival by going back to principles:

1. Build a buffer. A healthy margin of safety buys breathing room when reality disappoints.

2. Seek the overlooked. Under‑appreciated assets carry the best upside‑to‑downside ratio.

3. Align incentives. A performance‑based fee structure keeps us responsible for results, not rhetoric, not what ifs.

Closing Thoughts

I may not have a wife from the future whispering asset prices, I am grateful for my own wife thank you. But I do believe that discipline, probabilistic thinking, and risk management—backed by a fee structure that rewards success and punishes complacency.

In an uncertain world, these are the tools that let us keep moving forward—without drowning in a five‑foot river.

Hi 👋 welcome to Recompound Blog - The Investment Mindshift. We help you better your mindset on investment and economics one article at a time. More: Our Values | Advisory | Get to know us | Picks

Disclaimer: this post is meant for educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice.

Having a burned portfolio sucks. The feeling is usually unpleasant because we are uncertain whether it can recover or not. For me, and most people, the feeling of “helplessness” is the suckiest thing.

I am guessing that usually, when we encounter a problem at work, or a bug in the code base, or a customer complain, there are solutions that we can employ actively. Then the problem will cease being a problem and we are happy to carry on with our lives.

But a burning portfolio is different. You can’t turn on a hose and water the portfolio down to stop the burning. Even after the “actions” have been done, there’s no guarantee that the portfolio will recover. Despite the no guarantees and the immense sense of helplessness, is it really that we cannot do anything about it?

In this post, I will make my very best attempt to explain that there is something that we can do about it rationally. It is going to be a step by step on

How to recover from a burned portfolio

You could do independently at your own discretion with the steps as a reference. So if you are a silent lurker who’s thinking about your burned portfolio, hopefully this blogpost serves as a good reference for you to do something about it.

First things first

An overwhelming majority of investors have experienced a burning portfolio in the past. Warren Buffett is an example when he bought Berkshire Hathaway, the cotton mill, out of spite and did not manage to turn the company around after years of managing it.

So a burning portfolio usually stems from an ill-managed investment portfolio comprising of high risk assets such as stocks or cryptocurrencies.

And again, burning portfolio amongst people who invest in high risk asset is a shared, neigh universal experience (incredibly incredibly incredibly common), that is characterised by a situation of discomfort where we are not happy:

• to admit that our portfolio is in trouble

• to learn that our future finances might be in trouble because the size of the investment portfolio is a sizeable portion of their overall net worth

• to see that (maybe) others are “boasting” about their fantastic portfolio returns

So it is deeply emotional toward the unpleasant side. But behind that unpleasantness, I would say that a little courage is necessary to deal with this.

Without courage, the unpleasantness of the emotions that come when dealing with recovering your portfolio will lead you to unhelpful or even riskier “solutions” that can put your portfolio further in jeopardy. I will explain this more in the later section of the blogpost.

With courage, you are able to be rational and cognisant of the following basic truths:

1. There is no free lunch. People offering get rich quick schemes, etc are most probably lying OR making you take huge unnecessary risk without you knowing.

2. To recover a downside, more upside is required. To recover 10% loss, 11% upside is required. To recover a 50% loss, 100% upside is required. So recovering a burned portfolio, is not easy.

3. Therefore, recovery will likely require more time depending on how burned is the portfolio! Just like when someone is down with the flu can recover within a week. Another someone might need years to recover from a stage 4 colon cancer.

4. Yet there is a chance that your portfolio will not recover to its initial value and you just have to recoup “the losses”. As someone who could unfortunately pass from their illness, your burned portfolio might also never recover to its original value.

So yep, heavy stuff. But there is something that we could do towards recovery, still. Doing the right logical thing is hard, often times requires (loads of) courage.

Birds Eye View

Here’s a complete flowchart that describes the process from the start of having a burned portfolio all the way to recovered end. Which is the ideal end state where your portfolio is no longer burning and even growing.

It is a multi step chart with a number of if-else conditions. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, not all of the end state is a happy ending. Yet there is a logical path towards recovery and if I were to be shameless a little bit, we have seen multiple people’s portfolio recovered pretty convincingly at Recompound. Therefore I’d say that it is worth understanding how recovering one’s investment portfolio really works 🙂

Birds eye view chart above might seem confusing, so let’s break it down in order with some explanation.

START (Burned Portfolio) → Have investment thesis?

The start of the process is your burned investment portfolio.

Since it is an investment portfolio, it should always have a logical reason why the investments are there in the portfolio itself i.e. investment thesis. Now to be honest, most people who have a burning portfolio and derive a huge amount of unpleasant emotions don’t have an investment thesis. So if you don’t have one, that is okay as it is really really common. You could skip to the next part.

But if you do have an investment thesis. It never hurts to evaluate whether it is wrong or not. Key important point that I’d like to mention when evaluating our own investment thesis is intellectual honesty. Are we letting ego in the way when evaluating our investment thesis? Are we only listening to information that confirms our biases? Are we ignoring crucial information that invalidates our thesis?

But at the same time, are we too worried about noise and meaningless media sentiments? Are we being too cautious of certain things that shouldn’t be too big of a deal?

So if you have an investment thesis, evaluate it. If its wrong, sell the investment and replace with a new investment. If it is not wrong, do nothing (for now) and enjoy the process or stomach the pain.. 😎

Talking about diamond hands, a famous example of doing nothing is Dr. Michael Burry prior to the Global Financial Crisis when he shorted the housing market by buying Credit Default Swaps. His burning portfolio came from the increasing price of mortgage backed securities that he shorted. He was required to pay a monthly premium on the Credit Default Swaps he bought so that he can get a payout when the underlying bonds fail.

According to the movie (The Big Short), he did nothing for a number of years as his investment thesis was in tact and was sitting on hundreds of millions of drawdown before eventually doubling the original investment fund when the mortgage backed securities collapsed in value.

Don’t have thesis → Speculate again?

This step is in my opinion, what separates you from the pack. It is incredibly easy for someone with a burned portfolio to look for speculative bets in the hopes of “recovering their losses” quickly.

But the truth is “recovering losses quickly” is tantamount to “getting rich quickly”. The only difference is the starting point. Let’s say you started with 100 and have lost 50. Then, you want to “recover your losses” quickly. This means that you need to double your money quickly. Therefore, like I have briefly explained in the first things first section, the unpleasant emotions associated with a burning portfolio can lead us to these “recover quickly” suboptimal solution that is really not at all a valid solution for most.

To wit, below are the same action plan but in different manifestations:

1. Follow what other people are buying blindly (what is promoted on social media) with hopes that this stock or that stock will get jacked up 2x quickly.

2. Liquidate your assets, go to the casino and gamble in the hopes that you will 2x your funds and recoup losses

Therefore, if you could find a service that can double your money quickly, it is equivalent to finding a service that can make you rich quickly. Yes, the temptation to speculate again is huge because there’s a perceived notion that you have to recover your losses. If you decide you want to speculate again, all I can say is good luck? Maybe this post will be relevant again in the future.

But if after reading this, you commit to steer clear from speculating (unnecessary gambling, blindly copying other people’s investments, etc) I would say that you have managed to do the harder thing that requires discipline and rational behavior. And you have now been separated from the pack.

Yes, you are now the special minority.

No speculation → Acceptance → Long term?

After you have decided that you are no longer interested in gambling your money away unnecessarily (or at least gambling a sizeable chunk of your net worth away) here comes the 2nd hardest part: acceptance.

This process is 2nd hardest because it involves letting go of that “financial dream or needs” because of this burned portfolio. So you probably will need to increase your active income to have better chance of reaching that financial dream or needs or adjusting that financial dream at the end.

This could be very personal, but here is a simple scenario:

Bob wants to send his son to the United Kingdom to study. He set aside $100,000 to grow 15% per year. So after 10 years, that $100,000 would ideally be around $350,000. But because of the huge drawdown at year 3 for example, his fund might only realistically be at $200,000 after 7 years. So he has 2 main options. Either work harder and get the remaining $150,000. Or send his son to Australia instead where tuition is in Australian Dollars instead of British Pounds. Or encourage his son to get a partial scholarship in the UK.

This illustration also poses a key question to people with burning portfolios. Do you still have time before your financial commitment?

If your fund is needed in the short term, like 3 months, for example. Maybe viewing your portfolio with a mindset of viewing a bankrupt company might help. If you are dealing with bankrupt companies, what you are interested in as a stakeholder is how much can you recoup from this company. Does the company have assets like land, building, equipment, etc that it could sell? How much cash does the company has for me to take? What you are focusing on really is to “salvage” whatever is left to salvage.

Then you could go all out in protecting what you have managed to salvage as you don’t want to risk its value in the short run. People have their ways to protect their wealth, keeping inside the bank, buying precious metals, or buying government bonds, etc. But ideally those assets that don’t have too great of a price fluctuation.

Furthermore, it is also a time for you to ask.

Kapok belum? I.e. Are you still comfortable in investing high risk assets or have you had enough?

Not everyone is comfortable investing in high risk assets as stomaching price volatility tends to be deeply emotional for many people that leads to irrational behaviours in the market. If you have had enough of investing in stocks with its price fluctuations and perceived risks, it is okay to call it quits.

You just have to accept investing in conservative assets like money market funds or government bonds might never recover your portfolio in time, especially if adjusted for inflation.

In it for the long term and I can still invest in high risk assets in the hopes of earning better returns

As you have a long term horizon and you have not had enough of risky assets, investing in risky assets might be a good idea. But before we go into that. The critical question to ask is:

Do I have the time?

Because, you will need the time to come up with a better strategy than your previous or lack there of strategy on your investments.

Yes, that strategy is by optimising your returns, while minimizing risk as much as possible. The next section describes how to do it.

If you don’t have the time, don’t worry as there is a solution as well for this scenario.

Here’s a step by step of that strategy towards recovery if you have time

Step 1. Research on high risk assets

High risk assets simply means ownership. For example, owning a property, a land, a factory, a slice of a business (a share) is considerably high risk. Because the asset that you purchase it for can go down in value in the future.

In this case, it is highly highly advised to go within your circle of competence. If you are good at analysing stocks, stick to stocks. If you are good at analysing property, stick to property. If you are good at trading crypto, stick to trading crypto (but again, be intellectually honest to yourself).

Why high risk asset? If you are right, the upside is usually unlimited. For example, if you own a share of Google in 2000, there is no body telling you that your upside is capped to 2x.

But what if you are wrong?

Step 2. Make sure margin of safety is high

Here’s where your expertise or circle of competence comes in. If you are wrong, you probably won’t lose much if you have a high margin of safety.

How do you get a high margin of safety? You get high margin of safety when you acquire your asset a price that is cheap relative to its value. Intuitively and super simply:

You are buying a bubble tea shop who operates in one mall. You know that that bubble tea is going to open in another mall.

But you are offered the price of owning one bubble tea shop only. So if the expansion of the second bubble tea fails, you are still getting returns from that one bubble tea. If the expansion succeeds, you get double the returns.

Heads I win, tails I don’t lose much. That’s investing in high risk assets combined with large margin of safety.

So why margin of safety is particularly important?

Remember that you start with a burning portfolio, maybe you have taken too much risk in the past that got you here in the first place. Now is the time for you to gun for returns with risk in mind, not just gun for returns, ignoring all risk.

Step 3, 4. Monitor progress and evaluate thesis

Monitor hows the progress of the assets that you have invested in. So back to the bubble tea example, see if the expansion is successful or taking more time to materialise?

Then evaluate your investment thesis accordingly. Am I still making the correct bet?

Recovery

When you spend time do the 4 steps above, you will eventually get some right bets and some wrong bets. The more right bets you make, the closer you are towards recovery. And eventually with luck and patience, I believe that recovering your portfolio is very possible!

But I don’t have time

Well if you could not pay with your time to do research on high risk assets, you could spend money to help you do that and use Recompound. 4 steps that are outlined above is essentially done for you in a complete package. Circle of competence that we bring at the moment is Budi (OJK licensed investment advisor) helping you invest in the Indonesian public market with the principles mentioned.

We have done this many times and seen many of customers’ portfolio recover steadily but more surely even amid choppy markets.

Granted, Recompound is more expensive option compared to if you have the time. So if you have the time to come up with a good rational strategy to manage your investments, you are better off doing it yourself. But our fees are fair to you as we only charge our service when your portfolio grows. So we are aligned in terms of your path to recovery.

Closing Remarks

Burned portfolio sucks. Most shove away their burned portfolio problem into obscurity and do not want to deal with it, ever. A minority would want to take the leap of faith and commit to rectify things in the most logical and disciplined manner. If you have no time, we are here. But if you have the time to help yourself, we are still here to cheer you on.

Hi 👋 welcome to Recompound Blog - The Investment Mindshift. We help you better your mindset on investment and economics one article at a time. More: Our Values | Advisory | Get to know us | Picks

This article is about how image is not equals to reality which I am sure everybody is aware about, and how we could potentially profit from it. It is not financial advice and should be construed for educational purposes only. Have a fun read!

Introduction - a hard fought victory?

I am climbing Mt. Batur in Bali during my 30K trail running. It is a steep 16% incline with slippery tiny gravel that is very very hard to grip. After taking two humble steps forward, I inevitably slide down one step or so. I am frustated, but this is definitely the race that I want to finish, no matter what.

Prior to the race our team posted an Instagram story stating that I would be running this race. I made our audience predict what was going to be the outcome. Much to my horror, about 25% of Recompound audience thought that I was not going to be able to finish the race. I took that personally, like any other terrible person who has ego on their physical abilities in question ;)

As I focus all my attention and effort to continue the climb, I continue to think that I have made a huge mistake. Not really a mistake on signing up for the race or asking our followers to predict my timing. But a mistake of not wearing the proper gear coming to the race. I continuously have to profess battle against tiny gravels that keep entering my shoes like bunch of unwanted guests. I am pretty sure that at one point, it induced cramps on my foot thumb.

To make things worse, other participants seemed to be way more prepared than I am. Can you imagine the average participant looked like this

And I looked like this…

Read more

I was on a Google Meet call trying to convince a Senior Vice President from Gojek to join Recompound and be our first customer. He had an illustrious career in the growth and strategy department and his LinkedIn profile was glittered with awards, achievements, endorsements, likes. You know, the meet and greet with important people. Speaking at prestigious events. And reposting genuinely insightful articles with his experiences stitched together.

“Deep down inside me I was also thinking when can I be this cool of a guy?”

A little back story, you could judge us, but we are a VC-backed startup and I happen to co-found it. And now you might be wondering how are you not cooler than the Gojek guy you called? You guys got money from well-respected VCs!

Well that is because we are a VC backed startup with none of its glory and all of its folly. For a simple prototype to build a copy trading app with 0 customers, we received a $200k investment cheque back in 2022. That’s a sizeable amount no? Well, two thirds of it we lost within 6 months. Poof, gone like magic…

We lost most of it because of a Co-Founder break up (pecah kongsi). Past Co-Founders I am sure are good people with convincing backgrounds too. Influencers, having a family business in the brokerage firm, but just a little different mindset. The reason why we had a Co-Founder break up was because we (Toby and Budi) didn’t believe in fund raising for the sake of fund raising and maximising our company valuation. Our past Co-Founders wanted to fund raise and ride the fund raising momentum. So we decided to part ways and “buy them out”, which made our company broke instantaneously.

So the money gone.

3 other Co-Founders also gone.

But expectations from investors remained the same.

So how on earth are we supposed to produce results?

Maybe, convincing the Senior Vice President from Gojek to join Recompound was one of them. But what did we have to offer?

I was prepared with all the core value propositions that we could give.

• You don’t have to transfer your money to our account. Keep the money to yourself. You execute the transaction.

• No need to pay us management fees. Just pay us when your portfolio performs.

• We help you monitor your portfolio. If you don’t like us, you could cancel anytime with no fee.

Even then I wasn’t so sure if he were to be convinced. I could even recall myself stammering as I explained our core offering. Not because I wasn’t sure of our core product, but I felt ashamed of talking about an investment opportunity. He must have thought that I am a scammer with ill intentions of giving bad investment recommendation. Like this is literally a brand that no one has ever heard of, with super shitty landing page, a broke Co-Founder with no formal work experience in investments in Sudirman.

Frankly, I was ready for him to criticise our product, politely decline the offer and hang up. So I dug down and prepared myself mentally for another rejection (note: another rejection, because we have been rejected n times before).

So of course he mentioned,

“I have tried investing in stocks for 4 years since the COVID period. I followed this xxx guru who provides with stock tips with all of the supporting reasons and key indicators to look, but when markets turned against my favour, I asked my guru a harmless question why is the market down? My guru turned passive aggressive and blamed me for not managing risks properly. You should have done this and done that. And I was wtf I didn’t have the time nor the capacity to manage my own risks, and I have lost a yyy (where yyy is a ridiculous amount of money).”

I nodded and tried to offer some words of comfort. I said “I am sorry to hear that you lost a huge amount of money from a person you trusted”

He went on to say

“Well that’s part of the risk in investing. But I don’t trust him as he didn’t set the expectations clearly at the beginning. Anyway, your service seems genuine. I’d like to start with the minimum amount”

Budi and I turned off our camera muted our gmeet, pretended that our internet went choppy for a minute so that we could dance like crazy monkeys.

Dancing aside, that’s when we realised that capital market is a super hostile place for most people. Even for a high profile individual like the guy we were calling, money is easily lost even when they seem to have received good information. An investment guru with years of illustrious track record, does not cut it to be a source of help for these busy professionals.

And the crazy thing is, call after call, we kept seeing people with similar patterns of problem. One person tried buying cryptocurrency in the hopes of recovering losses they made from stocks. It was completely heart wrenching when they shared that their crypto investments also ended up further in a loss. And these are unsuspecting buyers who buy into the argument of a group of people promoting these “investment opportunities” online and labelling it as education. Saying that this coin or that coin are going to change the world and be valued at a ridiculous amount of money.

These calls made me reflect on my personal journey into the investment space as well. My father is the most enthusiastic person when it comes to investments, till this day even when being semi retired from work. He still boasts about the premiums he gets from selling put option in the futures market. He still draws those charts to determine the support and resistance zones in a bid to make a little bit more money late into the night. Why? Because perhaps at the back of his mind, he needs to recover the losses that he took when he purchased GOTO shares at IPO price with his hard earned money.

That is when I realise that every time I took a phone call with a potential client who’s had tremendous investment losses in the past, I am seeing myself and my family who’s frankly just in need for some help. I see a person who’s half (maybe more towards three quarters) skeptical yet utterly helpless. They choose to pick up a call with a no body because they want to learn that maybe not all hope is lost. Maybe there’s someone who could be of help. And I guess that’s why I am here.

As a business owner, every day I wake up on a big mission. To build the investment advisory space in Indonesia? I am more practical than Toby. As business owners, I want more customers. In the investment space, however, there are all sorts of investment offerings, stock tips, and trading plans that service providers can offer to people. While our work setup is notably different at Recompound, it is commonly misunderstood.

I mean come on, we have all the recipe to be misunderstood be mistaken by another “stocktip channel / provider” by people:

Giving buy and sell signal?
Bro, ChatGPT, Deepseek and AI are here. That’s a 2015 business model

WhatsApp group? That’s virtually the setup of all stocktip givers

Pay when profit? Huh, doesn’t that sound like a scam?

And you trust your clients to say the truth if they have bought and sold the stocks??

You don’t get a business owner bashing his own business appearance every day now do you? 😓

Ignore the gimmicks, and the setup. This is the summary in one simple sentence

We treat our clients’ money like our own - because it actually is our own.

I was recently yet in another conversation with a prospective client who asked a simple but revealing question:

“Do you give different stock recommendations to different clients?”

My answer was: No, we don’t.

We recommend stocks to our clients — because we invest in those very same stocks ourselves. Not just in tiny amount either — we, the founders, invest a significant portion of our own net worth in the stocks we recommend.

We don’t believe in saying one thing and doing another.

We eat our own cooking. And that’s why we have real skin in the game.

Indeed, the WhatsApp Groups, Buy-Sell signals, and Performance Fees are accessories

They are simply tools to make your workflow to be as familiar as possible.

• Performance fees have been around since Warren Buffett was young and handsome. We need not reinvent the wheel, on the business model.

• WhatsApp groups to manage people have been utilized in many service providers. It provides an excellent human touch for our customers to feel at ease and in touch with us.

But get this, the “main feature” or the “real deal” is having skin in the game. Otherwise, the buy and sell signal is not valuable. Because our incentives are not aligned with our customers’.

In short we are not just advisors — we’re Co-Investors

Unlike traditional financial advisors who categorize clients into “low risk” / “medium risk” / “high risk” buckets and recommend different products accordingly, we see things differently.

We believe an investment opportunity worth investing should be the lowest risk possible while still offering the highest potential return — not just for our clients, but for us too.

Because it is our money on the line. If we wouldn’t put a sizeable portion of our own wealth into a stock, we won’t recommend it.

I think that this alignment is not just ethical — it’s essential.

So what we are saying is that we’re not Gods who know it all. We’re Humans — But Disciplined Ones

We won’t pretend to be perfect. We make mistakes too. Not all of our analysis is 100% correct. A public company that has a sizeable market capitalisation is huge and it is impossible to know every single detail about a company. Unexpected and black swans events can and are expected to happen to companies.

This is why we would strive to focus on what’s important and what’s knowable and only invest when there is a large Margin of Safety.

This in our view allows us to mitigate risks and contain mistakes that happen from time to time. So our strategy is built on preservation first, upside second.

Even if a stock doesn’t play out the way we hoped, it doesn’t derail y(our) future.

And when the next great opportunity comes — which it always does — our clients are in a strong position to bounce back and reach new all-time highs in their net worth.

Our Philosophy: Enduring Wealth, Not Fast Hype

Some people call our approach too slow. Some say it’s boring.

And to be honest, that’s exactly the point.

We are firm believers in the principles of value investing — as practiced by Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, and Howard Marks.

Their track record isn’t just impressive for a few years. Their strategies have endured through decades — building and protecting wealth across economic cycles, bubbles, crashes, and fads.

Our focus has always been on managing risk, buying with large margin of safety, and avoiding unnecessary short-term market timing.

In our view, those chasing hype may get rich for a while — maybe even 10 years — but history shows that hype rarely builds lasting wealth.

Just look at Jesse Livermore, one of the most legendary traders in history. He made — and lost — several fortunes because he couldn’t contain his own greed. He died broke.

Our Stocks May Be “Boring” — But They’ve Kept Us (and Our Clients) Safe

We’ve heard it before:

“Why are your stock picks so boring?”

“Why not recommend trending sectors or the next hot IPO ?”

Many investors who chased the flashiest stories — whether it’s speculative tech stocks, trendy IPOs, or financial influencers promoting high-yield Peer to Peer Lending platforms — found themselves stranded when reality hit.

Our stock selection may seem boring — and to some, even our returns might seem boring. We’re not here to post screenshots of triple-digit percentage gains or show off luxury cars on social media.

What we attempt to deliver is something far more valuable and rare in this industry: consistent, above-risk-free returns, year after year, grounded in logic and discipline.

We’re proud to say that so far, 94% of our clients’ portfolios have outperformed Indonesia’s risk-free rate and equity mutual funds over time — without taking wild risks or making reckless bets.

For our clients who are still in the 6%, we feel you & sincerely apologize 🙏, we are trying our best to get your portfolio into the green!

We don’t try to sell a dream of overnight riches, because in investing, the people who promise you a Ferrari usually earn it off your money, not their own.

We’ve deliberately avoided that path. And that discipline is the reason we’ve survived, and why our clients’ portfolios have remained resilient.

In investing, avoiding the big mistakes & not dying is often more important than chasing every opportunity recklessly.

We Don’t Get Paid Sizeably Unless You Win

This is also why our business model is performance-based.

You pay a small one-time registration fee, and after that — we only earn when your portfolio grows. That’s it.

We’ve rejected the fixed subscription model that many advisory services or stock groups use, where they get paid no matter what happens to your returns.

We are also careful with associating ourselves from financial influencers who promote investment vehicles that they don’t invest in themselves. Don’t get me wrong, not all influencers are misleading and bad. Some are genuinely helpful and informative and they are very much needed and looked up to.

But the money and kickbacks can be a potential pitfall for endorsing fundamentally unsound products to mass market, citing unrealistic expectations and ignoring hidden risks that are not clear without much due diligence.

Building Something That Lasts

I know at the start that I said that I wake up in the morning to get customers. But maybe Toby is right. We started Recompound not just to run an advisory business — but to build a legacy.

Indonesia deserves an investment advisory firm that actually gives a damn. That operates on principle, not pressure. One that sees trust not as a marketing slogan, but embedded in the purpose of the core product.

We don’t take shortcuts. We don’t pretend to know everything. But we do know this:

If it’s not good enough for our own money, it’s not good enough for our clients’. That’s what it means to have skin in the game.

Ready to Invest with Partners Who Are In It With You?

If you’re looking for an advisory that genuinely cares about your wealth — not just in words, but with real skin in the game — you’re in the right place.

• Want to find out more?

  Click Here

We’d love to learn more about you — and show you how we invest alongside you, not ahead of you.

Super light article especially realising that our blogpost content has been quite heavy in the past few weeks. Enjoy! But if you would like to read heavier stuff in case you missed it:

• DCA ing to US stocks blindly a good idea?

• Demystifying scam in the insurance industry (oldie but goodie)

• I pay Budi Rp 50.000,- if I check stock prices during the day

On our landing page, people who want to get to know more about Recompound can choose to book a call with a simple button click. So I am privileged to get the chance to talk to numerous people and to be answering their questions pertaining Recompound and their investments.

I have recently started noticing patterns of their question which is something of this flavour

“If you can make money from the stock market yourself, why don’t you just invest your own money? Isn’t asking people to invest with you and pay a performance fee only making you very sus?”

- asked by multiple people

This I believe is a very legitimate question. Especially in the world where buying investment products usually entails:

• very low returns

• very high management fees

• returns that are decent like p2p are going bust

Such offer that is presented to a prospective customer would come across as fishy and suspicious. So this article is an honest write up to tell you that what we are doing is not too good to be true. It is good for you when your investment portfolio performs, but it is also good for us as business owners, especially in the long term.

#1: The more, the merrier. This business model is not new

Few people noticed that our fee structure is based on Warren Buffett’s partnership in the 60s. The difference is that he implemented a hurdle rate of 6% (earns nothing if portfolio doesn’t grow the first 6%) and then applies 25% performance fee. Yeah, and he did not have management fee. For more detailed information, you could take a look at this post.

Why the legendary investor Warren Buffett (along with other investors btw, you could Google to find examples that only charge a performance fee) had this setup? Especially when he could make money from the equity market?

Because the more, the merrier. The more money he manages, the more returns.

It is probably akin to if I can cook a delicious meal for my 10 friends and they pay me $10 dollars each and I earn $100, why would I only want to stop at 10 friends? Why not 100 customers by creating a new shop? Or 1000 customers by franchising it?

Then the follow up question will be, why not just take a loan from the bank? Which leads to answer #2

#2: Not only we would earn more money, we would also earn more trust

Taking a personal loan from a bank necessitates paying interest.

Building a company necessitates paying operating cost (employee salaries, rent and so forth).

Both are similar in nature that contains a fixed cost component that we need to pay regardless. But let’s take a look at the reward.

The reward for taking a personal loan from a bank is more money. That is simple.

Now the reward for helping people grow their investment portfolio is twofolds:

1. More money (than otherwise that you could have made with your own personal capital)

2. More trust (from the customers whom you work with)

So from a cost and reward standpoint, it makes more sense for us to “get leveraged” by setting up a business with a performance fee structure, where we earn more than a fee. But also trust from our customers. Furthermore, I believe that trust is an intangible asset that is scarce in today’s Indonesia. We don’t have to name names but a quick glance at news media could already give us very clear signs that trust is not there:

1. Fraudulent startups

2. People expressing their distrust towards a new sovereign wealth fund

3. Shadow banks offering high interest yields going under

and the examples seem to never run out.

Therefore, I firmly believe that trust that is built with careful intention would compound and re-compound overtime.

#3: Know where your returns come from and investment in businesses should be a one sum game

Whenever buying an investment product, or being engaged in an expenditure that is categorised as investments. I hope I don’t sound preachy, but it is important for an investor to know where the return comes from. This is very straight forward yet often overlooked by people who want to invest.

Example one, if you want to buy a property as an investment, where does the return come from?

1. Some time in the future, that property might be hotly in demand because of the development over the area so people will bid higher prices for that property

2. Rent

Example two, if you put your money in p2p lending, where does the return come from?

1. From the lender who pays their loans with interest OR

2. From VCs that inject money to p2p companies if a lot of lender defaults

Another example, if you want to buy bitcoin as an investment, where does the return come from?

1. People wanting to buy your bitcoin at a higher price in the future because:

   1. they believe there will be others who would want to buy their bitcoin at a higher price in the future, OR

   2. they would want to use the bitcoin for some sort of use case

Now if you invest with Recompound, where do you get the returns from?

1. Some time in the future, the stocks you hold might be hotly in demand as there might be people who want to buy it at a higher price

2. Business growth leads to more dividends for you as a shareholder

Therefore, first if the businesses you buy are growing and are profitable, you as a shareholder would often be entitled to dividends. Second, you buy the business at a cheap price, people in the future might want to buy your business at a more expensive price.

Closing Remarks

A “no growth, no fee” promise might sound too good to be true — but that depends entirely on how it's structured:

1. Is it transparent?

2. Is it legal?

3. Does it make long-term sense?

Our goal is not to wow you with hype, but to win your trust one compounding quarter at a time.

Hi 👋 welcome to Recompound Blog - The Investment Mindshift. We help you better your mindset on investment and economics one article at a time. More: Our Values | Advisory | Get to know us | Picks

Last week, we wrote about our shenanigans with clients and a little bit of behind the scenes. I realised that a lot of clients are super busy. It follows that probably our newsletter subscribers are also super busy. Therefore, our subscribers might appreciate a zero-cost tools to help them save time to invest passively and consistently in the stock market.

Am I making a slippery slope argument? Let me know by answering the polls below.

This article assumes that you are a person who is ready to invest passively. Meaning:

• You have a 3 - 6 months emergency fund

• You have an active income every month

• You are not here to trade, but to invest for the long term. This means that you are looking to buy and hold for at least 3 years.

This approach is simple and you don’t have to know how to code. But you can actually automate your investment workflow and you don’t have to manually invest once the system is setup. The outcome of following through this guide is:

• Staying consistent in putting in more funds into your investment portfolio.

• Optimise on time in the market (not timing the market). You can stay invested and not have to worry about price fluctuations or market panics.

• Save time. You’re busy and you know that money does not buy you time. But automation saves you time 🙂

Also, the goal is not to download the sekuritas app

Sekuritas app is mostly optimised for active traders because they earn their revenue from their users buying and selling securities. Since you are not an active trader, perhaps you don’t have to clutter your phone with a sekuritas app 🙂

Do you want to check on price? Don’t as it is usually noise, not signal. Or if you have to, you can Google the share price.

Want to check your official portfolio holdings? Sekuritas sends you a client statement pdf document every month right to your email inbox.

Without further ado, let’s get right into it.

Step 1: Get a brokerage account that has a broker (a person that can help you enter your trades).

This could be any brokerage firm that is not yet completely digital like:

• NH Korindo

• KB Valbury

• Trimegah

• RHB

• and so on.

No, you don’t have to have a minimum amount of investments in your investment account to have these folks help you input your trades (usually). But what I personally prefer is that:

• Broker needs to be responsive when I message them through WhatsApp

• Broker needs to be able to accept my orders off market hours so that I can send the orders at night, and they execute when the market opens in the next trading day.

If you need a sekuritas (brokerage firm) with a broker, I personally have Kevin Pranata from NH Korindo to help input my investments. Some of our clients have Ola Pinata from KB Valbury to help them input theirs. All are super responsive (even during weekends). I’ll put the their codes in the appendix below if you want to have any of them as your broker.

Step 2: Set an amount and then fund your Rekening Dana Nasabah (RDN) automatically

Once the brokerage account is setup, now it is time to get the money into your RDN automatically.

I am quite sure that most banking apps these days can do a recurring transfer. I use MyBCA and setting up a recurring transfer is straightforward:

• Make a transfer

• Select your investment bank account

• Input the nominal (For example Rp 5.000.000,-)

• Select the transfer type to “berkala” or “periodically”

• Then you can set which date you want to have the periodic transfer. For example, you can have the periodic transfer one day after your salary day.

Step 3: Pick a stock or a basket of stocks

The methodology is endless for this one:

1. You can of course, use Recompound 😀

2. Consult independent investment research houses

3. Select a stock with the best reputation in the market

4. Select an equity mutual fund (like Sri Kehati) and then list the top 10 stocks holdings

and many more. Assume that you have the following stocks:

1. OCBC Indonesia (NISP) because you want to be exposed to the Indonesian finance sector. (Actually I don’t use BBCA as an example because it gets thrown out as an example quite a lot by people).

2. Sido Muncul (SIDO) because you are a big believer in the Indonesian herbal medicine giant

3. Prodia (PRDA) because you believe the company is going to benefit from the expansion of health industry

4. Telkom (TLKM) because you want exposure to the telco company in Indonesia

You get the drift. From the above, you’d get a portfolio exposing you to multiple industries.

What’s important in my opinion is not to overthink the above at the start because:

1. You are investing for the long term (3+ years) and equity tends to do well in the long term.

2. You are dollar cost averaging anyways. If it goes down, the subsequent month, you get to average down.

3. You are most likely starting with a small amount of money, bear in mind not to touch the emergency fund that you have setup. As the money grows, you can always engage with external help to be on the look out of the fundamentals of the businesses that you are actively putting money into.

4. Learning by doing is often better and quicker than learning by studying.

Step 4: Automate your orders

The way you automate your order is as follows. Go to Gmail or an email provider that is registered to your brokerage firm. Then you could send a recurring monthly message to your broker that you’ve registered. To do this with no code, you can use Zapier. In the dashboard, you could go to Zapier and connect your gmail account like so.

Then, you can create a new zap

• Create a New Zap

  Go to your Zapier dashboard, and click "Create Zap".

  

• Trigger: "Schedule by Zapier"

  • Choose Schedule by Zapier as your Trigger App.

  • Set the frequency:

    • Daily / Weekly / Monthly / Custom (e.g., every month on the 28th at 9:00 PM)

  

• Action: "Send Email"

  • Choose Gmail, Outlook, or Email by Zapier.

  • Fill in:

    • To: recipient’s email

    • Subject: your subject

    • Body: your message content

    • (Optional) add dynamic content if needed

  

• Test & Turn On

  Zapier will send a test email. Once it works, turn the Zap ON.

Notes:

1. Make sure, you send the recurring message after you’ve funded the account with fresh funds.

2. Make sure the email recipient is your broker (the one you signed up with earlier)

3. To populate the Body, assume you want to order those 4 stocks with equal weighting, you can send something of this flavour

Hi Pak Kevin, dengan cash Rp 5.000.000,- saya ingin melakukan pembelian saham:

1. NISP | Budget Rp 1.250.000,- | di harga market

2. SIDO | Budget Rp 1.250.000,- | di harga market

3. PRDA | Budget Rp 1.250.000,- | di harga market

4. TLKM | Budget Rp 1.250.000,- | di harga market

You can literally copy paste the template above and change the stocks and budgets to fit your personal circumstances. Once the recurring message is set, you are good to go.

Once everything is setup,

Let your broker know that you will be sending them an email order every month through your email account that has been registered with the brokerage account. Let them know as well to inform you key information that is important. Here are 3 things that are important to me:

• Whatsapp me if the cash balance turns out to be less than 0

• Whatsapp me if the stocks don’t get bought out

• Whatsapp me if the stocks have been successfully purchased

Then you know on the fly if the system has worked as you would have expected it or not.

If you’ve made it this far and actually implemented the guide

Congratulations! You’ve made a big step to:

• Automate your stock investment workflow to make your money work harder for you

• Potentially receive passive income if the stocks you purchase distributes dividends. As of 2025, IHSG stocks offer attractive dividends. Our clients on average gets a yield of 5.6%.

• Compound your wealth. It won’t seem like its a lot at the start, but compounding effect is felt in the later years, not the start.

• Be better than speculators who often make reckless investing decisions based on emotions derived from sentiments be it from news, social media or other unreliable sites instead of a fixed investment strategy.

All this benefit, you get by setting it up once and you don’t have to spend more time to think about your investments unnecessarily. Such that you can channel your energy and focus on things that really matter for you at the present moment.

When do I seek external help?

If you are starting out, I believe that help (that costs money) is not necessary. Likely you won’t put your entire savings account to your stocks investment account (don’t). And the mistakes you make won’t cost much, if you end up making any.

Seek external help when your money gets really big and you don’t know how to manage it. Or when it gets big enough that passive investing does not feel comfortable. Then you might need an active investment advisor that helps to look out for your investments.

When does Recompound enter the picture?

In case you are wondering if you are our client, the main benefit that you get is:

You don’t have to setup Zapier, you can regularly wire money to your RDN and let us know that you want to topup regularly. Our system will get your confirmation and our team will get to propose the investments for you.

Therefore, you don’t have to actively look for stock opportunities when you want to buy.

That’s all for today’s write up and hopefully it is helpful in any way.

Appendix

• Kevin Pranata from NHKorindo

• Ola Pinata from KB Valbury

Hi 👋 welcome to Recompound Blog - The Investment Mindshift. We help you better your mindset on investment and economics one article at a time. More: Our Values | Advisory | Get to know us | Picks

Last week, we did a poll on what should we write this week. More than 50% of you would like to read about behind the scenes and client shenanigans. Hope you enjoy!

Investing is a Lonely Journey

In the traditional finance industry, investing tends to be a lonely journey.

When you decide to buy an investment product — be it a stock, a mutual fund, or some structured note — it’s usually a private matter. No celebration, no conversation. Just you with your doubts and fear that you try to suppress, a login portal, and maybe a two-page factsheet you only half-read or quickly skim in the office.

Even the products themselves are structured to feel distant. Mutual funds is a great example. When was the last time you spoke to the fund manager behind one? Or even remembered their name?

When we imagine a fund manager, a certain stereotype usually comes to mind:

• Nerdy

• Deeply analytical

• Critical thinkers

• Occasionally aloof (because they've done the homework and you haven’t, so hush now)

That’s not entirely unfair.

Finance professionals — fund managers especially — are known to love using jargons that I’d like to call: word salad. Concepts that are actually simple end up buried under layers of language meant to sound smart rather than useful.

Take valuation, for example. Some professionals might tell you they use something called a Discounted Cash Flow model, or DCF. That involves estimating the terminal growth rate and calculating the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC), which you then use to discount future cash flows to their present value.

Sounds complicated? It’s actually not. But the presentation of it makes you feel like you’re not supposed to understand it. At least that’s how I felt when I was first exposed to those ideas.

The Expert Barrier

So, two things tend to happen:

1. There's a perceived (and sometimes real) knowledge gap between you and the “experts.”

2. You still have to invest — despite finance not being your comfort zone.

Put those together, and you get what we call “lonely investing.”

You’re left to navigate it all yourself, hoping you’ve made the right decision, with no one to bounce ideas off. You want to ask that fund manager / your relationship manager, but you don’t know where to begin.

No one truly gets what you're trying to do.

But what if you could interact with the “fund managers” and actually be in the same whatsapp group as them?

Well you have Recompound.

And no, this is not a shameless plug about Recompound. It is a realistic story about us, being humans, serving others who are also humans. So let’s take a look at the characteristics of the humans we serve, presented as truths.

Truth #1: People don’t want to think about investments all the time.

Honestly? Most of our WhatsApp groups are dead silent. Not because clients don’t care. But because they’re just busy. With work. With family. With life.

Take my brother as an example (he’s a Recompound client too). You might think that he’s my brother and therefore he’s super engaged with the product to optimise his investments yada yada. But no, I’ll explain later.

To add a bit more colour, he used to be a professional in a corporate world. Seeing his little brother doing his own business, he decided to take a leap of faith and he’s right now starting his own business in the F&B industry. He used to be real busy working at his corporate job. Now he is even busier cracking his head and banging his feet onto the wall to get his first few clients and figuring out a good business model. Maybe out of 24 hours, he’d like to spend 25 hours on his business*.***

He’s been with us since the very beginning. And since a year ago, he has only said 68 things on our WhatsApp group (yes I count the conversations sent by my bro~).

Of those 68:

• 23 are just “ok” or “siap” (with variations like okkk, siappp, 🫡🫡 — you get the drift).

• 10 are “wkwkwk,” the classic Indonesian chat-laugh. (Still don’t know why we do that. Been like that since I played PC games in elementary school.)

• 6 are “makasi,” “kamxia,” or “thank you” — usually when he pays his fees.

The remaining fraction of the conversation is slight remarks about the stocks we buy, when he’s topping up and the broker. Super brief, short and sweet. Because of that, Wilson created and OK_MSG_LIST on our code repo to get the bot react to thank you or ok messages with 🙏. And of course, we hard coded the list. We could have regexed it, but no we hard coded it.

OK_MSG_LIST = ["ok","ya","yoi","iya","oke","yep","okk","ouu","sip","yes","oya","ooo","gas","yup","yea","yez","thx","kke","ok2","iye","yap","aman","iyah","done","siap","iyeh","okee","sipp","yups","syip","okei","thx!","yeah","okok","woke","yeps","thks","nais","yeap","yezz","sure","yess","iyaa","siip","xie2","okay","yoii","yeep","iyes","sip!","good","yupp","yes!","yepp","gass","yes2","okkk","okeh","baik","amin","yeaa","iyes","okeee","iyess","okokk","oh ok","ok tq","aman2","ok ok","noted","okhey","okeii","naisu","haode","okaay","tq ya","oo ok","wokeh","ke yi","okdeh","okiee","boleh","trims","siaap","ooke","bisaa","cool!","done.","iyapp","okeh2","yesss","udahh","siapp","sipsip","okeoke","lol ok","xiexie","noted!","ok can","ok pak","thanks","got it","oh okk","syappp","siappp","ok gas","ok uda","ok sip","makasi","sdh ya","wokeee","okoeke","tq yaa","ok deh","okeeee","notedd","donnee","udah +","okeiii","siap..","oke ko","iya ko","ok sdh","tq pak","oh ok2","oh sip","doneee","ok koo","done y","oke oke","done ya","oke uda","ok siap","haha ok","noted !","okkayyy","ok nice","ok done","oke sip","oh okay","alright","ok cool","yes udh","oke mas","okk sipp","okee sip","siap pak","baik tks","done yaa","ok siap~","ooh okee","baik pak","sudah ok","oh okeee","done fwd","executed","oke sipp","udah kak","sudah ya","thankyou","ok siapp","udah gtc","thank you","ok2 noted","siap trims","okok siapp","forwarded!",]

Truth #2: Principles Stay the Same, but Execution Evolves

One fine day, Budi was reading a book by Charlie Munger. In it, Charlie wrote that a fund manager needs to be a dictator. As someone who looked up to Charlie (and maybe still does a bit too much), Budi immediately called me and said:

"Tob, we’re dictators. People have to follow us to the T!"

It came from a good place — the desire to maximise long-term profitability for our clients. After all, if we’ve done the homework, shouldn’t people just follow the plan? Don’t forget that Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett’s buddy) is a wise man.

But almost immediately reality hit us super hard. On another fine day, we were chatting with a prospect. In the middle of the conversation, Budi (being Budi) casually said,

“We’re basically dictators.”

The poor guy chuckled nervously… hung up… and ghosted us forever.

We learned a few things that day:

• One, we are not dictators.

• Two, don’t ever say dictator to a prospective client.

• And three, while discipline is key to long-term investing, people don’t like being told what to do.

Over time, we realised something deeper. The key to long-term profitability isn’t just about perfect asset allocation or timing every crash and rally. It’s more about time in the market.

The longer we can help our clients stay invested, the more likely they are to benefit from the magic of compounding. So our job shifted — from telling people what to do, to helping them stay emotionally steady when it matters most. And I think Budi’s real transformation — his butterfly moment — came during one of those difficult times.

When Donald Trump slapped tariffs after the 2025 Idul Fitri holiday, a client reached out, panicked. Markets were down and he had a few stocks that were already at a floating profit, and he asked if it would be okay to sell some to feel safer.

Now, a few years ago, Budi might have snapped (ironically to me, not to the client):

“No! We’re dictators! Margin of safety is still high! Opportunity cost! Think long term!”

But instead, he said something else:

“If it helps you feel calmer through this tough patch, please go ahead. Just know that we’ve reviewed the businesses behind your portfolio, and our investment thesis is still intact despite the tariffs.”

The client ended up selling. Ironically, the stock rallied a few days later.

But the point wasn’t the 1-2% he might’ve missed out on.

The point was: he felt okay. He thanked us for walking the journey with him, not for being right about the stock.

For me, that’s when it really clicked.

Clients don’t (and shouldn’t) have the same level of conviction as fund managers. They haven’t done the hours of due diligence. That’s okay.

But it means we now have a second job:

To create a safe psychological space where people can stay invested for the long term.

That’s what we’ve set out to do. That’s the real work.

Truth #3: The VVIP / the bringer of chaos

In the deepest, darkest chamber of Recompound, there exists… a client. A very special client. His name is Computer Science / ChaoS — or CS for short. Yo CS, if you’re reading this, yes, we are talking about you.

This guy is beyond imaginable. If I go offline for just 1.5 hours, I return to hundreds — sometimes thousands — of chat threads between CS and Budi. The messages come in so fast and furious that we had to create a separate WhatsApp group, because our internal alert bots kept thinking we were dealing with a service crisis. Yes, we have bots to help flag client messages so we don’t miss them.

And if you’re a client reading this — don’t abuse it please. We are humans too. With only two thumbs.) Anyway, back to CS.

I honestly can’t do a proper summary of his conversations. No meta-analysis could ever capture the essence of what CS says — or what Budi replies. But one thing is clear:

He is crazy passionate about both the market and Recompound.

Here’s what sets him apart:

• He reacts to every significant price movement

• He reads every new financial report (sometimes before we do!)

• He even alerts us when assets outside our scope — like S&P500, Bitcoin or Gold — move sharply.

Most of his messages are emotional, funny, and borderline degenerate (in the best way possible). It happens so often that Budi blurts out:

“Ini orang bawel banget Tob gila wkwk”

(Translation: “This guy is unbelievably talkative, Tob — insane lol.”)

One time, when the market was crashing, CS literally told Budi to take a back seat and demanded I step in — because, in his words,

“Budi injects too much hopium. Toby is more cautious and realistic.”

I didn’t know whether to be offended or flattered. I just laughed and scrolled on.

But truthfully?

We love it.

Interactions with CS are a daily reminder that behind every WhatsApp group we manage, there are real, passionate individuals who deeply care about what we’re doing together.

And yes, if you’re another client reading this:

Please don’t suddenly become CS. Otherwise, we’ll have to open another WhatsApp group for the banter division. 😂

But all jokes aside, these “shenanigans” — this chaos, this energy — are exactly what make this work feel so special. People often ask, where do you get the motivation to keep building Recompound?

It’s not some mythical force.

It’s passionate clients like CS and others of course — people who push us, banter with us, and believe in what we’re doing.

And for that, we’re grateful.

Closing Remarks

So there you have it folks. Shenanigans with clients. If you are a client and have some ideas on how we could improve the product, please let us know.

Regardless if you are a client or not, if your line of work deals with some sort of managing clients, my sincerest wish that your clients will push you to become a better version of a provider that you are. Ultimately, it is the tiny pieces of communication, interaction and values we share with people that build trust overtime and a rock solid foundation in this thing we call society.

Hi 👋 welcome to Recompound Blog - The Investment Mindshift. We help you better your mindset on investment and economics one article at a time. More: Advisory | Get to know us | Our Picks

This article is an announcement piece on our latest product, Picks. The product is about offering people an access to our investment thinking and therefore, investment picks we find interesting. In case you missed it, Budi wrote a well received article on whether it is time to sell all stocks in the wake of Trump Tariffs.

So you probably have heard of Recompound from the $1 ads we spend on Instagram daily. Maybe you saw this post:

That IG post, we briefly touched upon why we prefer BMRI to BBRI. It is just our humble opinion and not an investment advice for you to ditch your BBRI investments and switch over to BMRI just so that we are clear.

We talked about how BMRI’s CASA ratio in recent year post COVID is more impressive than that of BBRI’s. Nerdy?

Now, this is your point of view

You might be thinking to yourself:

Wow, these folks look cool. Let me check out what they do and go to their landing page.

For more context, you are doing financially alright with an active income that you anyway have planned to set aside for your investments. In fact, you probably have tried investing before and that’s why you have a good grasp of the IG post you saw earlier. You have been gunning for risky investments overall but stomaching volatility is a real problem. That’s why you vibe well with the below

Furthermore, you are also a prey to your Relationship Managers (RMs) as you have a nice pile of cash sitting in your bank with little idea on what you should be doing with that cash. Which is why the cards below might resonate well.

Yes Recompound, you describe my problem well, but you are not answering the biggest issue here: What is your investment style like?

It is no where to be found in the website. The quote

“Helping you invest in Indonesian equity for the long term. Only performance fee, funds stay with you.”

is not convincing and clear enough. And because I don’t get the way you invest, I have to book a session to call with Budi? 😠

Are you trading?

Are you going to be trading in and out with bunch of technical indicators I have no clue about?

If so, my busy schedule won’t accommodate your trading practices, sorry.

Are you analysing fund flows?

Are you going to analyse the flow of foreign funds entering Indo market?

Aren’t foreigners selling now in 2025?

Are you pumping and dumping? 😨

Count me out.

Back to Our Point of View

That’s why, we launch Picks.

We launch Picks for you to gain access to our investment thinking and therefore, stock picks.

Picks would showcase how we do value investing:

• Not trading in and out

• Not analysing flows and predicting the whims of foreigners

• Not predicting macroeconomics

• So, lots of looking at the fundamentals of a company

• and lots of deliberate holding with very minimal transaction

Through Picks, you also will know why and how we come to like or dislike a particular investment opportunity, purely from a business fundamental lens. So it is as real as it gets.

Here are the values that underpin the design of this product:

• Originality in value investing

We treat buying an equity (a stock) akin to buying a business that are run by human operators with real products being sold to others.

When you look at our analysis of a business, you get to think like a business owner. Then it follows that it will be more straightforward for you to ask yourself:

Are you paying too much for a piece of the business or not?

If you are getting a good discount over the business ownership, it is a good thing. If you don’t get a good discount over the business ownership, maybe you should look for other businesses that are offering good discounts?

• Honesty

We won’t pretend to have the right analysis all the time. So we share our past mistakes and our learnings so that you won’t make ours.

But we also share our wins as well. If we consistently make wrong bets all the time, we probably won’t be in this business 🙂

• Approachable

We don’t want to be aloof. We want you to feel safe about asking us questions, discussing and suggesting more ideas to improve our product.

Ultimately, investing is already hard. We don’t want to unnecessarily make it harder.

What do you get by subscribing to Picks

In the spirit of originality, honesty and approachability; we categorise equities (stocks) into 5 main categories.

• Skip

  Equities we deliberately skip and why.

• Interesting

  Equity where we don’t mind allocating 5-15% of portfolio value. Analysis included.

• Fat Pitch

  A rare opportunity where we are brave enough to allocate more than 25% of portfolio value into this equity. P.s. Don’t be mad if this is empty.

• Wrong Thesis

  Past interesting equities that we got wrong. So don’t just copy folks as our investment thesis can very well be wrong.

• Right Thesis

  Past interesting equities that we got right. Right investment thesis contributes to the performance track record you see today.

Btw, Picks is not free

You have to pay a monthly subscription fee to gain access to our investment thinking. So here’s what I suggest you to do:

1. Try subscribe to Picks for 1 month

2. If our investment thinking resonates with you, but you still can’t handle your own investments, then stop Picks and sign up for the advisory. We’ll give you a discount on the registration fee as you have tried using Picks.

3. If our investment thinking resonates with you, and you can handle your own investments, subscribe for the yearly period. Yearly is cheaper

4. If our investment thinking does not resonate with you, let us know why and what you are looking for. Then cancel subscription.

Why launch a product during a market crash?

Serious and long term oriented business operators launch products regardless of market cycle.