Has it ever struck you that just because you don’t know how to calculate doesn’t mean it cannot be done? Maybe the problem is because like you say, you are kind of stuck at Statistics 101 instead of 301, that’s why you can’t do it? Going by your logic most M&A & investment activities in the world belong to “open system” (whatever that means), yet everyday thousands of corporations & banks employing millions of professionals are doing statistical and financial modeling to determine all sorts of risk weighted investment decisions. Going by your Statistics 101 cheap football analogy, they should all disband their investment teams, get one guy to sit around list 5 factors and arbitrarily vote “for” or “against” then sum up see if there are more “for” or “against”? This sort of analogy just goes against what is observable in the real world.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not against you personally for only having rudimentary laymen knowledge on finance & investment analytics, after all different people have different skillsets. It’s just that earlier on you made a big show about how others are only blindly buy & hold and espoused others to follow your lead in having probability calculations and investment logic. Now in retrospect it looks thick when you are unable to produce anything substantial and try to get away by simply declaring this is just “Statistic 101” or come up with strange excuses like you do not have perfect data or too much noise.

This is not true, interest rates can not only go up or down but also stay constant. This has been demonstrated possible by Japan for nearly 20 years. Remember, your thesis is to hold cash for 3-5 years and wait for property to plunge. Where is the statistical odd calculation that chances of a sharp increase in interest rate is higher than that of staying constant or rising slightly over the next 3 – 5 years?

You are contradicting yourself. If the recommended ratio is 3x, then when it was 4x, 5x, 6x, 7x, you would have been saying price will go back to 3x. Seeing that it is now 8x, I don’t think any person who followed your advice and missed out buying at 4x, 5x and 6x are too happy about your probabilistic calculations and investment theory.

Please don’t throw big words like “basic supply demand dynamics” whenever you lack the strength to carry through your case. What about hot money inflows, household formations and projected net adsorption rates? And also rentals may fall, but sometimes this is compensated by falling capitalization rates. So again where are the calculations of odds demonstrating that your scenario after weighting all these options is of higher probability than other scenarios?

The government’s goals are to stabilize property market and not to cause a price plunge, that I agree. But if they succeed this means a price appreciation that is moderated maybe to the region of GDP growth and general inflation rates or at worst stays flat or falls slightly. This does not gel in with your proposition to hold cash and wait for a property plunge in 3 years.

You did not address this incompatibility between the government’s goals and your own prognosis that there is a high probability of prices plunging in the next 3 years. Instead we are advised that the Singapore government’s target of soft land is “almost never achieved”. Do you have enough case histories of government intervention failure leading to property price plunge in Singapore to arrive at a probabilistic conclusion? Or is it just another off-hand personal opinion of yours that is whacked to us as a fact?

This is an overly broad statement that can justify withholding any form of investment.

I personally have never claimed that I am confident of property prices going up. My original post was just a simple one to explain why Sgeans are so into property, i.e. because all the alternatives not attractive. For me I express no opinion the next 3 – 5 years where property will go.

You were the one who jumped in on the need to wait out for property prices to plunge and lecturing other bros that investments should be done like the way you are doing – with business rationale and calculation of the odds and even coined a cute soundbite “play the probabilities”. All I did was invite you to share with us what exactly are the calculations.

So far you demonstrated you neither know nor care much about the subject of calculating probabilities. Instead what we have are broad attempts to brush off anything that does not gel with your conclusion with lines like “This is the real world, not university”, “Just statistic 101”, some kopitiam football betting theory, “basic demand supply” etc.

Again, where are the calculations which you claimed you did earlier?