Managed to catch up with S&P500

 

Finally caught up with the S&P500.

Hopefully can keep up till the end of the year 

Experimental Unit Trust Portfolio: Update 1

 

In May 2026 I decided to start an experimental unit trust portfolio on POEMS focused exclusively on Amundi Unit Trusts with the following target allocation:

• 40% MSCI World
• 20% Prime USA
• 20% Emerging Markets

This is a 2 month update. I have been steadily adding to it. As the market has been going up, the means that the average buying price of these funds has gone up and the percentage return has gone down.

On the bright side, the absolute $ profit has doubled from $1.6k to $3.6k.

This shows that while a high % return looks good, the actual $ profit is also important. Previously, I like to buy after a crash, but when the market started improving, I was reluctant to buy because this meant that I am buying for higher and higher prices. That was the wrong way to think about investing. As long as you are confident that the market is going up, continuing to buy is always good as that maximises your $ return even though your % return looks lower. 

This is subject to the usual portfolio construction rules like asset allocation percentages and concentration limits.

May 2026 post: https://buyaftercrash.blogspot.com/2026/05/experimental-unit-trust-portfolio.html

Dividends Collected: June 2026

 

About $10k+ dividends this month. YoY 10% higher than 2025 so still on track for $20k/mth.

1 out of 7 chance of household income >$30k

 

The Straits Times on 30 June 26 reported that in 2025, 13.4% or 1 out of 7 resident households have a monthly income of $30,000 or more.  

Having a 1 in 7 chance that you are living in a household earning more than $30k a month is not super common, but at the same time not super rare as well. 

Just posting this info here for my reference.

Which Dividend ETF? VHYD, WQDV, QDIV, UDVD?

 

Kyith in Investment Moats did a review of London listed Dividend ETF UDVD. As a Dividend lover, I am always on the lookout for good dividend ETFs. I had looked at UDVD but it honestly did not seem as good as the alternatives, including Vanguard's VHYD and iShares QDIV. The "requirement" that a company keeps on increasing its dividend seems to be a bit 'off' to me.

Google finance graphs, which don't do dividends reinvested, indicates that UDVD is the worst performing of the 3. In order to figure out what happens when dividends are reinvested, I turned to Claude Sonnet 4.6 set at High Effort. It confirmed that ranking in the basic Google finance chart that UDVD is the worst performing of the 3 dividend ETFs over 1, 3, 5, and 10 years. 

However, it is important to point out that the divergence in performance appears to have occurred mainly in the last 3 years 2023-205, which illustrates the point that a 'strategy' works... until it doesn't.

The main reason I buy VHYD is for diversification. The second reason is dividends 😀Claude appears to agree (even if I tell it not to be too agreeable) that adding VHYD to VWRD diversifies the portfolio in terms of sectors and geography. Whether diversification is a good thing, is of course another question.

I am also investing in another dividend ETF WQDV and according to Google finance simple charts it also outperforms UDVD by a large amount. In fact it outperforms VHYD but that could be partly due to it holding more Tech than VHYD.

However, I have not included it in the comparison because it changed the index it follows twice in the time I have held it so its performance would have been affected by that, so not a good comparison. It changed to an ESG dividend index sometime back, but after ESG fell out of favour it changed to the current MSCI World High Dividend Yield Advanced Select Index (what a mouthful...).

Last major illness was in July 2025

 

I had a little bit of a sore throat this week but fortunately did not turn into a full blown upper respiratory tract infection needing antibiotics which would mean I would have to stop exercise for a few days. 

This time, I just gargled with mouthwash and it sort of went away and didn't affect my workouts. But it made me wonder when my last illness was.

Thanks to Strava data, I am able to see when I so sick that I had to stop workouts. I just have to look at the low mileage weeks to see whether I was taking a break or if I was ill. Based on the data, the last time I fell ill enough to have to stop workouts for a few days was in July 2025 (the darker blue bar). As its mid-June 2026 now, it means I have been not had a serious illness for nearly a year and counting.

It could be luck, or it could be the benefit of exercise and a slightly more healthy diet that has boosted my immunity and helping me avoid serious illness. Health is wealth!

SpaceX and Meme stock territory?

 

SpaceX started trading 12 June 2026 and the stock market rose. Meanwhile, the market seems to be ignoring Iran or assuming that a deal will be done (nothing has been finalised). The good news is that my portfolio has moved faster than the S&P500 and hopefully will catch up with the S&P. I wonder if SpaceX will become the next Meme stock and whether stocks are going to move into Meme stock territory.

This could be an opportunity value investors who take a cold hard look at free cash flow and earnings and continue to seek out stocks that actually earn money. I have continued to add McDonalds MCD as a value stock.

In the meantime, I continue to buy the usual ETFs, always adding VHYD/WQDV to my VWRD/VUSD/LSPU purchases in order to reduce my tech concentration.

On holiday in search of great coffeeshops

 

I'm back from my 4th short holiday this year. I flew business class one way to Australia as I managed to clear the redemption waitlist and economy return. I took a red-eye flight so I informed the stewardess that no food or drink service was necessary, and went to bed. To me, the lie-flat seat is the main point of business class. If the flight is too short to sleep, then not sure what the point of a lie-flat seat is....

My holidays mainly involve reading in coffeeshops, finding a nice park for a shakeout run, reading in coffeeshops again, participating in some running event or other, and back to reading in coffeeshops again. Holidays are a great time to clear my reading backlog as well. Nowadays I read mainly non-fiction and I have notebooks in which I take notes. Basically, its a pleasure to write and the pleasure is increased if the writing is done using a nice notebook in a nice environment. This is what holidays are about.  

One of my holiday 'side quests' involves a  search for great Matcha Lattes. This time, I found a lovely coffeeshop with plenty of natural light (a sense of space in the environment also promotes creative thinking) and a lovely selection of pastries. I paired my matcha latte with a Basque Cheesecake and accompanying Greek Yogurt. 

For the rest of the year, I have tickets for 1 more holiday already bought, and planning 3 others.

By have multiple short holidays to nearby destinations, I maintain a regular cadence of holidays that I can look forward to as the next holiday is no more than 6-8 weeks away, and the time I am away is so short it doesn't cause any stress for me at work. In fact, I was able to buy the tickets in 2025 as I know the holidays I'm taking are so short that I'm sure I'll be able to work around any work commitments. 

Portfolio Update June 2026

 

This is my mid-year portfolio update. I have sold down my First State unit trusts. While they have served me well, the fund manager Martin Lau is no longer young and its time to move on to low cost unit trusts and ETF. Basically, I have transitioned my First State China into two dividend ETFs, 3070.HK and 3110.HK. The top 10 components of these ETFs are totally different so they are complementary (Claude  AI also thinks so). First State Bridge being a balanced fund gets transitioned into the Lion Global All Seasons Funds.

Due to capital gains, OCBC enters the XL category while A$ appreciation helped ASX 200 ETF IOZ enter the L category.

As I posted earlier, Astrea VI PE Bond was redeemed just before stock prices jumped so I managed to deploy most of the money into equities.

Dividends Collected: May 2026

 

$40k+ dividends this month, including contributions from the 3 local banks. On track for $20k/mth passive income this year.

Portfolio Performance May 2026

 

I am glad that my portfolio somewhat recovered and 5% is a decent return. But S&P500 seems unstoppable and its going to be hard to match it's return this year.

Looking back at Hong Leong Finance

 

Blogger BFire just posted that he sold his Hong Leong Finance holding:

Finally I Sold Hong Leong Finance

It reminded me of my own decision to exit HLF on 1 July 2025 at $2.57:

Sold HLF

While HLF has been a stable stock (compared to say REITs), there is an opportunity cost to holding it instead of deploying the cash in more attractive investments. I also felt that there was a risk of disruption by fintech and HLF being too small to be able to respond effectively. Finally, I had committed myself to either increasing the size of my smallest holdings or exiting them. I was not prepared to buy more HLF so I exited and bought LionGlobal All Seasons (Growth) Fund using the sales proceeds. Turned out to be a good idea as the All Seasons fund grew from $1.531 to $1.818 which is a 18.75% gain.

LionGlobal All Seasons (Growth) Fund 

FSMOne RSP / JEPG Active ETF

 

FSMOne is trying to "encourage" increased use of RSP by publishing the  RSP amounts for the median/upper quartile/top decile by age group. As I am a big fan of FSMOne's commission-free RSP with decent exchange rates, it is no surprise that I am in the top 10% of FSMOne customers when it comes to monthly RSP.

On 13 May 2026, I compared the SGD:USD exchange rates:

FSMOne: S$1,277.2 to buy US$1,000
SCB: S$1,277.8 to buy US$1,000 (silver tier)
IBKR: S$1.2729+S$2,55= S$1,275.45 .to buy US$1,000 (added US$2 comms)

FSMOne is still slightly cheaper than SCB's silver tier and way better than SCB's blue tier. Both can't compare to IBKR if larger amounts of US$ are changed, but for RSP amounts below US$1,000, FSMOne is very competitive.

________________________________________________________________

One of the latest ETFs that I have added to my RSP list is JPM Global Equity Premium Income Active UCITS ETF - USD (dist). It is basically an active covered call ETF that tries to generate income from dividends and option writing and has a reasonable expense ratio of 0.35%. 

It has basically underperformed the market in 2025 and 2026. Currently its negative -3% year to date. As the S&P500 and World indices continue to shoot up, the price of this languishing ETF becomes more attractive to add a little bit of diversification to my portfolio. My hope is for a steady dividend yield and stable price and I will benchmark this against my USD Corporate Bond ETF because JP Morgan's advertising seem to be pitching this as a better alternative to bonds because this strategy is less affected by interest rates.

Experimental Unit Trust Portfolio

While I have been helping my relatives set up Poems accounts to invest in Amundi unit trusts, I have not done so myself because my main UT platform is FSMOne which doesn't sell Amundi funds. Also, my main method of investing in index funds is via LSE-listed ETFs which are technically tax-advantaged because VUSD has 15% US withholding tax and LSPU has 0% WHT (because its synthetic). Amundi USA, being a physical replication unit trust, is subject to 30% WHT at source (it doesn't matter if it is IE domiciled or not - also note that Amundi also has a synthetic USA fund but that is not sold by Poems).

In April, since I had some spare cash to deploy, I decided to put $20k into an experimental Poems portfolio comprising Amundi funds and to see how it goes. As you can see from the screenshot above, its 80% developed markets and 20% EM, which is 'technically' overweighting EM compared to MSCI All World, but I've always felt that EM is under-represented in the All World Index.

 

Dividends Collected: April 2026

 

SG Companies usually don't pay dividends in April so foreign stocks do the heavy lifting this month. year-to-date I am a tiny bit ahead of dividends collected in 2024 which is a good sign.

Portfolio Performance April 2026

 

There was a big 11% rally in the S&P 500 for the month of April (technically started on 31 March). This momentum was so great that it overtook my portfolio which is now trailing the S&P500 by 0.7%. However, I am grateful that my portfolio climbed out of the red and is positive. More importantly, I continued buying while my portfolio was red, because its always good to buy stocks when they are cheap.

This shows that you should never underestimate the S&P500, at least 50% of my fresh purchases are either S&P500 or FTSE World (70%+ USA). I'm glad to check my records to see that I bought S&P500 ETFs VUSD and LSPU on 27, 30, 31 March and 1 April. 

My AUD investments finally paying off?

 

I had posted in 2017 about Australia and Norway markets being possible commodity proxies. As I pointed out, backtesting shows a meaningful correlation between the Australia stock market and DBB which is the Invesco Base Metals fund. I am also a regular visitor to Australia and my visits to Perth show that the mining driven economy is booming with new business parks (logistics etc) being created near the airport. I took the opportunity during my last visit to drive through these new business parks to see whether they were just empty shells or whether there were lorries going to and fro. 

It is therefore no surprise that the AUD hit a 2-year high recently and shows no signs of stopping. This is good news as it also suggests good demand from China for industrial metals and other exports.

Coincidentally, I bought more ASX ETF IOZ on 7 and 8 April, just as the currency was starting to ramp up. So this brought my capital gain from the increase in the ASX200 and the currency appreciation.

I continue to be bullish on Australia (hence my belief in Fraser's Logistics Trust which has significant Oz exposure).

Previous Post on Australia: https://buyaftercrash.blogspot.com/2017/07/norway-and-australia-and-possible.html

Vomero 18 Coffee Bean: S$99

 

NVO and NKE are competing to be my portfolio's "biggest loser." At the same time, I believe in them. Nike keeps to making stuff that I actually want to buy (and actually use for running). The Nike Vomero 18 is a cushioned and comfortable shoe that is ideal for easy runs. Most importantly, it fits my feet well (crucial to try before buying). The Vomero 17 and Invincible 3 (it would be called Vomero Premium 17 under the current Nike naming convention) had heel lock problems.

So when I saw the special edition Vomero 18 "Coffee Bean" (yes it comes in the usual Nike cardboard box plus a metallic coffee bean bag) on sale for S$99, I couldn't resist and grabbed myself a pair. 

Asics, on the other hand, seems to launch shoes with attractive colorways, then later on, makes only the monochromatic and boring colorways available. Take the current colours of the Megablast for example....

FIRE Lifestyle: Food Reviews

Blog Labels

I have decided to better organise my blog by using labels. From work, I know that maintaining and updating metadata is tedious so I am just starting with a couple of simple labels

• FIRE Lifestyle: For my travel, food, and other posts about how someone who is Financially Independent spends his money
• Credit Cards: My own experiences with Credit Cards 
• Health & Fitness: Health is Wealth!
• No Label: Probably everything else pertaining to my investments

Gyukatsu or beef cutlet is just lovely. When in Kyoto, I am more of a fan of Gyukatsu Kyoto Katsugyu because of their wider selection of cuts of meat compared to Gyukatsu Motomura which is more 'mass market'. Do note that not all menu items are Japanese beef. They also use Australian beef. That's why my go-to order is the Wagyu Sirloin which is Kuroge Wagyu beef. 

The beef already comes prepared medium-rare, so you just press it briefly on the hot plate to make it medium and a bit warmer. I have seen so many Westerners just put the cutlets on the hot plate for ages as they seem to only take their beef well done. One American group recently asked the waiter to relight the fire as they had been cooking the beef for so long the fire had gone out!

I have tried the Singapore version at One Holland Village and the beef was strangely not as good. I have eaten at a Kyoto outlet 3 times in the last 9 months so I still have a good "memory" of what is good Gyukatsu.

Tonkatsu on the other hand, is pretty good in Singapore, with Iberico pork options roughly comparable to premium Japanese pork. On the other hand, the traditional high temperature cooking doesn't allow you to taste the subtleties between different types of pork. "White" Tonkatsu  are pork cutlets cooked at a low temperature which makes the meat look "white."  

Because the cutlets are cooked on the spot at low temps, it takes 20minutes so it probably won't be viable in Singapore where high rents mean you really need to move products quickly.  Also, they need to be certified pathogen free (Japan has pathogen free certification).

Hakkinton Pork comes from Iwate Prefecture and has more fine muscle fibres and you can experience the chewy texture. First-timers that want softer meat can go for Hayashi Pork from Chiba prefecture. (I've taken both types and like both).

Price-wise, its still cheaper than Wagyu Gyukatsu. As for regular Tonkatsu, I actually quite like Matsunoya's 800+yen 'fast food' Tonkatsu or if I want ambience, then Katsukura in Kyoto. (not to be confused with local Tonkatsu chain Katsuya).

Finally, Kobe Beef and A5 Wagyu in general. As I want to keep my cholesterol down, I generally avoid eating steak in Singapore and eat steak when I visit Japan (3-4 times a year). Since I eat steak so rarely, I want to make it count and not spend my 'saturated fat' quota on cheap coffeeshop steak but on something good.

A5 Wagyu served Teppanyaki style is great. You get the experience of a chef preparing the meal for you and what is usually pretty good ambience if you choose a nice restaurant. If you eat steak rarely, make it count.

While eating in Mouriya in Kobe was a very nice experience, I don't actually find Kobe beef to be that fantastic (sacrilege?). The meat is softer and more tender, but is it also a question of fat content? I am honestly totally ok with regular high quality A5 Wagyu served in a nice setting (actually Mouriya also serves regular A5, not just Kobe beef, but if one goes to Mouriya, might as well go for the Kobe beef?)

3070.HK AI guided portfolio reorganisation

   

I have a large position in First State Regional China using CPFIS since the GFC. In 2008, there were not many options for CPFIS. Most of my money went to STI ETF but since I wanted to diversify, unit trusts with FSMOne seemed to be the only option. Due to inertia and the fact that I can't use my CPF for anything else, I have left it there. As long as it returned more than CPF interest, I guess I am content. 

However, as I have reached the 50 year milestone, CPF is looking more like 'real money' that has to be managed properly.  I am looking at an 80/20 allocation of equities/fixed income-near cash and CPF at age 50 is pretty close to cash, maybe equivalent to a 5-year fixed deposit?

At the end of the day, Martin Lau, the famous fund manager for First State, is not getting any younger and its inevitable that someone will have to replace him. Given the 1.73% expense ratio of the fund, it's time to take steps to exit. Should have done it earlier, but better late than never.

This means that I will sell the fund and the cash is refunded into CPF-OA, while I use my cash to buy a China focused ETF to replace it. I told Claude.AI what I was holding, including another existing dividend ETF 3110 and asked it about 3070 and to generate various comparison tables and analyse their holdings. Given that 3070 and 3110 most interestingly do not duplicate each other (their top 10 holdings are totally different), Claude concluded that they are complementary.

While 3070 has a slightly higher expense ratio of 0.77% compared to 3110's 0.68%, its manageable and 3070 holds the Chinese Banks whereas 3110 seems to be focused on industrials, and I am always a fan of financials (even though China banks may be called upon to do national service by bailing out State Owned Enterprises). The infographic above shows the reasonable P/E (the 'SOE effect'?) but more importantly the totally reasonable dividend payout ratio which implies that dividends will be sustainable.

So I am gradually selling my First State Regional China bit by bit and buying mainly 3070 but I will increase my monthly RSP of 3010 and 3110 as well.

Time in Market > Market Timing

 

Just recording today's headlines as an illustration of why time in market > market timing. As I have mentioned in my earlier posts on crash buying, I started buying the moment the market started moving downwards. It is impossible to time the bottom so those influenzas who have been advocating waiting for a big crash will probably have missed the boat, or at least missed the 5%+ upswing in one week. And as the previous studies have shown, missing the initial market upswing greatly reduces one's total returns, hence the saying time in market > market timing.

Sometimes it also helps to be lucky. Thanks to the Astrea 6 redemption proceeds of $50k+, I am deployed more cash into equities than I would normally have done.

Dividends Collected: March 2026

 

Dividends collected YTD ahead of 2024 and 2025. The key test will be how much I collect this month versus 2024 when I collected 25k.

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.

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.