Big, Small or Mid-Cap?

I've been thinking about whether investing in big, mid or small cap companies would be the most beneficial for us. I guess that while picking good investments will involve us investing in different sizes of companies (good investments don't only come in one size), but there may be characteristics of certain size of companies that would fit our investing goals better than others.

Singapore Stock Market Decline Today

The stock market today seems to have dropped quite a fair bit, with all of the ST Market Indices down today, possibly due in part to the Shanghai Composite Index falling over 8% yesterday and another 1.68% today. I think that this is a good time to do some review on my thoughts of shares (also before their quarter financial statements come up) so I'll just cover the prices of some of the shares that I've covered previously and give any updates that I may have on them

(Image source: http://www.davidicke.com/headlines/66843-crash-alert-the-stock-market-is-falling-like-a-stone/)

Saving as a Student

Happy (belated) Youth Day to my younger readers!

I'm not really sure of the number of younger readers that I have, but I'll be sharing some numbers on saving money as a student, the importance of doing so as well as some tips on saving money as a student. Saving is a habit that should start from young and hope to encourage younger readers to adopt this good habit as well.

(Image source: http://timobrienhomesblog.com/2010/07/09/summer-energy-saving-tips/)

Tips for New Investors

I would like to share some tips that I have been able to glean from my short time in investing thus far, hopefully it will be able to help new investors or people thinking of starting to invest their money avoid some of the mistakes that I have made.

(Image source: http://www.valueinvestmentindia.com/page/3/)

Growth Investing vs Value Investing

Just started reading Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits by Philip A. Fisher. This book seems to be going into growth investing, which I think is good to compare to value investing (You can read on my thoughts on different investing styles at Value Investing and Thoughts on Investing for Dividend Yields). While both share similar ideas (such as fundamental analysis and buying stocks on their "intrinsic value"), they have some differences such as their focus on "intrinsic value" (slight difference between the two in my opinion)

(Image source: http://www.stockopedia.com/content/the-truth-about-growth-investing-it-works-67194/)

4 Quadrants of Money Management

I was thinking about Stephen Covey's 4 quadrants of time management, which I read in his book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I think that this is not only applicable to managing our time but can also be used in managing our money as well.

(Image source: http://czarto.com/2012/04/24/four-quadrants-of-time/)

3 Bad Money Habits and How You Can Break Them

Going to start this chain of blog posts where I start to include some of the money habits which I think are unnecessary and completely within our control to break. I may add more habits as I go along and encounter some of them, but here are the first 3 that I've been working on. While I hope they don't apply to you, I hope that you may find some of them useful.

(Image source: http://www.womansday.com/life/work-money/tips/a6793/bad-money-habits/)

Singapore Savings Bonds (SSBs) Issued in October

As MAS has just announced that the new Singapore Savings Bond (SSB) will be issued on Oct 1 with retail investors able to apply for them from Sep 1, I'm going to repost this post that I shared earlier last month, with some new information added and others updated.

Investment-grade bonds offer a good alternative to stocks especially for risk-adverse investors

(Image source: https://www.drwealth.com/2015/05/12/all-you-need-to-know-about-the-singapore-savings-bonds/)

5 Ways to Start Building your Emergency Fund

This is a continuation from my first post on What is an Emergency Fund and Why You Should Have One. This post is going to show you some tips and ideas on how you can start to build your emergency fund if you have yet to do so

(Image source: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201405/alexa-von-tobel/need-for-freedom-fund-savings-living-expenses.html)

Is it Worthwhile Investing in Public Transport Operators? (Part 2)

Just to digress a bit from this post, I would like to celebrate the first milestone for this blog: Reaching 10,000 pageviews, what a great way to start this week. Thanks for the support that you have been giving this blog :)

Now, on to the actual post.

The first part to this can be seen here:
Is it Worthwhile Investing in Public Transport Operators? (Part 1)

This is a continuation from the previous post and intended to give a better analysis of the shares instead of just through their P/E ratio and the factors affecting them. This will cover the other aspects such as the balance sheet and cash flow.

(Image source: https://twitter.com/sbs_transit and http://www.smrt.com.sg/Media/Press-Releases)

Thoughts on Investing in REITs

Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) seem popular among investors as they generally have high dividend yields and sell at a discount to the book value. They also pay out quarterly dividends, which is especially good for dividend investors who can quickly reinvest the dividends and compound their returns at a more frequent rate. I have not really covered REITs in my blog post so to start I'll just post some of my thoughts on investing REITs, then (maybe) I'll cover some of the REITs, but I've personally not invested in them before.

(Image source: http://realtybiznews.com)

What is an Emergency Fund and Why You Should Have One

What is an emergency fund? It is cash that you have saved up just to settle some unexpected events or accidents that life hands to you. How much should you have in an emergency fund? That depends more on your current situation, such as being self-employed or employed in a high turnover industry, but one guideline that I like to follow is around 8 months of expenses, which I got from Suze Orman. More on why and what an emergency fund should be made of will be covered in this blog post.

(Image source: http://www.inc.com/magazine/201405/alexa-von-tobel/need-for-freedom-fund-savings-living-expenses.html)

Difference Between Being Frugal and Plain Cheap

Found some of these points on the difference between being frugal and cheap interesting and may also help us in our lives by knowing where to draw the line between being frugal and just cheap, which would help us in managing our own daily expenses.

(Image source:http://www.pennilessparenting.com/2010/06/frugal-vs-stingy.html)

What is your Time Value of Money?

Was thinking about this question as different people would place a different time value on their money. Some would be willing to give up high potential returns in exchange for instant gratification while other would be more willing to save and invest the money and let it grow so they have more in the future.

Is SGX Overpriced?

Was just wondering if the SGX share is overpriced. As covered in Good Companies vs Good Investments, the SGX is a good company due to its strong balance sheet as well as being the only local bourse, but do these justify its high share price?

(Image source: http://www.eq.com.sg/page/site/public/partners.jsp)

Do Uninteresting Shares Present Good Value?

Do shares in uninteresting industries that will hardly ever make it to the headlines of newspapers like oil stocks in the current downturn and technology companies getting higher and higher valuations make good investments? I think that there are usually in these industries there are some that will be overlooked and offer attractive prices that will be able to sustain a good return to the investors that take time to look at them. This blog post is intended to highlight one of them.

(Image source: http://www.colex.com.sg/disposal_services.html)

Is it Worthwhile Investing in Public Transport Operators? (Part 1)

With the dust settling on Tuesday's peak hour breakdown of both the North-South Line as well as East-West Line, I was just thinking if public transport operators (PTOs) make good investments. With the calls to make SMRT private, reducing train fares and the possible $50 million fine slapped on SMRT for the recent disruption, I'm not so sure any more, so this is just going to be a brief analysis of the 2 main public transport operators: SBS and SMRT, focusing largely on their profits instead of overall health (balance sheet, cash flow, etc.)

(Image source: https://twitter.com/sbs_transit and http://www.smrt.com.sg/Media/Press-Releases)

How Much Do You Need to Save for Retirement?

This blog post is just to show the amount of money that we should be saving for our retirement. Most of this would just be some of the numbers that I have calculated to show the amount that we should be saving to ensure that we will be able to build up a sufficient nest egg for our retirement. If you want to learn more about saving up for retirement, you can read my post on it here: Ways to Begin Saving for Retirement

(Image source: http://www.bankingsense.com/how-saving-slowly-over-time-builds-your-retirement-portfolio/)

Why Fundamental Analysis is the Way to Go

Going to share my thoughts on why I prefer fundamental analysis to its direct opposite, technical analysis in this blog post.

(Image source: http://www.investingstarter.com/technical-analysis-stock-investment/)

Yangzijiang - Is it good enough to buy?

With the recent fall in the share price of Yangzijiang (YZJ) to ~$1.30 today, maybe it's time that we start looking at it as a possible opportunity for investment.

I did an earlier post on YZJ here: Yangzijiang - A worthwhile look?, but this post will be a slightly more detailed look at the share

How the Economic Machine Works

Sharing this interesting video that I found on Youtube, not sure if any of you have seen it before, that may help you understand the economy and how it works better and answer questions such as why we have cycles, what is the role of the central bank, etc. It is by Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates.

Jardine C&C on its slide down

Just wanted to highlight to you that Jardine Cycle & Carriage is continuing its slide down, reaching below $30 per share today. Though this is still a quite expensive stock (min $3000 investment is not something all of us can just make), but as it falls it seems to keep on getting more attractive.

(Image source: http://sgforums.com/forums/4148/topics/448537)

Good Companies vs Good Investments

This is just to clear the air and differentiate between good companies and good investments. In a nutshell, not all companies are good companies, but almost all companies can be good investments.
Good companies do not necessarily make good investment nor are good investments always good companies.

UOB Kay Hian - Good Buy with Weakness in Trading Volume?

Was just looking at this lightly traded stock, which is also the only listed broker in Singapore as well. Its Singapore operations make up the largest source of revenue, followed by Hong Kong then Thailand, so it is exposed largely to South-East Asia and the more general Asian region. With the decline in trading volume in Singapore, its earnings have fallen quite a bit in 2012 and 2014, which has also dragged its share price down from $1.645 in Aug 2014 to the current ~$1.50.

(Image source: http://www.thesas.org.sg/component/content/category/8-web-pages.html)

Do The Rich Think Differently?

Going to use this blog post to share some of the knowledge I have gleaned from books such as "Rich Dad's Retire Young Retire Rich" by Robert T. Kiyosaki and "The Millionaire Next Door" by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko as well as articles online and some of my own observations of how the rich think and why are it is different from the middle-class thinking.

Thoughts on Investing For Dividend Yields

In this blogpost, I hope to share my views on investing for dividend yields (something quite popular among other finance bloggers). I do not really subscribe to the belief that by looking at a basket of the highest dividend yield shares would yield superior results to other shares.

Is a good share one that pays out its earnings in dividends?

(Image source: http://zewt.blogspot.sg/2007/09/tax-free-dividends.html)

There are two goals in investing: Dividends or Capital Appreciation, both of which will provide your return on investment. A share paying out a 5% dividend and another whose price is growing at 5% a year is almost the same in my opinion, it is just whether the company decides to reinvest the money in itself or pay it out to its shareholders.

In my opinion, the important part which decides whether a company is better off paying out its dividends or reinvesting in itself would be the return on equity. If it is able to maintain or even grow a high return on equity (double-digit?) which is higher than my expected return on investment, I would be happy to let it keep its money for reinvestment in the business instead of paying it out in dividends. Likewise, a company that pays out a satisfactory dividend is also good.

There are stocks now that offer good dividend yields, look at Jardine Cycle & Carriage, which presents a good dividend yield for a company that is at the low end of their cycle (Read: Jardine C&C: Possible Opportunity for Dividends). These companies are good for people looking for a source of income which they can reinvest or use for their own expenses.

But there are also stocks that offer good value while paying almost no dividends. One of the stocks in this category that I'm watching is Ezion. Though is pays like 0.1 cent of dividend on a one cent share, it has a P/E ratio in the mid-single digits. While it is in the oil and gas sector which has declined considerably since its heyday, the fundamentals of the business still seem sound and even if it takes a hit to its profits, its currently low P/E ratio should be able to absorb it. I like it to not pay dividends for one key reason: It earns a high Return on Equity. around 20%. I would be hard-pressed to find another company that can return the same amount, or even if it decreased to say 10%, it's still better than the market return and the money that the company earns and reinvests in the business can also hopefully earn such a high return which would make the lack of dividends worthwhile.

Needless to say, good dividend yields and consistent payouts are good, but I don't think that we shouldn't only be looking out for shares with the highest dividend yields (these usually don't last very long anyway). We have to look at the underlying profits of the business and see if the dividends that it pays are sustainable or if the company is able to generate a satisfactory return on its equity, which can justify the retention of earnings. But I do not think that there should be a preference for a dividend-yielding stock unless maybe you're retired and looking for a passive income flow, but even then, good opportunities for capital appreciation should not be avoided.

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