April 2026: Holidays and a relief rally.

 

Advance Holiday Planning Bears fruit.

I have gone for my first Japan trip of 2026 though it was too early to see Sakura. I still enjoyed. My next trip in April will be after the peak Sakura season on a redemption ticket (redeemed during the sale) but there should be some left to see (I was also in Japan in mid April 2025). Thereafter, I have 3 more trips to Japan and Australia. Since I have booked/redeemed/paid for all the tickets, I fortunately do not have to pay the additional fuel surcharges that have since been introduced. I also wonder if the fuel surcharges will reduce the number of tourists visiting Japan but I'm not so confident of that because of the substitution effect. Many in the region may not want to fly to Europe because of the increased cost and/or perceived risks, and may choose to fly to Japan instead.

Hopefully the situation and prices will stabilise soon, because I still need to book  a couple more year-end holidays. 

Relief Rally? TACO?

Trump as expected TACO and announced that the war will end in a few weeks, which triggered a relied rally. I bought on Monday S&P500 ETFs listed in London before the US market opened and rallied hard. Notwithstanding that jump, I bought more today. As I have mentioned before, I feel that if my warchest is of a healthy size, I shouldn't stop buying the moment the market turned. Even though the price is going up, it is still lower/same as early March so I should still buy more because the market should be up further than today at end 2026.

Endowment Fund

 

ST Reference: Endowment Fund

TL:DR, a Doctor in her will gave $2m to a charity to set up an endowment fund. ST explains that:

An endowment fund is a pool of donations that organisations, such as universities and charities, invest for long-term financial support. The initial sum is preserved, and only the returns are used by the organisation.

I am posting this here for my reference so I don't lose this link as the idea of an endowment fund where the principal is forever preserved and you spend only the returns is obviously attractive to me and matches my own investment/retirement strategy of only living off my passive income.

What I found interesting was that this couple was obviously passionate about charity and had very little spending needs. Why did she wait till death to start giving away her $20m fortune? One hint can be found in this part:

The couple, who had no children, owned properties in Singapore and overseas. Despite their significant assets, Mr Chia said his wife lived frugally so their money could be used to help others.

They saved and invested their sizeable incomes in illiquid properties. So they probably had modest liquid assets suitable to their frugal lifestyles but a lot of property wealth. It may be a stereotype but the elderly seem to find it really difficult to 'sell property' (whether to downsize to a smaller more appropriate home or otherwise). So have to wait until they pass away before the property is sold.  

March 2026 Crash Strategy Part 2

 

Dow and Nasdaq are in correction territory, but S&P500 not yet. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have been spending my $50k+ Astrea VI refund last week to buy various counters, so my main 'warchest' is still intact and ready to be used once S&P500 also hits correction territory, maybe next week. Because my bank accounts have daily fund transfer limits, I am going to do some fund transfers over the weekend so that my trading accounts will be ready for action on Monday.

I don't discount the possibility of Trump trying to make some sort of announcement to soothe the market, but the market might ignore it, especially with S&P 500 valuations still on the richer side.

I bought some ON Holdings because the price crashed so I am even more exposed to the sportswear market. But my main buys will be VWRD and VUSD/LSPU ETFs. I will probably initiate a position in Amazon next week since the price has corrected. As the saying goes, buy what you know (at a good price) and I have Amazon Prime and buy quite a lot of stuff on Amazon.

CPF account check

I have used some of my CPF to invest since 2008. By far the largest item I have purchased is STI ETF, which has done well of late and has been giving regular 3.5%+ dividends every year, which is higher than the 2.5% CPF-OA interest rate. I also have 3 unit trusts, all by First State: Bridge, Asia Growth, and Regional China, and 2 stocks in CPF: Frasers Centrepoint Trust and Comfort Delgro

Back in 2008, there weren't many options and I used unit trusts to diversify, otherwise I would be SG concentrated with STI ETF and stocks. If I had to start all over again, it doesn't make sense to buy any product with more than 1% expense ratio, but inertia has prevented me from doing house-keeping of my CPFIS account.

For 2026, my resolution is to reorganise my CPF holdings and to exit these high cost unit trusts which have done their job in that their CAGR is well above the CPF 2.5% interest rate. So before I clean up my CPF investments, I did a calculation of my CPF total: OA+SA+MA+CPFIS:  $1.68m.

March 2026 crash strategy

 

Iran-related anxieties caused a market crash but you can always count on Trump to TACO and say things to soothe the market (insiders who have advance knowledge of what Trump is going to tweet will probably be very wealthy this year).

The problem of course is that you can't stop a war you started simply by making positive statements on twitter. So I still expect some downside, but not very much.

I continue to purchase VWRD and bought some FLCT today at $0.905, in order to use up some of the $50k+ refund I got from the Astrea VI PE Bond. My Astrea VI yield on cost was 4.4%+ so it was really good value. While the short-sighted were celebrating getting 3%+ on 6-mth T-bills (which rolled over at 2%), those with a medium term perspective would have realised that Astrea VI at the midpoint of its maturity with a half-filled reserves account and 4.4%+ yield, was a way better invesment.

I also started an RSP of the LSE-listed JP Morgan Global Equities Premium Income Active ETF (JEPG).  It has a reasonable management fee of 0.35% for an active ETF and generates income by holding stocks and using an options overlay. As an Income ETF, it holds primarily value stocks rather than the Mag7. But interesting, it also has counters like Berkshire (0 dividend) in its top 10 holdings. Presumably it holds Berkshire and earns from writing Berkshire options.

I am not supposed to increase the number of counters I hold but technically since Astrea VI was redeemed, I can add one new counter to my portfolio. 😀

First experience doing RSP of LSE-listed ETF on FSMOne

 

This post documents my first experience with doing an RSP of an LSE-listed ETF on FSMOne

• $0 fees
• The ETF opened at $356.60, so price of $356.90 I suppose is reasonable. It closed eventually at $357.75
• Exchange rate was 1.27099.  The opening and closing rates that day were 1.2663 and 1.2662. So the forex premium is an estimated 0.37%

This FX premium is consistent with my experience with HK$ ETFs. It seems that the forex premium if you use S$ to pay for the RSP and ask FSMOne to convert is always a little bit higher. If you convert the US$ or HK$ yourself, the forex premium is closer to 0.25%. 

But overall, 0.37% forex premium is still much better than SCB's forex premium (SCB used to be better but now its like 0.7% until you hit silver tier when it drops to 0.4%).

Michael Burry on the Hong Kong Stock Market

 

Someone in HWZ shared Michael Burry's (The Big Short) post on the Hang Seng Index. 

Hong Kong Stocks: Structure & Strategy - by Michael Burry

When I clicked on it, I could read the whole article, but now it seems that most of it is behind a paywall. Anyway, to summarise, the point appears to be that even though the HSI crashed due to various reasons including political ones, the fundamentals and more importantly earnings of HSI companies remained sound and the HSI kept on paying good dividends throughout the crash.

Therefore, a value investor's investment thesis would still be intact, subject to the caveat that the market can remain irrational for longer than an investor can remain liquid. But assuming that you did not use leverage, you could just keep calm and collect dividends.