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.

Comparison

 

Some say comparison is the thief of joy, but sometimes you are discovering someone whose numbers are so close to yours, you wonder "are you me?" The famous sunglass wearing blogger just posted his 2025 CPF balance and passive income and the figures are really close to mine. So my reaction was one of amusement and whimsy. So without further ado, here's a comparison table for entertainment purposes.

On a more serious finance-related note, I see that he will be choosing ERS since he is turning 55. It will eventually be my turn to choose. Currently, my thinking is to go for FRS and to invest the difference between FRS and ERS. Based on my parents' health and genes which I have inherited, I should be mentally active for 20++ years so no problem doing DIY investment.  DIY investing will also keep my mind active and help fight against dementia. 

After 20 years (age 75), I should hopefully have 4x my investment, in which case, if I put that sum into some high-yielding fund, I should be getting a lot more than FRS payouts.

Dividends Collected: Feb 2026

 

SG stocks hardly any dividends in Jan, and curiously US dividends, hardly any in Feb. The good news is that for the first 2 months of the year, dividends are higher year-on-year vs 2024 and 205.

Comfort Delgro and Capitaland Ascott Update

In 2022, I posted that I was still buying Capitaland Ascott Residence Trust and Comfort Delgro and was looking forward to an EPS recovery:  

BuyafterCrash: Singapore Stocks I am still buying

 

ComfortDelgro's EPS got hit bad by COVID.

Fast forward 3 years later to 2025, we can see CDG's EPS continuing to recover with the latest being an EPS of 10.43. This is still lower than pre-COVID. If you are an optimist it just means that CDG still has further room to grow its EPS to pre-COVID levels. If you are a pessimist it means that CDG's management hasn't executed its strategy as well as it should have as we should be back to pre-COVID EPS by now (especially with inflation baked-in).

Finally, it's good to see CDG stating its dividend policy, which is 80% of PATMI. A reasonable number, given that it is a cash rich company. I am happy with my current holdings of CDG and won't buy more. My plan is just to hold it for the long term and collect dividend.

_____________________

As for Capitaland Ascott, I can't find a handy table, but the earnings per stapled security (diluted) are:

2019: 8.99 cents

2020: -7.69 cents

2021: 9.32 cents

2022: 6.25 cents

2023: 6.07 cents

2024: 5.95 cents

2025: 8.07 cents

So ART is slowly recovering as well, but still not back to pre-COVID levels.

Buy After Crash Strategy

 

I started my blog in 2016 and named it Buy After Crash, because that was how I started my investing journey around the time of the GFC. 

During GFC and again in 2016 and again during COVID 2020, STI was also under 3,000 due to a 'crash', and as I documented in my blog, I was happy to buy STI as long as it was under 3,000.

Recently, in the influenza sphere, there appears to be some influenzas creating a "fake dispute" about buying after crash strategy. I don't follow these influenzas so I depend on blogs I actually read to keep me updated:

Investment Income for Life: Mr Loo Strikes Back At Kelvin Learns Investing and Boon Tee on Crash Buying Strategy!

Finance Opti: Lump Sum vs. DCA vs. Crash Buying??

Since my blog is named Buy After Crash, I think I should weigh in with my strategy. Its so simple there is no need for multiple long-form youtube videos to describe it. I guess thats why you need to create a "disagreement" so that there is material for a youtube long-form video.

The starting point for me is to have the correct Asset Allocation that matches your risk profile. As a simplification, we could divide assets into equities and cash/near-cash/investment grade fixed income. It could be 50/50, 70/30 or 100/0. I think I'm around 80/20 or higher. 

With the correct asset allocation, you sleep well at night because your portfolio has a certain amount of risk that is aligned with your risk profile. Assuming your risk profile remains constant, portfolio risk could go up or down.

When markets crash and equities become cheaper, I feel that the risk of holding more equities goes down 

(1) From a valuation perspective. There is more upside from undervalued stocks.

(2) From a historical perspective, as the long term market trend is up.

This means that even if my risk profile is the same, I should be willing to buy more equities during a crash, over and above mere 'rebalancing.' So every time the market corrects, I tap on my cash/near-cash/fixed income portfolio of my portfolio to buy more equities.

If you are 50/50 or 80/20, it's simple to tap on your spare cash to buy equities. If you are 100/0, this means you have to use leverage/margin to buy more equities, which has a cost and the market may be irrational for longer than you are solvent. So crash buying when you have a 100/0 allocation is still possible, but perhaps more difficult. 

I wonder if those influenzas who like to discuss crash buying have actually showed how they invested/traded during various crashes. My blog documents what I did during the 2016 and 2020 crashes (and also Trump's liberation day not-really-a-crash). This is for my reference so I can learn how to improve. Like I posted before, I identified one weakness in buying only during the downward phase of the crash and not buying during the early recovery phase (because of the fear of dead cat bounce). But Historically, prices during dead cat bounces were still attractive and you would have still made money buying during dead cat bounces.

UOB Krisflyer fee waiver

 

The credit card annual fee will appear in the bill for the month after the month printed on the card. Once it appears, you have to go to the UOB App to apply for waiver. After submitting the waiver, I got an automatic response that it was waived. 

The fact that it was immediately waived suggests that there is some sort of preset criteria, and the simplest criteria would be annual spend. From an IT perspective, its not cost effective (within the context of a super secure banking system) to do some sort of multi-factorial algorithm that pulls data from all sorts of places to decide whether to waive or not. 

As a data point, I think my spending on this card is about $1k a month, so good to know that is sufficient to get a waiver.

Down US$41k in NVO, but portfolio up 6 figures

 

I am currently down US$41k in NVO so I have to concede that it is one of my worst investing mistakes. 

However, diversification has saved me and my portfolio is up 6-figures in the first 2 months of the year, so that's not bad. Unlike those influenzas that only like to show their winning trades, the reality is that you win some and you lose some - just try to have more winners than losers.

In other news, ETHA has spiked up and this might be the start of a V-shaped recovery. I will ride the wave up and exit at $20+ like I did the last time.

Sold Vodafone, bought some ETHA & JD.com

 

Telecos are usually not considered growth stocks. The industry requires enormous upfront capital expenditure (eg: to set up 5G network) and shareholders get rewarded by a steady income stream from the investment. Over the last year, Vodafone has gone up faster than Singtel (though the US$ depreciation means the gap isn't as wide as the chart implies). 

Last night, I decided to start selling my Vodafone ADRs and some of my sell orders 'hit'. At the same time, I have re-initiated a position in ETHA averaging about $17.00 and started adding to JD

Obviously, the timing is bad as ETHA closed at $16.34 last night, but I am preparing to average down a bit and sell more Vodafone to fund this. 

Experience in clearing SQ redemption waitlist

 

I was thinking of a Gold Coast holiday in June. Unfortunately, that only coincides with the June school holidays so prices are higher and there are no Business Saver Awards but you can put yourself on a waitlist. I decided to try out putting myself on a waitlist for business class saver redemption ticket (72,000 miles) for a desirable red-eye flight to maximise the time I have there, and 7 hour flight is just enough to sleep on the plane. Flights to Japan a bit too short for a good sleep.

About a month later, I get an e-mail with the nondescript message "Ticketing time limit" which meant that the waitlist had cleared and I can redeem the biz class ticket I had waitlisted. I had to pay taxes/fees of about $100 over and above the 72,000 miles but it still beats buying the ticket.

For the return to Singapore, I selected an afternoon flight and redeemed an economy class ticket (no need to waitlist, all available), since a 7 hours day flight is just about manageable.

While it is pretty likely that PPS members get priority waitlist clearance, I don't even have Krisflyer Gold at the moment so it's pretty nice that I still managed to clear the waitlist for a school holidays flight. I plan to try to book my October holiday through the waitlist method as well.

3010.HK ETF First chips, now India

 

Just last month, I talked about how I have been buying 3010.HK to gain exposure to the India stock market, just in case India benefits from the China tariffs, but ended up benefiting because the ETF holds a lot of TSMC as well as Korean chip companies. With the US announcing a trade deal with India last night, we should see a decent rally in India stock prices.

In other news, I bought a bit of ETHA just to do some trading during the crypto crash. I've talked about my Gold & Silver holdings a little but I'm not interested in accumulating more. It seems that there is a disconnect between the physical market and the paper market (which might be seeing some manipulation).

Good start to the New Year

 

The first month of the year has flown past. A 3.95% gain and beating the S&P500 is nice. I will be happy with a high single-digit gain in 2026. I think a correction of some sort is inevitable and will give me the opportunity to deploy some spare cash or even CPF-OA.

Silver

The last trading day of the month was significant with a 25.5% one day correction in silver. Which to me seems totally reasonable since Silver prices had gotten out of touch with reality. With the amount of derivatives out there, who knows whether there was a 'pump and dump' performed by hidden actors, especially since commodities are traded on different exchanges and under different regulators.

Can day traders beat algos?

I'm always on the lookout for investment books to borrow at the NLB and came across this book Flash Crash. Highly entertaining (I have already read Flash Boys and Dark Pools, also available from NLB and highly recommended) look at HFT and algorithmic trading, in this case, spoofing of S&P e-minis. Hence I wonder if the recent Gold/Silver price moves involved predatory algorithms (now powered by AI) trading with each other. 

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.