Miles Strategy

 

Someone asked in the HWZ forum about miles and there were the usual doubts expressed whether it was worth chasing miles. Coincidentally, I have just started to learn more about miles collecting, mainly from the milelion website, and my short answer is that if you are going to spend the money, then why not make sure you get some miles from it? For me, I got no interest holding 10 credit cards and min-maxxing the miles, but I feel I reached an easy-to-follow 'middle ground'.

HOW MUCH TO SPEND TO GET AN AIR TICKET?

Again, thanks to milelion constantly scanning the SQ website so I don't have to, I redeemed 3 return air tickets to Japan for 2026 at 43,200 miles each.

If you were a min-maxxer with a 4mpd card, you would be able to achieve 43,200 miles with no more than S$10,800 spend. The MMs will take advantage of promos that increase the mile earn rate above 4mpd, so their average earn rate will often be above 4mpd.

For myself, I only have 2 cards so my effective mpd is less than 4mpd, but it keeps things simple.

UOB Visa Signature - assuming $1,000-$1,200 contactless payments a month, that will give 48,000-57600 miles at 4mpd.  (Bonus activated at $1k spend, max cap $1.2k).

UOB KF Credit Card - assuming $1,000 a month of qualifying transactions at 2.4mpd plus $12k worth of SQ/Scoot/Pelago/Kris+ spending at 3mpd, that will give 28800 +36,000 =64,800 miles. (there are also miles awarded by SIA which are separate)  UOB KF has no spending cap, so the $1+1k/month is more like my estimate of spending.

So very roughly, if I have $3k/month of qualifying spending at maybe 3mpd (average of a 4mpd and a 3.0/2.4mpd card), that will be good for some economy tix to Japan every year when they have their global redemption sale.

Remember your unused miles

Remember that each time you fly Scoot / SQ on tickets you buy, you earn miles from the flight. Very often, these miles alone aren't enough to redeem a flight. But when they are added to the miles you earn from credit card spend, at least they are not 'wasted'. For example:

• Singapore-Sydney Business lite (the cheapest biz ticket) return nets you 9,780 miles.
• Singapore-Tokyo Economy value return nets you 3,294 miles

I selected these examples of actual flights I would take. Sydney is long enough that I would want to fly Biz, but Tokyo flights are short enough to fly economy.

Miles Millionaire: Whats that??

Finally, I note that some influenzas like to flex they are "miles millionaires" and this term appears to have been 'endorsed' by the official SIA Krisflyer instagram account:

While a million dollars invested will grow your networth through compounding, I fail to see how accumulating one million miles will do anything for you. In fact, miles depreciate over time. My strategy is to redeem flights as soon as possible. I have enough in my account to redeem a ticket or two just in case there is some not to be missed fantastic sale, but even then, its way less than 100,000 miles.

Tempting to Min-max?

I will try my best to stick to 2 credit cards and not get influenced by these influencers... though there is certainly a temptation to go up to 3 cards if my spending increases enough to justify a 3rd card (hopefully not).

 

 

Dividends Collected: September 2025

 

Year is coming to an end. So far it appears that I have collected fewer dividends than 2024. It could be an error counting my dividends in 2024, or there was a one-off capital return for some counter.

End Sep 2025 Report

 

Three quarters of 2025 have passed and still no sign of a correction. Despite being in the red with NVO, the portfolio continues to grow. The last 3 years have been very good to investors. Time in market is better than market timing?

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.

Strategy: Sep 2025

 

Despite tariff woes and the ICE raid on the US Hyundai plant, Kospi has hit a record high. I have decent exposure to Kospi via my large holding on Vanguard's Asia Pacific ETF VDPX. 

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. 

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. 

  

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.

Dividends Collected: July 2025

 

Just realised that I forgot to upload my July dividends. Not much S$ dividends but overseas counters paid dividends.

August 2025: 20% YTD

 

The stock market went crazy over Powell's speech at Jackson Hole even though he didn't actually say much. One wonders if it is a case of confirmation bias if everything he says is interpreted as pointing to a rate cut.

My YTD return has now hit 20%, handily outperforming the S&P500. 20% on a 7-figure portfolio is a pretty tidy sum and I have no complaints. Others may have higher returns but its not a competition so let's all Huat together!

I don't know when the next correction is coming but I will continue to DCA ETFs and do a little stock picking. 

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.

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.

Nike on the move, accumulating more LULU

 

The same JPMorgan analyst who downgraded LULU with a target price of $224 has upgraded NKE. Since I have a large holding of Nike, that's good for me. The Lulu downgrade also gives me an opportunity to buy more, with the price dropping below the JPMorgan TP of $224.

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

Performance July 2025

 

With S&P500 continuously hitting new highs in July 2025, I am happy that my portfolio has managed to keep pace. With 5 more months left in the year, there is still a good chance of a healthy correction which would be a good buying opportunity, but overall, 2025 is looking like a good year.

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.

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 %.

Dividends Collected: June 2025

 

.

Just a normal month of dividends. The Mapletree family paid dividends this month.

Sold Hong Leong Finance / STI 4,000

 

With STI finally hitting 4,000, it is the right time for me to do some cleaning-up of my portfolio. I have therefore sold my small holding of 4,000 Hong Leong Finance shares @ $2.57. Having held this for 10+ years, I have received 4-5% annual dividend and a little bit of capital gain. However, since I am holding loads of Finance Counters, I can take a cold hard look at which are worth keeping and which have to be sold. 

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. 

2025 Mid-year Performance

 

Despite the war in Ukraine and the bombing of Iran, stock markets continue to rise. 15% return for 2025 seems to be a very real possibility and 20% might even be on the cards.

Some say dividend investing is bad, dividends can go to zero. But 2025 is a year when dividend investors can collect dividends and also get capital gain.

Portfolio: 6th milestone achieved in June 2025

 

Despite the ongoing situation in Ukraine and the Middle-East, markets continue to rise with STI ETF hitting the elusive $4 mark. Therefore, I decided to check the current value of my portfolio (my scripts to scrape SGX stock info for google sheets no longer work so I have to do a bit of manual calculation).

I'm pleased to note that I have hit my 6th Portfolio Milestone just 11 months after hitting the 5th milestone. Since I have started to dabble in a bit of active trading, I am hoping that this will help me achieve my 7th milestone in even less time.

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.

Exiting my small Telco Positions: BT, TEF, Starhub

 

For Telcos, I hold Singtel, Vodafone, Telstra, Telefonica, British Telecoms and Starhub.

Telcos have been rallying YTD though the 5-year chart is not very pretty. Its more a case of holding on, collecting 5-6% dividend over 5 years, and exiting at a small profit (compared to S&P500 5 yr performance).

I plan to close my smallest positions, so I have sold my BT and started selling some of my Telefonica. 

Starhub my average buying price was $1.85 during GFC so I have collected 16 years of dividends to reduce the pain of capital loss. I should be closing out the position shortly, or maybe for sentimental reasons I try to hold a bit longer until I have fully exited some other counters.

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. 

Confirming FSMOne Flat fee

 

FSMOne recently reduced its flat fees for ETF trades. Together with a reasonabe forex exchange rate, this is one of the best deals in town together with its 0% comm RSP for certain ETFs.

I bought some 3010.HK Asia ex Jpn ETF on HKSE and this is the invoice I got. Basically, the total is HK$46.89 as there appears to be HK$8.89 of assorted fees you have to pay over and above the base HK$38.  Since HK$8.89 = S$1.5, its not a big deal.

The one tip I learnt is that it might be better to change your S$ to HK$ and to buy using the HK$ as exchange rates <could> be better. I'm not 100% sure but previously I published my experience with my ETF RSP where I allow FSMOne to change my S$ to HK$, versus changing the S$ to HK$ myself. There did seem to be a difference, albeit a small one.

The 'problem' with changing HK$ yourself is that you will inevitably end up with some excess HK$. To me that was not a problem because I can 'sweep' up all excess HK$ by using the ETF RSP function.

What is cheap, can get even cheaper

 

Recently, I bought a spare pair of Vaporfly 3 for $153 on the Nike website in white/pink colorway. I considered it a great deal because the usual price is $339 and with the 'usual' discount its around $289. I also said that like stocks, buy stuff when they are cheap. There is a second saying, what is cheap, can get even cheaper. 

At the Nike store, I found them clearing stock of the 'boring black' colorway for $113. Black is not my preferred color as I like more cheerful colours to make running easier, but this price was too good to pass up so I bought yet another pair. Since its so cheap, I'm using this pair as one of my "general" training shoes while reserving the ones with the nicer colour for races and key workouts.

Sorry UOB, you launched the wrong China ETF

 

Just saw a finfluencer website doing an advertorial for UOB's A-share ETF. All I can say is sorry UOB, you launched the wrong China ETF. As for the website they are partnership with, they have to go along with the advertising copy and not mention that A-shares are severely underperforming vs HK/China ETFs. Everyday there is news of some a Chinese company like Xiaomi, BYD or Baba releasing some great AI or tech innovation in China. Any guesses whether these companies are listed in HSI or whether they are A shares? Looks like Lion-OCBC had the right idea when they launched their HSI Tech ETF though frankly, I find tech ETFs to be way too concentrated.

As I have mentioned in this blog. I have been doing regular monthly RSP of 2800/2801/3010 HK ETFs for the last few years because I don't want to look at my losses 😅, so best to just automate the buying process. Thanks to the recent rally, I don't mind looking at my China portfolio now as I should be able to break even soon. I bought more 2801.HK yesterday as well just in case there is a trade deal rally.

It's pretty obvious from this YTD chart that 2800.HK and 2801.HK are outperforming their A-share counterpart 2823.HK

Part of the reason can be found in this FT article. Mainland Chinese are buying more HK listed shares rather than A shares!

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

 

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.

I've created a new category of "Xtra-Large size" holdings. Currently, only ETFs and SSB fall within this category. The closest individual stock to X-Large is LLOY.

T-bills have been removed and replaced by Fullerton SGD Money Market Fund and LionGlobal All Seasons (Standard) Fund

Cholesterol and Triglycerides: Good. LDL can improve further.

VO2 Max: Superior (at the borderline, so it fluctuates depending on whether I have a good set of workouts that week or if I'm tired)

Healthy weight. Focus now is on body fat.

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

 🐧🐧🐧

PIMCO Income Fund E Class JPY hedged and Admin Class  SGD hedged are two of the five best-selling fixed income funds on FSM

Comparing the SGD hedged class, it loses out to the All Seasons Fund in two critical metrics: Annualised Volatility & Sharpe Ratio

Higher Sharpe ratio means better risk adjusted returns. Lower volatility means exactly that, less volatile.

Buy stuff when they are on sale

 

Really good deal. Bought another pair as a spare. Their replacement, the VF4 is not as suitable for beginners as the VF3, with 5mm less cushioning and a more aggressive carbon plate shape.

When there's a genuine sale, you need to be decisive and press buy. Applies to stocks and also to shoes. 😎

FLCT: Time to buy?

 

Apart from the Frasers Centrepoint preferential offering, I haven't added to my REIT holdings for some time as there were more attractive offerings. After taking stock of the latest price moves and interest rate curves, I think its about time to get back into REIT buying. There is more upside than downside from here. 

So I've bought more today at $0.845, taking advantage of FSMOne's $8.88 flat rate commission and free level 2 data.

Australian beef and food products are just as good if not better than USA. If China finds USDA Prime more expensive due to tariffs (which are still there) than Australian Angus, it makes sense for them to buy more from Australia. I suspect increased trade between Australia and China will help the logistics sector which FLCT is heavily exposed to.

While I am a big fan of REITs, in Feb 2025 I felt that everything else was more attractive and more likely to move versus REITs which would be one of the last to move. As you can see from my blogposts, I have been focusing on the overseas market more. Now that everything else has started to move and become relatively more expensive, SG REITs are starting to look relatively more attractive. By the way, anyone who bought BABA in Feb 2025 (I didn't, though I have indirect exposure via 2800 and 2801) would be sitting on very nice returns.

Trade War ended before it really started?

 

I changed some HKD and used it to buy some 2800.HK last week, "just in case" China and USA actually agreed to a trade deal. 

They didn't agree to a deal, but reducing (not even removing) tariffs seems good enough news to move the markets.