Readers would know that I have been waiting (M1 Finance blog here) for a Singapore-based robo advisor platform to launch a tailored investment portfolio where we would be allowed to choose set of funds/stocks on our own and let the machine handle the rest. i.e. rebalancing and transactions. Finally, Endowus created this opportunity for us via its new type of investment goal called “Fund Smart”. Although it still doesn’t allow investors to hand pick stocks, there are enough variety of equity and bond funds that you can choose to invest in depending on your risk profile and needs. After using St ..read more

We are back to all time highs at the S&P 500 as of this week. Who would have imagined at the lows of March that it would only take 5 months for stock market to recover from its sharpest decline and enter into a bull market territory by passing the previous highs. Honestly, I haven’t. Up until late May, I was still skeptical and bearish about the stock market while the market went straight up after March lows. Analyzing the way the market behaved, I have changed my stand and outlook then onwards. There were several reasons for the recovery but the main one was the fiscal and monetary suppor ..read more

Thanks to the Wall Street’s creativity and financial engineering, in today’s markets, there are thousands of different instruments that investors can choose and trade depending on their risk appetite. Exchange traded funds (ETFs) are the most commonly used instruments in the market nowadays with the variety of the investment options provided by the issuers. Given their low expense ratios and diversification effect, most people generally prefer to invest into a broad market index ETFs such as SPY for S&P 500 or ES3 for Singapore’s STI index. However, there is one type of ETF that investors ..read more

I usually do not make individual stock analysis on my blog posts. But if you are not aware of this stock’s recent run, I thought it would be interesting to mention - especially before its earnings announcement on August 18th. I am talking about Sea Limited: Singapore based company and traded in New York Stock Exchange (NYSE:SE), multiplied its value more than 5x times in less than a year and currently up 220% year-to-date. Their business relies on three main segments that is expected to grow massively following the “new normal” of COVID-19 world: Digital entertainment, e-commerce, and digital ..read more

Monetary Authority of Singapore has advised the local banks to conserve capital and cap their dividend payments with the announcement last week. For some, this might be unexpected but for the readers of Eurasianomics, it’s not surprising at all! Since the beginning of this year and the peak of the global COVID-19 crisis, I have been quite bearish on the macroeconomic fundamentals and local banks of Singapore. In my previous posts, I have mentioned how I faded the price recovery in local banks, specifically in DBS throughout May and June, and cut my positions instead of adding into it. Screens ..read more

Happy to be back after a month long break from Eurasianomics posts. During this busy period, I have tried to focus on the internal projects that I have been following. Hopefully, I will share some of it with the readers as well, where I have built a Python library to do some investment and trading analysis. Coming to this week’s news, digiPortfolio owners once again have been notified that a new rebalancing on its way for the Q3 2020. Some of you might think it is too early to rebalancing once again after Q2 for a robo-advisor as it doesn’t reflect a very “passive” investing method. Some might ..read more

What a time to be a stock market bull! The sharpest decline in the market history back in March, turned into one of the quickest rallies we have seen lately. Given the economic realities, fundamentals and earnings expectations, not a lot of Wall St. analysts or economist was expecting such upward trend in the market. Even the most successful money managers in the market such as Warren Buffett, Stan Druckenmiller and David Tepper were skeptical about the projections and valuations in the stock market for this year. So how come all these big names got this wrong while the retail investors and da ..read more

We have gone through another earnings season in Singapore and the dividend payments distributed. However, following the market uncertainty and economic slowdown, investors may wonder if some of the companies will reduce their dividend payouts in the upcoming quarters/years. And given the COVID-19 reality, it is important to filter out the companies that can be in cash flow problems in the future. This way we can select the dividend stocks with “healthier” balance sheet and cash flow statement who can ideally continue to keep or grow their current dividend payout ratio. For this purpose, I have ..read more

On March 7th, two weeks before the bottom of the COVID-19 market, I have shared a post called “Is it a good time to buy DBS Bank shares” ? Thanks to all visitors, it is still the top read at Eurasianomics. Since then, a lot of things changed in the market globally and in Singapore. In this blog post, I wanted to revisit my call and analysis for DBS to see if DBS is still a “hold” or “buy”. DBS share price performance vs. my game plan If you recall the previous post, my conclusion was to wait and see until the COVID-19, macroeconomic and bond market trends provide much clearer picture. In fact ..read more

Readers would know that I am a big fan of the robo advisor platforms and personally invested two of them so far in Singapore. Back in January, I have analyzed why I have chosen StashAway for USD based investments and DBS digiPortfolio (Asia Portfolio) for SGD based investments. Given the market crash in March, it was a great challenge to see how these robo advisor platforms would perform against the peers and benchmark indices. The second most important point for me was to see how proactively they will rebalance and optimize the customer portfolios given the “new normal” of COVID-19 world. For ..read more