1H18 has been a turbulent period for Singapore’s stock market. Drivers from technology, oil & gas and property-related stocks have corrected significantly the last quarter of 2Q18. These sectors suffered from de-rating of valuations due to slower-than-expected growth and potential trade war implications. RHB opines that it is time for investors to turn its focus to small-mid cap picks. According to RHB, there are five top Singapore-listed small-mid cap picks that deserve more attention from investors. Investors Takeaway: 5 Top SG Small-Mid Cap Stocks That Deserves More Attention Silverlake Axis In the past few months, Silverlake Axis managed to win several sizeable contracts including the upgrading of Malaysia Building Society’s core banking system. This has helped Silverlake Ax

A company can do a few things with the free cash flow it churns out every year. It can reinvest the money into its business, use it to pare down debt, pay dividends to shareholders, or buy back its shares. There are a few reasons why companies want to buy back their shares. Some companies might do so to support their share price. By reducing the number of shares outstanding, the earnings per share will increase. This, in turn, causes the price-to-earnings ratio to fall due to a larger denominator. The share price should then rise as the market perceives the share price to be cheaper than before the repurchase. In June this year, 74.6 million shares were repurchased by 33 companies for a total amount of S$174 million, according to a recent report by Singapore Exchange Limited (SGX: S68). Th

Top 30 in my portfolio: No. STOCK NAME No.of SHARES PORTFOLIO% MARKET $ 1SGX4,80011.217.172SATS4,0006.515.003UOB6475.6426.764OCBC Bank1,4385.4511.645CapitaLand Mall Tr7,8005.262.076SPH6,0005.082.607AIMSAMPI Cap Ind R10,0004.491.388Starhub7,0003.781.669Keppel Corp1,6003.737.1510CDL HTrust6,8003.481.5711FCT4,7003.382.2112Keppel DC Reit7,4003.281.3613Suntec Reit5,8003.271.7314SingTel3,1903.203.0815ParkwayLife Reit3,6003.192.7216SPH Reit8,5002.740.9917Starhill Global Reit12,0002.520.64518Mapletree Com Tr4,8002.451.5719Frasers Com Tr4,9042.201.3820CapitaLand2,0002.063.1621Frasers L&I Tr6,0002.051.0522Bukit Sembawang1,0001.885.7823Ascendas Reit2,0001.722.6424Sembcorp Indust1,8001.612.7525SIA Engg1,5001.533.1426Keppel InfraTr9,0001.520.5227Cache Log Tr4,0001.000.7728Frasers Property

On Wednesday, the tech-centric NASDAQ composite index in the United States closed at a record high of 7781.51 points. While some market experts warned about similarities to the 1990s dot-com bubble, investors have continued to pile into tech stocks. The NASDAQ has increased 11.4% year-to-date, with tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Cisco seeing double-digit gains so far this year. Investors have many reasons to be optimistic about the future of tech stocks, as the US continues to strive towards becoming the global leader in 5G technology. In 2017, an Accenture report projected that 5G could add 3 million new jobs and increase the US GDP by US$500 billion. On 20 June, Education Minister Ong Ye Kung, who is a board member of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, announced the governmentâ€

Blue chips have always been the focus of most Singaporean investors. However, instead of solely focusing on blue chips, RHB recommends investors to add some quality small-mid cap names in to their portfolio to increase the potential returns. Here are 6 small-mid cap gems that RHB thinks investors should be adding into their portfolio. Investors Takeaway: 6 Gems In SG Small-Mid Cap Space GSS Energy RHB remains highly positive on GSS Energy’s prospects in the short term as it expects a number of potential catalysts, such as the discovery of hydrocarbon in its Trembul Operating area. Notwithstanding that, RHB thinks that the precision engineering segment will be spurred by more new projects in the automotive and consumer spaces. BUY, TP $0.25; Current share price $0.142 HRnetgroup HRnetgrou

Warren Buffett is a huge advocate of businesses buying back their shares. He believes that share buybacks can reveal a thing or two about the company’s management. He once opined: “What you’d like to do as an investor is hook them up to a machine and run a polygraph to see whether it’s true. Short of a polygraph the best sign of a shareholder-oriented management — assuming its stock is undervalued — is repurchases. A polygraph proxy, that’s what it is.” On that note, let’s check out three companies picked at random that have repurchased their shares thus far during the week, as of market open today. Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp Limited (SGX: O39) Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation, or OCBC for short, is the longest established local bank and

Warren Buffett is a huge advocate of businesses buying back their shares. He believes that share buybacks can reveal a thing or two about the company’s management. He once opined: “What you’d like to do as an investor is hook them up to a machine and run a polygraph to see whether it’s true. Short of a polygraph the best sign of a shareholder-oriented management — assuming its stock is undervalued — is repurchases. A polygraph proxy, that’s what it is.” On that note, let’s check out three companies picked at random that have repurchased their shares thus far during the week, as of market open today. HRnetGroup Ltd (SGX: CHZ) HRnetGroup, which debuted on our stock exchange in June 2017, is the biggest Asia-based recruitment agency in the Asia

"Boleh" means "can" or "able to" in Malay.What a historic day for Malaysia! Dr Mahathir trashed Najib with a snap of his fingers gloved in his infinity gauntlet neatly decorated with the coalition of infinity stones: DAP, PKR, PNA, PPBN and Warisan Sabah. His Alliance of Hope, Pakatan Harapan and its partners convincingly defeated Najib's Barisan Nasional (BN) with 122 seats vs his nemesis' 79 seats. Mahathir's win ended one of the longest reign for a democratic ruling party and renewed hope that Malaysia can one! (i.e. Malaysia can achieve what it wants to achieve.)Under Najib, Malaysia really suffered with the ringgit falling to a third in value relative to the SGD - one Malaysia ringgit is only worth 33 Singapore cents. The exchange rate was 1:1 in 1965. Also, the market cap of KLCI is

As we highlighted last month, stock market corrections are opportune periods for companies to execute their share buyback mandates at favourable prices. The flurry of share buyback activity in March continued in April, though with reduced intensity. A total of 22 companies repurchased about 39.8 million shares at a total consideration of $116.8 million in April. This is in contrast with the 30-month share buyback high of $222 million in total consideration reported in March. Late April also coincides with AGM season for FYs ending 31 Dec, when 12-month share buybacks are scheduled to be approved. This week, we will look at four companies who have bought back the largest percentage of their outstanding shares based on buyback mandates approved in the past 12-months. All figures cited in thi

The time of the year has come to review the annual dividend list, this year we are breaking up to list into more parts so that we can discuss more names. We have used the same criteria over the years which is free cashflow, EBIT margins, ROE and the dividend yield. The most important one would be the free cashflow. As this determines the companies' ability to pay dividends. Dividends should be a integral part of everyone's portfolio because this is where real money comes back to us. In my experience, 50% or more of an investor's monetary gains would actually come from dividends in a long term portfolio. It is also a good idea to first build a strong dividend portfolio that would supplement or even cover entire annual expenses. Then we are really free to choose the work we really want