Buy-side vs sell-side
A light hearted post inspired by my trip to Bunaken 🤿🐠🪸🪼
This is a light hearted post about my not so recent trip to the beautiful island of Bunaken (30 minutes boat ride from Manado, capital city of North Sulawesi). I have to attempt to relate this to the world of investments though, so that Recompound blog will not be mistaken as a travel blog (although travel bloggers write their stuff in a much better way than I do) 🙂
In particular, I will highlight the difference between sell-side and buy-side. As the name suggests, sell-side refers to people who sell stuff, while buy-side refers to people who’d buy stuff. Sell-side wants to maximise sales, while buy-side wants to maximise value out of their purchase.
Here we go.
I love going for vacation. Not necessarily because of the destination per se, but also because of the journey. From packing my chess set so that I can play with the islanders in Bunaken, to driving to the airport and checking in my belongings at the counter. My favourite part of all is sitting in the airplane. I just find that airplane is one of the most amazing human inventions ever. I mean, the amount of engineering that goes into designing the jet engine, wings, body, etc is completely nuts. So here I am, all excited from Soekarno Hatta Airport to Sam Ratulangi Airport in great anticipation to witness and experience paradise on earth.
Sell-side vs buy-side 1:
Taxi, Gojek, individual driver, or walk?
Flight was pleasant with a brief delay and everything was according to plan until…
We reached Manado at Sam Ratulangi Airport and were swarmed with 100 cab drivers.
Sir, use Bluebird 100k to the hotel
Sir, use Goldenbird 150k to hotel
Sir, just use my Innova 95k to hotel
…
Sell-side (cab drivers) can be very pushy sometimes
I noticed that cab drivers were incredibly incessant in selling their cab service at the airport. Each of them tried to justify the value of their service. Some say that it is the cheapest option, others sell comfort. We were followed and given offers even when we have said “no, thank you” multiple times.
Buy-side (travellers) have to remain calm
As a first timer in Manado, I didn’t have a benchmark of what is expensive and what is cheap. Amidst being bombarded by a group of taxi drivers, one of my friends thought of using Grab to check transport price. Indeed, the cost of using Grab is only 65k. But we had to walk all the way out to the exit gate of the airport because ride-hailing services weren’t allowed to pick up passengers at the airport. So for us, buy-side, we had to breakdown the cost benefit:
Cost: 65k, walk to the exit gantry
Benefit: transport
The only decision that we had to make was is it worth it to walk to the exit gantry to save 30k from the cheapest option available? We think yes, so we decided and move on.
Buy-side (us travellers) might make a subjective decision
Notice that this decision to use Grab is subjective. Others might feel that paying an extra 30k is worth it so that they don’t have to walk so much. For example, if they carry a lot of luggages or they have companions who aren’t so eager to walk.
Sell-side vs buy side 2:
Mie ayam, McDonalds, or nasi kuning?
Now we have reached the hotel and are all checked in. We noticed that we are absolutely hungry. So the million dollar question of the hour is:
What do we eat?
Sell-side (food merchants in Gojek App) might sell stuff that appear too good to be true
For food options in the Gojek app, it is quite clear that they their food recommendations have a lot of discounts and promotions:
Buy 1 get 1
45% off
Buy your food and pay later (is that a thing?)
Good sell-side can offer the too good to be true offerings realistically and sustainably. Bad sell-side is likely to not be able to do so.
Buy-side (travellers) must sift through this information and often feel fatigued. So due diligence is needed to make a decision
For the case of Gojek, I know that the promos are real (not always true for other promos done by other companies thanks to fineprints). But still, a lot of evaluation has to be made regarding food place we want to select.
What do other people think about the food quality?
Does it look appetizing?
Can you find this food outside of Manado?
Obviously as the buy side, I must refrain from using my emotions and spur of the moment to select my food. For example, there was a guy who bought McDonald’s in the hotel and Chicken McNuggets smelled awesome. I really wanted to buy McDonald’s for lunch, but should I though?
Anyhow we decided to eat Nasi Kuning Selamat Pagi at Jl Jenderal Sudirman, Manado. Nasi Kuning tasted alright but the chilli was crazy spicy. All in all not a bad choice, but wouldn’t go back there again. You can make a not so optimal decision even after you’ve done your due dilligence.
Sell side vs buy side 3:
Dive 1, 2 or 3 times? In the east, west, north, or south? Eat grouper, seabass, or napoleon?
On the next day, being really happy for trying out some local dish, off we go to the beautiful island of Bunaken. We took a boat from Dermaga Pantai Bahowo…
And we reached Bunaken in about 30 minutes with a slow boat.
Sell-side (nature) sells an infinite amount of beautiful stuff to you
Well, this is the part where I can showcase how beautiful it is to be in Bunaken. We went diving a total of 10 times.
Exihibit A: some corals and me
Exhibit B: a really big puffer fish spotted in the wild
During dive intervals, I swam in the sea freely and made a couple of drone shots 🙂
The food was the best part: grilled fish freshly caught by my friend’s dad who happens to be a local islander. So he went fishing in the morning, then grilled the fish for dinner.
Buy-side (traveller) always always have to make do with limited amount of time & resource
Yes, we went diving a total of 10 times to dive spots like Lekuan, Muka Kampung, Fukui, Alung Benua, etc but there were many other dive spots that we did not get to visit. Each dive, you could only spend about 45 minutes to one hour. There’s so much more a dive spot could offer if you spend a longer time down there.
On the food side, you could probably only eat 2 to 3 fish in one sitting in the island. Yet there is so much fish available that they made them into abon.
So by being a buy-side, I am fully aware that my time (& resource) is limited, yet I have to choose how to spend them from a myriad of choices.
I might not always get the best value from the resource I spend. There might be other ways to make the trip more worth while, more fun and more everything. However, I have to make do with the fact that there are things that I don’t know. And hindsight is always 20/20.
We should have gone there, we shouldn’t have done that, and the trip should have been even more amazing.
What matters most actually is that we strive to make the best out of available information, time and resource we have at present so that we can make good decisions. From a series of good decisions, we most probably would have gained something of value over the course of the trip. In my case, a good memory of time well spent.
p.s. I hope you can do all the relation with the finance world yourself as I don’t want to ruin the travel blog moment. If you know, you know. Cheers!