Straco had just been hit by the perfect storm that will almost certainly impact its upcoming 4Q19 results as well as 1Q20 results. Flyer suspension The bad news started streaming in back in late-Nov 2019 when a spokesperson for the Singapore Flyer said in a media statement on 26 Nov 2019 that the Singapore Flyer
I recently came across an interesting article. This was a Harvard Business Review (HBR) article back in Sep 2019 which identified the Top 20 global companies that have achieved the highest-impact business transformations over the past decade. These are the world’s most transformative companies that excelled in the development of new products, services, and business
Sequence of Returns Risk could be your major party pooper Imagine a hard-working individual name John who started saving and investing early and amassed a nest egg of $1m in his stock portfolio at the age of 65. He proudly produces his bank book, showcasing the magic retirement “figure” clearly imprinted on it to his
Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) Plenty has been written on the Supplementary Retirement Scheme (or SRS for short). This is a voluntary scheme that complements one’s CPF savings for retirement. You can contribute any amount to your SRS account, subject to a cap of S$15,300 for Singaporeans and $35,700 for foreigners, as many times as you
I came across this pretty interesting diagram from visualcapitalist aptly called The Periodic Table of Commodity Returns. Its a really fancy table with a myriad of colours that caught my attention. The table basically depicts the annual returns of the key commodities over the past decade. I was interested to find out which was the
Most of you would have heard of dividend growth investing, buying companies with a good track of growing their dividends. This is a solid way to grow your income over time. However, buying a dividend-growth company can turn out to be a “bad investment” if one grossly overpay for it. So how does one determine
I follow this website called TipRanks from time to time when I am running dry of stock ideas. TipRanks is a fintech website that tracks and measures the performance of the stock rating issues by over 6,000 Wall Street Analysts. According to their records, the 25 best performing analysts had a success rate of 67.6%,
Can we enjoy our Latte and still retire well? If you are like millions of people around the world who spend a $5-6/day, 5 days a week, on a nice cup of latte, is that an act of financial irresponsibility that could potentially derail your retirement plans? Well, depends on who you ask that question.
Not much has been written about Inflation. However, it is one of the Four Key unknowns that affect one’s retirement plan. Granted that inflationary pressure has been low in the past decade. However, having a complacent mindset with a low inflation assumption baked into one’s retirement calculation might be a recipe for disaster. Compound Interest
I have written about Robo-advisors on a number of occasions. The advent of Robo-advisors here in Singapore provides an additional option for Singaporeans to start their investment journey with a low capital requirement (a minimum amount of $1k can usually get you started). I do believe that Robo-advisors are good investment platforms for the typical
We have written in a previous article why a 60:40 equity to bond portfolio composition (Portfolio 1) isn’t the ideal structure for a retirement portfolio using the 4% withdrawal rule. Instead, we suggest using a portfolio structure that consists of 20% equity, 20% bond, 40% REITs and 20% Gold (Portfolio 2). In this article, we
Before all the Warren Buffett’s fans out there start stoning me, these are Warren Buffett’s own words pertaining to a particular loss opportunity: “In the earlier years, it’s very clear – the answer is stupidity” Warren Buffett What was this pertaining to? He was actually referring to his decision NOT to invest in Microsoft in
Creating the ideal 4% withdrawal rule portfolio I believe that some of you would be familiar with the 4% retirement rule. In a simple nutshell, this is the amount of money you might withdraw each year from the starting value of your portfolio of stock and bonds in retirement and not risk running out of
I tried to calculate the math behind the Retirement Sum Scheme and unfortunately, that did not work out for me. I hope that some expert can enlighten me on that. But before I dive into the details, below is a quick summary of the Retirement Sum Scheme and its successor, CPF LIFE. For those already
Following the closure of the Motley Fool Singapore, Singaporeans now have one less website to visit for their stock inspiration. The Dollar and Sense team have previously put up a list of 13 local websites that continue to offer Singapore investors quality stock insights and commentaries. Unfortunately, the New Academy of Finance doesn’t make the
Glassdoor, a website where current and former employees anonymously review companies, just announced the Top 10 best places to work in Singapore for 2020. Unfortunately, no local firms made the cut. All the top Singapore employers of 2020 are international firms. 8 of the leading 10 are headquartered in the US, one in the Netherlands
