~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month. For the month of November, volatility continues to be the main theme in the world markets.  In the first one and a half weeks of the month, markets were cautiously optimistic.  Although many analysts has mentioned that inflation is on its way down, but the words from FED members kept the markets jittery. Then came the release of the October CPI numbers, which showed that inflation was better than expected. This immediately propel the markets sky high, with the USD weakening against major currencies. However, not all is happiness and to the moon.  The FED minutes mentioned that they will still ensure that the job is done.  The increase in interest rates may be of smaller magnitude going forward, but the peak rate may be higher.  This added pressure to my portfolio, as the REITs' income will be adversely affected in the long run, as their debt-servicing cost increases furt...

I am writing this post just to jot down my dabble into the crypto space, and as a reminder to myself, always only invest in assets that I know, and assets that I have conviction in.  If I want to dabble in "risky gamble" for an opportunity in high risk high reward returns, always keep it to a size that I can afford to lose.  Kindly note that this is more of a journal to myself, and I have no intention to mock anyone, or add salt to anyone's wound. I started dabbling into cryptocurrencies in September 2021, yup, near their all time high.  I signed up for an account with Gemini, and slowly dollar-cost averaging (DCA) into them with small capital.  Every month, I will inject SGD 200.00 into Bitcoin (BTC), and SGD 200.00 into Ethereum (ETH).  Frankly speaking, my intention for this is a gamble into the crypto hype, with high risk high reward returns as the main intention.  Hence, I would limit my capital into crypto at a mere 1% of my entire portfolio. I contin...

Last week marks the end of the earnings period of all the REITs I owned, namely Capitaland Integrated Commercial Trust (CICT), Frasers Logistics and Commercial Trust (FLCT), Mapletree Industrial Trust (MIT), Mapletree Logistics Trust (MLT), Mapletree Pan-Asia Commercial Trust (MPACT) and Parkway Life REIT (PWLR).   As such, I think now is a good time for me to do a short review of their performance for the quarter/ year, to have a more wholesome perspective of how the rising interest rate and the current macro-economic environment impacts the REITs' performances. 1)     Earnings As seen above, the earnings of most of the REITs have improved.  Despite the good improvement in gross revenue (by more than 10%), the increase in operating expenses caused their net income to improve by a smaller percentage.  Do note that the earnings of MPACT jumped by more than 80% due to the merger of Mapletree Commercial Trust and Mapletree North Asia Commercial Trust, and...

2nd November 2022 marks the 1st anniversary of the opening of the Interactive Broker account for me to invest in US markets.  As such I hope to write this post to record this personal milestone of my investing journey.  From November 2021 to November 2022, this year presents vast opportunities for investing.  However, as usual, I am always joining the game at the wrong time.  Too late in opening account to start buying (should have started 2 years ago in 2020), and too fast with ill-disciplined purchase, resulting in insufficient stamina to last through the game (started buying in December 2021 at market high, with insufficient cash to average down further now).  At that time in December 2021, I thought that some stocks that I am interested in had fallen by about 5%, so probably it is a good time for me to slowly nibble in.  What happens after that, I believe everyone knows.  If only I start nibbling into the market 6 months later, that would have been...

The latest card I applied for in August is the HSBC Revolution Card. Initially I just applied for the card as I am a new customer who will be eligible for SGD 200.00 cashback during the promotion period.  However, after applying, I realize this card has many more advantages and perks above and beyond this cash-back! 1)      No Annual Fees Anyone who has own a credit card will know how troublesome it is to deal with annual fee waivers.  For some credit cards, they do not allow annual fee waivers if the annual spending did not exceed certain amount.  Hence, without annual fees for lifetime (provided their policies do not change) is definitely a good perk! 2)    Earn Miles While You Spend All along, I am not one who look at mile points.  This is because for the past 30 odd years, travelling is not a priority in my life.  However, as I aged, my perspective changed and started to think that travelling may be something that I need to d...