SG Wealth Builder

Make money. Build Wealth. Preserve Wealth

Year: 2015

Keppel REIT
Money management; personal finance 

A nation in disgrace

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Would you take our children to court if they do not support us when we are old and jobless? This was the question that I posed to my wife after I saw an article by a money blogger who regretted the way he treated his late father.  Apparently, he was not on good term with his father and was compelled by the family court to support his father under the Maintenance of Parents Act.

After reading his article, I could feel his remorse, but I was not impressed with him either. To be taken to court by parents is a shameful thing, especially in an Asian society like Singapore, where family disputes are often confined within homes. Because of dignity and face value, very few parents are inclined to haul their children to court for not supporting them. Those who did are usually driven to desperation and forced to make their children pay up.

SG Wealth Builder

The Maintenance of Parents Act was promulgated in 1995 to give parents above 60 years old who could not support themselves the legal means to claim maintenance from their children. The implementation of such an Act in a First World country like Singapore shows the lack of social value and filial piety among many Singaporeans.

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Property investment; Singapore market; housing prices 

Homeowners feel the heat from rising interest rate

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It is like a rude shock to a sweet dream. Singapore homeowners are given a reality check since the start of the year when the key interest shot up like nobody business. Perhaps it is a sign of things to come but the trend is expected for a long time since the last financial crisis in 2008, which led to many countries to adopt loose monetary policies in the form of quantitative easing, notably from United States, Europe, Japan and China.

According to the Association of Banks in Singapore’s website, the latest three-month Singapore interbank offered rate, SIBOR, was 0.972% as of 20th March 2015. This was the highest level since 2008 amid expectations that United States Federal Reserve would possibly raise the lending rates mid of this year.

Obviously the above information is bad news for home-owners who borrowed a lot from the banks to finance their properties. Any slight incremental increase in the lending rate would affect their spending abilities.

I can relate to homeowners’ fear as I have home mortgage loan as well. Any form of market uncertainty is bad from a homeowner’s point of view because of budgeting concerns. Incidentally, in a few months’ time, the tenure of my mortgage loan will expire and I am looking to refinance my mortgage loan.

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Stocks 

When is the best time for you to invest in great businesses?

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Investment moats is the competitive advantage of a company that allows it to fend off competition from its rivals and enable it to earn excess returns for many years. According to Morningstar’s Why Moats Matter, there is a stock research process which guides investors on how to invest in great businesses at the right time and make money from the stock market.

The process involves a bottom-up approach which requires investors to identify the company’s moat(s), establish the fair value and determine the margin of safety. On the surface, it may seem straightforward but when you put it into practice, it is not so simple.

Moat Sources

According to Morningstar’s investment framework, there are five main sources that a company may possess: intangible assets, cost advantage, switching costs, network effect and efficient scale. Now why is having a moat source important from an investor’s point of view? If you recall that 15 years ago, Nokia used to dominate the worldwide mobile phone market and boasted the majority market share for a number of years. However, the entry of Apple’s iphone in 2007 changed the game and led to a dramatic shift towards smartphone, leading to Nokia losing its status as the market leader.

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Entrepreneurship Investments 

Capital Match: Singapore’s Peer-to-Peer Lending Fintech

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Capital MatchKevin LimCapital Match

Capital MatchSince SG Wealth Builder was founded in 2010, I had the opportunities to meet CEOs and entrepreneurs who unselfishly shared with me their visions and investment insights. Today, I am excited to be granted an email interview with Pawel Kuznicki, co-founder of Capital Match. The company is a peer-to-peer lending fintech start-up in Singapore.

1) Can you share with the readers your background and business model?
I started my career as a consultant with McKinsey & Company in Europe and Africa. Then I moved to Rocket Internet, global venture builder, to build their portfolio companies in Southeast Asia (Zalora and Lazada). Last year I started my current business, Capital Match.

Capital Match is a peer-to-peer lending online marketplace to SMEs. Peer-to-peer lending is essentially banking without a bank as an intermediary – investors lend money directly to companies with Capital Match facilitating the transactions by providing credit risk assessment, legal documentation and debt collection services.

We mainly serve SMEs who cannot get a bank loan (a majority of SMEs in Singapore). We provide them loans of SGD 50,000-200,000 for a term of 3-12 months. Loans are syndicated with multiple investors providing funds to one borrower. The interest rates vary from 1.5% to 2.5% per month (on top of it there is additional processing fee of 0.2-0.5% per month).

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gold price
Gold 

Bullion Star Financials 2014

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In a step to further increase customer transparency, Bullion Star published its financial information such as sales revenue, number of orders, average order, medium order, website visits and other key data in its website on 14th March 2015.

Sales revenue was impressive and amounted to $53 million with average order of $6475. BullionStar.com also had more than 850,000 visits from 268,000 unique visitors in 2014. Among the 180 different products that Bullion Star carries, gold bars were the most popular products, consisting of 52% of its total sales, followed by silver bars (18%).

To be frank, I struggle to find another bullion dealer that carries so many variety of bullion products that Bullion Star offers. Furthermore, the prices of their bullion products are among the most competitive that you can find in Singapore.

The company was started in 2012, straight after the Singapore government announced GST removal for investment grade precious metals, and became operational in 2013. SG Wealth Builder is honored to partner with Bullion Star to bring new exciting technology into the precious metal industry since 2013!

Among the various product offerings of Bullion Star, my favorite one is the Bullion Savings Program (BSP) that are fully backed by precious metals and allows customers to convert to physical bullion at any time.

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personal finance 

CPF Medisave Minimum Sum to be scrapped on 1 January 2016

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Health Minister Gan Kim Yong announced in Parliament yesterday that the Medisave Minimum Sum will be scrapped next year January. For many Singaporeans who had been lamenting that their CPF monies “don’t really belong to them”, this is definitely a form of greater flexibility on the uses of their Medisave accounts. This is because when Singaporeans withdraw their CPF monies at age 55, they will no longer need to first top up their Medisave accounts to the MMS. Instead, they will only need to meet the withdrawal rules.

Another change would be the Medisave Maximum Ceiling, which would be fixed for each cohort of Singaporeans when they turn 65 years old. Mr Gan reiterated that the ceiling has to be raised every year to keep pace with rising inflation and increasing life expectancy. Given a choice, I would not touch my Medisave monies even if I am 55 years old now because the interest earned in Medisave account is so much higher than the current bank saving rates. However, going forward, the interest rate environment might change, so I really appreciate the scrapping of the Medisave Minimum Sum.

The revised Medisave rules is a sign that the government is beginning to soften its hardline approach on CPF monies.

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Stocks 

Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is proposing new rules on securities-based crowdfunding

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Crowdfunding is the latest investment trend that uses online technology platforms to address both the needs of investors and small-medium enterprises (SME). At one hand, retail investors are looking for viable fixed income sources to grow their wealth. On the other hand, we have start-ups and SMEs which lack access to alternative pools of private financing, other than commercial banks. This is where crowdfunding can help to bridge the gap.

In a recent consultation paper issued, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) is proposing measures to facilitate crowdfunding involving securities.

Generally there are four types of crowdfunding – donation-based, reward-based, lending-based and securities-based. According to MAS, donation-based and reward-based are not subjected to securities regulation as there are no exchange of securities and promised of financial returns. However, for lending-based and securities-based, MAS deemed that they are subjected to securities rules.

Henceforth, MAS’ proposed framework for securities-based include the requirement for companies operating lending-based or securities-based crowdfunding platforms to hold Capital Markets Services (“CMS”) licenses. In addition, MAS would restrict offerings from lending-based and securities-based to only Accredited (AIs) and Institutional Investors (IIs). The rationale for this approach is because MAS aims to safeguard the interest of retail investors as there is a certain amount of risks in such investment products and MAS deemed that AIs and IIs are better positioned to handle the level of risks involved as they have more capitals and experiences.

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Gold 

BullionStar is hiring!

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Below is newsletter from BullionStar, a Singapore online bullion company where you can buy gold and silver at competitive prices. To be a successful wealth builder, investors must always stay ahead of the the curve and keep abreast on the latest development in investment trends. For the past few years, the government has been trying to establish Singapore as a precious metal trading hub, with the aim of creating good job opportunities for Singaporeans. The salaries offered by BullionStar is really attractive and competitive. So Singaporeans should have no valid reason to complain the lack of good paying job positions in Singapore. Read on to find out more

BullionStar is currently hiring for customer service roles. Singapore is the go to place in the world for precious metals. If you are passionate about the bullion industry, now is the time to join our team!

 We are hiring 1-2 people for customer service roles which include serving bullion customers, handling transactions, handling bullion and carrying out various administrative tasks.

BullionStar is a fast paced company. To contribute to our team you will have the following skills:

– Accurate and meticulous
– Versatile and hard working
– Communicative taking initiatives and giving feedback

The job location is BullionStar’s bullion shop, showroom and vault at 45 New Bridge Road.

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Sheng Siong share price
Stocks 

Sheng Siong Group’s net profit grew 22.3% yoy to S$47.6 million for FY2014

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Singapore, 25 February 2015 – Sheng Siong Group Ltd. (“Sheng Siong”, together with its subsidiaries, the “Group” or “昇菘集团”), one of the largest supermarket chains in Singapore, reported a 22.3% year-on-year (“yoy”) increase in net profit to S$47.6 million for the full year ended 31 December 2014 (“FY2014”), mainly because of higher turnover and improved gross margin.

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Revenue increased by 5.6% yoy in FY2014 of which 2.3% was contributed by the new stores which were opened in 2012, and 3.3% from comparable same store sales for the old stores. The increase in revenue was driven mainly by growth in the new stores, longer operating hours, marketing initiatives and renovation to some of the old stores. Most of the new stores, which are now in their third year of operation, continued to grow within expectations. Revenue contraction in the Bedok and Tekka stores appeared to have bottomed out in 4Q2014, despite growth remaining negative for the full year, though of a lesser magnitude compared with FY2013.

Gross margins increased to 24.2% in FY2014 compared with 23.0% in FY2013, driven mainly by lower input costs derived from the distribution centre, better sales mix, and stable selling prices.

Sheng Siong

Administrative expenses increased by S$6.4 million in FY2014 compared with FY2013, mainly because of the increase in staff costs.

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AEM share price
Stocks 

What is it like to catch a falling knife?

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One of the golden rules in investing is never to catch a falling knife. Yet when it really does occur on one, most of the time, most investors would enter into self-denial mode and refrain from exiting their investments or cut losses early.

You can term it as a classic investor’s symptom or attribute it to ego, greed and fear of cashing out too early. Whatever the case it is, catching a falling is a very painful experience and investors must not confuse it with the technique of dollar-cost-averaging. In my early days of investing, I made this folly in one of my investments – China Enersave.

Stock market

About 10 years ago, the renewable energy sector was seen as a hot prospect because of the sky-high fuel prices and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Many companies were engaged in various alternative fuel solutions and one of them was China Enersave, a Singapore company which operated biomass power plants in China. When I came across the profile of the company, like many novice investors, I was intrigued by the business model and therefore invested in the stock. In my excitement, I threw all caution to the wind and ignored the early warning signs – poor management execution, lack of company’s track record and the high risks of doing business in China.

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Uncategorized 

Singapore Memories: Chinese TV Drama – The Unbeatables

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As we celebrate Singapore’s 50th birthday this year, I can’t help but look back at how much our society has transformed and progressed over the years. I grew up in the 80s, a time when smart phones and Internet were non-existent. Though life was simple, the pace was also less stressful. In fact, my generation’s main sources of after-dinner family entertainments were television and radio only. To capture the memories of this past generation, I decided to blog about this beautiful chapter of my life in a series of articles starting with this one.

Widely seen as the trail-blazer TV drama serial in Singapore’s Channel 8, The Unbeatables was the first show that featured gambling as the core theme and took the Singapore’s audience by storm more than twenty years ago. Even though the show was produced in 1993, an era without the distractions from cable TV and Internet, most Singaporeans would agreed that it was one of the greatest shows that SBC (the predecessor of Mediacorp) has ever produced, even until today. In my view, I would say that The Unbeatables, was truly unbeatable, and had set the gold standard for the media industry. For more than two decades, no other shows had come close to matching The Unbeatables’ quality, class and enthralling twists.

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Gold; silver 

The Silver Bull Market: Four Investment Factors to Consider Before Buying Silver or Gold

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In Shayne McQuire’s The Silver Bull Market, he highlighted four important factors to consider before buying silver or gold:

1) Investment safety refers to your capital protection from the financial market risks. Most people always lament that owning silver or gold bullion does not provide dividend incomes. However, they don’t realize that precious metals allows you to remove wealth from the financial system. This is because gold and silver have historically been used as store of wealth and gold in particular, is seen as an effective tool to beat inflation. Take the current Euro crisis as an example. Greece is facing possible exit from the Euro because of its massive national debts. The country had been previously bailed out with a $275 billion international loan and is now asking for fresh fund of $10 billion euros in short term financing. Clearly, the country’s plight shows that the Europe economies are not doing well and holding on to the Euro currency might be risky as it could face possible devaluation if the crisis spreads across Europe.

Silver Bull Market2) Investment potential refers to the ability for the price of silver or gold to rise over the long term. It is interesting to note that while Warren Buffett disdains gold for its lack of utility, he views silver differently and even purchased 130 million ounces (at low price of $6) in the late 1990s, one fifth of the global production at the time.

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Stocks 

How to estimate fair value of a stock

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Many finance bloggers like to quote Warren Buffett’s saying “price is what you pay; value is what you get”. However, knowing this is one thing, practicing it is another matter altogether which requires some level of deep analysis. The fact is that you can’t determine the intrinsic value of a company just by staring at the figures stated in the quarterly or annual financial statements. According to MorningStar’s “Why Moats Matter”, there are generally two approaches when it comes to valuation concepts.

How do investors identify great companies? One of the simple tools to value company is through using earnings yield, or more commonly known in the investment community as Price/Earning (P/E) ratio. This simple method requires only current share price divided by the last 12 month’s earning. Companies with high P/E ratio are considered growth stocks.

There are pros and cons in using P/E ratio to measure the value of a company. Whilst this metric is relatively easy to calculate, this approach might not be appropriate for companies whose profits swing significantly from year to year. This is especially for for high growth stocks and cyclical companies like the airlines and IT companies.

Another approach of measuring the intrinsic value of a company is to determine the discounted cash-flow, or DCF.

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Lippo Malls Indonesia Retail rust
Stocks 

Singtel reports robust Q3 earnings growth

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Singapore Telecommunications Limited reported group earnings results for the third quarter and nine months ended December 31, 2014. For the quarter, the company reported group revenue of SGD 4,427 million compared to SGD 4,263 million a year ago.

EBITDA was SGD 1,229 million compared to SGD 1,264 million a year ago. Underlying net profit was SGD 970 million compared to SGD 910 million a year ago. Net profit was SGD 970 million compared to SGD 872 million a year ago.

Free cash flow was SGD 669 million compared to SGD 569 million a year ago. Profit before EI and tax was SGD 1,285 million compared to SGD 1,236 million a year ago. Net profit rose 11.2% boosted by higher mobile data revenue and bigger contributions from its mobile partners in Australia and elsewhere.

The company delivered a solid third-quarter performance and successfully increased mobile data revenues with better networks, technology, content and service. Post-tax profit of its associates rose 29% to SGD 458 million, led by Telkomsel in Indonesia and Bharti Airtel.

Singtel

For the nine months period, the company reported group revenue of SGD 12,884 million compared to SGD 12,720 million a year ago. EBITDA was SGD 3,817 million compared to SGD 3,858 million a year ago.

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Property investment; Singapore market; 

Singapore private property prices decline for the first time since 2008

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According to data released by URA on 23 January 2015 for 4th Quarter 2014, the prices of private properties declined by 4% for the year of 2014 as a whole, compared to an increase of 1.1% in 2013. The report also highlighted that there were price decrease across all segments of the private residential property market, including the central region, which seen drop of 0.9%.

Source: URA

The current market trend is in line with what most analysts predicted last year and the market mood is expected to continue to be sour moving forward. With the slew of cooling measures firmly in place, many property investors are still adopting a wait-and-see approach. Because of this, for the whole of last year, developers sold 7,316 units, a figure much lower than the 14,948 units sold in 2013.

Source: URA

To make matter worse, if we include the 14,220 Executive Condominium (EC) units in the pipeline, there would be a total of 83,180 units in the pipeline. Also, based on the completion dates reported by developers, about 24,796 units (including ECs) will be completed this year and another 25,717 units (including ECs) are expected to be completed in 2016. Clearly, the data indicated that the supply is outstripping the market demand since 2010 as reflected below.

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Gold; portfolio management 

Why Singaporeans always lose money in gold investments

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Ignorance is one of the main reasons why investors consistently lose monies when it comes to investing because the biggest risk comes from not knowing what you are doing. The second factor is greed, which causes investors to lose sight of the risks involved in alternative or exotic investments. In the pursuit for higher returns for their monies, those who are greedy overlook or underestimate the risks involved. Thirdly, arrogance is the ultimate downfall for those who don’t respect the market. Always remember the golden rule that you can never win the market consistently, so avoid leveraging your investments if you don’t have the holding power. Yes, leveraging can increase the profit margins, but it can also backfire and widen your losses when the market turn against you.

In early February 2015, news broke out that more than 250 Singaporeans lost an estimated $35 million in yet another flopped gold buy-back scheme operated by Suisse International. Unhappy investors gathered outside the police headquarter trying to lodge police reports to the Commercial Affairs Department (CAD). It was amazing that after so many widely reported cases of gold buy-back scams, Singaporeans still fell prey to such schemes. There were a few who even claimed to borrow a few hundred thousands from the banks to invest.

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crypto
Stocks 

Investing in SingTel

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Nowadays, I am extremely fed up with M1 network services. No matter where I go, the 3G network coverage is terribly poor for my mobile phone. As a result, sometimes I could not receive messages from my loved ones and friends.

I suspect the drop in the network quality may be because I cancelled M1 4G subscription recently – previously it was offered to me free-of-charge when I renewed my subscription plan but M1 stated that it would charge me $10 extra from January 2015 onward. If not for the fact that I have to pay hefty penalty for cancelling my subscription plan contract, I would have terminated my line long ago.

From the consumer’s point of view, if I am not satisfied with a company’s services or products, I would not invest in their shares. For a knowledge-driven economy, internet data access is critical in Singapore and if M1 is unable to provide reasonable network service level, it don’t deserve any investment merits. Notwithstanding the dividend track records, if M1 is unable to retain customers, its economic moat will only erode over the long run.

SingTelThe saturated Singapore market and the fierce competition among the three telecommunication companies (SingTel, M1 and Starhub) reinforce the importance of economic moats in this sector.

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Gold 

Gold Bars traded without spread in Singapore – A world’s first!

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Below is a press release from BullionStar Pte Ltd, a Singapore registered bullion dealer offering GST exempted precious metals for savings and investment. The Singaporean government exempted precious metals in 2012 with the objective of making Singapore a trading, transit and storage hub of precious metals.

Gold Bars with No Spread!

Today, BullionStar launches a unique new opportunity to buy and sell physical 100 gram gold bars without any spread between the buy and sell price! The BullionStar 100 gram gold bar is the world’s first physical 100 gram gold bar to be traded with no spread.

The gold bars are minted by the Swiss LBMA accredited refinery Argor-Heraeus for BullionStar with the text “Money since 4000 B.C.” on reverse indicating that gold has been money for some 6000 years.

When you buy 10 or more of these gold bars there’s no spread between the buy and sell price whatsoever. For purchases of less than 10 bars, there’s a small spread of 0.6 % which is still significantly less than normal for 100 gram bars.

BullionStar Mint – Gold Bars with No Spread – 100 gram
    
The gold bars are minted by the renowned Swiss refinery Argor-Heraeus and comes sealed in a tamper-proof Certicard blister package.

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Investments 

Singapore investors set to lose $70 million

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According to today’s Property Guru’s news article, 400 Singapore investors are suing Ecohouse for investment losses of up to $70 million. Apparently, the company had an office in Suntec Tower and managed to attract many first time retail investors hoping to make money from overseas property investments. Investors were sold investment schemes that promised to deliver “20% in 12-months on its S$46,000 social housing property investments”.

To put things into perspective, many of these Singapore investors are not your typical mom-and-pop types of investors who are uneducated and ignorant. Most of the victims are middle-class people with high incomes seeking to enhance their wealth through schemes that promise high returns within a short time frame. Usually the scheme involves pooling of investors funds and the money is typically managed solely by the operator. The first principle that investors should always bear in mind is that if something is too good to be true, it is! Retail investors should first of all check whether these schemes are regulated, instead of just focusing on the rate of returns.

Ecohouse managed to sell more than 1000 of their investment schemes in Singapore and other South East Asian countries in 2012 and 2013. That was the period when the property market was in blistering red hot form in Singapore and also coincided with the slew of cooling measures implemented by the government.

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SG Wealth Builder
Insurance coverage; medical shield; financial planning; personal finance 

Traded Life Insurance Policies in Singapore

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Singaporeans love to buy and sell properties and cars, and the secondary markets have been vibrant for these two big-ticket items. To source for the best deals, Singaporeans can conveniently log on to online websites like iProperty and SG Car Mart. But how about insurance policies? In US and UK, the secondary markets for traded life and endowment insurances are pretty robust. However, in Singapore, the market for traded life and endowment policies is still pretty nascent.

Traded life insurances exist because the existing policy holder decides to liquidate his life or endowment policies due to financial problems or when the insured person experiences a decline in life expectancy and hope to cash in on his insurance.

career

Usually the cash value would be low if the policy holder surrender the policy to the insurer, so a better option would be to sell to another individual at a higher price as offered by the insurer. Throughout the transaction, no new policy is created and only the existing policy bought by the original policy holder is used.

An important thing to note is that if you purchased a traded life policy or traded endowment policy, you are required to pay the premiums until the policy matures or the person whose life is insured dies.

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Forex; Trading 

New asset classes added to stock market ‘s alarm clock, Call Levels

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Local start-up Call Levels has created a mobile app that simplifies trading and investing by focusing on a single primary need – the need for investors to be alerted when their selected assets hit pre-set price levels.

The start-up’s co-founder, Daniel Chia, who was a sovereign wealth and hedge fund portfolio manager for the past eight years, created the app after realising that the complexity of existing finance and trading apps put off users who needed them most.

“It’s for part-time investors, businessmen who watch currency moves and even finance professionals themselves” says Daniel. “Call Levels keeps things simple for anyone with an interest in the markets by focusing on only doing one thing well – free, reliable, real-time price alerts.”

Personal finance

The app allows users to select their assets to track, set price levels with a responsive slider, and then receive push notifications when the asset prices hit the desired levels. Users can also notify friends, brokers and bankers when the Call Levels hit by adding their contact details to the app.

Call Level app users will get the most updated information reliably across multiple trading markets and stocks, with a system algorithm that scans the market every minute. Leveraging on Agile development methodology, Call Levels team and 2359 Media built the app within two months, with a system that notifies users within seconds, ensuring critical information reaches users in a timely manner.

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SembCorp Marine
Stocks 

Investing in Telco stocks to pay your phone bills

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Below article is adapted from SGX website and permission was sought to publish it.

According to a year-end BCG report, there are currently almost 7 billion mobile phone subscriptions globally, or one for every person on Earth.

Last year, listed mobile phone providers – Singtel, Starhub and M1 averaged a 10.1% total return and have generated a 1.7% return in the year thus far.

These stocks all distributed dividends last year, which might have helped offset mobile phone subscription plans. For instance, an investment of S$7,320 in Singtel shares last year would have generated enough dividend income to pay the minimum annual fee of Singtel’s Combo 1 plan.

Stock investing

According to Boston Consulting Group (BCG), there are currently almost 7 billion mobile phone subscriptions globally, or one for every person on Earth. The recent report BCG noted several factors are fuelling subscription growth, including greater access, increasingly sophisticated mobile-device functionality, fast-rising device sales, an ever-increasing range of devices and device types, and sharply falling prices. Another factor that was noted included more reliable data connections that enable increasingly data-intensive activities – moreover approximately 60% of the world’s population is covered by 3G connectivity.

Singapore’s three listed mobile providers are Singtel, Starhub and M1.

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Stocks 

mm2 Asia

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Local movie producer and distributor, mm2 Asia Ltd has launched the Red Carpet Club, a programme targeted exclusively at shareholders and investors of the Group.

Up to 200 movie tickets of the preview screening on 16 February 2015 to be given away to shareholders ·

The cast of the movie will be present ·

Preview screening is the first of many perks that mm2 Asia is launching as part of its mm2 Red Carpet Club for shareholders ·

To be eligible for ticket entitlement, investors will need to be listed as a shareholder of mm2 Asia with a minimum holding of 1,000 shares as at 5.00 pm on 30 January 2015 

Newly-listed local movie producer and distributor, mm2 Asia Ltd. (“mm2 Asia” and together with its subsidiaries, the “Group”), today announced an exclusive treat for its shareholders. The Group will be giving away up to 200 tickets to its shareholders for the preview screening of the highly anticipated “Ah Boys to Men 3: Frogmen” on 16 February, a movie that is co-produced by the Group.

This preview for mm2 Asia’s shareholders will be ahead of the movie’s premiere on the big screens on 19 February.

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Stocks 

k1 Ventures reward shareholders with dividends again

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In my previous post, I wrote that k1 Ventures might reward shareholders with dividends due to the divestment of China Auto Grand for $32 million. True enough, in today’s announcement, the management of k1 Ventures declared tax exempt one tier interim dividend of 1.5 cents per share. The dividend will be paid to shareholders on 12 February 2015 but the counter will go ex-dividend on 29 January 2015. Even though I am not vested in this counter, I feel happy for those who had invested in this counter.

In the current financial report, k1 Ventures classified the divestment of Helm, the long haul transport leasing business, as “discontinued”. This move effectively made k1 Ventures asset-lite because the heavy burden of long term debts was removed. Currently, the Group did not have any borrowing and is focused on managing the current portfolio of assets. In a way, it is a good move that k1 Ventures is not making any new investments because this will enable them to focus and maximize value on the proceeds from any realization of assets and to return the same to shareholders.

On the balance sheet, the Group has a net current asset of $84.3 millions. The shareholders’ funds decreased from $256.5 million at 30 June 2014 to $236.5 million at 31 December 2014.

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Forex; Trading 

How to avoid fatal investment mistakes

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Call Levels

One of the most fatal mistakes made by investors is not setting price levels when entering and exiting an investment instrument. This approach is akin to expecting zero risk and turmoil in the market, something which I deem foolish and naive. Perhaps one of the most recent shocks in the financial system is the sudden overnight surge in the Swiss franc after the Swiss National Bank removed the cap on it’s currency appreciation against the ailing Euro in mid-Jan 2015.

So is there a way to mitigate this risk? For sure there is. Technology has changed the way we live our lives and how we invest. We can never win technology, and therefore should always strive to leverage on technology to create and manage our wealth. Local start-up Call Levels has created a mobile app that simplifies trading and investing by focusing on a single primary need – the need for investors to be alerted when their selected assets hit pre-set price levels. Call Levels is a simple mobile-based market alert application that allows users to track and set alerts for foreign currencies, stocks (to be out in 2015) and commodities of their choosing. It will also provide snapshots for quick market analysis based on the customised alerts tracked by users.

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Stocks 

Investing in Dividend Stocks

sgwealthbuilder 620 Views 3 Comments

When it comes to stock picking, one of the key criteria in evaluating the performance of the managers is how they deploy or handle cash flow within the business. For example, they may choose to use cash to reduce company’s debts, acquire other companies, buy-back shares or reward shareholders with dividends. Most investors, especially minority shareholders, would prefer the company to pay out dividends because it means a form of passive income for them. My favorite stock is k1 Ventures, one of the largest venture capitalists listed in SGX.

I have been tracking k1 Ventures for more than 10 years and had invested in the stock over the years. k1 Ventures is an investment holding company invested in diverse sectors such as finance, transportation, education and oil and gas. Those who are vested in this counter would know that this is an excellent stock which had paid out huge dividends over the years. Since FY05, it had consistently paid out dividends and if you had bought the share then and hold on to them till now, you would have an incredible yield of about 70%! Now, how many stocks in SGX are capable of giving this sort of dividends nowadays? Currently, I am not vested in this counter but am still tracking the company’s development for future investment opportunities.

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Stocks 

Stock investments: Investment Moats

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Dear Gerald,

I remember seeing one of your blogs around end of December which listed your stock holding as at end 2014. I was just going through your blog again but I couldn’t find that anymore. Could you please let me know if that was deleted or it’s still there just that I missed it.

Cheers!

Cindy

I received the above email from one of my readers recently. In view of the historic highs recorded by the US stock market, I have sold off all my stocks since last year and re-position my fund to upgrade to a new and bigger house. I feel that given the current stock market climate, the risk premium is not worth my investment dollars as it is so hard to identify good companies worth investing for the long term and trading at reasonable price. However, I still believe the stock market present many opportunities to build wealth, and therefore, I take this “lull period” to polish my knowledge on how to become a better stock investor.

When I started out investing in stocks, I do not treat the stocks as if I owned the businesses. On hindsight, that was probably why I had a few hits and misses here and there.

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selling combs
Entrepreneurship 

Successful entrepreneurs

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In my journey as a personal finance blogger, I have the privileges to meet up with great aspiring entrepreneurs. I learned a lot from these successful entrepreneurs because they have been unselfish in sharing with me their views and their thoughts on successful entrepreneurship. In fact, yesterday, I met up with the founder of icompareloan, one of the best websites for comparing mortgage loans in Singapore. Below are some of the traits I think commonly found in great entrepreneurs.

entrepreneur

1. They note down their ideas (just like my Investment Notebook). If there is an ah-ha moment, they would quickly note it down and revisit the idea again.

2.They think through their ideas over and over again to see if they can be successful. Sometimes their ideas might have been implemented by others. But if they are able to develop a better and more cost-effective way of doing it, then they stand a higher chance of winning.

3. They do their homework and spend tonnes of effort on researching. After all, no generals would like to fight a losing battle.

4. They can sell their ideas effectively. In business, if you cannot sell, you are finished. To make money, you must know sales tactics.

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LPA
personal finance 

SG Wealth Builder’s Journey

sgwealthbuilder 797 Views 2 Comments

As we enter 2015 and bid 2014 farewell, many of us are making new year resolutions to improve on areas which we would like to improve in the coming year. SG Wealth Builder is certainly no exception.

There were several ups and downs for me last year but overall, I think 2014 had been pretty good for me. There were also some lessons learned in my life journey which I hope to pen down in this blog, so as to remind myself not to repeat the same mistake again.

Family

This year, there will be a new addition to my family! My second child is expected to arrive in late April this year. To welcome this bundle of joy, for the past few months, I had been busy making arrangements for his arrival. My wife and I initially were planning to hire a domestic helper because we fear that she may not be able to cope with my daughter and baby son.

However, after several months of discussion, we decided not to go for it because of the concern that the maid would create more headaches and issues for us to manage. We had heard and read so many horror stories of maids mishandling baby kids and children in Singapore.

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