← Educational Alpha
Educational Alpha
S3: Conversation with James Cheo, Chief Investment Officer, Southeast Asia and India, HSBC Global Private Banking and Wealth
00:37:07
Loading summary
Transcript29 lines
- [00:05]
Bill Kelly
Welcome to Educational Alpha. I'm Bill Kelly, your host, bringing you on the ground conversations with business leaders, educators and industry colleagues from around the globe. Educational Alpha is sponsored by iCapital, the financial technology company with a mission to power the world's alternative investment marketplace. Part innovator, part educator, and part navigator of the alternatives industry, iCapital offers intuitive, scalable digital solutions that have transformed how private market and hedge fund investments are bought and sold. With iCapital, financial advisors, wealth managers and asset managers around the world now have access to everything they need to deliver the return and diversification potential of alternatives to high net worth investors. To learn more, visit icapital.com.
- [01:01]
James Choi Chio
In this episode, Bill welcomes James Choi Chio, Chief Investment Officer for HSBC Global Private Banking and Wealth for Southeast Asia and India. They explore James's journey from his early days at the Monetary Authority of Singapore to his leadership role in asset allocation and wealth management. The discussion traverses crucial themes like intergenerational wealth transitions, democratization of private markets, and the evolving role of technology in investment strategies. James also shares his unique approach to social media and emphasizing mentorship, purpose and resilience while reflecting on the enduring legacy of Ratan Tata. Dive into a conversation that blends professional insights with personal wisdom.
- [01:42]
Bill Kelly
James Cheo, welcome to Educational Alpha.
- [01:44]
James Cheo
Oh, pleasure to be here for you.
- [01:46]
Bill Kelly
I've been looking forward to this and we just chatted briefly before we hit the record button and you were kind enough to say you followed my meanderings around social media, but in the US they say it's hard to keep up with the Joneses, in this case maybe hard to keep up with the Chios and that you've been very active with some very interesting messages and themes which we're going to get to in a moment. But I really do appreciate all of that and looking forward to this discussion today and right before I turn it over to you, I think it's important to maybe mention that Kaya just released its exam results for the September cycle and this is the level two. So these are the folks that have gone through both levels and now actively moving toward membership in Kaya. And I try to congratulate them all where I can. It's sometimes tough to keep pace, but the message I send to them is one of optimism and thank you and that this is the beginning of what it means to be a professional. And I would be remiss to not point out that you are really a tremendous advocate both in voice and action on this. Being a Kaya Charter holder, also an Frm and a CFA as well. So I want to make sure that I recognize and thank you for that commitment to professionalism because it does matter a lot, particularly in this phase. And we're going to get into that as well. So James, before we get into some of these topics, maybe a little bit of an intro on who you are.
- [03:04]
James Cheo
Well, my name is James Cho. Right now I'm the Chief Investment Officer for HSBC Global Private Banking and Wealth for Southeast Asia and India. What I do, essentially it's really about asset allocation. So if you think about it, I'm just like a little boy climbing up onto the mask of a ship, trying to look out for opportunities and to hopefully warn people if there are any risk or any dangers out there. So essentially that's what I do. But you alluded earlier on, there's also a part of me that talks about things I'm passionate about on LinkedIn. So topics like not just investing, but on sustainability, on certain aspects of career advice, leadership, things like that, these are the things that I'm passionate about and I think these are things that we could discuss more.
- [03:52]
Bill Kelly
Absolutely. And I did see very early in your career, I don't know if it was your first station, but you were an economist at the Monetary Authority of Singapore and for the listeners that don't know that the primary regulator in your home country. I'm just curious how formative that was and also maybe posit that question with an observation which is I almost think that every professional in this industry should do a tour of duty inside their local regulator because it'll give you a different perspective about what it means to protect the investor. And I think we're at a fork in the road where that protection has got to be defined to some degree by regulation, but more and more by education. Because we're going to take the very best value proposition proposition of an uncorrelated offering, but then rinse out that value proposition by protecting the investor and bringing it almost back to the risk free rate. How we accomplish something, I don't know. But is it formative? And how do you think about my view about maybe a required tour of duty for every professional to work for the local regulator?
- [04:52]
James Cheo
Well, I don't think one should make it mandatory for everyone to go through that duty of sorts. But for me, I started out 20 years ago, so when I graduated out of school, I graduated with first class honours. So in ways I've had the chance to go into consulting investment banking, but I chose to go into the Monetary Authority of Singapore, which is Essentially the regulator, the central bank as well as also the financial developer, all under one house. I did that really because I wanted to focus on purpose, because if I dig deep into my motivation, it's really about purpose more than just profits alone. So at that time when I was looking for a job, I was very clear that I wanted to work in the government sector because you want to be involved in policies that would improve the well being of society as a whole, if you could reduce some externality, if you could increase some positive externalities into the system. And that's what really motivated me when I started. So at the mas, I started out as an economist, I did a lot of policy work. But I think the real highlight for me was that I was part of the financial stability team that helped steer Singapore or even the central bank out of the global financial crisis. So it came out, my role was to organize the entire information flow during that time because it was extremely complicated. You had subprime crisis going, it spread further out and then big institutions started to fail. It started out with Bearstuns and then you had Lehman collapsing. So I did a lot of analysis work at that time to put forth information and also analysis such that policymakers at that time could think about the issues and how to frame monetary policy, how to frame financial stability policies to in some ways reduce the negative externality of financial crisis. So I think that was something that I find extremely fulfilling in that sense. So it gave me a good framework to think about financial crisis, to think about dangers. And also I think that laid the foundation for my career the next 15 years in terms of investments, in terms of strategy on how to navigate particularly financial crisis and also any possible crisis that might be on the horizon.
- [07:21]
Bill Kelly
No, I think a very good summary and just as an aside, I spent part of my early career at Bear Stearns and I also worked for a subsidiary of Lehman Brothers and having been involved in organizations when they were really moving at full tilt, it really is quite remarkable to see them gone from the landscape as we sit here today. Really quite incredible. But last thing, we can move on. I've had the pleasure of spending some time with the Monetary Authority of Singapore and IBF and credit to them as a regulator that they seem to be very much involved in the fabric of the industry and they work very, very cooperatively with that industry and the ecosystem, which I think is tremendous. Plus where I look at it from the US standpoint, and we've got a lot of headbanging between the SEC and the industry and that's Just not the right way to move forward. We don't have to agree on anything but common sense. Regulation, particularly as we get more and more toward democratization, is critically important. And that might be a good turning the page in terms of what is going on in private banking and wealth management in Southeast Asia and India. And I know a little bit about it through the US lens. And we're very rapidly democratizing product and I think in many cases doing it well in advance of education, investor understanding. But I think Southeast Asia and India are particularly interesting because you've got awesome demographics relative to, say, the U.S. and we certainly have a retirement crisis afoot here and that you've got a lot of folks in their 50s and 60s that have not saved a dime toward retirement. And it's late to be thinking about it, but maybe not so much on that theme where you can comment on it. But what is to say to the union of wealth management in your part of the world?
- [09:00]
James Cheo
Well, I think it's just like in every part of the world, it's at a transition to a certain extent. Wealth in Asia is still fairly young. Unlike if you think about Europe, it's probably many, many generations in the us probably two or three generations. In terms of wealth, there is of course new wealth that's being created in the us but over in Asia, I think the wealth is still fairly young. It's still first gen to a certain extent and for some it's second generation. So it is at a point of transition whereby the younger generation is starting to take charge. But when I say the younger generation, they are not exactly in their teens or twenties, they are probably in their forties or even maybe fifties, and that is the next generation. So I think this is a stage of transition. The preference to which how they engage and manage their wealth is very different, especially the younger generation. So I think there is a greater demand for convenience. I would say young people want information, fast, quick, all on the app, all on mobile. So that's a difference compared to the previous generation, which is more face to face speaking to an rm. So I think this trend towards digital, it's not just for the ultra wealthy, but I think it's across the board in that. Over in Asia, I think again there is a trend towards asset managers that could actually provide a more convenient, more seamless transaction when it comes to wealth management. And clearly I think consumers nowadays, or even everyone is very conscious on cost. So I think that direction won't change. They want things to be convenient, they want things to be fast and they want things to be cheap. So that's the same with investment solutions as well. So I think that's a big shift when it comes to the entire wealth management industry in Asia.
- [10:52]
Bill Kelly
So a couple of thoughts on that. So more convenient, more tech enabled. I think that that certainly defines this generation to a very large degree. But I do wonder, and maybe worry even from my standpoint about having very important long term decisions around asset allocation on somebody's iPhone, on an app where they can trade in and out in a very rapid basis, and the gamification of something that is a very important long term asset allocation method rooted in informed consent. So what are the positives and the negatives? I think getting them engaged this next generation is awesome. But should we be thinking about or worrying about the fact that they're going to be more market timers and traders as opposed to investors?
- [11:38]
James Cheo
That's a great question and it's something that I've been advocating for the last 15 years or so in that asset allocation is really extremely important at the heart of investing. But the fact of the matter is that not every individual investors use asset allocation as the underpinning framework to invest. Let's say in the earlier generation, those people who made their wealth, it's largely through concentrated bets on the success of their companies and that's why they became so wealthy. And in some ways their investment style, especially for the first generation, is still very much specific companies, companies that they know very well. So they invest big bets on those companies rather than a diversified portfolio or asset allocation as the decision framework. However, as wealth is being transferred or transited to the next generation, the next generation wants to take a greater holistic framework. And that's where the next generation is starting to see the value of asset location. Because if you do asset location right, it's essentially to help you compound your returns over time. But you're not going to get spectacular returns on a single year. It's to smooth out the volatility for you. But I think it suits quite well for the second generation really because the mindset is not to make mistakes rather than try to chase the next 10x or 20x returns. So the bulk of their portfolio would be very much, I would say, into asset allocation diversified strategies. But also increasingly you do see a portion of some of these portfolios of these younger generation looking at various investments as well. Things for instance, like whether it's venture capital, whether it's things that are more exciting. But I think that's a small segment of their portfolios that they look at in terms of trying to get the big returns, but I think the bulk there is a general shift even across the wealth segment towards a diversified portfolio approach rather than just picking single stocks or going for big bets. So there is, I think a general shift and I think that's manifesting itself across Asia when it comes to even stockbroking business which has become extremely difficult to operate because young people are no longer, or most of the population they are no longer buying stocks anymore with the likes of ETFs and with the likes of services that allow them or mutual funds that gives them that diversified approach. So the stockbroking business has been very, very tough over the last 15 to 20 years.
- [14:06]
Bill Kelly
And I think that's true across the developed markets. And the UK has got a big push to try to get their public equities more back at play with the big asset owners. And certainly in the US the public listings have continued to shrink and I think they're now under 4,000 as you sit here today. But it does seem like, and you alluded to this a moment ago James, that the home for capital formation is the private markets. And if you really want to get access to smallish micro cap, small cap names, it's not so much in the public domain anymore. You've got to be thinking about early to late stage VC. And there's a lot of very interesting themes going on there either around country but certainly around sector and developments in healthcare and artificial intelligence and and tech enabled solutions. So it's a pretty exciting place to be. But in the US again looking through my local lens, access is difficult for the average investor because you've either got to be a qualified purchaser or an accredited investor or these products are offered in wrappers that are only available to those pools of investors. So it makes it much more difficult and near impossible for the more average investor to get access to early stage vc. And there are clearly risks associated with it. So you've got to make sure you've got a due diligence partner on your side. But what are the access points in your part of the world for say a mass affluent investor? Can they get access to the VC space?
- [15:30]
James Cheo
Well that's a great question and I think to take a step back first in Asia generally there is a certain home bias to their investing approach. But if you look at the stats and if you look at where the outperformance has been, it's actually in the US. Just take S&P 500 for example. Over the last two to three decades, 9% annual returns. It's very hard to beat S&P 500 from a public market's point of view. And if you want to get into private markets which you give up the liquidity, you get that illiquidity premium, the opportunities that are still very much in the US whether it's PE, private equity, probably if you think about it, it's 14, 15% IRR. So that beat S&P 500. And of course if you look at private credit for example, it will be in the low teens sort of return. But the whole Sharpe ratio is going to be extremely strong because it's not mark to market. So the volatility seems at least on paper much lower than S&P 500. So a lot of the opportunity set that Asian investors have is actually in the us. So in terms of access points, you're right, you've got just like accredited investor schemes, we have similar schemes like that. So you have to meet a certain requirement before you could access private markets. And also I think in some ways the size, the minimum size is often prohibited for many well to do people. But you know, it's large. So there is a trend in this part of the world where those big chunk size of private markets are being fractionalized to smaller bits so it becomes more digestible for investors. So I think there is a trend and also if the market becomes big enough within the existing platform, it does allow cross selling between individual buyers within that platform at least. So at least if that creates some liquidity if they want to sell out. Because as you know there is a certain gestation period especially for private markets. So I think these are the innovations at the margin that's occurring in this part of the world to encourage a democratization of private markets for investors.
- [17:37]
Bill Kelly
So James, you mentioned fractionalization a moment ago and I think again in the US was just starting to see this. Hamilton Lane and I've mentioned this on the podcast before, they had a secondary fund maybe earlier this year I think, but a recent vintage and they raised somewhere around $5 billion and they created a normal structure or find a tax neutral jurisdiction in this case the Cayman Islands and then you put feeder funds off it. So this Cayman based fund has a feeder fund on the blockchain and if I want to get into the Cayman based fund, minimum ticket size is $5 million, the blockchain offering is 20,000. So clearly geared toward probably the qualified investor. But we're starting to see a bit of the camel's nose coming into the tent around access. It's still early days. But what does tokenization mean in your part of the world? Are you seeing a more active movement toward using distributed ledger and finding that as maybe the next gen of the private markets where you can have a very wide and diversified shareholder base very different than maybe six or eight LPs in my fund now I could have thousands of shareholders through maybe the benefits and advent of blockchain.
- [18:43]
James Cheo
I think we are still at the early on at the cusp of using tokenization for private markets here in Asia. Some firms doing it as how you describe master feeder fund and then you tokenize it from there so that the block size can be digestible for the investor. But I suspect the real bulk of the transactions are still not widespread or it's not mainstream as yet. On a few things because back to the point about home buyers again a lot of the investors are very used to the companies they own, local companies, they are very used to the way they invest. So the way that I think about things is always about asset allocation. And in terms of public markets you've got to be in the US you've got to have S&P 500, if not you underperform. And in terms of private markets you've got to be in pe, you've got to be in private credit at the least because these are historically asset classes that could actually outperform S&P 500. And like it or not, they are primarily still very much US focused. So I think there is, I would say, education in that whole process of asset allocation and building up portfolios, I think particularly for investors in Asia. And I think that whole trend towards tokenization, I think it will help. But the barrier I think is always about a certain home buyers and also education to unlock that home bias that's quite prevalent.
- [20:08]
Bill Kelly
I agree with all that. If I think about distributed ledger, it's a very important tool. But the focus has always got to be on the underlying what am I getting access to and at what price and is the nav peri passu to what an LP in a big institutional fund would get. And that's where due diligence becomes very, very important. And again on this platform, James, we talked a lot about performance dispersion from the median results up to the top quartile. And it can be very, very wide. And I don't know if enough investors fully understand and appreciate the difference between an IRR and a time weighted return. And oftentimes they're equated as if they're substitutes for each other. And if you're looking at those just in isolation, in a perfect world, an absolutely perfect world in terms of cash flows, they could be one and the same, but more often than not the cash is going in the ground and coming out at very different time frames in the IRR calculation. And investors, there's a lot that they need to know. And that's why I started this conversation by pointing out why professionalism matters. And I said, you eat and breathe this and I do appreciate it, but maybe just turning the page slightly on this topic, but sticking with artificial intelligence as a theme and not asking you to comment on any specific company, but in terms of embracing AI, banks, insurance companies, big asset owners in Southeast Asia, I assume it's at least nascent because certainly in the US it's nascent, but we have not seen the killer app or the killer adoption of it yet. And I do underscore the word yet because I think it's coming. And if I look at the mid and back office, there's probably a tremendous opportunity for operational alpha to utilize some of these machine learning based tools and eventually artificial intelligence. But what's the embrace been across large industry, the big banks, asset owners in terms of artificial intelligence?
- [21:57]
James Cheo
Well, I think generally it varies across and you're right, it's still very nascent in terms of adoption. I think primarily the thinking now is how do we as an industry or even within big organizations build gut rails around it first? I think that's where the conversations are around. So it's about governance, it's about policies. At this point the adoption is done not at a client facing level, but probably at the back end first. So I think that's where the tests, the use cases are being tried out. It does help many parts of a big organization, whether it's how do you onboard clients, for example, looking through huge amounts of data, how do you spot for money laundering signs, fraud cases and perhaps AI could be good at it. So these are where the trials are being done. And I think it's good to have technology to help people to do such things. So I would say a lot of it is at this point on a trial level internally rather than letting the clients use the AI technology because you don't want the AI to represent the organization when it's not tested to a level that organization is comfortable with. Generally I think that's the right approach. The embrace of AI is to test out is to think about it, but not to apply it across the board, but set the guardrails, I think implement it at the back End first middle office and then slowly once people are used to it, it will be eventually, I suspect roll out to customers.
- [23:25]
Bill Kelly
I agree. And these are very, very powerful tools in its early days and I think maybe moving a little bit more slowly embracing and understanding what they mean. I do worry that privacy is being rewritten real time and certainly in the United States we don't have a sovereign definition of what data privacy really means. We've got GDPR throughout the Eurozone, but we are going to be defining and redefining this in real time and probably some topic. James, I did an interview with a fintech based platform in Latin America a few weeks ago and the fellow runs is a good friend of mine and he sent me back the video, seemed fine and then a couple hours later he sent back the video and it was me in the same video speaking in fluent Arabic, fluent Spanish and fluent French and I'll send them to you. And if you listen to the one in Arabic particularly, you'd be hard pressed to believe it was not me. The lips moved and the cadence of my voice in that Arabic language was just remarkably spot on. I have no idea what I'm saying. I assume and hope it's the same thing I said in English. And since it's a trusted advocate on the other side, yes, but if somebody, and you've got a big social media presence, much bigger than I, that these deep fakes do make me nervous because they can look more and more real and I think all the more reason maybe to keep the pace a little bit more purposeful.
- [24:48]
James Cheo
No, I totally agree. In some ways the technology is very powerful because imagine our podcast can be used across the world with different languages. So that's the power side of things. But as with all technology, it could be used in a negative way as well, which can be quite scary and dangerous because sometimes for us to prove and to check certain things, just like your example in another language, it might be saying things that are extremely negative for that matter, and we don't know anything about it. And you're right, Even on my LinkedIn profile I've got people trying to fake as though they are me. There's imposters there using just my photo and trying to chat people up to try to get them into thinking that the victims will think that it's me and getting them to download an app or probably a spyware. So these things are real and I think it's very dangerous. As much as we try to put a stop to these activities, there will be always bad actors in the system, and I think it's very hard to eradicate 100%. But as long as we have certain rules, certain way of spotting these bad actors and calling them out, I think we need a certain system to make this work. And I think we're still in early days of AI and how things might work. So, yeah, I think it's going to be quite an interesting time, but yet I think we just got to be a bit cautious as well.
- [26:08]
Bill Kelly
I agree. And I think if I equate that to what it means to be an investor, your day job, mine is an individual with my own assets. We're managing risk, risk full stop. And one decision could be to stick it all in a mattress and hope for the best, but inflation's going to rinse it out. So you really have to engage and think about risk as an asset, less as a liability. And I think the same thing when it comes to educating and promoting yourself on social media, that simple thing could be, you know what, I've had a lot of imitations and fakes and I've seen some of you and I have talked about it. I have another. James reached out to me and said, wow, I thought I was already connected with James. And it's case in point, there are bad actors out there. So the simple thing would be to say, you know what, I'm just going to zip up the rabbit hole, shut down my social media profile and go away. But you seem to engage and engage more and I think that's excellent. And I think it is like being a smart investor, you've got to recognize the limitations but not necessarily silence your voice. And maybe this is a good opportunity, James, to talk a little bit about what you try to accomplish with your social media profile. And I encourage every listener to go and at least look at your profile and look at what you do. And from my interpretation, your posts are exceedingly upbeat, exceedingly optimistic. And the audience I think you're playing to is the next generation of leaders and youth and trying to give them purpose and meaning. What it means to go up on a stage and speak for the first time. What it means about growing and building your career and your personal brand. So I could have missed it in terms of the theme, but you are very active and maybe just tell me what you look to accomplish with your social media profile.
- [27:42]
James Cheo
Bill, I think you're spot on. Not many people can break down what I'm trying to do actually with LinkedIn. And in some ways you're right. I don't make any money on LinkedIn and it's just purely to, in some way back to why I started my career in civil service or with the government is essentially I want to search for a purpose. And somehow on LinkedIn, what I share my own experience does provide in some ways a little bit of positivity to the people around. And what encourages me is that there are many young people replying the direct message back to me to say that what I post encourages them. There are some that they've gone through a tough time and that message just came at the right time to help them put things into perspective. Because in some ways I see the young people as really the future leaders of society, of industry, but in some ways they are right now extremely, I would say, pressured by society as well, trying to live up to expectations, trying to live up to expectations of themselves, the expectations that other placed on them. So I'm just trying to encourage that they can actually walk their own path. And it's a very difficult message, especially in a Singapore society where the education system is extremely rigid. If you get A's for that, it's being so called inculcated into you when you are nine years old, seven years old, six years old, that you've got to get good grades, you've got to get perfect grades, and you are streamed into different classes at a very young age and it's hard for you to break out of that. So young people, especially in Singapore, they feel that they are pigeonholed into certain boxes or categories and they find it hard to break out of that. And for those who are doing well, they are highly pressured and, you know, the competition is never ending, it's infinite. So I think for some people, it's almost at a breaking point in terms of that pressure, that mental stress. So I think I want to in some ways give a message that it's okay to not be perfect, it's okay to search your own path and there's really no need to compare yourself with someone else. So I think that's where I think my message resonates with them. And also because of the career path that I took, I didn't choose to optimize my earnings all the time in the beginning. I chose to go into civil service, which is actually not where the money is, actually. So I think there are various paths to your own success and I think that's what encourages a lot of people. And that's where the bulk of my message is really about on LinkedIn.
- [30:22]
Bill Kelly
Well, thank you for it, James. Not enough people do it and very few do it as well as you. And I think you exude energy, youth, and harder for me to pull that off than you and optimism. And I think that's a very important message for this next generation. So I do appreciate it. One specific theme I just want to touch upon just in the remaining couple of minutes is how do we communicate? And you've turned social media into a weapon for the good, as we've just talked about. But it was interesting. I saw a relatively recent post and Mr. Tata, and you can talk a little bit about him in a moment. He left this good earth just about a month or so ago and he wrote a personal letter to you. And in that post, I did recognize a couple things. One is that you say people don't read email anymore. And hard to take the other side of that, but even fewer still write letters. And I go through my mail and they still deliver mail to my mailbox every single day. And I would say 95% of it gets tossed in the garbage. But if somebody takes the time to write a handwritten letter to me, that sticks out. So it's interesting that maybe lessons to be learned from future greats or prior greats and the resonance of somebody like Mr. Tata. Continue. The fact that that letter, you saved it, it meant something to you. And I think there's an important message there about how we should think about communicating going forward.
- [31:41]
James Cheo
The reason why I dug up that letter, when I heard the news of Ratan Tata's passing, I was very sad. But I felt that I'm compelled to tell a side of a story that people outside of India or even people don't really see. Because everyone knows how big, how successful a businessman he is, how big Tata Group is. The achievements that he did is all well known. But what people don't fully see, especially outside of India, is that he treats people equally. And that's how he treated me. I was just starting out, really a nobody, but he treated me as an equal. And that's not something that is common, especially for such a successful leader at the time. Whenever he's in Singapore, he would always call me up and say, hey, do you want to meet up? And he would always be very polite. He'll ask, are you busy at the moment? Are you free to meet up? So I would always joke and say that he's the busy one. Whatever I'm doing is not important. Not that important in the whole scheme of things. So that's the kind of person he is. He really values you. He treats you as an equal. He values your time he doesn't look at you as someone lesser than him and I think that's quite remarkable. And I even remember accompanying him to meet senior leaders in Singapore. So I think we were at the Istana, which is like the President and the Prime Minister's office. So I accompany him to the Istana in Singapore. I think he was supposed to meet Lee Kuan Yew at the time. So Lee Kuan Yew is former Prime Minister of Singapore founding father. So very, very senior and very well respected person. So before, before Mr. Tata went into the room, Ratten Tata held my hand and I could see a certain kind of apprehension in him before meeting Lee Kuan Yew and he held my hand and said, wish me luck. So that's the kind of person that he is. He treats you as this equal. And that's the story that I want to tell the rest of the world with my LinkedIn post. Essentially that despite him being the biggest business bigwig in India, he bothers to write a letter, handwritten, hand signed to a nobody in Singapore. And I think that's quite something. And as a result I think that post, it became extremely viral across the world. I think I had almost 100, I think 18, 120,000 likes. It became so hard that I couldn't reply because there are too much comments on the post. Even when I tried to reply those comments it was lagging because there was just so much, I would say an outpouring of emotions of what Ratan Tata is all about. And I think it shows, it's this seemingly little gestures that show how big a man that he was.
- [34:19]
Bill Kelly
Well, a great summary and a great way to wrap up this conversation, James. And you've done right by his legacy and I know you continue to do that. And I just wrote down as I was listening to you, if I had to think about what his message would be and yours now to us is be accessible, be deferential and be polite. And these are not difficult things to do. You could have vast amounts of wealth or no wealth at all, high station in life or no station. You can accomplish these things literally today. And I think oftentimes as we reach a certain stage in our career, we forget that these things matter and they matter so much. And to look at the relationship you had with him and he being nervous and relying on you when he goes to an important meeting just shows how just the ability to take a hand or say thank you. These things will never go out of style no matter what assets we fractionalize. You can't do away with the human touch.
- [35:11]
James Cheo
Absolutely, Bill, you're spot on. And I just had a conversation with a very young, bright person over the weekend and I think essentially she asked me what's the advice in how you go on your everyday? And I told her how I go on every day is I just think of every day. I start off at zero, at ground zero. Whatever knowledge, whatever rank, seniority, it should start off at zero. And when you treat everyone as though you're learning, you treat everyone at every topic with curiosity, with a humility that you don't know everything, and also to learn from others, essentially. I think that if you have that attitude, no matter how senior you are, I think then it makes life more fulfilling. You will learn better. Rather than you think that you have 20, 30 years of experience, you talk in a lingo that is so technical, you think that you're smartest in the room and those things. It might work for some people, but for me it's my attitude or mindset is always to be at zero every day. And from that perspective, I think I could learn more. I think I can do better. I think I could be a better person if I have that mindset.
- [36:19]
Bill Kelly
Well, in the podcasting business, they call that a mic drop moment, so we're going to leave it at that. James, I think it's a great exclamation on a great conversation. And I'll finish where I started, which is thank you for all that you do. You've been a tremendous member and an advocate for professionalism beyond what KAYA alone stands for, and so many investors and individuals will continue to benefit from that. So great to see you, James, and appreciate all you do.
- [36:46]
James Cheo
Thank you, Bill, great chatting with you.
- [36:50]
Bill Kelly
Thank you for listening to Educational Alpha. I'm your host, Bill Kelly. Learn more about the CHIA association and subscribe to the show@caia.org that's C A I A dot org. See you next time.