I have been to roughly 50 countries now and I often being asked about this question when people see I travel only with my 30L Osprey backpack. It’s a fair question and it is the result of iterative optimization. It’s not for everyone since everyone’s situation is different. I can clearly see the limitation and take it as a grain of salt to understand that it is optimized for a single male at age 30 ish, travelling to the places where temperature is above zero celcius and mainly battle-tested in Asia, North America, Middle-East and Europe.

First of all, I would list the reasons for travelling light. A few bullet points,

1. No check-in luggage therefore for some of the airline you could do web check-in and skip the counter step. Save your time at the airport. Also, you could save the time of waiting at the luggage carousel.
2. No check-in luggage means you risk no chance of losing your check-in luggage, or it is delayed and sent to the wrong place.
3. Since you travel light then you have more negotiation advantage to those greedy taxi drivers trying to rip you off. You could just walk 1km from the bus stations or airport to hail other taxi. Or even better, it is only 15 mins of walk to the city center you could just simply walk.
4. Sometimes there is a gap between your hotel checkout time and your intet-city bus time. You could just carry your bag with you instead leaven your luggage at the hotel after checking out. No need to go back and pick up your luggage and add more risk factors on transportation.

There are also a few downside as well.

1. Since only cabin bag you could not carry scissors and razors etc. Also the total amount of liquid is also restricted by flight rule. Fingernail clip is alright though.
2. The room for souvenir would be limited.

With the above goods and bads said, let’s start by introducingy bag. It’s 30L Osprey Comet.

Before digging into the individual items, I would like to address the rule of packing. That is Modulization with displine. You need to categorize your belongings into groups and keep them in smaller bags. Like electronics and batteries in one bag. Socks and undies in another etc. Also, you have to follow the discipline during your trip, whenever you take out some stuffs from the bag, you have to put them back to their original place, so that you could minimize your chance of leaving your belongings behind. Every time I lose some of my belongings, I broke the rule.

To secure my bag, I would carry two padlocks with me. I could use them for the hostel’s lockers in case they charge you on padlocks. Note that choose the one with wire steel, since you wouldn’t know what the hole looks like for the closet. And use password padlock so you don’t have to worry about losing the key

Just secure your bag with padlock with play as a signal that you are prepared a traveller so that pick pocketer would choose an easier target. Even if a simple padlock is not that secure in the eye of a skilled locksmith (or they could simply destroy your bag), it shows as a security theater.

Next I would like to talk about the clothes. How to minimize the weights while keep yourself warm. The simple rule of clothing is to make it multi-layer: Putting more on when it’s freezing and taking the outer layer off when it is warm. To cope with windy and drizzling rain, I bought the NorthFace shell. It doesn’t keep you warm but necessary when it’s windy and rainy.

The shell is very light weight and you could fold it up and stuck it into the bag. However, you also need a layer to keep yourself warm, where I chose Uniqlo’s ultra-light down. You could also fold it as well and good for temperature above single digit.

For temperature on mid-teen, I could basically handle it by my Route-8 base layer, it’s designed for hikers and it could handle to about 11–12 celcius in unwindy circumstances.

For the clothes with direct contact to the body, I chose Uniqlo’s dry-fit. Since it’s the inner most layer, in most of the cases you only need to change this layer. And it is easy to dry up overnight. All you have to do is just put around three of them in your luggage and it’s enough for your long term traveling.

For pants, the inner layer I also chose Route-8 in case the temperature is pretty low. With Merrell’s Zip-off trousers. You could simply turn it into shorts if it is hot, or while you sleep. The material is quite comfortable so you could use it as pajama and therefore you don’t need extra set of pants.

I use Merrell’s hiking shoes as well. Sometimes you have light hiking in your trip, and it could handle well muddy roads and lightly raining. The downside is that it is not that comfortable as running shoes. You might want to take it off while you are on long distance bus ride.

To be continued.

前一篇提到的 Index Fund 或 Smart Beta 是最容易上手的方式，也不太需要花太多時間去維護，如果你想多加強的話可以進一步研究總體經濟來觀察整體的走向來決定你的倉位，套上一點 Grid Trading 的技巧，大致上就可以表現得不錯。特別是 Grid Trading 的技巧對於 Price range 是有下限的，ETF 作為整體是沒有倒閉風險，波動性也鐵定比單一股票小多了。如果資金有點分量的話也可以套上 Option Strategy 來買一點 Cash-Secured Put 或是 Covered Call 在閒置資金上不會浪費掉。我想這樣應該是可以蠻大機率打敗指數 3% ~ 4%。當然，美股市場以外的 Put and Call 可能流動性就沒那麼好配合。

如果要開始研究個股的話就是不歸路的開始，學習曲線跟操作心理的要求直線上升，特別像是港股跟美股一天漲跌幅沒有限制的市場，只要犯下錯誤是沒有機會跑的。所以最好是從小倉位開始實驗，然後從邏輯簡單的產業下手，從小注開始投去習慣實戰，因為是小部位虧了的話就當作是學習成本。畢竟沒有人生來就不會犯錯然後把東西學會。當然你也可以從 Paper Trading 開始做，但是 Paper Trading 畢竟虧錢不會痛，而一個好的投資人的一項大的要素就是抗波動性心理素質強。巴菲特也說不習慣 50% 的帳面波動的話就不要進股市比較好。在操作的同時也把自己交易的分析等等記錄下來，有了紀錄之後才不會有自我心理安慰的情況存在，要直面錯誤才能進步。在試驗的同時其他大的倉位然後可以用舊有的 Index Fund 的方式投資。這樣保證還是可以拿到市場平均獲利。

實戰操作後就是要發展自己的系統了。雖然很多人一開始進股市都是從學習技術分析開始，不過許多研究都已經說明至少在成熟如美股的市場技術分析已經太多人用而失效了，所以除非你是在其他散戶居多的市場要不然還是不要從技術分析學起。還是乖乖挑一個 Role Model 來當作仿效對象。普通人大多數都會挑 Warren Buffett 來開始，不過現在的巴菲特已經不是普通人可以模仿的對象，而且他從小打磨的生意眼光算是一般人永遠追不上的。而 Seth Klarman 書可以看，體系一般散戶也是模仿不來的。我覺得一般人一開始最好是挑 Joel Greenblatt 的早期 Magic Formula 還有 Walter Schloss。他們的體系都是偏量化還有 Net-Net 會比較容易複製。而且也不講究高超的生意眼光，對於資金大小也沒有要求。同時假如負擔的起的話你也可以去訂閱一些 Investment Newsletter，像是 SeekingAlpha 上有一些操作性強的 News Letter，你就等於是付了一筆固定的學費，而不是像基金抽成，來學習如何操作跟投資。一開始鐵定會看不懂，但你也可以用 Chat 的功能詢問為什麼，等於像是有個私人家教一樣。然後同時你就可以從你訂閱的作者的身上學習產業知識的關鍵點。

價值投資最困難的一點就是對於產業的競爭邏輯熟悉度的建立，你要能夠像打橋牌一樣看到別人好幾步之後，特別是邏輯越簡單的產業越能保證十年之後邏輯還是不會變，你不用時時像科技產業擔心被人家顛覆，你的知識也就過時了。你對於什麼不會變之後，你才能了解到為什麼你有信心在某些情況下市場是錯的，你願意用時間去換取市場認錯再回來用比較高的價錢跟你買。然後漸漸地你才會有個大概估值的想法。至於商學院的各種 DCF 啊，EV / EBITDA 啊，當然也是很重要不過基本概念也不難，看個書幾個禮拜鐵定就學會了。最難的還是你要知道產業本身最關鍵的邏輯是什麼，還有同樣是會計報表，不同產業就要換完全不一樣的知識去解讀，像是週期股的話看 PE 是一點用都沒有的，而房地產則是要看每股土地儲備等等。如果想要輔助一些常用的估值模型的話，Finbox 跟 Gurufocus 都不錯，可以自動化估值建議。

另外，你也可以到 TipRank 看看分析師的分析，而且可以看他們過去紀錄到底分析得準不準。

等到操作有一段經驗並且有賺到些錢之後，就是建立 Investment Checklist，具體可以參考這邊。然後就是要有一套自己相信的系統。我自己的話還是覺得以人工分析的價值投資為主，畢竟投資還是一門藝術，就像是要醫治病人這個複雜系統一樣，目前人還是厲害太多了，而且量化的統計分析是基於歸納法，歸納法在無限反饋的 Chaos System 有它的極限，永遠都會有黑天鵝會證偽你的系統。只要一次來你沒有準備到的話就會讓你受到嚴重的傷害，就算不致命也可能對心理造成傷害讓你自己停損出場。不過量化的方式也是有很大好處，分散投資的話可以暫時擴大你的能力圈，然後你就可以慢慢學習補強自己點滿的產業，到時候那些產業對你就是十分有確定性的，你就可以分配錢去集中投資。這樣應該可以說量化算是風險系統，防止你去做極端的事，至少做到不是太蠢就是。