~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

This post is written with the help of ChatGPT, as I lacked the necessary in-depth finance knowledge.  There are some points here that are written and has been fact-checked with the relevant information from other sources. In early April 2025 after the "Liberation Day", where Donald Trump started imposing reciprocal tariffs to almost every country, besides the sharp plunge in stock markets which caused my portfolio to drop below the SGD 600K market value "support level", a bewildering sudden and sharp spike in US 10-year and 30-year Treasury yields (more specifically between 9th to 11th April) occurred and this caught markets off guard.  Investors were rattled because usually when stock market crashes occur, investors tend to move funds into the US Treasuries as a form of flight to safety, which tend to lower bond yields.  Hence when the 10-year bond yields suddenly spike from around 4.0% to above 4.5% in a couple of days, media headlines screamed about a potential b...

So, the time has arrived for me to settle the refinancing of my mortgage loan.  Kindly note that this is not a sponsored post, and the companies and parties mentioned below are involved in assisting me with the application process and completion of the refinancing procedure. My last mortgage loan is with Hong Leong Finance (and yes, I am a shareholder), which started in October 2022.  It was a 2-year fixed rate loan where I enjoy an interest rate of 1.4% in the first year, and 1.5% in the second year.  I was relatively fortunate, because I started looking around for mortgage packages since April 2022, before the crazy propelling of interest rates began, and thankfully, although I was a couple of months too early, Hong Leong Finance was able to lock in the rates for me till my previous lock in period ceased.  As such, I am able to enjoy the lower rates with peace of mind when the interest rates were crazily high in 2023 and most of 2024.  However all good things ...

This month marks the end of the 3rd 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 most important event that happened this month is definitely the FED ...

This is going to be a short post, to join in the crowd to talk about the performance of REITs lately. Finally, the long awaited rate cut by the FED has materialized.  The anticipation began since December 2023, and we have been waiting for a whole 10 months before it finally happens.  On 18th September 2024, the FED has finally confirmed the cut of 0.50%.  This is probably not the one and only rate cut that is going to happen, so what remains uncertain moving forward is the frequency of rate cuts in the rest of this year and in 2025.  That will depend on the health and strength of the US economy moving forward.  Nearer to home, we have seen how this anticipation has been great for Singapore listed REITs.  Since the speech by Jerome Powell on 10th July 2024, REITs have staged a small rebound and I have written a post discussing whether the rally has legs .  Indeed, as of 19th September 2024, based on Lion-Phillips S-REIT ETF, REITs have rallied by about...

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...

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 t...

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 ...

This piece is inspired by AK71 once again, who has recently released this video saying that he is considering liquidating his entire portfolio.  He is having such thoughts because his portfolio is sufficiently big enough to be placed into safer instruments like T-Bills or Fixed Deposits to eliminate/ minimize any market volatility to the portfolio, and this amount is more than sufficient to last him his lifetime.   So will I do the same thing?  I am not in the situation to comment on that, because my portfolio is way too far away from this ideal situation, and moreover everyone's situation is different.  If I ever own a portfolio the size of his to be able to Fat FIRE, I think I may probably consider doing something similar, but there may be some factors I personally need to evaluate and assess.  Since my portfolio is significantly smaller, I did think of complete liquidation of all my assets before, but with the help of geo-arbitrage.  I am a Malaysi...

Based on my earlier post where I planned to accumulate 2 years worth of dividends before beginning my Barista FIRE journey, I have to find a place to park the funds, and preferably earn some interest instead of sitting idly in the account.  For the salaried individuals, there are many options as recommended by Seedly , with United Overseas Bank (UOB) One Account, Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC) 360 Account being the top choices, where, with salary crediting and fulfilling spending requirements, one is able to achieve interest rates of up to approximately 7%.  However for individuals without a fixed monthly salary being credited into any accounts like myself, a self-employed individual, it will be great if there is an account with reasonably good interest rate, but without all the hoops and loops to cross to achieve decent rates. Note that the full credit for this post goes to Singsaver , and I selectively highlighted a 4 accounts that suit my personal needs best. 1...

This is going to be a short post just to share that my aim to rebalance my portfolio has failed.  As shared in previous post , I have planned to rebalance my portfolio to lower the percentage of REITs, and increase the percentage of non-REITs.  That would be done by keeping the amount of REITs I hold in my portfolio unchanged, and adding more non-REITs into my portfolio, namely United Overseas Bank (UOB) and Development Bank of Singapore (DBS).   As shared previously, I hope to add shares of UOB into my portfolio below SGD 29.00 before XD, so I can benefit from the 6% dividend yield.  However, when my cash is ready, the share price has already propelled to above SGD 30.00!  When I consoled myself that I may have another opportunity after XD to add more shares below SGD 29.00, reality slapped me in the face as UOB's share price shot up above SGD 31.00 just two days before XD.  This probably mean that not only did I missed out on more dividends, I am als...

Back in January 2023, the interest rates reached 4.25-4.50%.  Since then, interest rates continue to gradually climb till 5.25-5.50% in July 2023, where it held constant till today.  As such, it is a good time to review how the crazy climb in interest rates in 2022 impact the performances of REITs, which are highly leveraged and more sensitive to interest rates compared to other listed companies.  In the comparison below, I only focused on the REITs and Trust I hold in my portfolio. 1)     CapitaLand Ascott Trust (CLAST)   " CLAST's properties saw strong demand as international travel continued to recover.  CLAST’s revenue per available unit (REVPAU) in 2H 2023 reached 103% of pre-pandemic levels in 2H 2019 on a pro forma basis, increasing by 10% y-o-y to S$157.  REVPAU also rose 23% y-o-y to S$148 for FY 2023.  In 4Q 2023, majority of CLAST’s key markets such as China, Japan, United States of America (USA) and Vietnam also register...

In a blink of an eye, we are already in 2024.  2023 has been a year of surprises, ups and downs.  As a lousy predictor of events, many of my predictions for 2023 did not come true.  The recession that was announced by analysts and economists since 2022 did not materialize even till today.  Will it happen in 2024?  It is anyone's guess.  I am no longer concerned by such events that are beyond my control, and I just want to concentrate on the things that I can manage.  The purpose of this post will be for me to record my hopes and wishes for the year ahead, and some of the things that I will do to my portfolio, and also certain plans for my friends and family. 1)     Changes To The Way I Manage My US Growth Portfolio It is rather embarrassing to talk about this at this point in time because it took me so long to realize this issue and take action.  Being a passive investor, my aim in investing is to continuously accumulate shares in s...