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

Are you looking to invest in dividend stocks that pay high and stable dividend income? You want to invest in stocks with strong fundamental, proven business models, great dividends track record and ideally, you are also the customers of their products/services: Telco plans. Today, the three Telcos I’m going to cover achieve exactly that. But […]

What a year it has been for the Singapore telecom industry. The crazy competition has seen StarHub retrenching 300 staff while M1 is the subject of buyout offer by Keppel and SPH. Despite the extensive shake-up in the local telecom industry, leading player SingTel stands tall against the relentless waves of changes. SingTel share price also remains resilient in the face of the unprecedented disruptions that had impacted StarHub and M1. With 735 million mobile customers in 21 countries, SingTel’s investment moat is indeed unassailable. Investors would note that SingTel share price has been bearish in recent months. However, the recent M1 general offer had led to a mini recovery for SingTel share price because many observers deemed that the industry consolidation would benefit SingTel. But

The Singapore stock market, as represented by the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) tumbled by 47.3 points, or 1.5%, to end Friday at 3,209.8. Most of the index components finished in the red, including all three banks. Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp Limited (SGX: O39), or OCBC for short, was the bank that fell the most at 2.2% to S$11.19. On Monday, OCBC announced that a planned sale of Hong Kong Life Insurance to First Origin International Limited had been called off as the buyer failed to meet certain conditions before a September 30 deadline. Hong Kong Life Insurance is 33.33%-owned by OCBC Wing Hang Bank Limited, a subsidiary of OCBC. Another loser for the week was industrial real estate investment trust (REIT), Ascendas Real Estate Investment Trust (SGX: A17U). Its units declined by 3.4

I can imagine SingTel CEO Chua Sock Koong rubbing her hands in glee as she read news of how arch rival StarHub struggles amid the unprecedent shake-up in the telco industry. Just months after StarHub failed to renegotiate contract with popular Discovery Channel, SingTel snagged the rights to broadcast the channels in October 2018. SingTel victory must be bitter to StarHub as the latter also lost the English Premier League broadcast to the leading telco more than ten years ago. Then, there is the StarHub retrenchment. In my previous article, “StarHub share price to plunge after being booted out of STI”,  I have highlighted how StarHub share price is expected to face destiny after being demoted from the prestigious Straits Times Index. But the announcement of the StarHub retrenchment wa

The telco sector isn’t the sexiest recently. But in the past week, the spotlight has shone on the telco sector, thanks to Keppel Corp’s plans to consolidate in the mobile industry. Keppel Corp announced last week that it is launching a buyout offer together with Singapore Press Holdings to take over M1. Currently, Keppel Corp owns 19.3 percent of M1 while SPH owns 13.5 percent of M1. They are looking to acquire Axiata Group’s 28.7 percent stake in M1 to become an individual majority shareholder. According to analysts, this will allow the new major shareholder to dictate the business strategy. Furthermore, the deal will allow M1 to utilise Keppel’s datacentre assets to supplement its weak enterprise segment. M1 can also retail Keppel Electric’s energy to its home customers and bun

Singapore Telecommunications Limited (SGX: Z74) or Singtel, is one of the three main telcos in Singapore. The other two are M1 Ltd (SGX: B2F) and StarHub Ltd (SGX: CC3). The company recently published its annual report for the financial year ending 31 March 2018. Reading an annual report is one of the best ways to keep up with a company’s developments. So, I decided to go through Singtel’s latest annual report to understand the company’s prospects, and how it had performed in the last 12 months. Generally, when reading an annual report, I will pay close attention to the letter to shareholders that the company’s chairman or CEO writes. In this article, we will focus on one area that I found to be interesting: diversification. Associates and joint ventures For those who are new to S

Prices are updated as of 30 September 2018. You might have heard that starting next month (November), residential households islandwide will be able to pick from a variety of electricity retailers to buy electricity from. For most of us, this can be a little unnerving and confusing, since we have been buying power from just one company – SP Group. With the impending launch of the Open Electricity Market island-wide, Singapore households will be able to choose from 12 electricity retailers, each offering multiple plans. What does it mean to buy electricity from a company other than SP Group? Will electricity reliability be affected? Is it compulsory to switch? Here is what you need to know about the Open Electricity Market, and an overview of the choices available so you can mak

For medium term trading (buy & sell every few months), a stock trader may feel the importance of relative monthly stock performance. If one could apply statistics to understand the months with relative stronger or weaker performance, the knowhow could help in advanced trading plan. Here is a compilation of season effect (monthly stock performance, green is a gain, red is a loss) over the past 12 years on global stock markets in Singapore, US, Hong Kong and China.   1) Singapore (Straits Times Index – STI) Worst Month: Aug (Losses in 12 out of 12 years) Best Months: Mar/Apr (Gains in 10 out of 12 years) 2) US (Nasdaq Composite Index – Nasdaq) Worst Month: Jun (Losses in 8 out of 12 years) Best Months: Apr/May/July (Gains in 9 out of 12 years) 3) H

Top 30 in my portfolio: No. STOCK NAME No.of SHARES PORTFOLIO% MARKET $ 1SGX5,00011.387.372SATS4,0006.455.223UOB7476.2527.084CapitaLand Mall Tr9,0006.172.225SPH6,0005.322.876OCBC Bank1,4385.0811.447AIMSAMPI Cap Ind R10,0004.321.408Starhub7,0004.041.879Suntec Reit5,8003.461.9310Keppel Corp1,6003.446.9611CDL HTrust6,8003.361.6012FCT4,7003.302.2713SingTel3,1903.193.2414Keppel DC Reit7,4003.131.3715ParkwayLife Reit3,6003.002.7016SPH Reit8,5002.631.0017Starhill Global Reit12,0002.580.69518Mapletree Com Tr4,8002.391.6119Frasers Com Tr4,9872.251.4620CapitaLand2,0002.083.3721Frasers L&I Tr6,0001.981.0722Bukit Sembawang1,0001.785.7723Sembcorp Indust1,8001.723.0924Ascendas Reit2,0001.632.6425Keppel InfraTr9,0001.380.49526SIA Engg1,5001.372.9527Frasers Property1,8000.941.6928Cache Log T

STARHUB is about to make changes in its organisational structure that could result in lay-offs among its 2,500 employees in a bid to stay "agile and lean" ahead of new challenges, disruptions and threats.CW8888: Over his last 38 years working as employee; what he saw with his own eyes of his senior colleagues broke down and cried was scary and lasting!Read? Don't Laugh At Ants When They Looked Far Ahead Of Their Time

Dear readers, let us take a look at the Oversold STI stocks as at 29 Sep 2018. As usual, I would illustrate the oversold STI constituent stocks using the "heatmap" above so that it would be very clear to readers with just a quick glance. For this post, Starhub stock was replaced with Dairy Farm International in the chart due to Starhub being replaced by the latter stock in the STI index. Read more »

Finally see some relief from the selling near the end of Sep, all thanks to M1. Keppel/SPH has joined forces to buy out M1 resulting in the spill of the spoils to other telco such as Singtel and StarHub. Overall was glad that the stock market recovered abit by the end of the month. STI vs my portfolio My portfolio is paying off :) PeriodSTIMy Portfolio (Realised)Verdict Jan 2018-3.78%11.26%

Over the past few days, we have seen Starhub approaching a key level..A level that was holding for 3 months and sellers were just too strong all there while…That level was 1.80…We were around 1.78 and I was expecting an attempt to breach that resistance and hence some targets were drawn…So Why were we alerted to this counter in the first place? Find out more below…Well, we had a couple of SIGNALS on the system over the past few months, to the upside and then to the downside…And entry then an exit… 1 to go in, 1 to go out!But more importantly, we have one bullish signal recently with NO EXIT yet… see what I mean below…Seems like we are still seeing more upside from the SIGNAL…Want to know what goes on behind these signals and how it alerts us?Attend a FREE workshop, dates

Hello, everyone. Here are three things about the local stock market that you might be interested in today. 1. The Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) inched up 1.5 points, or 0.05%, to 3,219.2. Of the 30 index stocks, 11 were in the green, 18 were in the red while one – ComfortDelGro Corporation Ltd (SGX: C52) – ended the day flat. Thai Beverage Public Company Limited (SGX: Y92) was the best performer of the index as its shares rose 2.2% to S$0.695 each. On the other hand, the company that was the biggest loser was Genting Singapore Ltd (SGX: G13). The casino operator’s shares fell 2.8% to S$1.04 apiece. 2. The Straits Times Index has a new look. Pan-Asian retailer, Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd (SGX D01), has replaced telco, StarHub Ltd (SGX CC3), on the 30-stock index. The ch

I’m a value investor. So, I like to search for companies that are trading at good value. A list of stocks that are near their respective 52-week lows is a good place to start my search for a good reason. These are the stocks that are either neglected or beaten down by investors. And, some of these stocks can be bargains in relation to their actual economic worth because market participants can at times react too negatively to certain companies that have sound long-term prospects but have experienced some short-term stumbles. As such, I will screen for stocks that are trading near 52-week lows nearly once every week. There are many stocks that pop up on my screen each time I run it.  So what are the companies that have shown up on this week’s list? Here are three of them: Jardine Math

Dairy Farm International Holdings Ltd (SGX: D01) has replaced StarHub Ltd (SGX: CC3) on the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI). Even though StarHub is well-known to be a high dividend-yielder, is it a better dividend share overall compared to Dairy Farm? Let’s find out by assessing the dividend growth rate and dividend payout ratio of the two companies. Dividend yield On Friday, Dairy Farm closed at US$9.30 per share, giving a trailing dividend yield of 2.2%. On the other hand, StarHub last exchanged hands on Friday at S$1.67 per share, translating to a trailing dividend yield of 9.6%. Looking at the dividend yield alone, StarHub appears to have the edge over Dairy Farm. But this metric does not show a full picture of a company’s dividend sustainability. The next two factors will reveal

This article contains PART of my 1st Scorecard Newsletter written on 22 Aug 2018 for my Moat Scorecard subscribers. This is the 1st write up of the Scorecard Newsletter just for you, as a subscriber. This write up will comes with full disclosure on the companies that I will be discussing, even if they are in my portfolio. Do note that this write up will be reproduced on TUB Investing Blog 1 month later without full disclosure.Before I start, I like to discuss about the consequences that occurred during the Turkey-US crisis. Basically, market went down quite drastically and it caught quite us by surprise. This signifies the volatility of the current market – a simple discussion between countries can result in multiple ripples globally. This is most probably the Nth tim

US escalated its trade war with China as President Trump announced on 17 September that he would go ahead with imposing 10 percent tariffs on about US$200 billion worth of Chinese imports that will take effect on 24 September and potentially going up to 25 percent by the end of the year. In retaliation, Beijing added US$60 billion of US products to its import tariff the very next day. Despite the negative news, markets seemed already mentally prepared for them seeing strong rebounds across major Asian bourses amidst heavy bargain hunting on 19 September. Over the last two weeks, Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 2.5 percent to finish at 26,656.98. Apart from the economic worries coming from China, Hong Kong was also devastated by Typhoon Mangkhut, the most intense storm to hit the city s

Billionaire investor, Warren Buffett, is a huge proponent of buying low-cost index funds. He once said during an interview with CNBC: “Consistently buy an S&P 500 low-cost index fund. I think it’s the thing that makes the most sense practically all of the time. The trick is not to pick the right company. The trick is to essentially buy all the big companies through the S&P 500 and to do it consistently.” Like Buffett said, investing in a basket of stocks instead of picking individual companies might be the better option, especially for new investors. The basket of stocks, also referred to as an exchange-traded fund (ETF), offers instant diversification for investors. Singapore’s two popular ETFs There are two ETFs tracking the Singapore stock market benchmark,