Monday, 20 October 2025

LionGlobal All Seasons and Gold

 



While I mentioned that I have not been buying Gold, one of my favourite Unit Trusts had taken a tiny position in Gold (0.55% of portfolio) by January 2025 or earlier (the above screenshot was taken in Feb 2025 of the previous month's factsheet). Currently the value of that holding is now 0.99% of the portfolio which I presume is mainly from price appreciation. That should be good for a couple of basis points of alpha which is not that much, but good to know that occasionally active managers can make good trades....


Link to Feb 2025 post: BuyafterCrash: Lion Global All Seasons Fund revisited (SRS strategy)

Sunday, 19 October 2025

Gold? (Looking back to 2016)

 



When I first started this blog in 2016, one of my earliest posts was about Gold and how I felt it was insurance rather than investment. If everything was normal it should match inflation plus a few basis points for 'holding cost.' If something terrible happened, then the 'insurance' function would kick in and the price would spike. The 2016 photo above shows my tiny gold holdings which I have not increased since 2016 (I think I bought a couple more bars/coins after the photo was taken but nothing after 2016).

Instead, my strategy was to invest in economies that have a significant commodities business as any increase in commodity prices would benefit that economy. Specifically, I have a large position in Australia, which is the 3rd largest producer of gold.



Recently, there has been a sustained increase in the price of gold, which cannot be explained by its 'insurance' function. Perhaps the idea of you should pay a price premium for a 'store of value' function has taken root thanks to crypto. Or crypto millionaires and moving some of their crypto winnings to Gold.

I do not plan to buy more Gold as I find it too difficult to value. As I mentioned in 2016, Gold doesn't generate earning or cashflow. Instead I hope to be a beneficiary of the Gold boom indirectly though the Australian market.


My 2016 PostBuyafterCrash: Gold?


________________

Postscript: The morning after I posted this, CNBC reported a rare earths investment framework/agreement between US and Australia.




Friday, 17 October 2025

October Strategy: Just continue DCA

 


Trump threatened 100% tariffs in retaliation for China rare earth export controls, but market quickly recovered and marched upwards. 

For October I bought more VWRD and a smaller amount of VHYD. Also continuing my HK/China ETF RSP with FSMone. Nobody really knows when the next correction will occur so I will just continue adding to VWRD.    

One thing I am paying attention to is the (over)concentration of the ETF constituents. FSMOne provides a useful auto-calculation in their ETF pages and I noticed that 3010.HK is on one hand, relatively less concentrated with top 25 holdings comprising 46.13% of total assets and on the other, TSMC is a whopping 13.5% individual weightage.


Finally, USD:SGD is on the move and went back above 1.3. That should generally be good news for my portfolio which has a reasonable chunk of US$ fixed income ETFs.


Monday, 6 October 2025

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).

 




 


Wednesday, 1 October 2025

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?