Also, may i ask.. if i accumulated big enough portfolio in SCB for IWDA, for example 100K usd worth.. can i port them over to IB? advisable to do that?
Yep, you can do this (and it’s a good idea).
Thinking if this Thailand FD is better than SSB.
I know i have to take into consideration of FX.
Couple of things to think about:
1) Yes, as you mentioned, FX. I’d even go further and say that Thailand is one of those countries where if you’re planning to retire there, you
don’t want to own local-currency assets; you want to own hard-currency assets (global stocks and bonds) instead.
This is normally something I only run across with my larger consultancy clients who want to retire to smaller countries, but if someone came to me and said “oh and I want to retire to Thailand”, I would not put them in THB fixed-income or Thai equities; I’d point them to a global portfolio instead, because the risk of a sudden devaluation in Thailand is pretty significant.
2) Which bank is offering these rates - what’s their credit rating like? Do you trust them to be around in three or four years when you crack the term deposit open?
How do you guys feel about AGG then? No withholding tax?
Not a particularly huge fan. Why would a Singaporean resident want to own a lump of American bonds unless you’re planning to retire there.
Hi fellow experts, this is my first post after reading ST e-book and would like some clarification.
I am currently in university (freshie) and have a lump sum amount of $60k
Crikey, when I was a freshie my bank account had about enough money in it to cover a cup of coffee. You’ve done pretty well for yourself!
The brokerage that I will be using should be SC for all the bonds and equities.
May I know if this is correct? Or is it a better option to split up my lump sum into monthly payments and then use IB for IWDA/ SC for local?
The problem you’re going to run into is that IBKR doesn’t let Singaporean residents buy Singaporean stocks; you’ll have to have a Stanchart account for the MBH and ES3. Other than that, you’ve got absolutely the right idea.
Hi Shiny
Thoughts on Phillip SING Income ETF?
Seems to be dividend focused and is it a good alternative to investing in STI ETF?
Nope. The fees are higher than ES3; and being a dividend ***** is a dangerous game to play. You’re less diversified because you’re putting all your money in banks and REITs. Better to spread it out; less yield, more capital gain.
Any one invested in lse? Is it recommended?
What?
Hi ST and others, I see the point that the US stock market =/= the US economy. Since Donny is obviously accelerating the decline of US as a country and probably its economy, are there any long-term effects on the strength of USD?
No. Donny Two Scoops can try to talk down the dollar as much as he wants, but at this point everybody in the market has realized that he can’t do squat to actually influence the strength or weakness of the USD (unless he has pics somewhere of Jerome Powell getting intimate with a goat).
In other words, how should I worry about the long-term currency risks when I buy ETFs in USD?
People have already pointed this out, but when you buy an ETF, you own the stocks in that ETF. You don’t own a pile of US dollars, you don’t own a pile of US-dollar-denominated-bonds-that-will-repay-US-dollars. You own stocks. So you don’t actually have exposure to the currency that the ETF is denominated in.
With the suspension of Maybank MIP, buying of MBH is getting a little bit more expensive. Rather than looking into bond etf, i am thinking whether i should keep cash in high interest savings account that can give me 2% consistently, assuming i can fulfill the requirements.
I’m not a big fan of these, for a couple of reasons:
1) They tend to have a lot of hoops to jump through. As an example: the Citibank one is relatively popular, but you have to hold money in there for at least a year before you make the maximum yield - and as soon as you take any money out, the interest rate resets to the lowest rate. That makes it well suited for an emergency fund, but
very bad as an investment where you might want to take money out every 6-12 months to rebalance. You’ll constantly be resetting to the lowest interest rate.
2) They have caps on the amount you can keep in them - $150k in the case of the Citi account. Any amount above that earns a pittance. This might not seem like a constraint now, but after a couple decades it’ll be a problem;
3) The interest rate is still lower than you’d get from MBH.
It’s a bit of a pain that MBKE pulled their MIP. In the alternative, until a better plan comes along, POSB’s InvestSaver plan (buying A35 instead of MBH) is perfectly good.
Is iShares Global Corp Bond UCITS ETF the best recommendation for a corporate bond ETF?
Shiny, you suggested this bond to be before, as I mentioned I was unsure of where I will settle down/retire.
When I looked at the performance, it seems very fluctuating. Are there any others worth considering?
That one moves around a lot because it’s got bonds of a bunch of different currencies in it. You’ve got currency risk as well as everything else.
Hi Shiny, BBC, and all other experts,
I have been DCAing to IWDA monthly using IB without any doubt until I read a post today, saying that the number of IPOs has increased sharply and most of the companies are not even profitable. I believe this is a sign of a market crash.
Not to speculate or anything, but in the current market situation, would you recommend any different actions, rather than DCAing monthly as usual, to be taken? like hold off DCA for a while or even sell?
Firstly, think for a moment about whether it’s a good idea to pivot your entire investment strategy based on one blog post. If you did that, you’d be pulling your money from the market and re-adding it basically every day.
That aside: the point of dollar-cost-averaging is that you’re buying when the market is up
and when the market is down. When the market is down, your monthly investment is able to buy more shares, so you’re getting a better deal.
Markets will go up and down; they always do. The best thing you can do is set your strategy on autopilot so that you don’t wake up one morning and have a panic attack and pull everything based on something some rando wrote on their LiveJournal.
Why are reits generally unpopular in this thread? Seems like whenever I talk to my friends at least a couple of them will strongly recommend reits as an investment instead of etfs.
Not REITs in particular, but real estate in general: I’m not a huge fan of it as an asset class. In the US, at least (and definitely in the Singaporean residential context), it tends to be a pretty spectacular underperformer over long time periods. Most US real estate outside of a few hot markets still hasn’t recovered from 2008; and last I checked Singaporean condo prices are actually down from when I left in 2012.
Now people will contradict me and say “but SG-REITs have done so well,
obviously residential real estate is dumb but SG-REITs don’t own residential real estate!”. I mean, firstly, just because SG-REITs have outperformed stocks for the last few years doesn’t mean they’ll do that forever and ever amen; they eventually have to come back to earth.
The other thing is that price data and total-return data for SG-REITs can be a little misleading. SG-REITs are non-stop users of rights issues to raise capital for more acquisitions; that means holders are constantly getting diluted. But that dilution doesn’t show up in price or total-return data.
So the people who claim that SG-REITs are totally awesome are fixating on two things:
1) You’re pretty much entirely betting on Singaporean commercial real estate (office building and shopping malls) and industrial real estate (factories and warehouses). The smarter long-term play is to own the companies that use those office buildings and warehouses. If you own the REITs, all you get is the rent; but if you own the companies, then you get to share in the profits.
2) They’re getting a little blinded by the yield. Singaporean commercial and industrial real estate yields about 4-6%, but that comes with a lot of volatility; if the economy slows down, you’re going to be the first one to take the hit.
So, is there still a rationale to use SCB instead of DBSV cashupfront for purchase of MBH bond component?
SCB priority vs non priority
- 0.18% to 0.2%, 10 dollar minimum, custodian
DBSV Cashupfront
- 0.12%, 10 dollar minimum, CDP supposedly (I'm waiting for their reply on this just for confirmation)
Yeah, you’re missing that DBSV charges their full rate (0.28%) on the sell side. Stanchart is at least decent enough to only charge 0.18% when you sell, so you’ll probably end up paying less at Stanchart.
not as a satellite portion.
