March 2016 - SG Wealth Builder

Month: March 2016

Being a fundamentalist, it is intriguing to read the technical analysis done by Dave, founder of See How I Trade. For the next few series of articles, I will attempt to combine both my bottom-up approach with Dave’s top down market analysis on SGX stocks. In this article, I will touch on Keppel Corporation, one of the most favourite blue chips among Singapore investors.

The past one year has been extremely unkind to Keppel Corporation, which suffered a triple whammy from the Lava Jato scandal, potential Sete Brasil bankruptcy protection and plunging crude oil prices. Due to this challenging environment, Keppel Corporation’s share price plunged to a 6 year low of $4.84 per share. Investors of Keppel Corporation were shell-shocked by the extent of the fall as in the year 2014, the share price was still trading at the $10 range. To drop by 50% in value within a year is frightening, even in terms of paper loss.

Many long-term investors of Keppel Corporation put on a brave front and one finance blogger even insisted that Keppel Corporation is not a pure oil and gas play. Of course everybody knows that Keppel Corporation is a conglomerate with diversified business …

What Are The Advantages Of Trading Online

sgwealthbuilder

March 29, 2016

Trading

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It won’t be wrong to say that Internet has completely changed the way many things are done these days. Today, you can buy almost everything online. You can search for information on all kinds of products and services. You can also ask for recommendations from your friends and family on social networks regarding certain products or other things.

The Possibility Of Trading Online

Thanks to the easy availability of Internet, you can also trade online. You just need a computer and an Internet connection to trade online at one of the several brokers that offer the facility of trading online. Online trading has grown a lot over the past few years. There are a number of advantages of this type of trading and here is a list of some of the major advantages.

SG Wealth Builder

One of the biggest advantages is that it is extremely easy and simple for individuals to conduct trades. You can buy various instruments such as stocks, currencies, commodities, CFDs and various other such financial instruments over the Internet. You do not need to give a call to the broker or do anything else to buy a financial instrument. You simply need to log onto …

Are you a motivated wealth builder?

sgwealthbuilder

March 27, 2016

personal finance, Self improvement

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One of the worst nightmares of a salaried employee is being retrenched. This is especially so for mature workers in their forties and fifties. The prospect of losing your job at such career stage can not only be frightening, but also damaging to your financial health. In this regard, are you a motivated wealth builder?

Recently, a Singaporean called Mr Chua is still looking for work 6 months after losing his job. His experience is not unique in Singapore and can happen to anyone of us, given the competitive job market. To mitigate the damages arising from job retrenchment, we must always strive to be a motivated wealth builder.

One of the most common perceptions is that you must be good at managing your personal finances in order to be considered an effective wealth builder. To this end, I feel that ensuring employability and job longevity play an important role in our wealth journey as well. Most of us tend to place too much focus in our job and overlook the importance of enhancing new skills or knowledge with the aim of developing a second career in the later stage of our working lives. We are always too pre-occupied with …

See How I Trade

sgwealthbuilder

March 26, 2016

Investment; SGX stocks; Equities; Stock trading

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Being a partner with Dave, founder of investment membership website, “See How I Trade”, I am given the privilege to access his website for free. For the past few months, I learned quite a lot on the different trading techniques from his website and this has inevitably changed my perspective on making money from the stock market. Whether my investing prowess has improved is still premature at this point of time because I have not put what I learned into practice. But nevertheless, it has been a fascinating learning journey.

Like many finance bloggers in Singapore, I used to believe in fundamental analysis and don’t believe in technical analysis because I always thought that the latter is more relevant for traders. But I have come to realize that most investors have the instinctive nature to speculate in the stock market. Trying to curb or avoid such instinct will not do the investor any good. Thus, the more sensible approach should be to set aside an amount of fund for “investment” and another set of fund for “trading”. But before you start trading, it is important to understand the science behind trading and develop your own method in order to …

Raffles Medical Group’s Proposed Stock Split

Raffles Medical Group (RMG) recently announced share split of each company share into three ordinary shares. It is not a done deal yet and the proposed move is still subject to approval of shareholders at a general meeting and the approval of SGX.

The rationale given is that the proposed share split will make the company shares more accessible to retail investors because of the reduction of each board lot. In addition, the move will also expand the shareholder base from the current approximate 7,780 shareholders.

I am not invested in this counter but have been tracking the company’s performance. Given that SGX has reduced the board lot trading size from 1000 to 100, RMG’s rationale for the stock split is not exactly convincing. This is because most retail investors can afford investing in RMG at current price, albeit at lower board lot size. On the flipside, existing shareholders may face risks of a decline in their share value after the implementation of the proposed share split. There is no assurance that the subdivided shares will be $1.39 after the implementation of the stock split.

SG Wealth Builder

On its financial health, RMG is doing reasonably well. Profit after tax …

7 Money-Wise Tips When You Buy a Home

sgwealthbuilder

March 21, 2016

Property investment; Singapore market; housing prices

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With property prices rising, there’s a need to be more financially savvy when it comes to shopping for a home. Not so much as cutting corners but finding better and more efficient ways to shop for a house. Considering how much you’re going to need to shell out for one, being money-wise is a good, practical approach to take.

Money-Wise Tips

Use property listings. In a world where everything happens online, checking online property listings is certainly one way to save customers the time and money it takes to find available properties for sale. With sites like Property Guru, homes in OUG Parklane for sale can be found in a matter of minutes instead of the hours or days it used to take. You won’t have to pay a visit to the properties for a first look. You can do that online and generate a better list of prospective homes that meet your requirements. In the past, home shoppers could only explore a few homes so coming up with a prospective list of properties took time. Now, you can achieve the same results at your desk. You save on time, effort and travel, all with handy tools like

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Three ways of making more money

I suppose at some point in your life, the thoughts of making more money must have crossed your mind. Otherwise, you will not be visiting my blog! When I started my financial journey, I did not know that I would follow my late father’s footstep and become a sole breadwinner one day. Being young, I could not appreciate what Dad has done for us. On hindsight, if you have been receiving all the time and not giving, you may tend to take things for granted.

To feed us, Dad had toiled and worked hard all his life, much to the detriment to his health. At the age of 38, he suffered from a crippling stroke that would make him disabled for 20 long years. As a result, his income abilities got impaired and our family suffered for many years. Now that I am approaching 40 and am taking on the same responsibility as a sole breadwinner, I am determined to work hard for money and also to make my money work hard at the same time in order to mitigate the financial damages arising from permanent disabilities.

Work hard for money

The conventional way to make more money is to …

Make explosive wealth with gold

Recently, my wife and I liquidated our UOB Gold Saving Accounts (GSA) again. We are consolidating our funds with the aim of purchasing a new Executive Condominium.

Overall, including the profits made on 25 February 2016, we made a total profits of $800 from gold. Not a huge amount of profits but considering the fact that we held the investments for only three weeks, it was quite a good investment in my opinion. But is it possible to make explosive wealth with gold?

Basically there are two main ways to invest in gold. One is to buy physical gold, that is gold bullion which comes in the form of gold bar and coins. In Singapore, you can purchase gold bullion from BullionStar, one of the largest dealers with more than 300 types of precious metals. The most attractive aspect about buying investment-grade bullion in Singapore is that there is no need to pay tax. Thus, foreigners can take advantage of this and make online purchases from BullionStar and then store their gold in BullionStar’s Vault Storage.

However, the thing about buying bullion is that you should not expect to make quick profits out of it. You …

Managing your CPF proceeds from the sale of HDB flat to build your wealth

My wife and I have been house-hunting for the past few years and recently just decided to purchase an Executive Condominium (EC). The desire to upgrade to an EC is because of the new addition to our family. With the arrival of my boy, we need a bigger space. But the key motivation behind this move is basically I want my children to grow up in a better environment. I always feel that people living in HDB three room flats come from “challenging” backgrounds – drug addicts, ex-convicts, etc. I know it is too sweeping to make this sort of statement as I have been living in HDB three-room flat for more than 30 years. But as parents we all want the best for our kids. So in today’s article, I shall note down how to manage CPF proceeds from the sale of HDB flat to build your wealth.

Selling your existing HDB and buying another resale HDB

Firstly, if you are buying EC, you can only apply for bank loans. HDB don’t offer loans to EC owners. Nevertheless, before I touch on the financial aspects for buying EC, I will like to touch on the finances for buying a …

What Is Going To Happen To The Property Market In Singapore?

sgwealthbuilder

March 12, 2016

Property investment; Singapore market; housing prices

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Below is a guest article from Gerald Tay of Conspiracy of Real Estate Investments (CREi) Academy Group. CREi provides property investment education tailored specifically to the ordinary investor & folk; and share time-tested, proven investment strategies which every keen ordinary investor can learn and apply with consistent success.

We know property prices have gone down, albeit an 8% dip since the peak of 2013.

There’re plenty of arguments from “experts” (mostly against) if the Singapore Property Market will indeed face another round of severe price correction – low price levels as seen in the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, the economic stagnation period between 2002 and 2005 and 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

The arguments suggest prospective buyers who are eagerly waiting on the side-lines are looking for answers in the wrong place.

Some arguments have the audacity to suggest buyers, instead of waiting for the “impossible” scenario of a bloody market, they should take advantage of (somewhat) “discounted” prices by developers who are desperately clearing stock today.

Their Reasons:

A low unemployment rate of 1.8%
The economy is projected to grow positively, albeit at a modest pace of 2% to 4%.
The Government had interceded early against over-leveraging with prudent

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OSIM founder may not succeed in privatising the company?

OSIM founder may not succeed in privatising the company? When the market is bullish, news of merger and acquisitions are usually met with positivity because generally, valuations will be higher and thus, the take-over offers would often be attractive to shareholders. However, the case is usually reverse during bear markets because of the possibility of hostile take-overs by competitors.

Sometimes, the management may even attempt to privatise the company on the cheap with the eventual aim of sharing the profits and dividends among the major shareholders. This is probably the case for OSIM, which recently announced a shocking voluntary cash offer by the founder, Ron Sim. However, whether Ron can succeed in privatising OSIM remains a big question mark. In this article, similar experience can be drawn from K1 Ventures, which made similar approach back in 2012.

Firstly, under the SGX Listing Rule, in order for the privatisation offer to be successful, OSIM founder must acquire at least 90% of the total number of issued shares (excluding treasury shares). Thereafter, OSIM founder is required to buy over the remaining shares of those “dissenting shareholders” who refused to accept his initial cash offer of $1.32 per share. Currently, the founder holds …

OSIM founder finally revealed true color after years of shares buy-back

For many years, OSIM has been buying back its shares from the open market. As an investor, I had always been curious why the company was so aggressive. Nevertheless, purchasing shares from the open market is a good sign because it means the management has a lot of confidence in its growth prospect.

On 7 March 2016, legendary entrepreneur Ron Sim finally decided to show-hand. The founder of famous local luxury massage arm-chair maker announced a voluntary unconditional cash offer of S$1.32 for all the issued ordinary shares in the Company. The offer was made through Vision Three Pte. Ltd.

The last shares buy back announcement by OSIM was on 3 November 2015 and the company has already amassed 31,089,400.

The offer price represents a premium of approximately 31.8% and 33.5% to the volume-weighted average price (“VWAP”) per share for the corresponding one-month and three-month periods up to and including 29 February 2016, respectively.

SG Wealth Builder

I am a big fan of OSIM and has been tracking the stock for several years. In one of my previous posts on OSIM, I pointed out that the OSIM was trading at $0.04 per share during the Great Financial Crisis. …

10 Easy Ways To Make Extra Money

Although money makes the world go round, you may find yourself in a spin by not having sufficient funds in your bank account. But if you struggle to make ends meet, feel as though your pay cheque doesn’t go far enough or simply want some extra cash to spend on life’s luxuries, then consider giving one or more of the following 10 easy money-making tips a try:

1. Forex trading

Short for foreign exchange, forex is the largest financial market in the world and allows anyone to take advantage of currency fluctuations caused by interest rates, inflation, government policy, and a wide range of other factors. It has fewer barriers than other forms of trading and is simple to get going.

2. Online surveys

Research companies are always on the look out for members of the public to answer online surveys and test new products. This can be done while watching TV or before you go to bed at night and will result in either cold hard cash or another type of reward.

3. Sell your holiday snaps

You don’t have to be a professional to sell photographs, as stock image agencies constantly need new and novel images of far-flung …