~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

There are many strategies and investing methodologies, such as growth investing, dividend investing, value investing, all-weather portfolio investing and index (passive) investing.  Undoubtedly, the followers and practitioners of the respective investing methodologies will have their own reasons and biasedness on why their chosen method is 'better' than others, and I respect that.  Many times, due to our individual biasedness, when we prefer a certain methodology over others, we may also end up claiming that our chosen method is superior over others, and at the meantime, failed to notice some loopholes of the preferred method.  Therefore, it is through comparison, argument, justification and debate that we expose and highlight all pros and cons of the various methods, and hopefully we get to learn and improve from there on. For me personally, based on my character, the way I do things, and the personal data points from the day I started trading and investing in 2009, I conclude

The Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) movement in Singapore continues to have a dedicated following, but its popularity might vary among different groups.  For a quick recap, there were 5 popular FIRE strategies when I first came to know about the FIRE movement, namely traditional FIRE, Lean FIRE, Barista FIRE, Coast FIRE and Fat FIRE.  If you do not know about these, feel free to see my previous write-up on the different  FIRE strategies .  Some people remain enthusiastic about the principles of saving aggressively and investing wisely to achieve financial independence early in life.  However, the movement has also faced increasing scrutiny and adjustment as people realize the challenges and trade-offs involved in pursuing extreme frugality and early retirement, especially in high-cost cities like Singapore.  This is also evident when books like "Dying with Zero" gain popularity, further undermining the need for FIRE. As such, besides the revamping of FIRE from &q

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month. For the month of August, it was a month of roller-coaster ride.  The first half of the month was a wild ride, with the Nikkei plunging a frightening 12% in a single day.  The main culprit was due to the sudden shock that the Japan finance department decided to raise interest rate by 0.25%.  Technically speaking, an increase in interest rate by 0.25% is nothing worrisome, however this is worsen by the huge sum of monies involved in the 'Yen Carry Trade'.  A detailed explanation of the 'Yen Carry Trade' and its impact on the financial markets has been explained in this post by Dollars and Sense .  The outcome of these series of events resulted in the rise in Japanese Yen against the US Dollar and institutions and investors hurriedly unwind their positions to minimize their risk exposure.  This led to the plunge in the markets, with investors turning the tide from greed to fear in days

Within a short span of two months, the Malaysia Ringgit has appreciated against the Singapore Dollar by an alarming 5.4%, from a low of SGD 1 : MYR 3.509 on 12th June 2024, to a high of SGD 1 : MYR 3.319 on 5th August 2024, making MYR one of the best performing ASEAN currency in the past 6 months (Latest high of SGD 1 : MYR 3.3084 reached on 29th August 2024).  Although the exchange rate seems to stabilize between the range of 3.32 to 3.38 for now, MYR may continue to appreciate against the SGD once the FED materializes interest rate cut in US, and it did.   To understand why this is inevitable, we may need a little economics lesson.  As I am not finance-trained, I shall engage the help of ChatGBT on this matter. " The 'Impossible Trinity', also known as the 'Trilemma', is a concept in international economics that states that a country cannot simultaneously have all three of the following: 1)     A fixed exchange rate 2)     Free capital movement 3)     An indepen

Recently there is a viral trend on TikTok about " Underconsumption Core ", which spotlights frugality and living sustainably.  In this trend, instead of posting large hauls of clothing and beauty products, users are posting videos of their well-used everyday items and a downsized skincare collection.  To followers, the rise of this trend can be linked to the challenges Gen Z and millennials face today, including mounting economic pressures and environmental concerns.  I think tidywithspark.com has a good writeup on this trend of underconsumption core. picture taken from tidywithspark Being a millennial myself (someone born between the early 1980s to late 1990s), I was dumbfounded initially when I saw this report.  In my personal opinion, is it not common sense for an individual to use something completely till it is used up (for consumables) or till it is spoilt before buying new ones?  It is meant to be the normal way of life and I do not understand why it became a viral tr

Do note that this is not investment advice, and definitely not any recommendation to buy or sell, because even I myself do not know what I should and will do. The recent magnitude 7.1 Miyazaki earthquake that rattled southern Japan on 8th August 2024 serves as a stark reminder of the potential for a far more devastating event - an earthquake along the Nankai Trough.  The situation is also brought into world-wide attention due to the  megaquake advisory  released by the Japanese Government.  This region, known for its seismic activity, has a history of producing "megathrust" earthquakes, with the last significant events occurring in 1944 (Tōnankai Earthquake) and 1946 (Nankai Earthquake).  These quakes, which occur roughly every century, could potentially reach a magnitude of 9, resulting in catastrophic damage.   Experts estimate there is a 70 to 80% chance that a magnitude 8 or 9 earthquake could strike the Nankai Trough within the next 30 years.  If such an event were to

In the last week of July, Sing Investments & Finance Ltd (SIF) released their earnings for the first half of 2024, and the results were not pretty, as its profit after tax declined by 2% year-on-year and its total comprehensive income declined by a larger 20% year-on-year.  However, SIF is not part of my portfolio, so why am I interested in its earnings?  This is because, as one of the only 3 listed financial institutions in Singapore, it can somewhat fore-tell how the earnings of Hong Leong Finance (HLF) is going to be.  Recent performance of HLF has not been rosy.  In the last earnings report, HLF reported a massive 32% decline in dividends , prompting me to carry out my first portfolio balancing in March 2024.  With the earnings from SIF, I am wary of the latest earnings from HLF, and decided to make a speculative pre-emptive move to rebalance my portfolio to sell part of my HLF shares while the share price is still at decent levels. As such, on the first week of August, I sold

Parkway Life REIT (PWLR) is one of Asia's largest listed healthcare REITs, and one of the 2 healthcare REITs listed on SGX (the other being First REIT).  PWLR invests in income-producing real estate and real estate-related assets used primarily for healthcare and healthcare-related purposes.  As at 31 December 2023, PWLR's total portfolio size stands at 63 properties totalling approximately S$2.23 billion.   Since I started revamping my portfolio back in late 2017, till I began blogging down my Barista FIRE investing journey in March 2022, I have slowly accumulated shares of PWLR until it became the largest REIT holding in my portfolio, both capital injected and market value wise.  As posted in April 2022 , I wrote about the reasons why PWLR became the largest holding in my dividend portfolio when it has the lowest yield amongst all the REITs.  To this date, 2 years plus later, PWLR remains to be the REIT with the lowest yield at approximately 4% per annum, and it is still the

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month. For the month of July, it was another interesting month.  The first half of the month seems all bright and rosy, with S&P 500 and NASDAQ hitting all time highs, boosted mainly by the Magnificent Seven.  This helped to propel my portfolio to a new high in the first week, with almost all the stocks in my US Growth portfolio hitting individual all time highs.  Even the lagging Tesla has staged a strong rebound, rocketing from below USD 200 to above USD 250 within 2 weeks!  The strongest hype came when the June CPI numbers were released this month, showing slowing inflation year-on-year and even a decline in core inflation month-on-month.  This immediately caused the 10-year yield to ease and propelled the price of REITs in the following days.  That is definitely a welcome move as it is beneficial to my portfolio, but whether it will last remains to be seen. I say this because many analysts are al

Dying has been a taboo subject for many, especially for Asians.  Personally for me, I am not too worried of passing on, as I do not have any children who are dependent on me.  I am just very very worried to be in a bed-ridden state for whatever reason.  Besides that, in the event that I passed, my only worry will be my mum, but I believe my brother will take very good care of her, so no worries there as well.  So, why am I writing about this taboo subject?   Due to family medical history, I do not think I will live a very long life (70 is probably a bonus number), however, nothing is absolute and predictable.  Therefore as much as I would like to get as many things done as early as possible to ensure minimal regrets, I will also need to protect myself from longevity risks.  Personally, being able to have a rough prediction of how much time I have left is a very fortunate thing, because that will enable me to prioritize and do as many things as I could with the time I have left.  Howeve

I am not a financial expert, so this post is just purely my personal feeling.  Learning from AK71, I am starting to talk to myself a little bit more as well (without the part on technical and fundamental analysis).  As such this post is just based on my gut feel and not supported by any statistics or numbers.  Just having fun! So since the speech by Jerome Powell on 10th July 2024, the Singapore REITs have registered a huge rebound in the following two days. Based on the Lion-Phillip S-REIT ETF, REITs staged a 6.35% rebound in the following 2 trading days (11th and 12th July 2024).  More encouragingly, the daily trading volume in these 2 days were around 10 times higher than the average daily trading volume in the past year!  This price movement, supported by the high volume, may be an indication that this run up for REITs still have legs!  Fast-forward to this week, the performance of the REITs are largely subdued (except for the US Commercial REITs) and the trading volume has normali

First half of 2024 have passed and previously I did a quick review of my portfolio in the 1st quarter and 2nd quarter in my earlier posts.  I classified my portfolio into 3 components, namely SG REITs, SG Non-REITs and US Growth.  An overview to the performance of my portfolio for the past one year is shown below: Things to note: 1)     SG REITs' performance seemed stable, but that is due to consistent injection of small amounts of capital through dollar cost average (DCA) into the portfolio along the way.  Without the capital injection, I believe the drop will be quite significant, especially when the performance of the Mapletree family of REITs (which were supposedly the blue chip REITs) were way below expectations, and their share price has not really found a bottom. 2)     SG Non-REITs' performance were quite stable for the first half of period under review.  The spike in value on week 42 is due to large capital injection and portfolio rebalancing to include Development

Do note that this is not a buy or sell recommendation.  This is solely my personal reasons for adding the shares into my portfolio.  Do perform your own due diligence! Recently, share prices of the Singapore-listed REITs are back to their near term lows, and for many REITs, their prices are actually very close, or at their 52-week lows.  To many die-hard fans of REITs, including myself, we are always happy to dollar cost averaging down on the REITs to capture the high dividend yield of quality REITs at rock bottom prices.  However in the past one to two years, I think REITs-investors like myself had borne the brunt of the "low getting lower" share prices for the REITs, so much so that many of us are actually running out of war chest, or some may decide to pause and take a look to see where the price supports actually lies, before continuing to invest. Personally, I am not planning to wait as I do not know where the price supports are, or when the share prices of the REITs are

This month marks the end of the 2nd quarter of 2024.  Thus it's definitely a good time for me to record the performance of my portfolio to track how it has been. To recap, I started my SG Dividends Portfolio in late 2017, and I began tracking the dividends and all reinvestment done starting 2018.  To date, my SG Dividends Portfolio consist of banks, REITs and defense technology.  On the other hand, I only started the US Growth Portfolio in late December 2021.  Currently, my US Growth Portfolio consist of mainly big tech names, bank and exchange traded funds (ETFs). Being a relatively conservative investor, I prefer to dollar cost average (DCA) into the market to slowly build up my portfolio.  The advantages of using Interactive Brokers to buy the US shares via DCA are undoubtedly the low fees and ability to buy fractional shares of mega-cap technology shares like Alphabet and Tesla.  The latest FED meeting in June has once again successfully caused more confusion in the market.