*Official* Shiny Things club - Part 2

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revhappy

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That seems like a decent idea for a current retiree in India, or at least somebody getting very close to retirement. It doesn’t seem like such a great idea for a mid-career individual planning to retire in India, beyond about ~20% of assets. At least, that’s what the “textbooks” would suggest.

....But you/we picked a hell of a time to realize this. ;) The rupee is currently relatively weak (or weaker), and equities are relatively highly valued. If you’ve got a long enough time horizon for a relatively gentle mid-course adjustment, great.

What’s your current savings flow look like? Are you still pouring a large percentage into rupee fixed deposits? And am I correct that government deposit insurance in India is limited to a mere 100,000 rupees in the aggregate (per person, added together across all banks)?

I have stopping moving money to India since about 3 years now and I have brought back some money last year. So as of now 60% of my networth is in India, most of it fixed income and about 20% of it is in equities. Yes, there is almost no protection on bank deposits in India. But there is an implicit guarantee that banks won't be allowed to go down. It will cause riots in the streets. The govt would rather devalue the rupee and pay off depositors. Both Greece and Cyprus were unique because they use Euro and they can't themselves print the Euro, so the depositors faced haircuts in those cases.
 

311290

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@BBC

Thailand has trade treaty with USA, so 15% dividend tax.

Will the option 9 be the best option instead of just investing in local stocks
 

ipaq4444

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That’s an interesting question.

The world’s first index mutual fund was introduced in 1976. That was Vanguard’s “First Index Investment Trust,” now the Vanguard 500 Index Fund (a S&P 500 U.S. stock index fund). For the first 5 to 10 years this index fund was not so well known. It’s only really been about 30 years in the U.S. when index fund investing has been at least reasonably popular, so today’s retirees and late career individuals probably started out investing in something else.

You should keep an eye on whether there’s something better that comes along. Every 5 years or so is probably enough. And thank goodness something better periodically comes along. As an example, last year (2018) the U.S. fund manager Fidelity introduced a pair of stock index mutual funds that have zero costs across the board (FZROX and FZILX). For U.S. persons like me, they’re delightful. Another example: Singapore Savings Bonds (SSBs). SSBs are a relatively recent innovation, and they’re darn useful for certain purposes, such as saving for a wedding or down payment on a home, or as a place to park most (but not quite all) emergency reserve funds.


Thank you Sir
 

w1rbelw1nd

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The purpose of my post was to just show how STI has done v/s how I have done via my haphazard way of investing.

Well, if you can tell that you are investing haphazardly, then you are lucky, even though you have gotten away with it. If you truly want to a disciplined, consistent, passive investor, it doesnt matter that you get high returns or low returns, through skill or by chance. You need a game plan, and stick to it consistently. I would rather take a whip and flay my thighs raw than make myself less guilty with this kind of analysis (joking). I mean come on. What if you the rupee crashed and you made huge losses instead? What if you missed out of a bull rally? I dont think you are having the right mindset here. For me last year I just stuck to my plans, consistent 1-2k, and whatever bonus I have, into ETFs, and I made some losses (duh) some parts of the year.

Do I have a plan and stick to it? Yes.
Would I have looked back and regretted my decisions? F**king hell no.
Do I need to come up with a benchmark,made on hindsight, to make myself feel better? There is absolutely no need to.



Still, it is better you know how you have done, rather than just assume that you have done bad because you didnt invest systematically.

I am not sure if XIRR is better, my method gives a better picture of networth progression and I can tell you that currently 20% of my networth is gains and theoretically I could lose 20% in the market and still not feel so bad about it. Can you get this kind of picture using XIRR?

Cannot understand the way you think man. Anyway XIRR is the better way to look at investment returns. Since you are a IB user you can use the portfolioanalyst reports to show you how your investment returns are, your exposure, your deposits, your profits etc. Frankly I cannot even think of a proper financial term to describe the 20% return that you are talking about. I have however try to fit your description of your cashflows, assuming your non-cumulative cash inflows to be in 1 July of each month, based on really my best guess of what is actually going on with your cashflows.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1V3e1oLM0OGT8d8_B86J1dlqAHFeJ2SjPNeG2W4jDims/edit?usp=sharing

Annualised returns based on XIRR is 3.43%. :/
 

BBCWatcher

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I have stopping moving money to India since about 3 years now and I have brought back some money last year. So as of now 60% of my networth is in India, most of it fixed income and about 20% of it is in equities.
That seems awfully India heavy unless you’re close to retirement.

Yes, there is almost no protection on bank deposits in India. But there is an implicit guarantee that banks won't be allowed to go down. It will cause riots in the streets. The govt would rather devalue the rupee and pay off depositors. Both Greece and Cyprus were unique because they use Euro and they can't themselves print the Euro, so the depositors faced haircuts in those cases.
No, depositors in those countries had/have 100,000 euro of deposit insurance. There was a brief period of time when regulators toyed with the idea of levying a 6.75% haircut on Cypriot deposits up to 100,000, but they did not do that. (That would have been VERY dumb, and the regulators pretty quickly realized they were dumb. Then they weren’t.)

Obviously a further rupee devaluation would not make you or anyone else whole.

By the way, 100,000 INR is currently approximately S$1,907. That’s an extremely low amount of deposit insurance, even for India. That figure was set all the way back in 1993.

I’m not wild about your having ~48% of your net worth in uninsured Indian rupee fixed deposits. That seems pretty crazy to me. Am I wrong?

Thailand has trade treaty with USA, so 15% dividend tax.

Will the option 9 be the best option instead of just investing in local stocks
Option 9 has always looked best to me among those choices for anyone who isn’t at least within a decade of retirement. Even with a 30% non-treaty dividend tax rate on U.S. stocks. So the lower treaty rate is a bonus.
 

theMKR

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Hi all,

I just started trading becos i got insomnia and too bored at night :s22:
apparently i think i am paying too much to SCB for my trades so just wondering how i can reduce

already spent like 150usd just on fees.
 
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jacky817

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Hi all,

I just started trading becos i got insomnia and too bored at night :s22:
apparently i think i am paying too much to SCB for my trades so just wondering how i can make my trades more efficient?

trade.PNG

already spent like 150usd just on fees.

I think you're at the wrong thread.
 

havetheveryfun

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Hi all,

I just started trading becos i got insomnia and too bored at night :s22:
apparently i think i am paying too much to SCB for my trades so just wondering how i can make my trades more efficient?

trade.PNG

already spent like 150usd just on fees.

save up 200k and become priority client then no minimum fees
 

revhappy

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Hi all,

I just started trading becos i got insomnia and too bored at night :s22:
apparently i think i am paying too much to SCB for my trades so just wondering how i can reduce

already spent like 150usd just on fees.

SCB is not meant for trading. You can't go short, you can't use margin, no derivatives. Suggest open IB account, if you want such things.
 
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I've a question on exit strategy. Suppose you've decided to do DCA on IWDA (for eg), is there a position where you will stop buying in? Like if it drops 30%? Or we lose 50% of our invested amount etc? From what I read, it seems we should ignore the flunctuations and continue with our monthly strategy regardless and have faith it will recover eventually.
 

Ind1go

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I've a question on exit strategy. Suppose you've decided to do DCA on IWDA (for eg), is there a position where you will stop buying in? Like if it drops 30%? Or we lose 50% of our invested amount etc? From what I read, it seems we should ignore the flunctuations and continue with our monthly strategy regardless and have faith it will recover eventually.

I feel exit strategy also depends on your investment horizon though, maybe you can share more details for the experts here to help
 

BBCWatcher

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I've a question on exit strategy. Suppose you've decided to do DCA on IWDA (for eg), is there a position where you will stop buying in?
A sale price on the fund you're buying is delightful. It means you're buying at a lower price, and that's exactly what you want when you're accumulating.

The generally recommended dollar cost averaging (DCA) strategy for long-term investors that, for example, Vanguard uses in its "Target Retirement" funds is to keep buying and with a fixed portfolio allocation, such as 20% bonds and 80% stocks, until about 7 years before you're going to start drawing down the fund (in retirement) -- or as many as 10 years before perhaps if you're ultra conservative. Then, in the 7 to 10 year period before drawdown, the portfolio would gradually shift from that 20/80 split to, say, 70/30. If the portfolio shift happens within 100 months (8 1/3rd years), just to keep the math simple, then your bond allocation would increase 0.5 percentage points every month and your stock allocation would decrease by the same amount. That's across the total portfolio, and that would be your "exit strategy."

There are extremely rare exceptions you might consider. During the Global Financial Crisis the U.S. S&P 500 stock index fell more than 50% off its previous high -- by 54.1% peak to trough, to be exact, and excluding dividends (there were a few). I kept buying straight through it all, and by early 2009 I was doing some truly exceptional buying, quickening the pace of buys and pumping more cash into buying. It was like buying new iPhones for $5 each -- it was just amazing. The whole investable world was on sale, really, at ultra deep discount. That's a violation of DCA strategy, something I don't recommend. But that was a truly extraordinary time, the one exception in my lifetime.
 
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Right now, I'm planning to buy 2k IWDA every month for 20 years. Yes, I understand the 7 year before drawdown. Was wondering about the other extreme, whether there will be a way out if it falls. ok, I guess the idea is to be disciplined and follow through.

A sale price on the fund you're buying is delightful. It means you're buying at a lower price, and that's exactly what you want when you're accumulating.

The generally recommended dollar cost averaging (DCA) strategy for long-term investors that, for example, Vanguard uses in its "Target Retirement" funds is to keep buying and with a fixed portfolio allocation, such as 20% bonds and 80% stocks, until about 7 years before you're going to start drawing down the fund (in retirement) -- or as many as 10 years before perhaps if you're ultra conservative. Then, in the 7 to 10 year period before drawdown, the portfolio would gradually shift from that 20/80 split to, say, 70/30. If the portfolio shift happens within 100 months (8 1/3rd years), just to keep the math simple, then your bond allocation would increase 0.5 percentage points every month and your stock allocation would decrease by the same amount. That's across the total portfolio, and that would be your "exit strategy."

There are extremely rare exceptions you might consider. During the Global Financial Crisis the U.S. S&P 500 stock index fell more than 50% off its previous high -- by 54.1% peak to trough, to be exact, and excluding dividends (there were a few). I kept buying straight through it all, and by early 2009 I was doing some truly exceptional buying, quickening the pace of buys and pumping more cash into buying. It was like buying new iPhones for $5 each -- it was just amazing. The whole investable world was on sale, really, at ultra deep discount. That's a violation of DCA strategy, something I don't recommend. But that was a truly extraordinary time, the one exception in my lifetime.
 

raidorz

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Account just opened. Bought some USD with FXCONV routing and opened my first position I'm IWDA! 1 thing to note. I was kanchiong spider so didn't realise when I change my commission from fixed to tiered, it would take 1 business day to reflect, so I got charged USD5 for buying 9 shares of IWDA instead of USD1.70 (by right if I'm not wrong). This should only be a concern for those who are under 26 as you wanna minimise your commissions due to the lower activity fee.
 

Shiny Things

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I've a question on exit strategy. Suppose you've decided to do DCA on IWDA (for eg), is there a position where you will stop buying in? Like if it drops 30%? Or we lose 50% of our invested amount etc? From what I read, it seems we should ignore the flunctuations and continue with our monthly strategy regardless and have faith it will recover eventually.

A sale price on the fund you're buying is delightful. It means you're buying at a lower price, and that's exactly what you want when you're accumulating.

I’d echo BBCWatcher’s points, and I’d just ask another question: if the market drops 30%, why would you want to sell everything and lock in that loss?

I know it takes some discipline to not do this—to resist the understandable urge to sell everything and hide under the bed. A lot of retail investors in America made this mistake in December, when the S&P 500 tanked 15% in a month. But since then, the market has rallied nearly 10%; if you’d panicked and sold, you would have missed out on that rally.

Just a gentle reminder to justify the text for all chapters!

I'm not sure if it was an issue unique to the hardcopy I ordered via Amazon, but the text for random parts of some chapters weren't justified. Nothing catastrophic, but it did make for a more uncomfortable read at some points :s13:

Oh yeah, the formatting was pretty busted in some parts; I've been through it and fixed up all the justification (and also laid it out in a much nicer font, Palatino Linotype).

Yes, there is almost no protection on bank deposits in India. But there is an implicit guarantee that banks won't be allowed to go down.

People thought Lehman wouldn't be allowed to fail, as late as the day before it exploded.

And I'm honestly a bit surprised. You've said yourself that you're super-duper-risk-averse, but you were loaded up on deposits in Indian banks which are... frankly not great credit risks, especially if you look through the implicit guarantee. They're not as bad as Deutsche, but they're also not as good as a JPM or a DBS.

Hi all,

I just started trading becos i got insomnia and too bored at night :s22:
apparently i think i am paying too much to SCB for my trades so just wondering how i can reduce

already spent like 150usd just on fees.

a) You're in the wrong thread;
b) Use Interactive Brokers.

You're welcome.

I'm wondering realistically, how likely will the ES3-IWDA-MBH portfolio last for say a 20 year investment horizon. I.e., do we have to periodically change/move holdings to another ETF?

Yes, but you don’t have to.

As markets develop, there’ll be better investment vehicles popping up. MBH came along, and it’s a better choice than A35 for the bond component of your portfolio. Someone might launch a roboadvisor tomorrow that does all this for you for a reasonable price. The ES3-IWDA-MBH three-fund portfolio is the best for now, but there might be better, cheaper ways to get that same exposure in the future.

For $2k a month, what will be your suggested distribution into the below? Even 25% in each?
- MBH (for bond ETF)
- ES3 (for STI ETF)
- IWDA (for global market ETF)
- N2IU and C38U (for REITs, still have a soft spot for property :s13: )

Have substantial savings in high interest bank accounts (average around 3%), hence does it make sense to skip bonds all together then?

I mean, I think it’s pretty clear what my recommended distribution is. Assuming you’re about 35, I’d put 25% in MBH, and 37.5% each in ES3 and IWDA.

Also, as everyone’s already told you, ES3 already gives you plenty of real estate exposure; and over the long term, real estate underperforms a stock-and-bond portfolio; it will make you do worse. You don’t need a REIT allocation.
 

311290

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Thinking of withdraw SSB and put in thailand FD.

However now SGD:THB (1:23.16) which is low. The money will be use for marriage in thai so guess have to convert in future as well

SSB vs TH FD
1yr: 2.01% vs 2.25%
2yr: 2.14% vs 2.75%
 
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BBCWatcher

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For the record, in the U.S. stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression the Dow Jones Industrial Average (which was/is a small basket of stocks) fell 89% peak to trough, although it took quite a while to do that: from October, 1929, to July, 1932.

If you had been motoring through that period with dollar cost averaging, you ended up buying a lot of cheap stocks. However, the labor market was dreadful for employees in the depths of the Great Depression. If your income falls to zero, and for years, it’s at least not easy to keep buying even the cheapest stocks. If you were retiring in, say, 1940, this was all pretty dreadful — and then from 1942 onward you had rationing during some of your retirement. (It was much more dreadful in other countries, though, including in Singapore. And you got some help as a retiree from depressed prices.) Not so coincidentally, U.S. Social Security started cutting its first monthly checks in 1940, and that first cohort of Social Security recipients did really well.

Anyway, that was the worst of the worst in modern financial history. It cannot be totally ruled out, but Vanguard’s Target-style approach is robust against even such calamities.

Just before Jack Bogle died he encouraged investors to dial down their expectations of future total returns and to maintain a focus on cost control. His forecast was for lower total returns going forward, and he pointed out that if his forecast is wrong then you’ll merely have more retirement wealth than you need, a happy problem to have. I agree with all that. Just follow the basic principles: start saving sooner rather than later, make saving and investing a regular and dogged habit, keep it simple (and low cost) with ample diversification, and it should all work out fine.
 

flikmy

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Anyone has any thoughts on this:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-02-11/the-incredible-shrinking-singapore-stock-market

I guess it backs BBC's notion of having a greater diversity in the equities portion by having a larger portion in global equities (ie. 80-20).

It quotes: "A lot of private bank money is now in Singapore, and they actually like the core, somewhat boring, defensive stocks"
And ends with:
"As far as Aberdeen’s Thom is concerned, the stock market has little bearing on the “tremendous growth” in Singapore’s wealth management sector or the vibrancy of the financial industry generally. What’s more important, he says, is the perception that the country is a safe place to park money, with access to good advice and good money managers. And a thriving stock market? “A nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have.”

In another sense, I guess having Singaporean equities is suited for a retirement plan, but not having global equities in the mix might mean that your plan isn't aggressive enough over the long term 20-35 year accumulation period.
 

Maeda_Toshiie

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https://www.straitstimes.com/busine...e-incredible-shrinking-singapore-stock-market

The incredible shrinking Singapore stock market

A few choice parts:

But that doesn't tell the whole story. As of the end of last year, the market capitalization of companies with primary listings in Singapore had fallen by $97.5 billion, or 14 per cent, from the end of 2014, according to SGX data. The bourse's average daily turnover has been halved since 2007. "These trends are worrying," says Ngoh Yi Sin, an analyst at Singapore's CGS-CIMB Securities International.

Hong Kong's market is now so much larger and more vibrant than Singapore's, the two can't even be compared, says Tham Tuck Seng, PwC's head of capital markets in Singapore. The imbalance is practically impossible to right, because companies naturally gravitate to bigger, more liquid markets. "They're two different fishes," Tham says. And it's not just Hong Kong that's overshadowed Singapore. In 2018 even South-east Asia's regional exchanges left Singapore in their wake: The Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange in Vietnam raised US$2.9 billion; Thailand's bourse, US$2.6 billion.

Ron Tan is chairman and CEO of Cityneon Holdings Ltd, which mounts exhibitions modeled on blockbuster movies such as Marvel Entertainment's The Avengers and NBCUniversal Media's Jurassic World. In 2018, even though Cityneon's SGX-listed stock had been surging since a low three years earlier, Tan decided to take the company private. He says he was dissatisfied with Cityneon's valuation. Growth stocks such as his, which don't pay dividends, are misunderstood in Singapore, he says, because investors have become so accustomed to the steadier, dividend-yielding companies that make up most of the market, as is the case in Zurich and Dubai.

It's a stultifying mindset, he says, and it applies to everyone involved. "It's the ecosystem-the exchange, the fund managers, the retail investors, even the way I've been brought up," he says. "I'm a Singaporean, so I myself am programmed this way, so I cannot blame the rest of the people here when they look at my own company."

First, there's the education system. Singapore has gained international recognition for producing high-achieving students in math and science, but it's done so through an emphasis on following rules and rote learning. That, says UBS's Tay, impinges on creative thinking and leads to a lack of people starting businesses that might eventually list on the exchange. "We ask ourselves why we don't create enough entrepreneurs and creative people," he says. "It's not that we don't have them. It's just that the system does not allow it. If you have to spend so much time becoming exam-smart, you have very little time to be creative."

A country that thinks that entrepreneurship and creativity can be taught in school :s22:

Homeownership - revered in Singapore - is another drag on the stock market. Former Prime Minister Lee reasoned that if Singaporeans owned their own property, they'd be more invested in the country and its economy, and he instituted policies to encourage just that. Today, Singapore has one of the highest levels of homeownership in the world, about 90 per cent. Its people have a staggering US$949 billion invested in real estate, accounting for 44 per cent of household assets. This is the "traditional path," says Jaime Pang, a 31-year-old lawyer. "You get a job, you get married, you put all your money into a house, and there isn't much left over to invest in the stock market."

As a result, stocks and securities account for just 9.6 per cent of household assets, according to government statistics. That compares with 48 per cent in the US. And Singaporeans who do put money into equities increasingly turn to options beyond the city-state, a diversification that's facilitated by exchange-traded funds, among other things. "Local investors are savvy and have more international options," CGS-CIMB's Ngoh says.


The entire article is worth a read.
 

proton91

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Hi guys, I'm 28 this year.

What would be the recommended % breakdown amongst:
MBH
IWDA
EIMI
ES3

For MBH and ES3, what would be a good platform to buy?
 
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