Blog started 2016. Achieved Financial Independence in 2021. Focusing on Spiritual, Mental, Physical and Financial Fitness. Personal journal to record investment decisions for my own reference and in future, for my loved ones who will take over the portfolio. Advertising free as I'm not seeking hits or ad revenue. On the internet anyone can have a pretend portfolio, whether you think this blog is fake or real, doesn't bother me. :)
Wednesday, 1 October 2025
Dividends Collected: September 2025
End Sep 2025 Report
Sunday, 14 September 2025
SQ redemption sale
SQ is having a 20% redemption sale globally with certain blackout periods. Credit to milelion for constantly scanning the SQ website so the rest of us don't have to.
Looking at Osaka, there is a blackout for the peak Sakura season 12/3-9/4. But the week after that, there are still plenty of cherry blossoms left (I went to Japan in mid-April in 2024).
The availability of tickets to Japan is pretty good (eg: Haneda, Kansai have 3 flights a day and redemptions for all 3 flghts are generally available). I have redeemed a couple of tickets for next year.
As my plan is to go for short trips, I will be able to adjust my schedule to accommodate this and I did this successfully in 2024. I can still take Zoom work calls when in Japan since the timezones are not so different.
Wednesday, 10 September 2025
Strategy: Sep 2025
As everything seems to be hitting new highs, I have to be really disciplined about steady DCA of ETFs. At the same time, I can't help but look at SREITs again and wonder if they are undervalued. I have bought tiny amounts of FLCT and CDLHT to top up my holdings.
Finally, I had some excess cash in my SRS, and while I primarily buy Lion Global All Seasons unit trusts with SRS cash, the 0.53% expense ratio of the JPMorgan Global Research Enhanced Index Equity SGD caught my eye. While obviously more expensive than an ETF, I think its potentially useful addition to my SRS portfolio. It basically tracks MSCI World and the using Magnificent 7 are all represented in the portfolio. In other words, this isn't a dividend fund so the fact that its subject to 30% withholding tax on US dividends isn't too big a problem.
Monday, 8 September 2025
CPF Life
There is currently an active discussion thread in HWZ on CPFLife, with reference to Mr 1M65's CPFLife Strategy.
As I will need to make the decision on this in the next few years, I put a little thought in it and will use this blogpost to record down my preliminary thoughts
(1) There is an opportunity cost after setting aside the FRS or ERS at age 55 as payments only start at age 65 (or later if you want to defer). The opportunity cost arises because at age 55 you should still be mentally active and still able to manage your investments. On a 10 year holding period, MSCI World should outperform CPF Life interest.
(2) On the other hand, setting aside FRS of about $213k+ is not a huge amount and can represent the 'ultra-safe' fixed income portion of your portfolio yielding a decent risk-free interest. For example, after my $200k of SSB mature, I could roll this over into MSCI World instead of fresh SSB/T-bills, since I have $213k FRS sitting in CPF.
(3) Currently, I'm not inclined towards ERS. CPF gives bonus interest for the first $60k. So the ERS amount set aside, you only get 4% interest. From age 55 - 65, I believe that I will still have enough investing ability left to to beat 4%.
(4) Reading various forum posts, it appears that our views are deeply affected by the experience of our parents, grandparents, and other older relatives.
(5) My parents have hit 80 years milestone and hopefully I have inherited their longevity genes. I hope to stay healthy and fit and collect CPF Life at age 65.
All this may change as I get closer to 55 and get more information / different views. I'm just writing this down now as a reference point.
Monday, 1 September 2025
Dividends Collected: August 2025
S$32.8k for August 2025. In comparison $31.8k in August 2024, so only a marginal increase. However, it's not a perfect comparison because several counters seem to be inconsistent in relation to which month they pay their dividends (while some counters never seem to change)
Since I have been investing in US stocks in 2025 and bought a fair amount of LionGlobal All Seasons Unit Trust (which doesn't pay dividends) instead of channelling most of the money to dividend stocks or interest bearing T-bills, the best I can hope for is marginal growth in dividends this year I guess.
Sunday, 31 August 2025
Dividends Collected: July 2025
Friday, 22 August 2025
August 2025: 20% YTD
Friday, 15 August 2025
Exited INTC @ 25.00 and also TEF
I mentioned in a previous post that I was practising trading and one of my test counters was Intel. In round 1 I exited at $26.10 then after it crashed below $20 I bought a 2nd round and now after many ups and downs, I managed to exit at $25.00
https://buyaftercrash.blogspot.com/2025/03/market-rally-is-good-time-to-tidy-up-by.html
It is goes below $20 again, I will buy again. If it keeps on going up (like ETHA is doing now), no regrets since the objective of trading is suppose to be to realise profits....
Separately, I sold some some more Telefonica since it has been hitting a 52-week high. I have one more batch of Telefonica to see then I will have exited it fully.
Wednesday, 6 August 2025
NVO bleeding, but overall portfolio staying afloat
I have about 1,000 NVO shares (including recent averaging down trades) so the current price means I am suffering losses on this counter. On the bright side, the winners are helping to cushion the impact of the losers so my portfolio is still afloat and outperforming the S&P500 YTD.
I plan to hold onto NVO for the long term and maybe DCA a little bit each month. In terms of position sizing, I will cap it at US$100k.
Monday, 28 July 2025
Nike on the move, accumulating more LULU
Sunday, 27 July 2025
Finally Broke Even: 2800.HK
Thanks to the search function, I can find out that I started investing in the Tracker Fund of HK 2800.HK in July 2018. As the chart shows, this was near the peak, and thereafter there was a series of never-ending crashes. Given the grim chart, it might be reasonable to think that this is just one of the losses an investor has to take and hope that the gains from other counters would offset it.
However, for better or worse, I continued to RSP 2800.HK and benefited from using FSMOne's 0% commission promotion. Occasionally, I would buy some 'extra' over and above my RSP amount.
Finally, in July 2025, I have broken even with my 2800.HK holdings showing a +1.6% gain (in S$ terms). This is capital gain and excludes the annual 3.3-3.5% dividend yield from the HSI that I collected while waiting for the recovery. Keep calm and collect dividends, as the saying goes.
One might say that I could have made more money if I sold my 2800.HK at a loss and bought crypto or Tesla. I would say fair comment and there are some investors who are able to do that. For myself, I am happy if my worst performing counter (looking at the chart I don't think there's anything worse than this, considering the time I entered near the peak) is showing a profit.
Patience and time in market are important lessons for investors to learn.
My first purchase of 2800.HK in July 2018: BuyafterCrash: Strategy Report: July 2018
Friday, 25 July 2025
Performance July 2025
Monday, 21 July 2025
Time to buy REITs?
I mentioned in a previous post that my strategy was to accumulate World/US ETFs first because the outlook was bullish due to expected interest rate cuts. After World/US prices go up, switch to REITs as they will then play catch up.
In May 2025, with S&P500 constantly making new highs, I felt that REITs were primed to move so I bought a decent chunk of FLCT at $0.845 only to see the price drop further and S&P500 continue to make new highs.
BuyafterCrash: FLCT: Time to buy?
On hindsight, one can't time the bottom but at least I bought more at a decent price. Returning to today, FLCT has hit $0.885 and considering the $0.03 dividend that I received in the meantime, this means that FLCT has gone up 8.3% in 2 months. Nice.
With S&P500 hitting yet another high, I have continued my regular DCA of VWRD and VHYD this month, and also picking healthcare stocks which have crashed (NVO, GSK), but REITs are starting to look attractive.
I picked up Capland Ascott Residence Trust (HMN) and Capland (9CI, ok not exactly a REIT) yesterday but didn't manage to fill my FLCT order. Am looking at topping up a few more REITs today.
Thursday, 17 July 2025
US portfolio news, sold ETHA, accumulating NVO
For the purpose of learning trading, I had built up a small position in ETHA at about $15. I sold half at $22 and closed out the rest of the position at $24.50. It is since gone past $25 but learning to trade means pressing sell and realising profits. I hope to be able to re-enter at a lower price during a pull-back.
In the meantime, NVO's price has been languishing due to tariff related matters but it is finally available in Singapore:
I am still long term bullish on NVO and am taking this opportunity to continue to accumulate.
My $100k+ worth of NKE is now green in terms of capital gain, and I have already collected a couple of dividends along the way. My UA is at about breakeven level and I continue to add to LULU. The Indonesia tariff deal is reasonable news as it provides some certainty and is not a ridiculous %.
Saturday, 5 July 2025
Tuesday, 1 July 2025
Sold Hong Leong Finance / STI 4,000
At best, HLF will just keep on chugging along in the same niche it has carved out for itself without much growth prospects, but at worst, it may be disrupted to Fintech and not have the size or resources to respond. So its time to sell.
At the same time, I have bought an equivalent amount of Lionglobal All Seasons (Growth) Fund. I expect it to outperform HLF over the medium and long term.
Monday, 30 June 2025
2025 Mid-year Performance
Friday, 27 June 2025
Portfolio: 6th milestone achieved in June 2025
Thursday, 19 June 2025
T-bills crashed to 2%
Turns out SSBs were better after all?
As I have mentioned, I have been placing my maturing T-bill funds into a combination of Fullerton SGD Fund, LionGlobal SGD MMF, and LionGlobal All Seasons (Standard) given the declining T-bill rates.
What I found interesting is how so many investors prioritised putting funds into 6 month T-bills as opposed to SSBs when SSBs were yielding 3%+. To me this was a classic example of short-termism.
Since you can always redeem an old SSB and put the money into a new SSB if rates rise (which is what I did for a few of my SSBs), bidding for SSBs yielding >3% was a no brainer. I made sure I had hit the $200k quota of 3%+ SSBs.
At the end of the day, the drop of interest rates makes it important to rethink my cash management strategy. The opportunity cost of holding cash/near-cash is high if rates are low. but I would like to have some lower risk investments. Which is why some of my cash allocation is going into the conservative LionGlobalAll Seasons (Standard) instead.
Monday, 16 June 2025
Exiting my small Telco Positions: BT, TEF, Starhub
Friday, 6 June 2025
Dividends Collected: May 2025
$46k dividends. UOB, OCBC, DBS, LLOY, SAN, ING paid their dividends in May. Wonder why all the banks paying out in the same month.
Tuesday, 3 June 2025
Confirming FSMOne Flat fee
Friday, 30 May 2025
What is cheap, can get even cheaper
Friday, 23 May 2025
Sorry UOB, you launched the wrong China ETF
Wednesday, 21 May 2025
Sold my small CISCO holding
I initiated a small position in CISCO during the Pandemic. In other words, I picked the wrong video-conferencing stock as Zoom did much better. Nevertheless the profit for CISCO was decent and including dividends nett of withholding tax, the total gain since 2020 was about 40%. I'm doing some portfolio cleaning and it just doesn't make sense to hold US dividend stocks for the long term because of the withholding, so I sold them tonight and bought Vanguard Dividend ETF (VHYD) instead.
The next US dividend stock to unload will be McDonalds. I'm sitting on decent capital gain but withholding tax on dividends means I should exit all US dividends stocks as quickly as possible.
Posting this as a reminder to myself!
Recording my CISCO purchase: Previous blogpost
Tuesday, 20 May 2025
Mid-Year Review
Since I was free, I manage to prepare the mid-year review of my portfolio and my health, so I decided to release it early. Maybe the market will crash right after this 😅
Portfolio: Doing well. Hit the 10% mark for the first time this year.
Sunday, 18 May 2025
Pimco Income Fund (any good?)
With T-bill interest rates going down, I had written earlier about my thought process in purchasing LionGlobal All Seasons (Standard) unit trust.
To recap, I have a sizeable amount of cash and non-cash. Apart from maxxing out my SSB at $200k, I have cash in money market funds like Fullerton as well as cash in bank account. Finally, as I am almost at young senior status, I should start considering my CPF funds (above FRS) as near-cash (or at least a 5 year bond to hold between age 50 to 55).
So when my T-bills continue to mature, I should be on the look out for good replacements. Maybe a little more risk for a little more return.
Kyith in Investmentmoats has done multiple articles recently on PIMCO Income Fund. Not exactly sure why the love (or hate) for this fund in particular, but I guess it is a super popular fund so many readers will either be vested or thinking of investing in it.
I had never considered the fund before but his article piqued my interest so I went to have a deeper look. You can read Investmentmoats for more details on what the fund invests in, but after doing my own due diligence, I have decided the fund is not for me.
Fundamentally, there's the issue of my portfolio construction. I'm not sure how to fit such a fund into my portfolio. It's basically asking me to pay the fund manager a bit more (1.05% expense ratio) and to accept more risk in the hope for better return. My view of fixed income is that it should be the lower volatility part of my portfolio, to compensate for the potential wild swings in the equities portion, so on that note, the PIMCO fund doesn't fit the bill for me.
As a second order issue, the data from FSMOne shows that its 3-year Annualised Volatility as well as Sharpe Ratio is worse than the LionGlobal fund. This is rather embarrassing for PIMCO. How can an actively managed fund be so volatile?
As you can read from Kyith's article, a 6 month difference in when you entered the fund (buying in Jan versus July 2017) resulted in what could be 2.5% p.a. over 8 years turning into 1.35% over 8 years! This is not the type of volatility you want from a fixed income fund.
Conclusion?
I'm on the lookout for a lower volatility fund with decent sharpe ratio. I don't think the PIMCO meets those requires as its metrics are worse than the LionGlobal All Seasons fund. So I will stick with LionGlobal for now, but when I hit a certain amount of holdings, my usual practice is to diversify into a second fund, so I'll keep looking
🐧🐧🐧
Wednesday, 14 May 2025
Buy stuff when they are on sale
Tuesday, 13 May 2025
FLCT: Time to buy?
Monday, 12 May 2025
Trade War ended before it really started?
They didn't agree to a deal, but reducing (not even removing) tariffs seems good enough news to move the markets.
Friday, 9 May 2025
Bought $20k of this Unit Trust
I actually bought $20k of LionGlobal All Seasons (Standard) unit trust this month. This will entitle me to some cashback which is nice but not the main reason I am buying.
Why buy unit trusts?
I was looking for a low beta instrument with reasonable prospects for capital appreciation. I am already holding a number of US$-centric bond ETFs (IBTU, LQDE, VDCP for instance) so it would have been good to have part of my bond component in S$ fixed income.
The key point of this fund is that it holds a number of LionGlobal equity and fixed income unit trusts and gets fee rebates on those funds so that its overall expense ratio is only 0.41%, which is close to the expense ratio of some basic money market funds!
It holds 70% fixed income and 30% equity, and the equity side comprises ETFs and active LionGlobal funds. The 70% fixed income, which is clearly tilted towards shorter duration and with >50% in S$, will provide a lot of stability and steady returns from interest payments.
Alternatives?
For pure a SGD fixed income play, Nikko AM SGD Investment Grade Corporate Bond ETF came to mind. Its 5-year performance is 2.45% which seems worse than simply rolling over T-bills. The SG fixed income market is also so small and the universe of bonds the ETF can invest in is so limited, it makes me wonder whether active management might outperform (as long as the expenses are reasonable, as they are in this case).