Ticker Banner

ABOUT ME

Who is Hansen Bun?

Hi, welcome to my humble blog; I appreciate you, visitors, learning more about me. I will be your host for my blog, "Billionaire Bunny," also known as "Dividend Growth Bunny."

 

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Hansen Bun. I was born in March 1990. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, but spent most of my childhood time overseas for my education. I stayed in Singapore for four years, where I had my elementary school, and moved to San Francisco, United States, where I started receiving middle school, high school, and university education.



After graduating with a finance degree from San Francisco State University in December 2012, I decided to move back to help and work in my dad's company. I am still employed in my dad's home appliance manufacturing company in Jakarta, Indonesia. However, I also consider myself an entrepreneur who likes to start new businesses and invest in the stock market on the side.



I have many side business projects such as this blog you are reading right now, FinzWatch MediaBun's Bargains Online E-CommerceBun's GadgetBunster DesignJakarta Yacht Club, and many more. I have a passion for starting new businesses because I treat it as playing video games. Furthermore, I became a millionaire by 30 in 2020 (Personal Wealth). I did this by saving, budgeting, and investing most of my income. Anyways, you guys reading this page right now are probably curious to know about me. I will explain my investing journey on this page so you readers can learn more about how I get started.









So, how did I get started with stock investing?

I started experiencing stock investing in the year 2007. It wasn't me who discovered it, for it was my older brother, Peter Bun, who first learned about the stock market. After learning its potential, he eventually introduced me to it. I remembered learning about this when I was still in high school. 

 

Even though I was still young at that time, I was already interested in learning how to become wealthy one day. My brother and I started investing in the stock market with a simulator portfolio. A simulator portfolio is a dummy portfolio that we can invest in with fake currency. It was an enjoyable and exciting moment when we first started. We began investing in stocks we think are a good buy.

 

At that time, we didn't know anything about fundamental analysis or value investing. We were looking at how the stock market moves upward and downward every day. I recalled constantly checking how the stock market was doing every day in the school library. I continuously checked stocks' historical performance and learned that I could become rich one day by investing in the stock market.

 

Despite our lack of knowledge and experience in the stock market, my brother and I were making a profit with the investments we made with our mock portfolio. It was an enjoyable and challenging moment. We realized that there are opportunities for investing in the stock market.

 

This is when we decide to invest in the stock market with real money. My brother decided to open a brokerage account with Scottrade and started with a $20,000 investment from our dad. Our portfolio was doing great since the market kept moving upward during the 2007 rallies. In the year 2008, when the United States got into recession, that's when we lost money. It was also when we got more serious about the stock market.




How we began to get serious about stock investing.

My brother started reading about investing and was inspired by one of the greatest investors, Warren Buffett. He then learned that the crash was one of the best opportunities to purchase stocks since companies have cheaper valuations. As you can see, my brother and I grew up in a well-off family. My dad was a self-made businessman that operated a home appliance manufacturing company in Jakarta, Indonesia.

 

My brother somehow persuaded my dad to start investing in the stock market during the recession. My dad wanted us to learn more in this field, which led him to give us a large sum of $380,000 to invest, making our initial investment capital $400,000. This was a large sum of money, and my older brother was responsible for diligently managing the money. 

 

Despite our lack of experience and knowledge, we were making money and losing money simultaneously. It was kind of like a trial and error thing. At those times, I didn't know much about investing since I was five years younger than my brother. I followed his footsteps in supporting for he had more experience than me. We did have much fun trying out new things with the capital we were given. And as amateur investors, we made a stupid move and tried different investment strategies.

 

When I was in University, I decided to take finance as my major to learn more about investing. I don't think the finance courses I enrolled in had benefited me much. I guess I was taking those classes to meet my requirement for my Bachelor's Degree. 

 

When I was walking down the university hallway towards the cafeteria, I came across these students promoting their organization to other students at the University. This organization was a finance club called "Financial Analysis & Management Education". This club was a turning point for me, and it changed my view of investing.




It was a great club with lots of opportunities. Students signed up to the organization to get better options in career fields. However, I was looking at it from a different perspective. I wanted to learn more about the investing area. I knew that stock investing was an excellent skill to learn since people had become wealthy from it.

 

I enrolled in this activity part of the organization called Fund Management. People with great interest in investing meet there once to twice a week, where you learn more about the stock market. I started learning more about value investing, an investment technique used by legendary investor Warren Buffet. I learned to read financial statements such as income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements and grew more familiar with interpreting these data. It did not seem very clear at first, but eventually, I got accustomed to it. Moreover, I also learned many new fundamental investment skills that changed my perspective in investing in the stock market.




I was taught to use a stock screener when deciding on which stocks to invest in. This is a valuable tool to filter out those companies that do not meet specific financial criteria. I focus on the instruments within my defined metrics:

 

  • Companies that trade at discount-to-book value.
  • Tangible book value.
  • High dividend yields.
  • Low price-to-earnings multiples.
  • Low price-to-book ratios. 


Furthermore, I accumulated experience gathering data from various sources and applying that information to develop financial models for companies listed in the market. I have constructed a financial model to project the company's earnings and future cash flow. I calculated its intrinsic price value using the DCF method and other valuation metrics to derive investment conclusions. 

 

Learning to become a Value Investor, I was taught to hold companies for a long-term horizon rather than buy and sell stocks based on chart indicators. When there is a bear market (falling market), I was taught to use this as an opportunity to seek companies that are trading below their intrinsic value. This gives me a massive cushion of the margin of safety to minimize my investment risk. It is essential to purchase the stock cheaply and have a sound business model, preferably with a tremendous economic moat (competitive advantage), so that it will not erode quickly when going against competitors in the long run.  

 

With the skills that I acquired from the finance club and my brother's knowledge in investing, we could turn the $400,000 portfolio into a $700,000 portfolio by June 2015. That's a compound annual growth rate of 7.25% from 2007 to 2015. The result was still a loss to the average annualized return of the S&P 500; however, we were pretty satisfied with our result considering the facts of the trial and errors we went through. It was no doubt a great learning experience!




What makes me start a Dividend Growth Portfolio?

Passive income assets always inspired me after reading "Rich dad, Poor dad" by Robert Kiyosaki. The book didn't focus on stocks that pay out dividends; instead, it focuses on rental properties that can generate income. I knew that purchasing rental properties was impossible since I didn't have that kind of money. The book teaches us to focus more on building the asset column so that there will be enough passive income coming in to pay off all of our expenses.

 

Until June of 2015, I came across a dividend growth investing blog called "Dividend Mantra" by Jason Fieber. I read his "About Me" page in his blog, and it inspired me to create a dividend growth portfolio. I like using his strategy to create a passive income portfolio, similar to how rental properties are assets. I find that dividend growth investing was more practical than rental properties since I don't have to rent the properties out, which can be time-consuming.

 

After researching dividend growth investing, I decided to open my brokerage account with E-Trade Financial through a Singapore branch. In October 2015, my brother and I decided to split the $700,000 portfolio. My brother understood that I wanted to try out this new method of investing. I guess it was also time to manage my own portfolio and be independent. 

 

After the split, I recalled managing my investment portfolio of $400,000. I remember that in October 2015, I started managing my portfolio. I wanted to make this portfolio similar to Berkshire Hathaway, a holding company owned by Warren E. Buffett. Of course, it's not going to be as big as Berkshire Hathaway, but I will be content if it can at least become a mini version of it. 

 

My strategy was to combine the value investing style and dividend growth investing styles. Some of you might ask, "Wait a minute; how is dividend growth investing has anything to do with Berkshire Hathaway?" Indeed, Warren Buffett does not invest exclusively in dividend growth stocks, and he is known more for being a value and growth investor. However, if you do more research, you'll notice that he is a dividend growth investor. His company's top 5 stock positions, as of the year 2015, make up 70% of his portfolio. Moreover, his top 5 stock holdings pay out dividends. Those holdings have been increasing their dividends year after year. During that time, Warren Buffet top holding in Berkshire Hathaway was Wells Fargo [24% of portfolio], Coca-Cola (KO) [15% of portfolio], IBM (IBM): [12% of portfolio], American Express (AXP): [11% of portfolio], Wal-Mart (WMT): [4% of portfolio], and Procter & Gamble Co (PG): [4% of portfolio].

 

Wal-Mart and Coca-Cola have the longest dividend streaks of their top 5 holdings. Coca-Cola has increased its dividend payments for 53 consecutive years, while Wal-Mart has increased its dividend payments for 42 straight years. Warren Buffett's portfolio proves that he is a dividend growth investor more than any other investing style.

 

My goal for my portfolio is to generate better returns than the S&P 500 index and have the dividends coming from the portfolio become a passive income for my early retirement. I would also put $2,000 every month into my portfolio to invest more of my money in the stock market.

 

Furthermore, I decided to create my finance blog at the beginning of managing my portfolio. The finance blog is called "Dividend Growth Bunny" and displays my portfolio's real-time spreadsheet. Moreover, the blog also includes the transaction history page so that visitors can see when I purchase or sell stocks. It also shows the incoming dividend payout I received from holding these companies. My blog also shows my monthly and annual dividends performances displayed in a spreadsheet.



What will Billionaire Bunny's blog be about?

It has been more than six years since my portfolio and blog inception. During these six years of managing my portfolio, using dividend growth and value investing generated a decent annual return to my portfolio. After the portfolio split with my older brother and starting with $400,000 of capital in October 2015, I was able to turn my portfolio to $1,065­,000 as of April 2021. That's a compound annual growth return of 13% since the inception of October 2015.




"Billionaire Bunny" will be a personal finance blog about me. Like "Dividend Growth Bunny," I will continue documenting my investing journey. However, this blog will become more of a personal blog about me since I have created a new website such as FinzWatch, a financial media company that gives readers information about personal finance, stock investing, and more in this niche. I believe that "Billionaire Bunny" will be a blog page documenting my personal life and financial freedom journey. 

 

Creating this new site can help readers out there who want to learn more about me. I hope this blog can help me connect with new like-minded investors out there who can connect with me. Because of this blog, I have met friends in stock investing. One good friend I met through this blog is Christopher Lee Susanto. He is also a value investor, finance blogger, and mentor. I hope from this blog; I can meet new friends just like how I met Chris Lee.




I am not stopping investing and will continue my financial journey to become wealthy one day. I don't have a clue where I'm going to be 10 or 20 years from now. Billionaire Bunny's blog will let readers and followers know about my financial journey to become a billionaire somehow in the future. This blog will not just talk about budgeting and stock investing but also the side hustles I am working on. I'm doing whatever I can to increase my earnings, and I am willing to share this information with readers of this blog. Hopefully, all the things I am doing can be an inspiration and learning experience for everyone. So, please keep checking this blog out daily to stay updated with the things I'm doing.

4 comments:

  1. Looking out for our parents are great!! I'm all for it! It's truely making a different having money invested rather than just have it sitting around and get eaten up by inflation.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Hansen,

    Just saw your post at AHN and thought I drop by here to take a look. Reading through your about me page was pretty interesting. However, there is 1 area that you briefly mentioned that I might have to take an opposite stand on. Its the section about "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" where real estate investing was the focus. I have been in real estate for 14 years now. Got my sale person license in 2007 an purchased our first income producing with my family in 2009 and another one in 2011. Those properties are currently sitting at around 140% gain of what we purchased it at. But thats not the amazing thing. The amazing thing is, since we are living in the US we can literally borrow 75% of the purchase price and only put out 25% as a down payment. So the actual % gain is more around (560%) over the span of 12 years. I am not sure if you have access to buying property in the US or not but if you do I do highly recommend looking into it. Also, I am a member of the BiggerPockets.com website and you can read more about real estate investing from there. They have everything you need to know about real estate investing. Hopefully I can see you and connect with you on there.
    Khoa

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Unknown, thanks for visiting my blog; I appreciate it. I cannot use leverage to buy rental properties because I am not a U.S. citizen. I understand what you are trying to teach me; Grant Cardone uses leverage to build his real estate empire, one of my role models. I like Grant Cardone because he looks fantastic; however, I like Dave Ramsey's teaching as well. Dave Ramsey is conservative; however, he does not use leverage to build his real estate portfolio. However, I am not too fond of Dave Ramsey's look because he is bald, and I do not want to be bald like him.

      Delete