~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month. For the month of February, it remains a rather volatile month.  The Consumer Price Index (CPI) for January has once again risen year over year and even month over month.  This showed how sticky inflation is going to be moving forward, and has thus caused the 10 year treasury yield to spike up above 4.5% once again.  This has been unkind to many REITs, which experienced continual decline in prices, some going even lower than the Covid times.   Nothing much this month, except my regrets from the sale of Palantir last month.  It was definitely painful to watch its price rocketing through USD 100 to above USD 120, but I can only console myself with my reasons for selling at that time.  The sale proceeds were diverted to Microsoft and Google, and also 2 new ETFs, namely Vanguard Value Index Fund ETF (VTV) and iShares China Large-Cap ETF (FXI).  Microsoft and Google...

Recently, I have just completed reading Morgan Housel's "The Psychology of Money", and finally digested some of the contents within the book, which are valuable lessons that can further help me improve in my journey towards achieving Barista FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early).  For those unfamiliar, Barista FIRE is about having enough passive income to cover your basic needs, while working part-time to maintain a balanced, fulfilling lifestyle.  It is about finding financial freedom without retiring completely.   Living in Singapore currently, with its increasing cost of living, this goal can feel challenging (that is why returning back to Malaysia for retirement is always in my mind, and I am definitely working towards that too).  Thankfully, some of the lessons from this book have molded my approach towards dealing with money more conscientiously and live life fully within my means.  Below are some of the key things I learnt and how they have gui...

Dividend investing is a popular strategy among investors in Singapore, particularly for those seeking a steady income stream, me included.  However, focusing solely on high dividend yields can lead to poor investment outcomes.  In this post, I shall remind myself why solely focusing on chasing high dividend yields without other considerations and analyses can be risky, and highlight some examples of Singapore-listed stocks that once paid high dividends but consequently experienced declining share prices, resulting in a non-favourable investment. For a start, it will be good to understand that dividend yield is calculated as such: Therefore, a high dividend yield can be a result of high annual dividends per share, or low current share price, or both.  To me, a high dividend yield is anything above 8%.  Kindly note that this yield is just a number that I generated randomly since I started investing (I do not have any financial rationale or formula to generate this yie...

This is going to be a relatively short post, as a personal record to pen down a new achievement I have unlocked. I have started investing and trading since 2010, but without any systematic methodology.  It took many years of hits and misses, buy high sell low, fear of missing out and buying based on hearsay and selling on news out of fear, before I finally decided to revamp my investing methodology and stick to it religiously.  The pivoting point began at the end of 2017, when I decided that dividend investing is the path for me to take.  It is not a path or strategy suitable for everyone, and I understand that there are many naysayers of dividend investing.  However for myself, I appreciate the beauty of dividend investing and it is definitely the method that suits my personality and lifestyle. After the pivot, I started recording the dividends collected from my SG Dividend Portfolio since January 2018.  It has been a slow but steady journey.  After embark...