CategoryInvesting

As we step into the Lunar New Year, we find the stock market mirroring the Dragon’s famed volatility—powerful and unpredictable. Here’s a concise guide with suggested tools to keeping your portfolio (and heart) on course, harnessing the Dragon’s wisdom and courage as we sail through the choppy financial waters. Table of ContentsUnderstanding Volatile MarketsThe Power of...

Two days ago, TD Ameritrade Singapore abruptly announced that they will only be focusing on Accredited Investors (AI) and non-AI users have less than a month to leave or they will charge a hefty monthly account maintenance fee of USD 50 from 27 Oct 2023. This is extremely disappointing as I personally really liked their interface for trading options, and of course their cheap fees. But in...

Many of us in Singapore have an active CPF account and also maybe a property. Hence we would often get a question on how one can track their CPF and property “properly” in StocksCafe. First of all, StocksCafe is designed to track stocks hence it is not “perfect” for tracking non-stocks assets but we believe it can do a pretty decent job since it is after all simply about...

Sea Limited was established in Singapore in 2009 and is a leading tech company, with businesses in Digital Entertainment, E-commerce, and Digital Financial Services. As the stock market continues to crash as we enter 2022, the sector which is most adversely affected is the technology sector. If an investor is not knowledgeable enough, it could be both daunting and risky to venture into this space...

The U.S. CPI surged to a 40-year high, leading to market expectations that the Fed may continue to push with quicker and larger rate hikes. Despite being in a falling market, we need not focus purely on losses. We can turn our perspective around and see what is presented to us as an opportunity. Below are some investment ideas for the current market environment. Quality Stocks A rising market...

The pharmaceutical industry has been ranked among the most profitable and dynamic industries for a long time now. The hold of the prominent players in this industry has only strengthened in the market during the past few years. With the onset of COVID-19 and increased attention of the market towards pharmaceutical companies, the stock prices of medical stocks began to climb. Investors started to...

The spread of the deadly coronavirus impacted not only the day-to-day lives of everyone, but was just as harmful to the economy. Economic activity came to a grinding halt and the monetary policy strategy employed by many countries to reinvigorate the economy was to cut interest rates. Now that the situation has stabilized, interest rates are on the rise to counter the growing inflation.  It might...

The US stock market is home to some of the most famous stocks in the world, such as McDonald’s Corp (NYSE: MCD), Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX), and Nike Inc (NYSE: NKE).  Many may not know, but the US market also contains the world’s biggest companies by market capitalisation. The top four largest companies are (as of 8 September 2022): Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL), Saudi...

A slice of Chocolate Tower Truffle Cake contains 1,679 calories and 51 teaspoons of sugar, and even though it sounds (and is!) unhealthy, most of us would just consume it without much thought. What if we could “project” the impact of the chocolate cake on your overall health before your consumption? For example, what your fat percentage, arteries, or waistline would look like if you ate that...

When I speak to people these days, I get a strong sense of uncertainty about the markets and in particular stocks. I don’t blame them. If you watch or read any financial news, you are bombarded with news that would make you question your decision to own stocks. Despite these, dividends are an ideal source of income for multiple reasons. Studies show that people with multiple sources of...

Note: I am a strong believer of insurance but not insurance linked investments/savings (or however they name it). I would like to believe that I can invest my own money better 🙂 What are your thoughts on insurance? Do you actively find out about how to best insure yourself and your loved ones? Or do your insides shrink up at the mention of “insurance”, as you avert your gaze and try...

A user recently recommended a stock screener website, Uncle Stock, to me. Upon checking the site out, I found that it’s an extremely comprehensive (able to screen all major markets) and powerful (able to screen from >100 metrics) stock screener website. Overflowing with information, this website might be daunting for new investors to navigate, but will prove to be a mighty tool for those...

This seemingly simple equation is in fact not that easy to compute. I recently adjusted and optimized the calculation of Current Yield from insights and discussions that several users have brought forth. What is Current Yield? English Definition: Current yield is an investment’s annual income (interest or dividends) divided by the current price of the security (Source: Investopedia)...

It has often been advocated to avoid any stocks with a high P/E. The common argument is that you would be overpaying for hype stocks. However, overpaying or not depends on how the high P/E stocks behaves in future. For example, if high P/E stocks actually do grow at a rate that is significantly higher than low P/E stocks, then it is arguably justifiable to buy stocks with a high P/E. One real...

I have always wanted to attend the Value Investing Mastery Course (or VIMC) by BigFatPurse as I have heard many good things about it. However, as I am working and living in Tokyo, there was no opportunity for me to attend. Luckily for me, they recently released eVIMC, which is the e-learning equivalent of the popular VIMC. Personally, I have always preferred e-learning over physical lectures as...

BeatTheMarket is a mini-game that I built in SGXcafe. 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’ve decided, SGXcafe will immediately tell you on the next screen if that stock beat the index one year later. If you have not tried it, I encourage you to try...

As many of you would know, I initially built SGXcafe for my personal investment needs. Hence many tools here exist because I use them personally for my own investing. iAssist and iSuggest were tools that I built in an attempt to help me diversify my portfolio as it was rather challenging to decide which stock to add to my portfolio among the several hundred stocks listed in SGX. However, there is...

Recently, I finally managed to convince my wife to start investing directly using her own account. That is, she now has to decide for herself what and when to buy/sell. I did this partly so that she can directly feedback to me about what features needs to be improved or added to SGXcafe for users like her. I’ll let her tell you about her experience using SGXcafe. — Unlike Evan, I have...

The company that I am currently working for in Tokyo has a cafeteria that serves free lunch to all employees, hence during lunchtime, we would get together for lunch and chat. Occasionally, the topic about money management would come up, and to date, I have yet to find a Japanese colleague who invests in the stock market, citing reasons of either finding it too risky, lack of knowledge, or more...

Previously, I wrote an article about some simple analysis I did of companies listed in SGX that pays dividends. The main conclusion of that article was as follows: 1) If a company is giving out dividends this year, the chance that it would give out same or more dividends (absolute amount per share) next year was 60%. 2) If a company is giving out dividends this year, the chance that it would give...

Last week, when I shared my portfolio in another article. I received comments privately from several people such as “50 stocks in your portfolio?!?! I think 30 should provide more than enough diversification”, “Have you heard of Warren Buffet’s 20 slot rules?”, “Why are you holding so many different stocks?” etc. Well, there are a few reasons to this. 1)...

Although 2015 is not my first year investing in the stock market, it is my first time investing in the Singapore market. Previously, I was focusing on the US market mainly due to two reasons: 1) The minimum to invest in many of the Singapore companies was relatively high (compared to the US) due to the minimum purchase of 1000 shares. I was a poor student then hence this was a fairly big...

As 2015 is coming to an end, I am interested to see how well I did, especially since this is the first year where I had sufficient surplus to invest seriously in the stock market. I am especially interested to know how well I fared against a form of benchmark. In a previous article, I suggested that an easy and good way for anyone to start investing is via ES3, an Index ETF tracking STI. The...

One factor that affects whether I purchase a stock or not is how much dividends it gave out last year, and for how many years it has been doing so. This is because when I purchase stocks, I am hoping mainly to benefit from dividend gains rather than capital gains. One obvious question would be: how much can we rely on the dividends that was paid out in the past to predict future dividends? One...

Recently, a friend of mine sent me an article about how you should create a “total portfolio” that takes your career into account as part of the portfolio. That is, if you have a stable job, you should buy risky stocks so that you would have opportunities for huge gains since you are unlikely to get large pay raises. Likewise, if you are an entrepreneur, you should hold safe bonds...

As the idiom goes, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. It is common knowledge that diversification is very important when it comes to investing. However, the questions are: How to diversify?How diversified are you?How do you measure diversification? Google “How to diversify” and there are countless articles out there “teaching” people how to...

Everyone has a limited time on earth. Are you making full use of your time? Are you truly doing what you want with your limited time? If money is no concern, would you still be working in the same place where you are now? I would not be. Don’t get me wrong; I do have a wonderful job. It pays well, management is great, colleagues are awesome and the workplace is always full of fun. The...

Investing in the stock market is often deemed as risky and difficult by many. Here, I would show how a simple strategy would perform for a someone who does not know much about the stock market and is very unlucky when it comes to investing. Firstly, for someone without much knowledge in investing, index investing is ideal because it gives good diversification with just one stock. Also, rather...

I generally prefer a buy and hold approach. It is because I view shares of companies as entitlement to profits, and profits of good companies would only increase over time even if their short-term share price fluctuates. Also, capital gain is not recurring income whereas dividend gain is, and the latter is important to me since I am investing to retire. Of course, the question would be how to...