Real estate investment trusts, or REITs, are popular investment choices in the Singapore stock market. That’s because REITs tend to have high distribution yields due to their need to distribute up to 90% of their taxable income to unitholders in order to enjoy tax transparency. In this article, I would like to share with you three billion dollar REITs that are trading at high yields of about 7%. Those REITs are CapitaLand Retail China Trust (SGX: AU8U), Frasers Commercial Trust (SGX: ND8U) and First Real Estate Investment Trust (SGX: AW9U). Source: SGX StockFacts In this article, I will focus on the last REIT — First Real Estate Investment Trust. As a quick introduction, First REIT is a healthcare-focused real estate investment trust. It currently has a portfolio of 20 prope

On Wednesday, Apple unveiled the iPhone XS, XR and the Apple Watch Series 4. In the same week, Apple Singapore listed new job postings for retail staff for a location in the East, fuelling speculation that Apple is opening its second official store, after Apple Orchard Road, its first in Southeast Asia, opened to much fanfare in May 2017. If this is true, the move will increase Apple’s demand for physical retail space. This runs counter to many brick-and-mortar retailers in Singapore, who are increasingly looking to expanding their online presence for growth. For example, DIY chain Home-Fix has reduced its number of physical stores in Singapore from 26 to 16 since 2016, but actively bolstered the company’s online presence. Retail landlords are also feeling the sting from a cooling comm

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,

Yes, you heard it right. You don’t have to be a Crazy Rich Asian to invest in the Singapore stock market. You also don’t need thousands of dollars to buy your first stock. Lagi better, you don’t even need S$500 to start your investment journey. With as little as S$12 per day, or S$360 per month, you can kickstart your stock market portfolio. A basket of stocks Enter the SPDR STI ETF (SGX: ES3). The SPDR STI ETF is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the fundamentals of Singapore’s stock market benchmark, the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI). The Straits Times Index contains the 30 largest companies in the local stock market in terms of market capitalisation, adjusted for their free float. The companies include the three major banks in Singapore, and the property giants s

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

Real estate investment trusts, or REITs, are popular investment choices in the Singapore stock market. That’s because REITs tend to have high dividend yields (technically, a REIT’s dividend is known as a distribution – but let’s not split hairs here!) due to their need to distribute up to 90% of their taxable income to unitholders in order to enjoy tax transparency. In this article, I want to share two REITs with distribution yields of around 7% right now. The duo – CapitaLand Retail China Trust  (SGX: AU8U) and Frasers Commercial Trust  (SGX: ND8U) – also have market capitalisations of over S$1 billion each. Source: SGX Stock Facts CapitaLand Retail China Trust, as a quick introduction, is a REIT that owns shopping malls in China. Its portfolio cur

It is no secret that Singaporeans love to invest in properties. And who can blame them? Over the past decade, Singapore’s property market has skyrocketed. A growing economy, scarce land supply and low-interest rates have resulted in increasing demand for property. These in turn have propelled prices of property in Singapore to among the most expensive in the world. Investors who had purchased property a few decades ago would likely have made a killing. However, despite its marvellous track record, there are limitations to investing in property in Singapore. For one, investors require a large capital outlay. There are also additional stamp duties for permanent residents and Singaporeans buying their second property. Additionally, property is an illiquid asset that can take months or even

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

Share Buybacks The management team of a company has much more insights into the value and future performance of the company than ordinary investors, or even institutional investors. This is why share buybacks are usually seen a positive signal in the market that the company’s management think that investors are underpricing their shares. Read Also: Share Buybacks: What It Means And How It Impacts Investors Most companies have a share buyback mandate – this is the number of shares it can repurchase within the year, as approved by shareholders at its Annual General Meeting (AGM) or an Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM). The share buyback mandate of a company is just a guideline for the maximum number of shares they can repurchase (usually capped at 10% of the total number of shares of a

Amazon.com briefly joined Apple in the trillion dollar club on Tuesday when its shares hit a high of US$2,050.50 apiece. Although the share price has since dipped back to US$1,994 (as of 6 September), it still marked a historic accomplishment for chief executive, Jeff Bezos, who founded the company as a small online book seller a mere 24 years ago. Bezos is now the world’s wealthiest person, with Amazon.com a diversified enterprise that has more than US$200 billion in annual sales and more than 575,000 employees. Amazon shares have more than tripled since 2015 and are up more than 500 times the IPO price, after accounting for share splits. Share buybacks in Singapore reached a 35-month high in August as 43.6 million shares worth S$245.4 million were repurchased by 30 companies. The total

Singapore’s Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI), which hosts 30 of the 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 actually done quite well. In fact, a recent SGX report revealed that the top five performing companies in the index had returned over 77% on average over the past three years. Let’s have a look at the select quintet (data as of 30 August 2018): 1. Venture Corporation Ltd (SGX: V03) shares has delivered a stunning 154% return over the last three years. Founded in 1984 as a global electronics provider, Venture Corporation now sees itself as a global provider of technology solutions, products

The Straits Times Index fell 6.2 percent year-to-date to this year’s low in early July 2018. Since then, the index has recovered some grounds and is now up 4.6 percent from the recent low in July. Like Singapore, most equity markets have erased gains for the year following uncertainty over escalating trade tensions and higher tariffs. In the current risk-off environment, investors have been gravitating towards high yield dividend blue chips. With a stable SGD and healthy divided of 3.9 percent, OCBC thinks that it warrants a re-look at some of the high dividend yielding stocks in Singapore. OCBC’s Criteria For Its Yield Strategy OCBC combed through its coverage universe and selected high dividend yielding stocks. The selection was done based on several factors including consistent and

In August, there were 30 companies buying back 43.6 million shares or units for a total amount of S$245.4 million, according to a report released by the Singapore Exchange yesterday. Compared to a year ago, the repurchases last month was up 300%. The buyback on a month-on-month basis more than doubled – in July 2018, the total share buyback amount was S$109 million. The top five companies with the largest buyback considerations were Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) components. In the magnitude of total buyback considerations, those five blue-chips were DBS Group Holdings Ltd (SGX: D05), CapitaLand Limited (SGX: C31), United Overseas Bank Ltd (SGX: U11), Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp Limited (SGX: O39) and City Developments Limited (SGX: C09). Coming in sixth was HRnetGroup Ltd (SGX: CHZ

Out of the universe of Singapore-listed companies that reported 2Q18 earnings, 29 percent bested UOBKH’s expectations. This is almost double of last quarter’s 15 percent, which makes 2Q18 one of the highest level of beats since 4Q16. In this article, we dive into the sector analysis of some of the top performing and underperforming sectors in 2Q18. UOBKH SG Report Card: How Did Each Sector Fare? Banks: Solid Performance But Outlook Affected By Uncertainty The banks managed to deliver solid earnings result in 2Q18. However, OCBC came out on top of DBS in this quarter by beating expectations. DBS uncharacteristically fell marginally below expectations but still managed to deliver on net interest margin (NIM) expansion. In that aspect, OCBC was still lagging behind with some catching u

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

Top 30 in my portfolio: No. STOCK NAME No.of SHARES PORTFOLIO% MARKET $ 1SGX5,00011.717.412SATS4,0006.415.073UOB7476.3927.064SPH6,0005.312.805CapitaLand Mall Tr7,8005.272.146OCBC Bank1,4385.1311.307AIMSAMPI Cap Ind R10,0004.421.408Starhub7,0003.581.629Suntec Reit5,8003.431.8710FCT4,8003.422.3011CDL HTrust6,8003.351.5612Keppel Corp1,6003.306.5313SingTel3,1903.263.2314Keppel DC Reit7,4003.161.3515ParkwayLife Reit3,6003.052.6816SPH Reit8,5002.691.0017Starhill Global Reit12,0002.640.69518Mapletree Com Tr4,8002.471.6319Frasers Com Tr4,9872.241.4220CapitaLand2,0002.173.4321Frasers L&I Tr6,0002.091.1022Bukit Sembawang1,0001.926.0823Ascendas Reit2,0001.732.7424Sembcorp Indust1,8001.552.7325Keppel InfraTr9,0001.480.5226SIA Engg1,5001.402.9527Frasers Property1,8000.951.6728Cache Log Tr

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 disposal in dollar value

We’re near the end of the current earnings season. As is common with every earnings season, there will be some real estate investment trusts (REITs) posting growth, some REITs posting mixed numbers, and some REITs experiencing declines. So, which are the REITs that have recently reported mixed numbers? Let’s look at two of them: 1. In late July, CapitaLand Commercial Trust (SGX: C61U) released its 2018 second quarter earnings update. As a quick introduction, CapitaLand Commercial Trust is one of the largest commercial REITs in Singapore by market capitalization. It currently owns 10 commercial properties in Singapore and one office asset in Germany. In the second quarter of 2018, CapitaLand Commercial Trust reported a 12.0% year-on-year increase in revenue to S$98.0 million. Similarly

Following our article on 5 REITs becoming appealing again, we turn our focus to other S-REITs that are poised to benefit from their overseas play. Investors Takeaway: 4 Overseas REITs That Investors Should Focus On CapitaLand Retail China Trust Following the divestment of CapitaMall Anzhen, CapitaLand Retail China Trust has replaced it with a much younger asset – Rock Square – in the first-tier city of Guangzhou. Although the initial yield is lower, DBS believes that the asset has greater growth potential. It is also an indication of CapitaLand Retail China Trust embarking on a growth path as it shifts its focus from stability from master leases to growth generated from more actively managed assets. Now that CapitaLand Retail China Trust has a recapitalised balance sheet, the time i