CategoryFeature Updates

In our previous post, we shared that StocksCafe now supports IBKR imports. However, many users encountered the “Expects 84 columns but got 85” error due to a difference in the exported file format. We’ve now improved the feature so it works with both the 84-column and 85-column exports.To be honest, we’re still not sure what caused the change, as we don’t have our own IBKR account and rely on...

If you’re not using IBKR, feel free to skip this post.But if you are — congratulations! You can now import your IBKR transactions into StocksCafe with ease. How It Works Simply follow a one-time setup process below, then reuse it anytime to export your data based on your desired timeframe. Please export the data in csv format and use this page (only available on desktop / laptop) to import...

Since we released the ability to create recurring transactions, several users have reached out independently with a common request: They often know only the total amount they will pay, but not the price per share or number of shares, which are only known at a future date. To support this use case, we’ve updated how recurring transactions work.(Note: recurring dividends remain unchanged.) (New)...

Note: If you do not own Paragon REIT, you can skip this.

As Paragon REIT has been privatize and is scheduled to delist on 6 June 2025, if you currently have any Paragon REIT shares, you should create a sell transaction of all at price SGD 0.98 per share.

Thank you to user fireman1998 for alerting me to this 🙂

This is a sponsored post from LongBridge LongBridge has launched a lifetime “0 Commissions for US, HK and SG Stocks” promotion for all clients, making it the only brokerage in Singapore currently offering “0 Commissions” across these three major markets. While zero commission offers aren’t exactly unique, Longbridge Singapore iscurrently the only brokerage here offering...

Tired of uneven dividend payouts? Want a more consistent passive income stream? Our latest video reveals a smart strategy using StocksCafe to identify and select dividend stocks that pay out in your low-income months. Learn how to use StocksCafe to find companies with specific payout schedules, ensuring a more predictable flow of cash. We’ll show you how to filter by dividend month, yield...

From time to time, users have requested the ability to create recurring transactions in StocksCafe. We’re happy to share that over the weekend, we added support for easily creating multiple transactions or dividends at once. How to Create Recurring Transactions You can now create multiple recurring transactions at once on the desktop version. This feature is useful when you have...

It has always been my dream for StocksCafe to automatically sync all your transactions from every brokerage you use—so that manual data entry becomes a thing of the past. To make this a reality, brokerages need to offer modern, open APIs. While many still remain closed off and stuck in legacy systems, a few forward-thinking brokerages are leading the way. One such example is LongBridge, which...

TLDR: Sign up with LongBridge via StocksCafe and fund your account with at least SGD 2,000 and keep it there for 30 days to get 2 years free StocksCafe Global Friend subscription on top of goodies from LongBridge. Simply send me your registered phone number via the forum after funding the account. This promotion is limited to Singapore residents only. This promotion is valid till 31 Dec 2025...

For most investors, receiving dividends is one of the most rewarding aspects of investing. It’s no surprise that dividend-related features are among the most loved tools on StocksCafe! From tracking received dividends to projecting future ones, StocksCafe offers a suite of tools designed to help you stay on top of your dividend income. This weekend, we’ve taken it a step further by...

Recently, a user requested the ability to import option transactions into StocksCafe. One of the main challenges of tracking options is the additional fields required compared to stock transactions, making the process more cumbersome and prone to errors. At StocksCafe, we’re always striving to enhance your investment journey. Over the weekend, we dedicated time to building this feature...

This December is a great time to be signing up with Moomoo via StocksCafe as there are tons of giveaways! An exclusive additional SGD 80 + 2 years free StocksCafe subscription that is limited for sign ups via StocksCafe referrals only! This promotion is limited to Singapore residents and ends on 31 December 2024, 2159 SGT. Below is a summary, but do also read the detailed Terms and Conditions...

Free Stock Valuation Tool As you might have known, we have been working on QuantsCafe, our new platform designed to support data-driven investment decisions and today, we are happy to share that it now has a Stock Valuation tool (e.g. GOOGL), which allows you to evaluate a stock from multiple perspectives. For growth stocks, you can assess whether a company is growing fast enough for its...

Update on 1 August 2024: You can now also include Hospitalization plans. Due to personal experience, I am a strong believer in having adequate insurance coverage for wealth protection. Over the years, I have accumulated several policies for myself, my parents, and my wife. Managing these policies with spreadsheets became cumbersome, prompting me to add the ability to track insurance in StocksCafe...

If you are not using StocksCafe to track your option trades, you can skip this post. Recently, we updated the two pages on Desktop under Closed Position (i.e. Summary and Details) with more information for options traders to better understand their performance. In this post, we would like to explain the some of the key terms and definitions in these pages: P&L: It only considers the...

If you are not trading options or not tracking them using StocksCafe, you can skip this article. If you are, from today onwards, you will see an additional section in your daily email updates (see image below). It will basically give you information about the performance of your Options trades. This section will be shown as long as you have any Options transactions. Of course, we can make this...

As DBS (SGX:D05) is the most popular stock in StocksCafe, I thought that it deserves a dedicated post to share how to handle the Bonus Shares issuance that happened today (i.e. ExDate is 22 April 2024). What happened? DBS is giving out 1 new share for every 10 shares that you are holding (see announcement). What do I need to do? We have already created an event to help you handle this. All you...

One of the first features that I built when I started StocksCafe is the “Market Update” email. It is also one of StocksCafe’s most popular features. Personally, I look forward to receiving this email everyday to see how my portfolio performed for the day. Old Market Update Email (Demo portfolio) After 9 years, we are happy to share that this feature is now getting a new look...

One of the recent most popular request is to have the ability to personalize your portfolio view on mobile. As always, ask and we will try our best to make it happen 🙂

Ensure that you are on version 3.4.15 or later. To update, simply refresh the browser.

Happy investing!

About 50% of users access StocksCafe via their mobile devices, and we have been making various improvements to the mobile user’s experience. Today, I am happy to share that we have made another two improvements (ensure that you are on at least v3.4.4 to see these changes on mobile; the version number can be found on the menu, just below the logout button). Dashboard on Mobile Recently, we...

We first introduced Dashboard in 2019. We also introduced the concept of Net Worth and Financial Freedom Index (FFI) then. However, with the deprecation of Other Assets (which is included in the calculation of both Net Worth and FFI), Dashboard was overdue for an upgrade. We are happy to introduce the newly upgraded Dashboard. We have added several key metrics and graphs such as Day Change...

Many users in StocksCafe are heavy dividend investors, including myself. It is a great feeling to receive dividends regularly. In Singapore, REITs are extremely popular for dividends because of our love for owning properties and how they have generally proven to be paying stable and regular dividends. I always like to tell my friends that I own a brick in the shopping mall where we are hanging...

Webull is running a great promotion for their money market funds product called MoneyBull. And in typical Webull fashion, there is a very good deal going on right now. Perhaps most importantly, this deal can be enjoyed by both new and existing customers. New to Webull? If you are new to Webull, you can also qualify for the welcome rewards on top of MoneyBull promotion by signing up via...

TradingView is arguably the gold standard in charting nowadays. Furthermore, in the recent round of Zoom discussions, it was also one of the features that was requested by a few users. So, as always, ask and you shall be given 🙂 Today, we are happy to share that we have successfully integrated with TradingView (in Desktop for now). If you go to any stock page (e.g. DBS, Apple), you will see that...

It has been quiet on the blog for the past month or so, but a lot (of mostly boring development) has been happening back-end. Here are some updates that are more likely to interest you: Auto-Sweep This is used in conjunction with the Cash Balance feature. Quick Recap: Cash Balance allows you to easily track the amount of cash you currently have by tracking cash movements due to buy/sell...

Approximately a year ago, we introduced the Events feature, which greatly simplified the management of events, particularly stock splits. When you accept a pending event, the system automatically generates transactions for you to effortlessly handle the stock split. This means that buy and sell transactions are automatically created with the accurate number of shares and corresponding pricing...

In the previous article, we promised to create a tool for users to easily migrate from Other Assets to Custom Assets. Here are the steps to easily migrate. Go to this page on desktop Choose the asset to migrate. Choose the portfolio to migrate the transactions to Choose the symbol for the asset [Optional] Add a website for the asset, if any Tip: We highly encourage users to create a separate...

TLDR; If you are using or plan to use the Other Assets feature in StocksCafe, you should continue reading. Else, you can skip. About 5 years ago, we introduced the ability to track assets other than those listed in exchanges supported by StocksCafe. The motivation is simple. Everyone of us have assets beyond those supported by StocksCafe. However, we made a mistake. In the backend, we created...

About 5 months ago, StocksCafe started supporting Singapore T-Bills as it was becoming popular due to the ever increasing interest rates. Soon, hundreds of users have enter their T-Bills transactions into StocksCafe. Today, I would like to share two features that was added yesterday that will make your T-Billing life easier. Auto-create sell transactions Previously, you would need to create both...

TLDR; StocksCafe and Webull have a special collaboration from now till 28 Feb 2023 where you just need to fund your Webull account with at least SGD 1 and you are guaranteed to get at least USD 50 worth of stocks (up to USD 500). In addition, you will also get two years Global Friend of StocksCafe subscription worth SGD 90. Sign up now via StocksCafe referral link to participate in this great...

We are happy to share that we have built a new feature where you will be notified whenever you receive dividends (i.e. on PayDate)! All you need to do is simply go to the settings page (for desktop, for mobile), look under the “Dividend Notification Email” section, and check the “On PayDate” box. Then, on days when you are expected to receive dividends, you will receive an...

TLDR; For users who are still using username & password or Facebook Login to sign in to StocksCafe, please read on. If you are already using Google Login or very happy using username & password, you can skip 🙂 As we switch to the new mobile web interface, a few users are sharing that they are facing issues with saving the login and password (so that they do not need to remember them)...

TLDR; From now on, when you access on mobile web browsers, you will be redirected to where you will experience the new mobile web interface. By the end of this year, we will replace the Mobile App with the Mobile Web interface. Previously, StocksCafe had three different interfaces:1) Desktop interface for users using browsers on desktop Portfolio page on desktop browser 2) Mobile App interface...

Recently, a user reached out and asked a question: Portfolio Cost Yield is calculated as:Portfolio Cost Yield = Sum(Cost Yield x Portfolio %)I’d like to understand why “Portfolio %” was used instead of “Portfolio Cost %”. This is a great question, and honestly when I first implemented it, I did not think too deeply into it. Hence I decided to discuss more with that user. Let’s use an...

Note: This promotion is not valid anymore This page was last updated on 5 Feb 2024. TLDR; Sign up with WeBull and fund the account with at least SGD 1 before 29 Feburary 2024 15:59 SGT, you will get 1 year of Global Friend of StocksCafe subscription (worth SGD 49). Bonus from Webull for Feb 2024: If you fund at least SGD 2,000 and keep the money there until 31 March 2024, Webull will give you SGD...

Note: Please read this article to learn about new features added for T-Bills. Due to the recent bearish market, many investors are looking for safer opportunities. It seems like the popular investment among many StocksCafe users now are T-Bills. After receiving several requests for StocksCafe to support them, I decided to spend my weekend implementing a simple way for StocksCafe to support...

Temasek is one of two sovereign wealth funds in Singapore. Since its inception in 1974, some 48 years ago, Temasek’s total shareholder return (TSR) stood at an annualized rate of 14%, which is commendable. In comparison, the MSCI World Index has posted a yearly return of around 8% since 1987. Even though the time frame is not the same, Temasek has managed to beat the average market returns over...

The founder of StocksCafe turns 40 in July! In the spirit of celebration, StocksCafe will be having never-before-seen promotions! For new paying users: Get 40% off your first paid subscription for all monthly and 1-year subscription plans! Go to the pricing page to check out the new discounted pricing. For those who have paid for a subscription before: Get 40% referral fees instead of the usual...

Recently, several popular US companies have underwent or will be having stock splits (e.g. AMZN, GOOG, SHOP). How to handle stock splits In StocksCafe, the “correct” way to handle stock splits are to simply create two transactions on the split date. Example: Amazon recently had a stock split on 6 June 2022 of 1:20. Let’s assume you have 1 share of Amazon bought at $2,500 on 1 June...

TLDR; StocksCafe is migrating to CoinGecko as our upstream cryptocurrencies data provider. How to migrate If you only hold popular cryptocurrencies (>5 followers in StocksCafe), then the migration is already done for you. You simply have to check if everything looks ok. That is, everything is in exchange CG (prefix CG:) and nothing is in exchange CC (prefix CC:). Please let me know if anything is...

Thank you once again to everyone who participated in the recent survey. There are so much that we learnt through this survey and we will slowly but surely incorporate most if not all of the learnings. Key Learnings: 1. many of StockCafe’s features are not used Essentially, most users only love/use the Portfolio Management feature and everything else can be a distraction. So, we will...

Not sure about you, but I was not one of the 8 winners for yesterday’s $19.4 Million Toto 🙁 If you did not win too, here is another chance! Simply take a few minutes to do a survey for StocksCafe and you can be one of the 10 lucky winners for 3 months of Global Friends of StocksCafe! Yes, we have increased the number of winners from 3 to 10 to increase your chances. With 116 responders so...

Happy Lunar New Year! One of the main focus of 2022 is to get more people to understand and appreciate the value that StocksCafe can bring to them. In order to do that, we would love to hear your thoughts! Therefore, it would be great if you could spare a few mins to do a survey. To thank you for your time, we will be doing a lucky draw and 3 winners will be awarded 3 months of Global Friends of...

One of the key focus for StocksCafe in 2022 is getting more people to understand and appreciate the value that StocksCafe can bring them. This is especially true for new users who just joined us. Hence, we just released a “Welcome Week” series that aims to help you better leverage StocksCafe in your investing journey. Over the course of 7 days, it will send a short private message...

StocksCafe is always doing its best to improve itself, and the latest addition to StocksCafe is indexes. You can view the list of indexes that is now supported by StocksCafe. For now, we have only added a few popular ones. If there are others that you would like to see, let us know and we will see if we can add it. What Can You Do With Indexes? You can use it as a benchmark if you like. Although...

Note: This is not working now due to TD Ameritrade blocking it for Singapore accounts 🙁 One of the few processes in StocksCafe that has yet to be fully automated is the entering of transactions into StocksCafe. While we would love to make your investment journey as smooth as possible, it is not easy to get this data from most brokerages. Thankfully, there are some exceptions such as TD Ameritrade...

It’s been a while since I shared a feature update. Again, this does not mean that I am not working hard on StocksCafe, it’s just that I did not want to disrupt you with too many emails. Talking about emails, one of the more popular features in StocksCafe is the daily (or weekly, depending on your settings) market update emails. I regularly get notified by users if that email is...

I am happy to share that StocksCafe now supports Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and Indian National Stock Exchange (NSE)! This brings the total number of supported exchanges in StocksCafe to 10 – SGX, HKEX, KLSE, USX, LSE, TSE, SHE, SHG, BSE, and NSE! Of course, in addition to that, we also support Cryptocurrencies and Singapore Savings Bonds. If you know anyone that is investing in any of the...

Many users have been requesting for StocksCafe to join the Dark side 🙂 That is, to make Dark mode an option. As always, we do our best to meet users’ requests as long as it is within our means, especially if many requested for it. Today, we are happy to share that you can now choose between the Light and Dark color schemes. As this is our first iteration for the Dark color scheme, please...

It’s been more than a month since I shared updates about StocksCafe. Looking back at the tickets completed in May, many of them revolve around the improvement of Screener. 1) New simple preset screeners If you are new to using screeners in StocksCafe, we have added a few simple preset screeners for you to start with. When you are ready to dive deeper, you can also change the conditions to...

Note: Please read this article as we have migrated to CoinGecko. For those who are not trading cryptocurrencies, you can skip this article. Disclaimer: I am not encouraging anyone to invest/trade in cryptocurrencies. This is just to share that if you are, StocksCafe now supports it as well. Many users have shared that they would want to track CryptoCurrencies in StocksCafe (see ticket). So over...

For those who are not trading options, you can skip this article. Disclaimer: I am not encouraging anyone to do options trading. Just sharing that if you are, StocksCafe now supports it as well. Over the years, there have been various requests for StocksCafe to support Options trading, and I know that some users use the “Other Assets” feature to track options. Over the last few days...

New additions Shenzhen + Shanghai I have always wanted to support Shenzhen and Shanghai exchanges but simply could not find the time to work on it as there are always a million other things in StocksCafe to work on 🙁 This weekend, I finally set aside time to make it happen! This brings the number of supported exchanges by StocksCafe to 8! They are Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Tokyo, United...

Note: If you are investing only in stocks that are denominated in your base currency (e.g. SGD), you can skip this article. The old way of handling FX Previously, StocksCafe handled portfolio with multiple currencies very simplistically. It would directly convert any non-base currency using the latest FX rate when needed (except for dividends where the FX rate used is the one on ex-date). While...

A feature that has been requested by various users is the ability to tag stocks. With that, one would be able to group stocks by their own definitions and a wide variety of possibilities would open up. One specific application would be to look at what percentage of your portfolio is in various groupings (for example, you can now see what percentage of your portfolio are made up of dividend...

US Screener is back Recently, StocksCafe switched data providers for the US market. Due to the change, the ability to screen for US stocks was temporarily taken offline and several users have reached out to me about it. Today, I am happy to share that the ability to screen for US stocks is back! Please check it out and let me know if there are any issues. In addition, we were also able to secure...

Although I work on StocksCafe every single day, I realize it’s been a while since my last update. Here is a quick update on recent developments: 1) Short-Selling StocksCafe was originally created to serve my own needs, and as I personally do not short-sell, the ability to handle such transactions is not there. Not until recently, that is. Many users have requested for it, and I have...

Quick recap Cash Balance allows you to easily track the amount of cash you currently have by tracking cash movements due to buy/sell transactions and dividends payments. However, just knowing how much cash we have currently might not be enough for some, and several users have independently requested to let cash be considered as part of the current portfolio so that we can understand how our cash...

Free COVID-19 Insurance With the daily new cases worldwide still climbing, it is likely COVID-19 is far from over. While some might view this period as an opportune time to shop for discounted stocks, it might also be a good idea to check and ensure that you and your loved ones have sufficient insurance coverage against COVID-19. In case you are not aware, there are several companies offering...

I am happy to share that StocksCafe can now fully support Tokyo Stock Exchange! You should be able to use all the features that are available for Tokyo as well. This brings the total number of supported exchanges to six (SGX, HKEX, KLSE, USX, LSE and TSE!) One thing to note though is that I was unable to locate good English sources for news and blogs that covers the Tokyo market. So if you know...

Quick Summary 1) Activate the Cash Balance feature if you want to track your portfolio’s cash portion and/or see your portfolio’s detailed cash transactions. 2) Whenever you realize that your DIVIDEND transactions are out of sync, simply click “Sync Cash Balance Dividend” on this page. Or simply check “Auto Cash Balance Dividend Sync” in step 1 and the chance...

Over the last few weekends, I have been focusing on improving and adding features to the StocksCafe mobile app. While it is still far from perfection, I believe it should have many features that you would need on the go. Go to App Store (iOS) or Play Store (Android) today and download it if you have yet to. If you already have the app, do update it to v0.5.0 to access all the newly added features...

The most viewed page in StocksCafe is undoubtedly the Portfolio Overview page. Within that page, we have the Current Portfolio table that gives you various columns/information about the stocks that you are holding. While investors can easily control the columns displayed, they could not control the ordering of it previously. The purpose for this article is to inform you that you can now not only...

In my opinion, one unique feature of StocksCafe is the ability for users to feedback directly and influence StocksCafe. While I cannot promise that all feature requests are met, I do read through every single feature request and consider them. Below are two feature requests from users that I have recently implemented that I would like to highlight. (FYI I most certainly worked on more than two...

In this article, I would like to share a renewed tool, Risk Manager. As an investor, understanding your portfolio risks is of paramount importance. Using this tool, you can see the changes to various portfolio risk metrics (i.e. Beta, Value At Risk and Expected Shortfall) after you buy (or sell) a specific amount (defaulted to SGD 5,000 but you can change it here) of selected stocks. Why focus on...

One relatively under-utilized feature in StocksCafe is Alerts. At this point, there are only 615 unique users using it. Recently, we have made two improvements based on suggestions by Friends of StocksCafe. Hopefully, it will make the Alerts feature more prominent and useful. 1) More accessible In the past, it is not easy to navigate to the Alerts feature. In addition, the stock must first be...

The current top request (i.e. the most likes) is for StocksCafe to support the London Stock Exchange (LSE), and I am very happy to share that StocksCafe now provides limited support for LSE! What does limited mean? It means that StocksCafe only has End of Day pricing data for LSE. We were unable to secure dividend nor fundamental data. However, with this, you can enter transactions for London...

Dividends – be it past, upcoming, or projected – is one of the most popular features in StocksCafe. I understand how important it is for them to be updated and accurate, and with this new feature, we are one step closer to that. Not updated and inaccurate dividends Often, users would write to me and highlight a dividend not reflected in StocksCafe even though the company has already...

StocksCafe has integrated Facebook login to allow for quicker login (bonus: you have one less password to remember)! For existing users, please go this page and click on the continue with Facebook button to associate your existing StocksCafe account with your Facebook account. Once you have done that, you will be able to login either via Facebook or StocksCafe username/email. For new users, you...

When StocksCafe was first built, it was built with many assumptions based on my personal (albeit limited) understanding of stock trading. It included the assumption that fees are only incurred as part of a buy or sell transaction. Clearly, that is incorrect. There are many instances when non-transaction fees are incurred such as the monthly management fees incurred by robo advisors (e.g...

UPDATE Oct 2021: Find the comprehensive tutorial on Scrip dividends on StocksCafe Academy. Some companies/stocks regularly give the option to receive dividends as either cash or shares. Often, to encourage investors to choose shares, they would even offer them at a discounted price to the currently traded price. All along, StocksCafe has always assumed that users would choose cash because it is...

Last week, I spent some time improving Stock Screener. This week, I took time to focus on Portfolio Report & My Dashboard. Apart from various tweaks here and there, I would like to bring your attention to two updates: 1) Customize Baseline: Previously, the performance of portfolios were compared against SGX:ES3 as the baseline. Now, you can customize and set the baseline to be any stock...

Over the last few days, I spent time making several improvements and bug fixes to StocksCafe Screener. Two improvements to bring to attention: 1) Display Metrics: You can now display any metric you want in the results without having to use them in your screener. This can be useful for exploration when you do not yet know the correct value to set for that particular metric in your screener. 2)...

Note: StocksCafe API is now deprecated and not available anymore Short StoryWe now have an open source project aim at educating/sharing on how to use StocksCafe API. You can literally build any feature that you want! Simply go to this GitHub page to learn about all the awesome stuff you can do with StocksCafe API (such as generating and customizing the above graph easily). Full StoryThe ability...

Often, users do not agree with the stock’s sector and/or industry which are categorized by my upstream data source. Now, you can override them easily. Steps: 1) Using your desktop browser, go to the individual stock page (e.g. DBS). 2) Click on “Edit Sector/Industry”. 3) Select the new sector/industry you want. 4) Click update to save. Note that this will only affect your own...

Short Story Mobile app for StocksCafe is now available again! Here is the Android link and this is the iOS link. This is an early version and hence lacking many features. Of course, I will continue to add more features to it over time and the final goal is to make it as comprehensive as the desktop web version where possible. If you prefer to install the pseudo mobile app which has more features...

Update: Since Other Assets is now deprecated, changes are made to the following equations. With the new ability to include any asset into StocksCafe, we can now compute some interesting numbers useful to almost all investors. I have created a clean-cut dashboard page to display these numbers. Net Worth I hope it is obvious why as an investor you need to know your net worth. In case it is not, you...

Regularly, I would receive requests asking, “When will StocksCafe include XXX?”. They are typically other exchanges like London Stock Exchange or Australia Stock Exchange. Occasionally, it would be about commodities or other assets such as insurance, mutual funds, etc. Ideally, StocksCafe would be able to include at least all major exchanges, commodities, and funds in the future...

StocksCafe API Note: StocksCafe API is now deprecated and not available anymore. As StocksCafe continues to grow in term of the number of features and complexity, it is time to shift from Monolithic Architecture to Microservices Architecture in order to maintain flexibility and scalability among other advantages. In laymen terms, this simply means that instead of StocksCafe being one giant chunk...

With the increasing interest rates, Singapore Savings Bonds is becoming more and more popular. Naturally, many users have requested for StocksCafe to support them. As usual, StocksCafe answered your call 🙂 If you do not know what Singapore Savings Bonds is about, you can learn more here and here. I am happy to share that StocksCafe now supports Singapore Savings Bonds! Click here to see the...

Just wanted to share what’s going on behind the scenes at StocksCafe lately. 1) More Stable I am happy to share that since the infrastructure improvements (to two web servers) a month ago, there have been no known downtime (no complains from users and no logs suggesting that) for StocksCafe website. Once in a while, one server would go down but the second server would keep StocksCafe...

Users input various information into StocksCafe such as what stocks they bought and when, and many would also record notes either about the transactions or stocks itself. All these are very precious data to users and often, users would like to keep a backup copy. Up until now, they can only be manually exported. I am happy to share that I have now set it up such that you can get a copy...

Firstly, I would like to apologize to users who were affected by this “migration” last night and seeing errors on many StocksCafe pages. I was making a seemingly simple change, but is actually more complicated. I was making a database change for the field “shares quantity” from only accepting whole numbers (i.e. integers) to allow decimal values (i.e. floats). As integers...

I am very happy to share that the integration of US fundamental data is complete and StocksCafe now fully supports US stocks. You should now be able to see profile pages (e.g. Facebook) for US stocks, be able to screen for US stocks in screener and see related fundamentals in your portfolio profile or watchlist profile. This brings the number of supported exchanges to four; namely SG, KL, HK, and...

I have not worked much on the US market beyond adding EOD data and other basic features, and I’m happy to announce that I finally had some time to improve as well as add a few new features to it. 1) Similar Stocks – You can now see other stocks that are similar to the one you are viewing (e.g. Google) on the right hand side (in desktop view). 2) Shared Portfolio Statistics – You are...

One thing I wished for in StocksCafe is the sharing of knowledge and information between users. It was the main motivation of having “Cafe”. However, it has not been as lively as I had hoped for. I have made some changes to it recently, hoping to encourage more sharing between users. 1) Less Clutter – I have removed and rearranged sections in order to create a simpler and...

In the next few months, there will be many AGMs for shareholders to attend to learn more about the recent financials and future plans of the company. As some users have suggested, it would be nice to have a venue to learn when and where these AGMs are happening. And perhaps more interestingly, to be able to share thoughts, consolidate questions, or simply to know who else would be attending them...

Regularly, users would independently request for an iOS app to be built for StocksCafe. Due to limited resources, it is unlikely I can satisfy this request in the near future. However, a recent feature request made by a Friend of StocksCafe actually made me realize that I could create a pseudo app for StocksCafe. It is to simply create a shortcut (which looks like an app) on your phone that will...

Happy Lunar New Year! I apologize for not having any updates of late. While I continued to maintain StocksCafe and work on bugs, I took a short break from developing new features during the CNY period. In any case, I am back and the first new small feature is the ability to perform simple price simulations. Previously, whenever I wanted to find out things like what my P&L (or current yield)...

While StocksCafe is constantly fixing bugs and adding new features, once in a while, I would like to highlight and explain some new features or changes. The following are recent updates which I believe deserve to be highlighted: 1. Market Update Emails Market update emails is one of the more popular features in StocksCafe. In the past, it was catered solely for the Singapore market thus over the...

Merry Christmas! I hope you are enjoying yourself this holiday season. Just wanted to quickly share some changes I have made over this weekend: Dividend Withholding Tax As StocksCafe recently started supporting US stocks, some users have requested for StocksCafe to automatically adjust for dividends based on individuals’ tax status. For example, most Singapore residents would incur a 30%...

After months of planning, sourcing, and coding, I am happy to announce that US data is now available in StocksCafe! It is not completely integrated yet, but some of the most popular features are already available. 1) Add to Portfolio or Watchlist: You can now add your US market transactions! You can also add US stocks to your watchlists. 2) Stock Page: Some basic information including dividends...

This is a quick updates of two changes that I thought would be important/useful to communicate to everyone. Day Change Computation Previously, the day change shown on the main page of your personal portfolio was computed naively. It was simply how many shares of a stock you own at the end of the day multiply by the change in price (TodayClose – YesterdayClose). DayChangeForAStockPreviously...

Many stocks give out dividends and it is what many investors like about investing. Often, dividends are listed in the currency that the stock is traded in. However, there are many exceptions to that, especially for foreign-listed companies. For example, United Overseas Australia Limited is traded in SGD but states its dividends in AUD. In StocksCafe, I wrongly assumed that you would receive the...

After the recent release of new visuals for portfolio dividends, there have been more requests regarding visuals’ representations. They include the following: 1) Consistent Color: Previously, the same sector would be represented by different colors across different pie charts on the same page. I have since fixed that. Now, the same sector would be represented by the same color on the same...

Visualization is often easier to understand than numbers. Hence over the weekend, I took time out to add more graphs that would allow you to visualize dividends generated by your portfolio and answer questions about them at a quick glance. 1) Are your dividends growing over the years? What about the cost yield? 2) Are you over-reliant on a particular sector, industry, or stock? These new graphs...

Among the numerous minor improvements in StocksCafe, I think the following will be one of interest to many. Every user using StocksCafe would have a portfolio named “Default”. To some, this has been unwanted and they would like to have it renamed or deleted. The main reason why I have not allowed this so far is simply because StocksCafe was built upon the assumption that a user would...

A little more than a year ago, I added a feature that projects how much dividends you are likely to receive for the current year in your Portfolio Report. Although it is a simple feature with naive assumptions, it is actually one of the top most-liked features. Hence, upon the request of Friends of StocksCafe, I spent some time over the weekend to include dividend projection in more areas of...

For the past two days, some users have noticed missing information in their market update emails. Specifically, it is the Cost, Day Change, P&L, etc of each portfolio that is missing. This issue affected users who have only a single currency in their portfolio. It has now been fixed and you should see those details in your emails again from today onwards. A big thank you to all users who...

As I was working on the final phase of the HK integration, I realized that it might be better if I also had Malaysia stocks information because news agency and blogs that I wanted to index tend to have news/articles on both markets. Hence, last weekend, I switched gears and started integrating Malaysia stocks into StocksCafe as well. I am happy to share that you can look up information of...

This is a short article to quickly share what I did for StocksCafe this past weekend: Screen for HK stocks I have updated the Screener so that you can now also screen for Hong Kong stocks! New Facebook Page As I have recently migrated the website from SGXcafe to StocksCafe, I wanted to change name on the facebook page from SGXcafe to StocksCafe, but was repeatedly rejected by Facebook. Hence, I...

After successfully migrating StocksCafe to the new domain and infrastructure, I have been working on further integration with the Hong Kong Market. Hong Kong Market Integration I am glad to share that phase 2 (of 3) of the Hong Kong Market integration is completed. This means you can now add Hong Kong stocks into your portfolio and/or watchlist, and of course also have access to all the...

After many hours of coding, I am happy to share that Phase 1 (of 3) of the expansion to Hong Kong is now complete! Information about Hong Kong stocks is now available in SGXcafe (e.g. CK Hutchison). At the moment, it hasn’t been incorporated into the search yet, but you can find the full list of active stocks in Hong Kong Stock Exchange here. In Phase 2, I will focus on features revolving...

After a round of voting and discussion with Friends of SGXcafe, I am happy to share that we have decided to support APAC markets in the upcoming expansion! I have already started work to include Hong Kong exchange data. You should start to see changes within this week. Supporting a brand new market is not easy and would take time to iron out all the details, especially since I developed SGXcafe...

One of the most highly voted feature now in Friends of SGXcafe is “Stock of The Day”. The idea is to feature a stock every trading day based on some criteria. At the moment, I have come up with five criteria to select the stock of the day. 1) Significant Increase in Visitors – The number of visitors viewing a stock’s page significantly increased in the last three days...

It have been two weeks since the last article, and I thought I should just give a quick update of the improvements made to SGXcafe over the last two weeks in case you think that SGXcafe is becoming inactive 🙂 In fact, on the contrary, I have been actively adding new features! I will just highlight a few features that might be of interest: 1) Who owns this stock? At the point of writing, there are...

At the moment, one of the most highly voted features in Friends of SGXcafe is “Use various known methods to compute the intrinsic value of stocks”. As much as I want to do it, it is not easy to compute the real “intrinsic” value of stocks, assuming it even exists. All methods that I have found require subjective opinions of the future. And often, small deviations in...

First of all, Gong Xi Fa Cai! As I am currently in Japan, I’ve got nowhere to go “bai nian”. In combination with my wife not feeling so well, I’ve got on my hands an entire weekend to work on SGXcafe. One thing that is starting to irritate me is that as SGXcafe continues to add more features, I would have to make numerous clicks just to access a particular feature. This...

As mentioned in the first article of 2017, one of SGXcafe’s focus is to improve mobile engagement. So here we are, with our first baby step. I was never a fan of how SGXcafe’s home page was as it did not allow users to easily catch up on the latest happenings since their last visit, and the format was not mobile-friendly. Hence we are introducing a Wall that is inspired by...

I had some time this weekend and managed to finish up a few user requests, and would like to share them: 1) Individual Portfolio in Daily Market Update Emails Now you can opt to view the performance of each portfolio you own by simply going to this page and checking the “Individual Portfolio – Information about each portfolio you own” box. You will see the performance of your...

I have been interested in learning and integrating various approaches, namely fundamental analysis, technical analysis, portfolio management and machine learning to help myself make better investments/trades. This is the one of the reasons why SGXcafe exists. Recently, I started learning more about technical analysis through a book titled, Come into my Trading Room. I am thankful to Azrael for...

On average, I spend one to two hours a day working on SGXcafe. Sometimes, the features added are large and obvious. At other times, they are essentially invisible to most users. Today, I would like to share a few “invisible” feature updates that have been made recently. 1) Desktop view on mobile phones As mobile phone screens become larger, there have been requests to view the...

Recently, I introduced the new Stock Screener. It was well-received with many requests to add metrics and capabilities to it. This week, I spent some time to add the ability to share your Screener easily. There are a few things I hope to achieve with this sharing feature. 1) Easy Translation – To demonstrate how to easy it is to translate a strategy in your mind into a concrete screener. I...

Previously, I mostly viewed “What stocks to buy” as a ranking problem. What this means is that I would rank all the stocks available based on some criteria and pick the top few to purchase. Hence, tools that I built tend to generate a score and ranked accordingly. Examples are iAssist, Dividend Strength and Scorer (Scorer was previously known as Screener). However, after taking the...

Our portfolios are very personal and sensitive information. While many users have generously shared them publicly, many more are not comfortable with opening up their portfolio and share with just anyone who visits stocks.cafe. This is totally understandable. Even I only share my portfolio partially (portfolio is displayed without exact values). Hence, I have recently added a followers/following...

Many Stock Screeners (including the one on SGXcafe previously) only allows you to screen for stocks based on the current value of metrics. However, we are sometimes more interested in the trend of the metric than its current value. Hence, I have recently added more than 50 metrics trends to SGXcafe. At the moment, you are able to use them in two main places. 1) In Screener You can now use SGXcafe...

As an investor, we often want to believe that we can pick stocks that can beat the market. So I made a game that allows us to test if we could actually pick stocks that can beat the market. The idea is simple: you will be given facts of an anonymous stock on a historical date. Based on the information, you will choose whether to invest or ignore that stock. Once you have made the decision...

For each listed stock in SGX, there is a profile page (e.g. DBS) that displays the valuation and financial metrics of that stock. Personally, I use it often to learn the historical and current fundamental values of the stock. However, there are limitations to it. 1) Due to space constraint, I can only display partial information. For example, for Valuation metrics, I only show 52 weeks high, low...

One of the recent most-voted feature in Friends of SGXcafe is having a cash component to track your cash balance. It is a seemingly easy feature, but was actually tedious to implement because it intertwines with several other existing components in SGXcafe. What is Cash Balance? Easily track the amount of cash you currently have on hand after you buy or sell stocks, receive dividends, or deposit...

A few weeks ago, I released an iOS app for SGXcafe. Naturally, Android users started to request an app as well. However, just like it was for iOS, I do not have any experience with Android development either. Hence, I jokingly requested a friend from work to build the SGXcafe Android app for me and to my utmost surprise, he showed me a first version the next day. Of course, SGXcafe mobile apps...

Dividends Override was introduced to SGXcafe during the time when one account can hold only one portfolio. Soon after, I introduced the support for Multiple Portfolios in SGXcafe. However, Dividends Override was not updated to support Multiple Portfolios. This mistake potentially caused some mistakes in computing the total dividends you have collected if you happen to hold the same stock in...

Many users use SGXcafe to track their dividends, and I have received suggestions regarding it. I am always happy to hear from users, and where possible, I do my best to implement them in SGXcafe. This weekend, I spent some time and worked on a few aspects related to dividends: Dividend Projection In Portfolio Report, I have added a feature that projects how much dividends you are likely to...

Yes, SGXcafe finally has an app! According to Google Analytics, about 40% of visitors use mobile devices to access SGXcafe. Naturally, there have been numerous requests for SGXcafe to have a mobile app. Personally, I also wanted a mobile app for SGXcafe to better serve users, but I know nothing about iOS and Andriod development hence I have been procrastinating it. However, “iOS Universal...

Many features that you see in SGXcafe are requests made by users. I appreciate feedback and feature requests from users, and do my best to make it happen whenever possible. Therefore, if there is any feature that you wish to see in SGXcafe, feel free to let me know! This weekend, I spent some time working on adding new columns (e.g. annualized dividends % and annualized P&L %) to current...

Screener has always been one tool in SGXcafe that I enjoy using. With it, I can easily rank the hundreds of stocks listed in SGX based on whatever metrics I want. Which is also the reason why I decided to spend some time this weekend enhancing it. Firstly, I added a few more metrics to it. Namely: – Dividend Strength – NAV / Price – Cash / Price – Cashflow / Price There...

One of the main goals of SGXcafe is providing a portfolio management tool. It is also one of the most popular features in SGXcafe. When I added the ability for one account to have multiple portfolios, it was quickly adopted and used by hundreds of users. However, at that time, you could not look at individual portfolio for the portfolio reporting tab and a few users requested to have this feature...

A quick update on a few tweaks around SGXcafe. One of the top feature requests recently in SGXcafe is having more visualization. Specifically, the ability to see at a glance how much dividends you receive monthly (against other years) historically and pie charts to see your portfolio’s breakdown by sector, industry and companies. Feel free to suggest more if there is other information...

Recently, quite a few users have independently requested for the ability to have multiple portfolios in a single account. It seems typical to have multiple investment accounts, such as CDP, CPF, and SRS. Although this seems like a straightforward feature, it actually requires significant amount of time and effort to build because: 1. SGXcafe was built with the assumption of one portfolio per...

Initially, the portfolio sharing feature was added with the intention to allow SGXcafe users to easily share their portfolios on their own blogs as I saw many financial bloggers in Singapore sharing their well-crafted portfolios but in a technically-inefficient way (e.g. copy and paste from excel sheet to html). Interestingly, this feature is gaining popularity in SGXcafe itself, especially after...

Out of the several hundred stocks listed in SGX, how do you choose which one to buy? Use value investing to find the undervalued stocks? Find stocks with huge growth potential? Find income stocks that would give high and stable dividends for many years to come? Or…? Everyone has their own school of thought (e.g. Value investing, Growth investing, Income investing, etc) for choosing what...

These days, I have been preoccupied with making the switch to using properly licensed data from data I used to crawl from all over the internet. There are still some issues to iron out, but otherwise it is progressing quite well. Due to the switch, I had to take down several features temporarily, and one of the features that went offline was “Dividends Collected”. “Dividends...

Note: This feature is not available anymore due to licensing issues. Here is a question: How do you decide when to buy or sell a stock? I started trading in SGX a year ago, and every time I have money to invest, I always wonder “Should I buy now? But if not now, then when?” Since I didn’t have a good answer to that question, what I’ve been doing till now is simply buy the...

Note: Instead of every minute, alerts will be check daily at the end of day due to licensing issues. In an ideal world, we would be able to monitor the stock market around the clock, so that we would know the instant the stock reaches a price we’ve been gunning for, or when the stock we’ve KIV-ed at the back of our minds is approaching the ex-dividend date. Alas, we don’t live...

Are you keeping track of your portfolio by Excel or some other tedious method? There is a way to do it painlessly, and it even allows you to share it on your own site with just a single line of html code! The best part? It’s all available for free! There are many awesome financial bloggers in Singapore who share their portfolios on their blog. To me, it is to demonstrate that having a good...

In a previous article, I introduced a model which uses fundamental data to estimate Dividend Strength, P(“same or more dividends next year” | “predicted to be giving same or more dividends next year”). Numerous people have shown interest in this estimation model, therefore I decided to spend more time improving its performance. Its performance have increased from AUC (Area...

I regularly read articles from “The Motley Fool Singapore”. One person that is frequently mentioned there is John Neff. “John Neff (born 1931) is one of the best known mutual fund investors of the past 40 years, notable for his contrarian and value investing styles as well as heading Vanguard’s Windsor Fund. Windsor was the best performing mutual fund during his tenure and...

Note: This feature has since been removed due to low usage. We all have a limited amount of time. Are you spending that time wisely? And are you spending more time than you should be scrolling through Facebook? I am 🙁 In an attempt to change that, I thought that if I’m going to scroll through something on my phone, I might as well be scrolling through information on companies that I have...

Analyze Every investor has his/her favorite set of metrics that they look at when performing stock analysis and valuation. Therefore, it is difficult to decide which metric to display in SGXcafe, hence most of the time, I simply choose to display information that I am personally interested in. But I want to make SGXcafe more customizable so that it can provide better value to everyone...

Sometimes, I think I have an investing addiction. Just like people with a shopping addiction who feel compelled to go shopping whenever they have the time or money, likewise, I feel compelled to read up on stocks whenever I have the time (which was why I built SGXcafe to gather as much useful information as I can find for my ease of reading) and buy them whenever I have the money. However, I face...

There exists hundreds of stocks in SGX and deciding what to buy next is not an easy task. In part one of the “What to buy next?” article, I shared a few tools in SGXcafe designed to help me with this problem, including a new screener tool, Screener added to SGXcafe about 3 weeks ago. Screener was met with very positive response and high usage, and I received comments on how useful it...

“What to buy next?” Almost every month, I ask myself this same question whenever my salary arrives or when a good amount of dividends have accumulated. When I first started investing, I wanted a diversified portfolio which is why I built the tool, iSuggest (iSuggest is free for all registered users). It worked well at first, as it quickly brought my portfolio risk down to a minimum...

“No price is too high for a bull or too low for a bear” – an old Wall Street proverb It is a known fact that investors can be over-optimistic or over-pessimistic at times. When a series of good news happens, investors switch into the optimistic mode, often over-optimistic, and significantly bid up the price of a stock ditching any rational pricing theory whatsoever. Any high...

Recently, I read a book, A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G. Malkiel. In the book, he discussed two ways to valuate a stock – The firm-foundation theory and the castle-in-the-air theory. The firm-foundation theory assumes that each stock has a true value which is equal to the present value of all its future dividends. It is likely that you have heard something similar because this...