| SPECIAL FEATURE
Haney Golf Tip There isn’t anybody who can’t improve. Everyone has a vision of how good at this game they want to be. The hard part of instruction is working out how you get there. What are the steps you need to take to get where you want to go? Take it from me: a professional will help you do that. I spend a great deal of time with my students doing precisely that. It doesn’t matter if I’m working with a beginner golfer or the best player in the world – the process remains the same. In my experience, if you’re an amateur and you’re trying to help yourself, it can be difficult. You don’t have all the available tools to help you
Golf & Investment
Academy
Hank Haney is a PGA Teaching Pro and a Charles Schwab client in the US
About Charles Schwab
Schwab Investing Tip
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HK Golfer・OCT 2012
For more on the connection between golf and investing, visit: schwab.com.hk/golf
I don’t think I’ve ever seen an amateur golfer who wouldn’t benefit from getting their equipment a little more dialed in. One of the most important things you can do is to get a driver with the right loft for you. Drivers range from around seven to 13 degrees of loft. Personally, I use a driver with 10.25 degrees of loft. The great thing about the adjustable drivers of today is that you can really set them up for how you swing the club. Generally speaking, amateurs don’t use a club with enough loft. The more loft you put on the ball, the more backspin is created, which in turn counteracts sidespin, so a driver with a higher loft will always be a driver that goes straighter. But remember – test them out! Even half a degree change in loft can make a big difference. Find the right driver and you’ll be hitting it longer and straighter.
Talk to a Pro
nvesting today can be incredibly complex, with the number of asset classes, the number of securities and just being able to work out your risk and return. How do you sort through all that information? It takes a certain amount of time and a certain amount of expertise. If you don’t have that time or the interest in learning and gaining the expertise, that’s where a professional can play a key role. It’s important to remember that investing is an emotional experience. It’s your money, your livelihood and your future. So to have someone there to help control those emotions – to be a co-pilot or in some cases, a coach – can be very important in helping to guide you through the emotional times. If you take a page from the institutional world, almost all institutions have an investment committee. Why? Because they understand the advantage of hearing other thoughts and opinions. That’s what working with a professional can do. You can form your own mini investment committee and get the advice of others. When times are tough or emotions are high, you have that third party opinion there helping you.
“It doesn’t matter if I’m working with a beginner golfer or the best player in the world. The process remains the same.”
Lofty Issues
For those investors out there, you might find golf and investing share a lot of similar attributes. Both require careful planning, patience, and discipline, to site a few examples. Charles Schwab, Hong Kong, Ltd., a financial services firm serving investors in Asia, certainly believes so. #5
improve. Are you really making progress, are you really headed in the right direction? Do you know when it’s time to change course or are you going to just stick to what you’re doing? That’s why it’s good to have somebody there with you – to help, reassure and motivate you. This is crucially important in getting you to where you want to be.
“When times are tough or emotions are high, you have that third party opinion there helping you.”
HKGOLFER.COM
Charles Schwab Corporation’s Founder and Chairman, Mr Charles Schwab, is an avid golfer himself. Over the years, he has found both golf and investing are tough games and that there’s no short term fixes. His firm, which is the Official Investment Firm of the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour, strives to guide investors along their investing journey, formulate plans, and provide resources to help investors be successful. When Schwab first opened its doors in 1971, the company knew that the key to success would be getting the fundamentals right. By focusing on the basics, the firm managed to take an early market lead, offering a combination of low prices with fast, efficient order executions, and soon became the United States’ largest discount broker. Today, the company is one of the US’s leading financial services firms with around US$1.83 trillion in client assets. Charles Schwab, Hong Kong, Ltd. is a subsidiary of The Charles Schwab Corporation. HKGOLFER.COM
With one win and 13 top-10 place finishes this season, Bernhard Langer finds himself in second place in the Champions Tour's Charles Schwab Cup standings, narrowly behind leader Tom Lehman
HK Golfer・OCT 2012
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