Hi shiny and other vets, not sure if this has been asked before, but what is your take on the current market outlook?
So the STI is off about 17%—15% once you count dividends—from its highs of the year. This is a pretty big, pretty disconcerting pullback, and it's natural to ask "why would I buy stocks down here? They're only going to keep going down!"
The thing is, they're not going to keep going down. The stocks you buy today are the same stocks you were buying six months ago, except now they're 15% cheaper. Think of it as a 15%-off sale; if someone put a 15%-off sale on Macbooks, you'd buy that in a heartbeat. And it's the same thing with stocks. And six months ago, everyone was bulled up and ready to buy stocks; now, nobody wants to buy them, even though they're 15% cheaper.
The world is not going to end tomorrow, we're not going to spiral into oblivion or suddenly have a new GFC; that's simply not going to happen. The smart thing to do is lean against the crowd. Now's a solid time to buy.
Why do majority of the financial bloggers go for blue-chip stocks and Reits instead of just index funds, is it because it generates more traffic for their blogs?
Yeah, I think it might be. Banging the drum on "buy IWDA and ES3 and MBH and just sit on it for thirty years" isn't a great way to draw a lot of repeat traffic, even if it's the most sensible way to invest.
Hi I am a beginner and have not much experience. Have bought Posb invest saver for aroundyears now $100 per month. I also put in $700 per month in poems sharebuilder for sti etf. I should continue on right and not sell now since sti etf is Low now.
That's right. The idea is to buy low and sell high. Prices are low right now, and you don't need the money, so you should be buying, not selling.
Quick question (potentially trivial) for the experienced members here.
For brokers who have custody of your shares (like MBKE Prefunded), the buy and sell fees are effectively the same.
For brokers who transfer your shares to CDP (like DBSV Cash Upfront), am I right to say that the selling fees are higher than the buying fees, because one would incur fees for transferring the shares back to the broker? On top of that, the selling fees are not the Cash Upfront rate, since the shares are not in the broker’s custody?
It's the latter, not the former. Selling out of CDP is more expensive because the broker has to run the risk that you don't have the stock and you're actually naked-shorting (I thiiiinnnkkk).
Access to private equity for US retail investors?
Ehh. That was the hook that Blackstone used when they went public (and it's the hook that Astrea used for their bond issue!) but I don't buy it; the only way to get private equity returns is to invest in a private-equity fund.
They only lose IF they sell, which I doubt so.
I'm going to nitpick this a bit. "You don't loose if you don't sell" (the misspelling is 100% deliberate, trust me) is the easiest way to get yourself featured on @BagHolderQuotes Twitter. It doesn't matter whether or not you've sold; a loss is a loss.
2018 will be a good year to run a multi-decade study of long-run equity returns by buying at an S&P 500 (or IWDA) ATH.
To be fair: 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 were also good years to run that same study, because the SPX hit ATHs in all of those years as well.
Does the formating of the ebook count as a feedback? Somehow when i transfer it to kindle the portion which is encased by a boxed is shifted and some words can't be read.
Oh yeah, I wrangled with my editor no end about those. I like blockquotes like that, but the formatting just doesn't work on Kindle, and I don't have the time or the expertise to force them to work properly. I'm going to fix up the formatting and the inline images.
In a bear market, both of the etfs drop in value (paper losses for both) but my iwda fall at a slower pace, do I still need to sell iwda and buy into sti etf?
Or can I use my every mth purchase to make up to the right percentage and wait till the next schedule rebalance day or probably keep doing it till one of them became higher than the invested amount and also, higher in terms of allocation% ?
When you're just starting out, your monthly purchases will keep you pretty close to balanced. If it gets to rebalancing time—I usually like to rebalance twice a year, in November and April—and you're only out of balance by a few hundred dollars each way, then you can just leave it. But if your allocation says you should buy a few thousand dollars' worth of stocks or bonds, which might have happened after the big swings we've seen over the last few months, then go ahead and do it; stick to the rules you've set for yourself.
BBC mention can use CPF as the bond option. Do i need to invest my cpf into ETF?
Nah. With CPF funds, you should be investing to get the bonus interest on the first few tens of thousands of dollars in your CPF. That's free money, especially with the high interest rates on CPF-SA balances.
