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.