Rigid Investor

This post is a break from finance topics. We took a short trip to Bangkok recently on a free and easy arrangement. Bought tickets and booked a hotel stay though trip.com and we flew off on a Thursday, with planned return on Sunday. There wasn't any real reason to go Bangkok. The city is not too far away and flights are cheap. Two way plane tickets are about $1300 for five travellers. Three nights stay for 2 rooms are about $600. My wife heard from Class 95 that the Muttons visited Thailand's Safari World and had a good time. So, we decided to check out the attraction as well. We arrived in Bangkok at the Suvarnabhumi airport at around 3pm. I cannot recall I had been to the airport before. The place is crowded, especially near the exit of the arrival hall. Didn't order any food in flight, so we went looking for food straightaway on arrival. From Google, we located the "Magic" food court, which has more wallet friendly prices. After finding a table, we figured how t...

I've decided to start a monthly commentary of the recent market levels, the state of the economy as per my reading of global news and provide a summary and a personal thought of the current state of affairs. I've been doing that in a short regular journal in an Excel file for myself. It provides me a very useful account of my thoughts and the reason of my various financial decisions at the point of writing. I reckon it'll help me in the future, as a review of how I was wrong or correct, and serves a reminder to my future self on why I should always be passively invested at most times, and hopefully  all the time . As of writing on 8th October, the market had suffered a mini drawdown. S&P retraced to 4300 levels, with YTD gains of ~12%. Nasdaq pulled back to 13400 levels with YTD gains of ~28%. Forward PE from WSJ is 19.2 and 21.1 respectively. Both at slightly elevated levels, meaning valuation is not cheap. Of course, as we will eventually understand, no one can predic...

Market returns are usually defined by the benchmarks e.g. STI index returns. Active investors should not be satisfied with achieving market returns. Significant efforts are undertaken to pick stocks and customize a portfolio. This must be compensated by above market returns. Otherwise, isn't the time spent unwarranted? How do we pick stocks? This is as simple as entering the stock code and clicking the buy button. Or it can be as hard as doing balance sheet analysis, profitability forecasts, valuation calculations, industry research, peer comparisons, studying of historical and forward trends. Each topic by itself may require some significant technical knowledge and is not easily available for the average investor. However, all the effort incurred to determine that a stock is worth a place in our portfolio doesn't guarantee that it will outperform the market. Unsystematic risk is always present. The industry might be hit by black swan event. An obvious example during t...

The SG 2020 election results are out. The outcome is a historic victory for the Worker's Party, claiming one SMC and two GRCs. In a certain way, this election might be considered as a "defeat" to the PAP. Popular vote fell closed to all time lows of nearing 60%. There is some soul searching to be done for the ruling party. As voters becomes more educated, the current ways of reaching out to them have not worked well. Top down approaches are definitely outdated. Advanced concepts like civil liberties are increasingly valued. There can be more patience, respect and opportunities for the opponents with the necessary qualities and calibre. The current dominant party system confers an advantage of pushing key policies that works, more efficiently. The disadvantage is the unchallenged nature of passing bills advantageous to perpetuate the system. As the country's democracy matures, perhaps the natural evolution is to lean towards having a two or multi-party system where by ...

The word "disconnect" to describe the link between the market and the economy has been quite common nowadays. The stock market had ran in the opposite direction of the economy. It is an obvious conflict for any investor reading the current situation. On one hand, the world's greatest shutdown is still in progress. On the other hand, the market continues a vertical climb out of a hole it fell into. As most people believe, the market leads the economy. Meaning that if we translate the market action into a prediction of the future economy, we will be out of the woods within the next few months? Frankly, I am clueless. I'm not sure if anyone can answer this question confidently, given that there is no precedent of a virus like COVID-19 in the modern era. I always like to understand the market sentiment. Market sentiment is important because it gives us a perspective of the crowd's behavior, and how the crowd is moving is quite critical to investment decisions of succe...

I used to be on the DBS cashback program. I already had salary crediting and a housing loan with the bank. With a token spending on the card, I had met the minimum 3 category criteria to receive about $45 worth or cashback per month. The rest of my funds were parked at either Maybank iSAVvy or StandChart e$aver, both which offers higher interest on fresh funds deposits. Rotating funds between the two accounts once every 2 months kept the "fresh" status. However, interest rates have fell significantly this year. Last checked, the 1-month SIBOR is only at 0.5%. Correspondingly, deposits at the accounts are returning only 1.3% for iSAVvy and 1.1% for the e$avers for amounts of $50k - 200k. For the DBS Multiplier, the interest rates gets a 0.2% boost when one more category is added. It's easy to add the investment category by setting up a RSP (Regular Savings Plan) to purchase the Nikko AM STI ETF monthly. Minimum amount is $100 only. Sales charge is 0.82%, meaning that about...