Singapore’s Strait Times Index (SGX: ^STI) has had a rough 2018, falling 9.1% from the start of the year until the end of November. Despite the market’s tantrums, not all blue-chip stocks have performed badly. With that in mind, let’s look at the top five performing companies and the returns they have provided to investors this year (data as of 30 November 2018): Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd (SGX: D01) is a member of the Jardine group of companies. Dairy Farm’s is a pan-Asian retailer that operates supermarkets, hypermarkets, convenience stores, health and beauty stores, and home furnishing stores. Some of the familiar brand names under the company’s portfolio are Giant, Guardian, and Cold Storage. Dairy Farm is the top performing stock on the STI this yea

Against the backdrop of a rising interest rate environment, REITs seem to be one of the obvious losers. This is because REITs are asset-heavy investments that require high levels of leverage, borrowing substantial amounts of money to purchase properties that they subsequently rent out. Read Also: Increasing Interest Rates In 2018: Here Are 4 Ways Singaporeans Will Be Affected In Singapore, there are currently 39 listed REITs and a further nine business trusts (of which six are property related). On average, they have a debt to asset ratio of just under 35%. With rising interest rates, REITs will have to fork out more in interest payment, potentially reducing the distributions they can pay to investors. How REITs Have Performed In YTD 2018 To gauge the performance of REITs in 2018, we can l

Companies which are ideal to buy during retirement generally have strong businesses and excess cash to dole out to shareholders as dividends. With this in mind, let’s look at three Singapore-listed stocks that could give you a steady stream of dividend income in your golden years. Company #1 VICOM Limited (SGX: V01) is a leading provider of technical testing and inspection services in Singapore. In 2017, the company had a 74.5% share of the vehicular testing market in our Garden City. From 2013 to 2017, VICOM managed to grow its total dividend (including special dividends) at a remarkable annual rate of 12.5% from S$0.225 per share to S$0.36 per share. In the second quarter of 2017, VICOM adjusted its dividend policy to payout at least 90% of its net profit as a dividend; the previous ra

Starhill Global REIT (SGREIT) is a Singapore-listed REIT that owns a portfolio of 10 malls and office buildings located in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, China and Japan. As at 30 June 2018, its portfolio was valued at S$3.1 billion. SGREIT has been in my portfolio for a number of years now and given me a positive overall return despite its share price falling 15% year-to-date. This is largely due to the steady dividends I’ve received thus far. However, SGREIT’s distributions per unit (DPU) have been falling the past two years from 5.18 cents to 4.55 cents. This is worrying as steady, growing dividends are key for any REIT investor. Will SGREIT be able to boost its DPU in the near-term? I attended the recent annual general meeting to find out more. Here are 12 things I learned from th

As Halloween approaches, even the stock market has got in on the act. The Straits Times Index (STI), a benchmark index in Singapore, spooked investors by dipping below 3000 for the first time since January 2017. Eventually closing at 2972.02 on 26 October 2018 (Friday), the STI has lost nearly 13.4% since the start of 2018. In fact, since the beginning of October, it has fallen close to 8.7%. This drop, and heightened volatility, has caused many investors to take a tepid approach to investing in the stock markets. This brings us to our topic for this week – Low Beta. Beta Beta is a measure of the volatility of the stock compared to the rest of the market. A stock with a beta of 1 indicates that its price moves in tandem with the benchmark. A stock with a beta of more than 1 indicates tha

CapitaLand Mall Trust (SGX: C38U) is the first real estate investment trust (REIT) listed in our local stock market. It owns retail malls, and some of the malls in its portfolio include Tampines Mall, Junction 8, and Plaza Singapura. Before the stock market opened on Thursday (25 October) morning, CapitaLand Mall Trust announced its financial results for the third quarter of 2018. Let’s look at the main aspects of the announcement here. Financial highlights Gross revenue for 2018’s third quarter rose 0.7% year-on-year to S$170.5 million while net property income (NPI) grew 1.1% to S$122.7 million. CapitaLand Mall Trust attributed its higher gross revenue to improved contributions from Junction 8, IMM Building, Plaza Singapura, Bedok Mall, and Tampines Mall. The growth factors w

At the time of writing, Singapore’s stock market benchmark, the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI), has fallen below 3,000 points. The last time the index fell below this mark was in late 2015. But declines are better expressed in terms of percentages, rather than points. At its current level, the STI is down almost 18% from its highest point over the past year. If the index continues falling and breaches the 20% mark, we will have a bear market in our hands. Putting It Into Context A bear market sounds scary, but it shouldn’t be – that is, if we focus on the right things. First of all, bear markets are quite common and are expected to happen from time to time. Between 1993 and 2016, a period of 24 years, the STI had fallen 20% or more (from peak-to-trough) in two years ou

Shipbuilder Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Holdings Ltd (SGX: BS6) was the biggest loser for the week among the Straits Times Index‘s (SGX: ^STI) 30 constituents. Yangzijiang’s share price sunk 7.1% to S$1.18, compared to the index’s 0.2% dip to 3,062. In all, 15 companies in the Straits Times Index ended the week with a lower share price, while 13 made gains and two had share prices that remain unchanged. A week ago, Yangzijiang announced that it had entered into a joint venture with Japanese shipbuilders, Mitsui E&S Shipbuilding Co Ltd and Mitsui & Co Ltd, to establish a shipbuilding company in China. Yangzijiang will own a 51% stake in the joint venture, which will produce commercial vessels out of the Taicang yard in Jiangsu, China, from April next year. The second

A year ago, Phillip Capital Management, along with Lion Global Investors, launched the Lion-Phillip S-REIT ETF. The ETF aimed to give investors a way to invest in a diversified basket of Singapore REITs (S-REITs) which paid a steady stream of distributions. (At the moment, the average distribution yield for S-REITs is 6.8%.) The ETF was met with a largely positive response from the market – Lion Global Investors and Phillip Capital Management initially aimed to raise S$40-50 million but exceeded their target when the fund raised over S$100 million last October. Capitalizing on the Singapore market’s appetite for yield, Phillip Capital Management has now launched the Phillip SING Income ETF. The initial offer period for the ETF will close at 11:00 a.m. on 19 October 2018 before its list

If you like having a regular dividend in your pocket, consider real estate investment trusts (REITs). Thankfully, Singapore is home to some of the region’s largest and most established REITs. Each REIT has a specific investment mandate, and specialises in investing in certain classes of real estate. One of the largest REIT categories is retail, which boasts 11 retail REITs worth a total market capitalisation of about S$25 billion listed in Singapore. Here are three key things investors should know about retail REITs in Singapore. Singapore-focused retail REITs have outperformed the broader market so far this year According to an article by Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX: S68), four SGX-listed retail S-REITs – namely CapitaLand Mall Trust (SGX: C38U), Mapletree Commercial Trust

CapitaLand Mall Trust (SGX: C38U) is the first real estate investment trust (REIT) listed in Singapore. It is also the largest retail REIT by market capitalisation here. Some of the malls in its portfolio include Tampines Mall, Junction 8, and Plaza Singapura. In this article, let’s look at three things that investors should know about the REIT now. Funan – Singapore’s first O&O shopping centre Once a one-stop shop for all our IT needs, Funan DigitaLife Mall, was closed in July 2016 for redevelopment. Now renamed simply as Funan, the new mall is set to rejuvenate the retail scene. Funan, when it re-opens next year, will be Singapore’s first online-and-offline (O&O) shopping mall which integrates online, offline, data and logistics to empower retailers’ omnichannel strate

What Happened: On 27 August 2018, CapitaLand Mall Trust (SGX:C38U) announced that it was looking to take full ownership of the Westgate shopping mall. Prior to the announcement, CapitaLand Mall Trust already had a 30% stake in Westgate. The rest of the mall is owned by the REIT’s parent, CapitaLand Limited  (SGX:C31). Then, on 26 September 2018, CapitaLand Mall Trust released more details about the announcement and also set a date for an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) for unitholders to vote on the acquisition. The EGM is scheduled to take place at 10am on 25 October 2018. If unitholders give the thumbs up, the deal is expected to be completed on 1 November 2018. So What: There are a few important things to know about the acquisition. Let’s start with CapitaLand Mall Trust’s

There are close to 750 companies in the Singapore stock market. But only a select few are important enough to be part of Singapore’s Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI). The STI is made up from 30 of the largest listed companies on the Singapore stock market. These blue-chip companies come from a variety of industries and sectors. However, there is one family of companies which hold a greater clout on STI compared to most other companies. Let’s a closer look at CapitaLand Limited (SGX C31) in this article (data as of end of August 2018): 1. CapitaLand is the one of the largest real estate companies in Asia with assets under management (AUM) totalling a staggering S$93 billion. The property developer has built many iconic buildings around the world, including Ion Orchard in Singapore,

There are many ways to find investment ideas. Some useful ways are to screen for stocks or to look at a list of stocks near their 52-week lows to sieve out potential bargains. Studying what institutional investors have been buying or selling is another avenue. Institutional investors are typically large investment organisations, such as hedge funds, mutual funds, unit trust companies, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and so on. These investors tend to possess vastly greater resources than individual investors like you and me when researching stocks. Hence, it may be useful to keep a close eye on what they are doing, as a way to generate ideas. In this article, I will look at three Singapore stocks (among the top ten stocks) that have seen the highest net purchases in dollar valu

Singapore’s Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI), home to the 30 largest companies in Singapore, has fallen by over 8% since the start of the year. But it’s not all doom and gloom. If we lengthen our horizon from months to years, we will see that a good number of STI companies have done quite well. As a baseline, the index provided a total return of 9.9% over the past three years. However, according to a recent SGX report, there were at least 10 companies that produced returns that are three times better than the index. Let’s have a look at the top 10 performers (data as of 30 August 2018). For the first five companies, click here. 6. Genting Singapore Ltd (SGX: G13), an integrated resorts company in the leisure, gaming and hospitality sector, takes sixth place on the list. The last thre

The Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI), which tracks the performance of the top 30 largest and most liquid companies listed in Singapore, ended August in the negative territory. For the month, the index tumbled 3.2%, or around 106 points, to 3,213.5. Of the 30 index components, 21 were in the red while the remaining nine were in the green. The top three winners of the Straits Times Index were Yangzijiang Shipbuilding Holdings Ltd (SGX: BS6), Venture Corporation Ltd (SGX: V03) and CapitaLand Limited (SGX: C31).Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence Yangzijiang reported a strong set of financial results for the second quarter ended 30 June 2018. As highlighted in my previous article here, revenue more than doubled to RMB 8.0 billion from RMB 3.8 billion a year ago while net profit climbed 3

With uncertainty about how escalating trade tensions between the US and China will play out, investors have been more risk-adverse, concerned about broader ripple effects on global economic growth. The same has been observed in the Singapore market. As you know, the Straits Times Index (STI) is made up of 30 of the largest and most liquid stocks listed on the Singapore Exchange (SGX). Last year saw one of the most amazing bull runs in recent years, with STI generating total returns of 22% in 2017. The good times came to an end in 2018 as the market corrected pretty dramatically, with the STI generating a total return of -2.3% in 1H18. This was followed by a modest recovery, with a total return of 0.1% in 2H2018 to date. The 6 best-performing STI stocks that led the STI recovery for 2H2

There are many ways to find investment ideas. Some useful ways are to screen for stocks or to look at a list of stocks near their 52-week lows to sieve out potential bargains. Studying what institutional investors have been buying or selling is another avenue. Institutional investors are typically large investment organisations, such as hedge funds, mutual funds, unit trust companies, sovereign wealth funds, insurance companies and so on. These investors tend to possess vastly greater resources than individual investors like you and me when researching stocks. Hence, it may be useful to keep a close eye on what they are doing as a way to generate ideas. In this article, I will look at three Singapore stocks (among the top ten stocks) that have seen the highest net purchases in dollar value