Impending US Rate Hike

This Wednesday's rate hike decision is almost fully priced into the markets.

A hike is almost a given and what would like move the markets will be the rhetoric that accompanies the hike.

IF for some reason the Fed can date not to hike, expect the USD to crumble while equity markets to fly.

Can't wait.

Oil @ $36

This is currently too cheap to ignore.

If oil gets any cheaper, the world will turn into a wasteland because everyone will just max out the use of oil for energy consumption.

Have just initiated a long position with a view that oil will bottom out before it hits $30 and a near term realistic target of $50.

True Colours

Another weekend, another training session.

Yet a very fulfilling one at that.

Here are some key takeaways.

True Colours

People are categorized into 4 colours
1) Gold -
2) Blue - Relationship
3) Green - Competence
4) Orange - Freedom

Trust

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy)/Self-Interest
T = (C+R+I)/SI

Learn

L = Light
E = Exploring
A = Adjustment
R =
N = Next

PPVV

A key takeaway at sales training yesterday was learning how to find out the PPVV of every prospect you meet.

Passion

Pain

Values

Vision

Find that out and you would be able to better understand that person.

Definitely something that's applicable to our everyday life.

3Ws & 3Cs

Some things I have learnt last week

W1. What do we want to achieve and why?

W2. Where are we now?

W3. What next?

C1. Clarity

C2. Climate

C3. Competence

Applicable in almost all that we do in life.

Very useful.

Big Brother China

Back when I discussed the idea of The Collaborative Economy, I forgot to mention one other takeaway. One which I recently remembered.

That Tencent and Alibaba have more than 800 million users is a perfect depiction of the danger of social media and individual privacy.

Here you have the perfect setup where these social media groups with hundreds of millions of users (Facebook included, though far more restricted, ironically) who do EVERYTHING in their daily lives via some form of app linked to these mega companies.

From payments of taxi rides, online purchases, banking, bills, booking of tickets and so many other transactions. From linked blogs, blogs, weblogs and statuses, comments and likes. From investments, credit cards, insurance, financial-linked accounts and funds transfers. From every single private detail like birthdays, family members, daily activities, actual locations, account numbers, ID and addresses. The Chinese big two have ALL these data.

Let that sink in for a moment.

Now think about how this data can easily be used. From credit scores, outstanding payments, loans, and large purchases to the more scary like voting sentiment, consumer sentiment, dissent, criticism, political bias, and location-monitoring.

This is the really scary part.

What if every Chinese citizen is given a certain overall 'score' churned out by all this data and this 'score' is subsequently used to predict and decide the future of every individual? What if an individual is unable to work in the government sector no matter his educational qualifications? What if a whole family cannot qualify for certain rebates simply based on one family member's political criticisms? What if a glass ceiling appears even before you started the first day in your job?

The implications are endless. 

There is much good such data could  achieve in the right hands and mindset, yet in the wrong hands, this could also easily lead to demographical discrimination.

Something very interesting to ponder about.

Terrorism And REITs

On the back of the brazen terrorist attacks in Paris the night before, it appears that the atmosphere of fear created has reverberated all over the globe.

From an investment perspective, this atmosphere of fear will affect our investments as well. From the number of people staying away from crowded places, to general avoidance of large foreign branded places, this will become the new normal.

Stocks such as REITs and property owners of retail spaces will likely be affected. Particularly in Singapore, where a lot of us are used to thronging malls, there might be a concerted effort to avoid the mall crowds in case an attack happens.

There would be avoidance of malls in general, cinemas, taking trains to popularly crowded stations, maybe even concert and sporting events.

While we try our best to adjust to this new normal, going to work in our usual transport modes, we bear in mind that we could reduce the probability of being caught in an attack by avoiding large-scale events and places of large crowds.

Hence it is not the best time to invest into REITs right now IMHO.

Trade safe.

CAIA

And I thought I was too old for this...

Here we go!!!

A New Resolution II

Following my resolution to focus on savings, I am proud to say that I am currently on track and have kept to the resolution.

For me, this is not an easy thing given my knack of thinking that uninvited money is opportunity cost.

I have actually saved quite abit this month. Definitely more than what I would normally save, given how prudent I've been in the last few weeks.

Let's hope this will continue for awhile at least.

A New Resolution

Given my poor investing performance this year, I have made a new resolution from today.

I will NOT invest my funds in any products or asset classes anymore UNTIL I have accumulated $10,000 in cash savings in each of my four savings accounts.

Only funds from offloaded holdings or dividends will be allowed for channelling into invesments.

I will update the blog again when this target has been reached.

Good luck to me.

Risk Aversion

Recently, I'm beginning to learn that everything we've learnt in the investment world is wrong.

Risk aversion is the arch nemesis of investing.

It used to be constantly shoved down our throats that investing was the only way to fight inflation. Rather than keep our money is savings accounts earning pathetic interest rates, we were far better off investing that money for a historic return of X% that would stave off inflation and hence keep up with rising consumer prices.

Yet the ability to save is a very strong virtue. Given our Asian roots, we are far better savers than people in the west. 

And maybe it is this ability that has withstood the test of time.

Saving and letting cold hard cash lay idle, is not the worst idea in the world. Because many a times, the best trade we did, was the trade we didn't make.

At least when you let your cash lay idle, you do not suffer the anxiety and worry of your investment going wrong (which, believe me, happens a lot). Even better yet, you do not suffer WHEN the investment goes wrong and end up with you suffering loses instead.

Save well, and save for a rainy day.

The Collaborative Economy

The collaborative economy is defined as initiatives based on horizontal networks and participation of a community. It is built on "distributed power and trust within communities as opposed to centralized institutions" (Rachel Botsman), blurring the lines between producer and consumer.

I was lucky enough to attend Rachel Botsman exclusive event talk in Singapore about the collaborative economy last week. And what a brilliant mindfuck that was. I think everyone in the room was equally impressed by the level of 'out-of-the-box' thinking she promoted.

Here are the areas she identified which were ripe for disruption.

> Complex Experiences

> Waste

> Broken Trust

> Redundant Intermediaries

> Limited Access

People I spoke to felt that her talk revolutionized their way of thinking, inspired them to push boundaries and encouraged more critical thinking towards disruption. The disruption of industry was actually the topic of the day, particularly in the FinTech space.

Several ideas put forward really set up some critical thinking in that room:

- We have always been used to the idea of B2B, and B2C. But C2C? That's what the collaborative economy is about.

- Monetization of space and vacancy. Ideas and companies like Bla Bla Car, TaskRabbit, Airbnb, Uber and Rent-a-pet are the ideas of the future.

- The concept of turning Social Networking into Service Networking and monetizing this.

- Trust is the most valuable commodity of the future. And monetizing trust will be crucial for the collaborative economy to be efficient.

- The new world order demands Access over Ownership. People don't value ownership of any asset as much as access to that asset as and when they feel like it. Hence if you can provide access without the high cost of ownership, then you will unlock the opportunity cost of sinking time, effort and money acquiring ownership of this asset.

- The smartphone is the remote control to the physical world. All businesses have to go into technology to survive.

- The concept of finding the PAIN that people are experiencing and solve it!

- The collaborative economy has created an environment where one of the most valuable hotel chains owns no properties (Airbnb), one of the most valuable transport companies owns no vehicles (Uber), one of the largest online content providers does not produce its own content (Facebook) and so on. That, to me, was mind-blowing.

- Another speaker also covered the underlying power of Alibaba and Tencent.  With a database of about 800 million users. They could easily turn into one of the largest financial powerhouses in the world simply by monetizing this user base.

Otherwise you can easily Google and read more about the collaborative economy.

I even managed to get a picture with Rachel Botsman herself!

Property Prices In Districts 15 & 16

Are slowly coming down!

A quick search has yielded some interesting results so far.

I firmly believe there is more weakness to come and if patient enough, we will be able to find some bargains.

USD Strength And The Rate Hike

Will they or won't they?

I'm talking about the U.S. Fed hiking rates this month. 

The world is anticipating a rate hike, and yet there is just so much going against such a move all of a sudden. The USD is becoming so strong that many are already saying it is TOO strong. All major currencies are still going ahead with QE (Euro, Chinese Yuan, Japanese Yen) and if the rate hike goes overboard, growth in the U.S. could be adversely affected.

Recently initiated a position in AUDUSD @ 0.6950. Yet it appears there is even further downside in the AUD as commodity prices continue to stay weak, China is slowing down, and the USD prepared for a rate hike.

Yet I am fairly confident the AUD cannot allow its currency to devalue so far below 70c.

Really don't know if this trade will work out but let us see.

Those Little Dark Clouds...

So many potential flashpoints all over the world.

- Greece is facing another round of impending elections 

- Turkey is facing war on several fronts

- The Middle East is still a mess with the ISIS problem

- Ukraine still a mess 

- Tianjin, China mega explosion 

- Bangkok, Thailand bomb blasts

- Malaysia mega corruption scandals involving Najib and 1MDB

- Koreas at most highly militarized state, exchange of artillery fire

- China stock market crashing

- Oil prices crashing

- Dow Jones down 3% last Friday night

It looks like a mega storm is brewing.

Be safe.

FX Binary Options

Lately been playing with FX binary options.

They are essentially gambling tools which is just a bet whether prices will hit within a certain timeframe.

Yes, I am gambling, and this is not good.

But from a cost perspective, they are cheap. A single contract minimum sized binary option costs between $6 - $94 with the chance to earn $100 if you get your bet right. Hence technically if you bought a low-odds binary option costing $10, you'd potentially multiply your bet by 10X! I guess this is where the draw of binary options lies.

Have to try to stop or reduce my betting sizes.

The Best Platform To Trade Singapore Stocks

Right now, it is the Saxotrader by Saxo Capital Markets.

- Commission is only 0.12% with $15 minimum

- Zero Custodian Fees for SGX stocks

Of course there needs to be the negatives to be weighed in:

- Inactivity Fee of USD$100 there is not a single trade within 180 calendar days

- Stocks are 3rd-party custodian-owned so it is not linked to CDP

Given that people normally brand Saxo as expensive, they are actually beating out a lot of the competition for those in the know. US stocks are at $9.90 for the first 1,000 shares (note the 0.12% pa custodian fee though), EURUSD trades as low as 0.8 in spread and Futures start at $6 per contract. 

Not the cheapest of the cheapest, but a good platform with many good functions and tools at pretty competitive commissions.

Of course please do your own due diligence and fact-finding before making any decisions to open an account with them. This is not advice or recommendation of any sort.

En Bloc Potential Or Not

This old condo I live in now has got tons of old folks. I hear that a lot of them have even lived here since day one, back in the seventies when this place was still a HUDC.

The oldies are very nice and friendly. Many a times if you're stuck in the lift with one of them, they'd be the first to initiate some form of polite conversation. It's very informal.

Yet this begs the question.

When you're already so old, chances are you won't want to move out of this place no matter how much money some cash-rich developer could pay you right? Home is where the heart is and these people have lived here all their lives, their comforts are all here. What would abit more money do for them? Money cannot buy the familiarity of this place they've lived so long, nor can it buy the old neighbours and friends they've grown to know and grow up with? Heck many of them have even seen their friends kids grow up and move out.

So what en bloc potential are we talking about afterall? 

The vote will never come to pass in this old town. Probably over their dead bodies.

Accordia Golf Trust (AGT)

So following my previous post, I have taken the big leap.

Accordia Golf Trust (AGT) is my first big dive into the dividend machines.

Why Accordia?

Well I have been looking around for a high dividend yielding trust and for what it's worth, I have managed to read up enough from alot of financial bloggers who have covered this stock favourably based on current entry price.

Here are a few inspirations that I got for the AGT trade idea (all of whom are very respectable financial blogs that I regularly read):

1) Singapore Stock Market News
2) S-Reit Investment Blog
3) A Path To Forever Financial Freedom
4) A Singaporean Stocks Investor (ASSI)

They always say in stock investing, if you suck at doing your own research on a company, then research on other people doing research on that company.

Hope this pays off!

HUAT AH!

Dividend Machines?

Is it time to get back into the dividend machines again?

I am currently looking at getting into:

1) Lippo Malls Indonesia Retail Trust
2) Accordia Golf Trust

Both of which are yielding >8% in dividends a year right now, as well as:

3) Singapore Press Holdings
4) Either M1 or Starhub

Both of which are yielding >5% in dividends a year right now.

Now sure if this will be a good move.

Marine Parade Old Condos

Along Marine Parade Road is a bunch on prime condos that were built on reclaimed land on the 70s and 80s.

They are: Neptune Court, Mandarin Gardens, Lagoon View, Laguna Park, Bayshore Park

All these properties have on thing in common. They are sitting on one of the hottest pieces of land in Singapore with very good en bloc potential.

That's why even though they are leasehold with maybe less than 60 years left in their leases, their values have actually maintained very well.

Plus they are all a 5min walk to the East Coast beach.

Personal Income Tax

Haven't had much time to blog much lately.

It's the income tax season unfortunately. So after paying my dues towards nation building, I have not much spare cash lying around to invest.

This might be a good thing given the current Greek crisis and A50 collapse.

Some liquid spares on the side should be useful when more opportunities come. And I think some good ones will come sooner rather than later.

A50

This is what the Chinese government does when the Chinese stock market collapses, to prevent people from jumping off buildings.

In China people mortgage their homes to dump into stocks at 10x leverage. So when the market collapses >5%, which these days seems to be fairly common, you see a lot of jumpers on the tallest buildings in the city.

The current PE of an average listed company is 300! That's how much of a bubble we're currently in now.

Grexit

This is the latest term that's hitting the investment world right now.

As if this Greek tragedy of a story has become an overplayed record, the latest development seems pretty serious.

If Greece really leaves the European Union, all hell is going to break loose in the investment world.

Particularly for securities and derivatives, what will Greek stocks, bonds and other exchange traded products be worth? In Euros? In the old Drachma?

What new currency will rise from this crisis?

Who knows?

We will have to wait and see...

Long Time No Post

It's been a long time since I last posted. Hardly could do any investment analyses since I was so busy in Shanghai.

Anyway it was good as well since zero investing equals a lot of money saved!

FXCM

Recently invested in FXCM stock.

After the whole Swiss Franc saga, FXCM had problems meeting its capital requirements. Then came a loan deal from Leucadia National Corp which sort of rescued it. You can read more of what has happened on its wikipedia site.

I just think they have a very good business model and are still making tons of money.

Hopefully I'm right, haha.

Prospect Capital (PSEC) Risks Ahead

So I've been holding this stock for the longest time. It pays a very good monthly dividend of >13% annualised.

Since my last posting, the stock has been holding steady within the $8-$9 range. Recently there has been new developments that may be cause for concern.

Here's the view from Seeking Alpha and here's another from The Motley Fool.

Hopefully it can continue to move upwards.

FX Trading - Repeat Offenders

One extremely bad habit that I still cannot seem to rid myself off is having that indiscipline to prevent history from repeating itself. 

This has gone on for very long time.

I know I trade too frequently. I know trade too large sizes. I know I trade irrationally. Yet every time I consciously cut this down and reduce the above mistakes to a bare minimum, it's just rears it's ugly head once in a while to make me regret all over again.

Granted, with my low level of determination I have somehow managed to reduce the frequency of such recurrences, but each time it happens again I just feel like beating myself up all over.

I really need to stop this somehow before I end up losing my pants.

Self-discipline and emotional control, an FX trader's worst nightmare.

Charisma Energy Services Update III

Since my last Charisma Energy posting, its current price has dwindled to the current 0.022/23

How terrible!

It has dropped below the 0.025 mark where the warrants strike price is. As such the warrants are definitely worthless now and it would make sense that sellers will now want to turn the support into a resistance level, to prevent the share float from expanding by >10%. This would mean we will see sub-0.025 prices for at least till end 2016.

WTF.

Anyway, here are it's latest unaudited results for FY2014. Probably the catalyst for the breach of support.

Long XAUUSD

It's been in the doldrums for so long.

The time has come for Gold to make a comeback!



Huat ah!

Property - Sengkang Is Too Crowded

After 7 years of living in Sengkang and having blogged about how densely populated it is (read: here, here, here and here), I have finally moved out of Sengkang. And what a relief it is.

Sengkang is definitely too crowded.

Even at this stage of moving out, there are still stacks upon stacks of uncompleted HDBs and condominiums still under construction. Even at current capacity, the roads are visibly heavy (just look at the morning and evening jams), there are very few inlets and outlets into Sengkang and Punggol, and public transport mass is saturated (trains are full at Sengkang and Punggol stations).

I wonder if the next General Elections will see a rezoned Sengkang being it’s own SMC (Single Member Constituency).

I had this conversation recently where given what we have correctly projected of Sengkang some five years ago, the next five will also be fairly simple to project.

Basically as the various HDB dwellers (akin to ourselves previously) meet their MOP (Minimum Occupation Period) and can finally sell their BTO HDBs, the more affluent ones will almost definitely move out, being sick of the population density. This means that those who remain will be of the lower income bracket or those who choose to stay on and bear with the dense crowds. Couple that with the oversupply of flats, prices of apartments will be cheaper than most of Singapore and will be more affordable to the lower income. Finally add the upcoming hospital attracting older folk coming up and you can see where I’m going.

Sengkang has the potential of turning into a slum in ten years.

Not that I want it to turn into one, but if the government doesn’t do anything about it (or worse yet, is deliberately forecasting it!), then this is what Sengkang will become.

There is no better time to move out of this town.

FX Trading - Trading Smaller Sizes

Of course in FX trading every broker drums into you how using leverage of 50 - 200 times is a key selling point of trading FX. Yet it is actually the key reason why the vast majority of traders lose money. However, if you've read reputable educational sites on FX trading, the key takeaway is actually to trade no more than 5% of your account value at all times. This equates to a maximum of 20x leverage at most.

In FX terminology,

1 Standard Lot = 100,000 in nominal value of the currency pair where 1 pip usually equates to about $10 of the currency equivalent.
1 Mini Lot - 10,000 in nominal value of the currency pair where 1 pip usually equates to about $1 of the currency equivalent.
1 Micro Lot - 1,000 in nominal value of the currency pair where 1 pip usually equates to about $0.10 of the currency equivalent.

It is very important to know this because some brokers impose minimum trade sizes in order to coax traders to trader in larger volumes.

With that said, since the turn of the year, I have switched from trading in Standard lots to Mini and even Micro lots at times. This is the primary reason that firstly, I am hardly losing any money in FX trading in 2015 (touch wood!), and more importantly, I can concentrate on appreciating other things around me like my family and my hobbies without feeling the strain and stress of having to constantly check FX prices.

It is well known that the biggest indicator that stress and strain has gotten the better of you when trading FX, is the frequency in which you feel the urge to check FX prices. And these days I hardly check them any more than once in the morning, once in the afternoon and once at night. Truly a far easier task by far.

So I urge all traders to review their trade sizes and not fall into the leverage trap that I've emerged from.

Trade safe.

USD Has Too Much Strength?

Today an idea was put into my head.

If every other major country aside from the US is perusing monetary easing policies, then just how strong can the USD be before it all implodes? 

Is the US of A able to stomach a currency that is far stronger than any in the world? Even before it has even had it's first rate hike from 0%?

Maybe the FED might surprise every by NOT raising rates at all this year?

Let's see.

2015 Dividend Accumulator I

Continuing the Dividend Accumulator series, this is my first post for 2015!

Hoping that there will be many more to come!!!

26 Jan $86.10

Total Dividends for 2015: $86.10
Average per Month: $7.18

Personal Financial Investment Seminar 2015 Review

Last year I attended the Value Investing Summit 2014 and decided to give it a miss this year. In it's place, I chanced upon the Personal Financial Investment Seminar 2015, organized by Wealth Directions and cost a mere fraction of the VIS 2014 price tag. This was held from 12pm to 6pm yesterday at the NTUC Auditorium (Raffles Place).

Was it worth it? Hell yes it was.

This was touted as a blogger event where a few prominent finance bloggers were invited to speak. It was an interesting concept because I've never encountered it being done before, with such a large collection of influential personalities in our small community.

Something I have been left very impressed about this event is the simple fact that there wasn't much hard selling or pushing of any products (I'm looking at you with a frown CIMB, although I kinda understand) and there wasn't all that silly cheapo money giveaways nor secret snatch and grab seminar space yada yada, for those freebie-dwelling aunties and uncles.

At $8 per person, it was unsurprising that the tickets for the event sold out almost immediately, way back in October of last year.

So here's a quick review of the speakers and events on the day.

We came early because I wanted to snag good seats, so by 12.30pm we were seated in the auditorium. Dr Tee from Wealth Directions was presenting on the use of ShareInvestor.com's stock screener. It was very interesting. I might just buy into Keppel Corp in the coming weeks.

At 1pm the event started proper and here were the speakers:

1) Jared Seah - singaporemanofleisure.blogspot.sg
He spoke very cryptically about his topic, "Who Are You?". It was quite deep, and was about imagining ourselves to be zebras on the African savannah doing an exercise evaluating where in a herd you (the audience) were at. I think he wanted to illustrate and help us discover where we were as retailers in the investment world. He gets an A for effort to be creative and interesting, but a C for delivery. I think half the audience absolutely caught no ball. He blogs about it over here.

2) Calvin Yeo - drwealth.com
He spoke about financial planning based investing. I think he was just trying to sell the DrWealth platform for personal portfolio use to the audience. Didn't really get much out of his time slot to be honest.

3) Lionel Yeo - cheerfulegg.com
Wah this guy was so handsome and suave that even the wifey was mesmerized once he started talking. I have to admit Lionel really carries himself very well and is very presentable. He wasn't all just good looks either. His presentation on index investing (mainly ETFs) and the 80/20 rule - where 20% of your activities give you 80% of the results, was very enlightening. I learnt a few things here that I felt I would like to apply with my current portfolio.

4) Leries Goh - CIMB
CIMB was a key sponsor of the event, so certainly they'd be given a speaker slot. Firstly, this lady Leries is damn bloody HOT! She's chio, and sounds like she knows a thing or two. Unfortunately, she spoke with an agenda (CIMB obviously), so we decided to walk out on her halfway to go for a late lunch. I cannot stand broker macro talk and reccos because I get blasted with enough of this on a daily basis.

5) Alvin Chow - bigfatpurse.com
Alvin spoke about another concept which left me very impressed. The concept of conservative net asset value (CNAV) approach to stock picking. I felt like I picked up a thing or two on improving my stock picking skills from him. One key takeaway was to be selective when finding undervalued stocks that could be value traps. Selecting low Price-to-Book (PB) but being selective on what's counted in the books, if the very difference in using CNAV instead of just NAV. Here's his take on the event proper.

6) Dr Tee - Wealth Directions
Here he as again. Yet I felt like I could hear him talk all day. His concept of maximizing profits by buying at the very very low and selling at the very very high, is not that unattainable afterall. My key takeaways were aplenty during his talk, and they were probably the most value for money during this seminar. Here're some key points:
Maximizing profits in stocks
- Find the giant
- Wait for the giant to fall down
- Help the giant get up
- Say goodbye when the giant is strong again
This sound silly but if you sat through his talk, it all makes perfect sense (albeit metaphorically)
Also another one was
When to sell > When to buy > What to buy
Lastly, the CAGR %optimism line.

Finally there was a panel discussion where everyone went back on stage and showed their portfolio allocations and then took questions from the floor.

Once again, was the event worth it? Hell yes it was.

And if they had it again next year, you bet I'll buy my tickets 3mths in advance again.

The SNB Floor

For 3 years the Swiss National Bank (SNB) has spent billions maintaining the 1.2000 mark on the EURCHF.

Suddenly this evening in a deliberate move after months of reassurances, te SNB does an about turn and decides not to maintain that floor.

Suddenly all hell breaks loose, EURCHF tanks to a low of 0.84 (40% drop) before now recovering to around 1.02.

Whole market is in turmoil and only just begun to pick up the pieces. 

The next few days will be rather interesting. 

Standard Chartered Online Share Trading Account

So Standard Chartered is closing down it's equities business.

I saw this coming a very long time ago.

At 0.2% commissions, they were the 2nd cheapest in the industry (Saxo is 1st at 0.15%). There were no custodian charges, and there was a good range of markets to choose from (JP, AU, HK, US, UK).

Downside was a shit platform but it was still connected to your online bank account which makes it rather handy.

Now I have to make plans to shift all my shareholdings elsewhere :(

Well looks like it was too good to be true.

Huge Costs Projections In Two Years

This post shares some exceptional cost projections in two years time by yours truly. It is just to help myself be aware of the influx of cost consumables required and hopefully I can be disciplined with saving right now.

Come 2017, I will have several very,very big ticket items to purchase.

1) Property
The current plan given the falling property market is to stay put or rent for the next two years. By end 2016, the housing market will hopefully be flooded with cheap property, and we can begin our search for our 2nd property. This objective has been on the cards for quite a long time between the wifey and I already. Easily downpayment for a condo will come up to at least SGD300,000.

2) Car
With my dear little xiao hong due to be scrapped at the end of 2016, there will be a definite need to change to a new set of wheels. Nothing much to see here. Need to set aside SGD150,000.

Hopefully these are the only big ticket items I'll need to save up for!!! It's big enough man!

I'll really need all the various prongs of cash accumulation to really play out as planned. From salaried income, dividend income, disciplined savings, and hopefully capital gains.

Praying that it all plays out to plan.

Investment In Funds

Recently I invested into two funds, hoping that smarter fund managers can help me grow my funds better that what I can do. Specifically I invested into two dividend paying funds particularly for yield.

1) First State Dividend Advantage
Wow, this is such an old fund that almost 10 years ago when I was an RM in the retail banks, this was one of the popular products to sell. I have invested in this fund before and now I'm doing it again. The investment objective of the First State Dividend Advantage is to provide investors with regular distributions and long-term growth from high dividend yielding equity investments focused in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan). The investment policy of the Sub-Fund is to invest all or substantially all of its assets in the First State Asian Equity Plus Fund, a sub-fund under the Dublin registered umbrella fund known as First State Global Umbrella Fund plc. The Underlying Fund invests primarily in securities in the Asia Pacific region (excluding Japan). Such companies will be selected on the basis of their high dividend yields and their potential for long-term capital appreciation. It pays a targeted annual dividend of 4%.

2) HSBC GIF - Global Emerging Mkts Bd Fund
This is my first time venturing into this fund. I like it that it's risk classification is far lower than what I normally would do. The Fund seeks total return mainly through a diversified portfolio of investment grade and non-investment grade rated fixed income (e.g.bonds) and other similar securities either issued by companies which have their registered offices in emerging markets around the world, primarily denominated in US dollars, or which are issued or guaranteed by governments, government agencies and supranational bodies of emerging markets. It pays a targeted annual dividend of 5%.