No more TACO trade?

 

The headline says it all. Trump threatens tariffs against Korea. Korea market hits record high. If the market is now ignoring tariff threats the TACO trade is no more....

TACO

 

Barely one day after threatening tariffs, Trump walks back his tariff threats. At least I bought VUSD and some Lion Global All Seasons fund.

Finally a Dip in the market

 

It took more threats by Trump of Greenland-related Tariffs to cause a market dip which is of course a buying opportunity. I bought VUSD last night and will continue buying throughout the week. Hopefully the market doesn't reverse too quickly.

This is obviously a "TACO" trade (Trump Always Chickens Out) and I'm not sure he has a sound basis for imposing tariffs (they will of course make something up). 

3010: Benefiting from the Chip Rally

 

Since you need chips and memory for AI, it is perhaps no surprise that chip stocks have been rallying (including Intel, which I had exited some time back). One beneficiary of this rally has been the ishares Asia ETF (3010.HK) which I have been buying every month via RSP and fortuitously have been deploying my excess HK$ dividends into this counter as well (create a separate RSP which deducts from my HK$ in addition to the RSP which deducts from my S$ account).

The reason why I have been favouring 3010 had actually nothing to do with chip stocks but with the fact that it had a sizeable India component (18%) and I thought I had better get some more exposure to India just in case India becomes a beneficiary of tariff wars at China's expense. I viewed TSMC's weightage at 13.43% of the whole ETF as a negative thing (overconcentration in ETFs is not good)  that I could live with but as it turns out, TSMC prices has moved up by a lot for a megacap.

My plan is to continue monthly RSP because it provides geographical diversification with exposure to India, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.

ActiveSG credits for Body Fat check

 

Singaporeans have been given $100 of ActiveSG credits which expire on 31 Dec 2026. If you make a transaction, the credits will be rolled over to 2027. Browsing the things you can spend ActiveSG credits on, I noticed that you could do a Body Composition test with the Inbody 770. As I recently purchased an Omron Body Composition scale, I thought it would be useful to get a reference reading from the Inbody. The procedure is quite simple, just go to the ActiveSG website to signup with Singpass and the $7 is auto-deducted from your ActiveSG credits. You get an A4 printout of your results to take home.

Based on the Inbody report, I have a body fat of 15.9% and correspondingly low visceral fat which is good. Searching the internet for a "good" body fat percentage, the American Council for Exercise chart says that this is within the "fitness" range. For reference, the Omron reports 17.7% so its off by 1.8%, which I guess is an error one can live with for a $125 consumer product.

The DEXA scan, which is a series of low powered X-rays, is the gold standard for body fat analysis but it costs a few hundred dollars, whereas the Inbody scan I don't have to pay any cash. I plan to do it again in 6 months. 

Dividends Collected in 2025 dropped 9.5%

 

My dividends collected dropped in 2025. You win some and you lose some. Fortunately, the amount is still above my 2023 level so 2024 was probably a one off occurrence (maybe some capital return/special dividends skewed the figure, or I'm just bad at math). That leaves me with $19.9k passive income for 2025.

2025 Year in Review

Part I: Investment Returns

2025 was a good year for investors, even better than 2024 which was already pretty good. Even though only SCB and IBKR give me YTD returns, based on some rough estimates, 2025 is the first year I have achieved $1m+ in capital gain from investments. This does not mean that I only picked winners as I have losers like NVO and NKE which are nursing 5-figure losses. Nevertheless, as a value investor I still believe in them so I continue to hold.

For 2025, my IBKR portfolio returned an amazing 29.04% while my Standard Chartered Portfolio gained 20.11%, lagging the STI (Simply Terrible Index). My SCB portfolio holds a lot of SREITs like FLCT and Capland Ascott which underperformed the STI so underperformance this year was expected. Finally, my FSMOne account holds my HK/China ETFs that I have been diligently doing RSP (I couldn't bear to look at the losses so I needed to automate the RSP). The 4 ETFs that I RSP have all exceeded 30% (google finance doesn't add in the dividends). The fact that they all converged is pretty suspicious (window dressing) but I'll take the win.

Part II: Health is Wealth

Every year you will see bloggers in their year-end review post talking about taking care of health. I fully believe in this and I constantly review this. 

So far, everything is good. Most important to me is that I didn't get injured because I took a cautious approach to training. I hope to carefully increase my training volume in 2026.

Even though I am no longer eligible for IPPT, I use the age 39 IPPT standard (which is the last year I did IPPT before MR at age 40) as a benchmark and I can achieve a gold standard on push ups, sit-ups and 2.4km. Additionally, I can still achieve the gold standard chin-up of minimum 12 (chin-ups were part of IPPT when I did my BMT).

In terms of areas of improvement, my Total Cholesterol is borderline in the 190-195 range, though APO-B is all clear. 

Part III: Other Financial Milestones

In 2025 I applied for my second credit card, the UOB Krisflyer Credit Card. (Ignoring credit cards with lifetime fee waiver that were given to me which I don't use but keep in case of emergencies - the OCBC Frank card and OCBC Visa Infinite).

As I am travelling more, I finally decided to be more deliberate in my spending so that I can get some miles to redeem for flights. 2025 was also the year of credit card nerfs, so careful attention to credit card caps is needed more than ever.

Despite the fact that I talk about SQ business class flights, in 2025, I only went on one business class flight as I had only one trip that was >7 hours. All the other trips I took, mainly to Japan, were shorter than that and I didn't see the point of business class, especially since Krisflyer Elite Gold gave me priority check-in and security clearance and lounge access at Japanese airports. I have let my KFEG expire but I should requalify in 2026 as I plan to take more than 1 business class flight next year.

Part IV: Looking Ahead

I have no idea what to expect in 2026. I thought 2025 would be a solid single digit gain and was surprised by what happened. I planned to stay invested and to continue to invest cautiously in 2026. Happy New Year!