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Why You Should Attend The SMART Investment & International Property Expo 2015

Take control of your financial future and join many others in the SMART Investment & International Property Expo. With over 11 years of organizing investment expo in other parts of Asia, SMART Expo has invited hundreds of industry experts in their fields to provide useful advice and motivational talks to investors.

This year, Singapore will be its first stop in Asia, followed by Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai in later parts of the year.

There are different seminars held in this 2 days event, so whether you are someone who is looking for investment opportunities or one who wants to learn more about investing, you will definitely benefit from the insights shared by these quality professionals.

Property investment

If you have been following the news, you would have been aware of a slew of currency swings that are happening in the market.

The U.S. Dollar has been appreciating ferociously against other major currencies like the Euro, GBP and AUD.

Fortunately, the Singapore Dollar has strengthen against a basket of currencies. With a stronger S$, it makes properties investing abroad attractive as it costs less in dollar terms. This has been reported in the Straits Time recently and some of the overseas properties in Malaysia, Australia and Britain are popular among Singapore’s investors.

Some economists says that the central bank will likely keep its stance of letting the Singdollar appreciate against other currencies in the April meeting, albeit at a lower pace. This could be a good opportunity to leverage on for property investors.

If you one who plans to buy a retirement property or a weekend home to retreat to across the Causeway, look forward to Mike Chau’s seminar on “Why is Landed Property the Preferred Investment Choice in Iskandar, Malaysia for 2015?” on 28 March 2015 from 13:00 to 13:45. Mike is the managing director of eBizway Research Sdn Bhd and has invested in the Iskandar since 2008.

With the decline of the Aussie dollar, parents who are planning to purchase a property in Australia for their children who wishes to study or work abroad may find it a better deal now. Christian Numa from LK Property Group will share with you some tips and hindsight on how and why you should invest in properties in Melbourne – the World’s Most Liveable City. And Omar Butt from Find My Work Space will talk about the burgeoning marketing for flexible workspaces in the city.

You should also not missed Vina Ip’s talk on “Dirty Truths and Profitable Secrets to Building Wealth Through Properties” on the second day of the seminar. Vina is a founder of Property Club Singapore, and she blogs at PropertySoul.com where she shares her property investing experience on how she grows her wealth from one to five property in 4½ years. In 2014, she published a book “No B.S. Guide to Property Investment.” and was sold out in Kinokuniya and Times bookstores within 8 weeks.

If you are already planning to invest in some properties, there is a good selection of overseas properties that you can check out during the event.

There are many other seminars conducted by senior level industry experts giving their expert advice on property investment and how to succeed in the property market. If property investment is what you are interested in, check out the seminar’s timetable here: http://www.smartexpos.com/2015/MarSG/timetable.html

Personal Finance & Investment

Who say the SMART Expo is all about talks on property investments? For keen and young investors, look forward to some of the talks from renowned traders and professionals as they show you how to detect market trends, basics of assets allocation and how to create an ideal portfolio.

Jeff Sun is a professional trader and specialises in high probability trading strategies in index futures and equities trading of Singapore and US shares. He will show you his hindsight on proper risk and money management strategy and how to turn your portfolio into profits every month using some trading principles.

With over 15 years of experience in stocks, 11 years with options and futures and 8 years in Forex and CFDs as a full time investment manager, Terrence Tan will give you an overview on how to create a profitable portfolio yourself and how to achieve financial freedom without the need of experts.

For new investors, learn how to diversify your portfolio with Calvin’s enriching talk on “How To Setup Basic Asset Allocation“. Find out how each investment vehicles can make up an ideal portfolio from the experience of a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and Certified Financial Planner (CFP) holder. It is also worth mentioning that Calvin has managed deal size of over US$2 billion dollars as an investment banker in New York. He is now the managing director and co-founder of DrWealth.com.

Feng Shui and Fortune Telling

If you are a believer on Feng Shui, don’t miss the talk from Grandmaster Chang Qing Yuan where he share with you some Feng Shui Tips and Forecast for the year 2015. Being an expert in the fraternity, Grandmaster Chang is known for his practice of “Finger Divination” which allows him to accurately predict current and future issues of an individual. He also boasts the likes of looking at the fortunes and Feng Shui of some of the millionaires and billionaires in China and Taiwan. Grandmaster Chang will speak in the first day of the seminar, from 12pm.

If you are heading to the Expo on the second day, there is also a Feng Shui and Astrology talk by Master Trainer Kevin Foong. Kevin Foong is the founder of Kevin Foong Consulting Group and is devoted to using the “Four Pillars of Destiny 子平八字” to provide Life Readings.

Besides Feng Shui, you can also get your fortune told by Chinese Masters on both days of the event. Get a brief consultation to find out more about your future wealth prospects, health and how the interior design of your house affects Feng Shui.

Whether you are a seasoned investor or someone who wants to gain some insights from the professionals, there are so much activities and events to look forward to.

There will also be a lucky draw conducted during the events, and you can win exciting prizes such as digital cameras, watches, vouchers and gift cards.

For full terms and conditions: http://goo.gl/DJ4xMx

Mark your calendar and keep your weekends free next week as we look forward to see you at the event!

Address: Hall B, Expo & Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands
Date: 28 – 29 March 2015
Time: 11am – 7pm

* Pss.. if you are the first 150 registered visitor who attend the expo from 11am – 12pm, there is also a chance for you to redeem a $10 NTUC voucher.

(Money Digest Singapore is proud to be the strategic partner of SMART Investment & International Property Expo 2015.)

The Lure Of Income Investing

We have often heard of the term “Income Investing”, but what is it and why it should concern you? Income investing is essentially investing into assets that produce income for you. This could range from investing in stocks that reward investors with dividends, purchasing a residential property and renting it out, etc. I particularly want to zoom into the stocks side because that’s what I have been doing and more people can benefit from this article because owning a property requires a good amount of capital, which not everyone may have at their dispense.

Why Income Investing?

What if I told you that your money has the capacity to grow at a “fixed” rate irregardless of market conditions. Would you be interested? I want to introduce you to dividend stocks where companies pay out dividends that could range all the way to double digit dividend yields if bought at low prices. The benefits of investing in dividend stocks is that you enjoy potential capital growth as well as get to take home some cash every year or even every 3 months.

Picture this, you bought Stock X at $1.00 and based on past dividend history, it has consistently given off $0.05 of dividend per year. This translates to 5% dividend yield per year. What it means is that even if the stock price goes to $1.10(Scenario A) or $0.90(Scenario B), you’ll still get your $0.05 per year. If you consider in terms of returns, for Scenario A, it would mean that you made a 15% return for the year and for Scenario B, it would mean just a 5% loss (-10% + 5%). Your capital gain/loss is amplified or mitigated by your dividend yield.

Fixed Deposit or Dividend Investing?

Some of you may be contemplating between FDs and Dividend Investing. I will leave it up to you to decide at the end of the day, but I will show a comparison between the two.

Fixed Deposit

Lump sum/Progressive capital investment with a minimum lock-in period.
Principle amount usually guaranteed.
Some allow you to take home a small sum every year while deducting it away from your principle amount. Meaning less compounding power.
Fixed but relatively low interest rates and long lock-in period with penalties for early surrender.

Dividend Stocks (Increase risk, increase return)

Increased risk, although not necessarily high if due diligence is conducted.
Potential capital gains.
Possibility of increasing dividend yields through increased dividends or averaging down the share price.
No lock-in period, no minimum sum.

For people who aren’t interested with stock markets at all or don’t know how to select companies may prefer the fixed deposit option. However consider this, when you take on a little more risk and spend time to learn and understand companies, you can mitigate the risks you take. There may be losses, but for the same period of say, 25 years, with dollar-cost averaging or other strategies that you may apply, you’ll likely see returns that fixed deposits can never offer you. And besides, have you ever heard of anyone getting rich by putting their money in fixed deposits alone?

Portfolio and Risk Management

It’s a boring topic, but when money is involved, is it still boring? I hope not! Investing is more than just buying and selling, it’s the art of handling risk and emotions. Having read through many blogs and seen many portfolios, there’s one similarity among all of them. They all have Portfolio Management. If the rich are doing it, there must be a compelling reason why they are doing it right? Having a good portfolio management can help enhance returns and reduce risk. Not everyone wants to have a portfolio that moves together all in the same direction, and not everyone realise that they may be having it. A good portfolio should comprise of several forms of assets and preferably in different industries because that way your risk will not be concentrated in a single industry. Yes, you may have a chance of making it big when the sector goes into a boom, just like the technology stocks prior to the .com bust. It is one thing to be overweight on an industry, but it is foolish to allow yourself to take on a risk that you may not be able to afford. The last thing you want to do when investing is to be wiped out completely. In this article, I wish to share using a top-down approach and gradually zoom in on how one can have a good Portfolio Management and avoid undertaking too much risk.

Portfolio Management

As mentioned, a good Portfolio would be one that can withstand years of market movements and still stand strong. The word ‘Diversification’ may come to your mind when Portfolio Management is mentioned. There tend to be a misconception about diversification, especially towards investors. To most investors, diversification simply means diversifying your money into different sectors of the market. This isn’t entirely wrong, and there are indeed benefits to diversifying into different sectors. However, may I present to you a broader view of what diversification means. Diversify into different asset classes. A truly good portfolio should be one that is invested into different asset classes – Stocks, Bonds, Commodities, Forex, Properties, etc.

Having a portfolio that is diversified into different asset classes will save you from having your hard-earned money from being wiped out in a black swan event. You can be sure that even if the stock market crashes, you still have other streams of income from your different asset classes like bonds or rental income from your residential properties (Note that REITs is still classified as stocks). Imagine if all your money were in just the stock market alone, perhaps even diversified into a few sectors. Your portfolio would have experienced a hard pounding and it served as a wake-up call for many who did not diversify across the different asset classes. That’s not to say that being diversified into different asset class will make you immune to any big worldwide crisis like this, but at least it mitigates the damage dealt.

Risk Management

In theory, everything sounds perfect. However, not everyone of us can afford the luxury to be invested in all the 5 asset classes mentioned. It would be nice to try to be as diversified as possible, but even if it’s just stocks, there’s another way to manage your risk. A part of portfolio management is Position Sizing. Always consider how much risk you are willing to take in a trade, preferably in dollar amount rather than in %.

Step 1: Consider the maximum loss(in $ amount) you’re willing to accept.

Step 2: Set a stop-loss level

Step 3: Calculate the capital exposure per unit (Entry price – Stop loss price)

Step 4: Maximum position size = Step 1 / Step 3

This formula can be found in Robert C Miner’s High Probability Trading Strategies book. If you’re interested, do head down to NLB to borrow because that’s where I got the book from! Although not everyone has the luxury to take up the maximum position size for every trade, it will still serve as a good gauge as to how much the maximum should be. This prevents you from over trading beyond your risk tolerance level. There are many strategies available and this is one of the strategies that I have found to have served me useful because I know exactly how many shares should I limit myself to. Hopefully you would re-look at your investment strategies and identify if you are carrying too much unnecessary risk.

The Greatest Investment Of Your Lifetime

When considering the topic of ‘Investment’, we almost always think about Equities, Bonds or Forex first. We hear questions like “What stock is good?” or “How should I begin investing?” The growing interest in investment here in Singapore is definitely growing and we can begin to see a new generation of investors who are more daring and knowledgeable than their parents. We all have heard of stories about how other people’s parents or even our parents had their hands burnt in the past due to buying stocks or mutual funds. This has left a bad impression on many of the kids of my generation and have grown to become interested, but afraid of the risk of losing their hard-earned money as well.

Every once in awhile, we hear people talking about how this stock is going to skyrocket or that stock is going the be the next big thing. Are these truly the investments worth chasing after, or is there an even bigger and more important investment that you can and might not have begun investing in? There are many proven cases even today that those who invest in this boasts of superior returns and is still experiencing compounded growth. I hope you’re interested in what this investment is, because you should. This investment has no barriers to entry, does not cost beyond what you can afford(possibly free) and can make you incredibly rich (both in monetary and non-monetary terms). However, this investment requires a lot of time, effort, and determination.

This investment is you.

Investment in yourself is the best and the most important investment everyone should make. Cliché as it might sound, it’s one investment that many people have overlooked. The younger you begin, the more time you have to compound this investment. The rewards can come in many form, depending on what you seek from this investment – Money, Happiness, Relationships, etc. You name it, you can have it!

You may not know where to begin, as it usually is the case. So here’s a simple step-by-step guide to get you started on your investment.

Step 1: Do a self-assessment of what you love doing or want to achieve 5-10 years down the road. This would create a purpose and a direction to work towards to in your life.

Step 2: Do an inventory check of what you have and what you are missing in your pursuit towards achieving an even higher returns on your investment. Knowing what you have (Tangible and intangible) and what you don’t have allows you to work more efficiently and purposefully since you can leverage on what you have and gather what you don’t have in your free time.

Step 3: Start off with baby steps. The idea is to keep things manageable instead of taking a leap of faith. Create habits that lasts rather than simply to achieve something at the spur of the moment and allow the flame to die off after minor achievements. This could range from borrowing a book from the library once a month to taking up classes on a regular basis.

Step 4: Along the way, find a higher purpose. Sometimes we are simply not focused enough to have the fuel to keep chasing after that one dream. While it is good to be focused, it can get tiresome at times to keep at it. When you continually find a higher purpose, you will find it more enjoyable to continue the journey! This could range from teaching others what you have learnt to having the current purpose fit into an even bigger purpose! The key to it is to make slight deviations instead of totally pursuing something new. It would have been wasted effort.

I hope this article has helped you to realise that the biggest investment of your lifetime is waiting for you to invest in it. Stop looking elsewhere because it begins with you. If you have time on your side, even better! Allow time to compound the knowledge and skills that you have gathered.

Some practical tips:
If you are an investor in the stock market, you would have experienced times when you are already fully invested in the market and there seem to be nothing else you can do except to wait. It’s easy to convince yourself that it is time to take a back seat and relax. However, I urge that you keep looking out for the next investment opportunity and sharpen your skills and knowledge by reading! Books are a great source of knowledge and inspiration for trade ideas. Just don’t stop investing in yourself and you’ll see the compounded fruits of labour in years to come. Make it a point that when others have yet to begin, you’re already leaps and bounds ahead of them by the time they begin!

Technical Analysis – The answer to “When to buy?”

Why Should I Consider Technical Analysis?

For questions like “What to buy?” requires fundamental analysis. But when someone asks, “When to buy?” This is when technical analysis comes into play. Technical analysis is the other approach of investing. When you talk about technical analysis, you’re looking at things like charts, chart patterns, technical indicators, etc. It gives you a visual information about how the stock price moves for the minute, the hour, the day, week and even month! This information is useful because it can give you a better sense of how the stock is doing right at the moment. Fundamental analysts usually have to deal with information that isn’t updated because company reports would only come out quarterly, or even annually! Many things happen in between the quarters but you could possibly be trading based on the previous quarter’s results which may no longer be relevant.

Pure technical analysts are not interested in the research of a company’s fundamentals because the way a stock price moves would have indicated how much everyone thinks the stock is generally worth. When an undervalued stock moves because it was uncovered by a fundamental analyst, it wouldn’t be missed by technical analyst who watch price-volume action of a share price. As long as a stock moves, the technical analysts will be there watching it as well! Price movements can give a technical analyst a lot of information such as breakouts, psychology of the market players, trend, reversal patterns, etc. These days, there are a lot of people relying on charts when buying a stock. You would only be putting yourself in a disadvantaged position if you choose not to avail yourself to the same information they are receiving. With more and more speculators in the market, fundamentals might be ignored for short moments and only technical analysis can help you for the moment to be profitable.

Here’s an example:

A pure fundamental analyst would not know where the support or the resistance is. He would know what the company should be valued at but he may not know when is the best time to enter. For example, NOL is down-trending from $2.30. A fundamental analyst values it at $1.50 based on Price-Book ratio, P/E ratio, or other metrics available to him. When NOL sells down to $1.50, the fundamental analyst would make the purchase because he thinks that is what it is worth. However, from a technical analyst point of view, he would wait to see if $1.50 is supported or not. If the price is not supported, he waits for the share price to continue falling and test the next support level at $1. When share price eventually gets to $1 and shows that it is supported with a high volume, the technical analyst buys it.

At the end of the day, both analysts got NOL, but the technical analyst got a better price because he knows that from past price movements that $1 is a strong psychological support and buys it at a support instead of simply buying it because he thinks that is what it is worth. Past price actions can give you a hint about the future price movement because of many reasons, largely psychological support and resistance levels. The fact is that many people are relying on such information, and if you aren’t, you will lose out and the market will not make sense to you. Having a visual image of how the stock market is going will be very much easier for you to find support levels such as in the case above.

Of course, this is not to say that technical analysis is 100% accurate and gives you pin-point accuracy. What it can provide you is more information that opens up your eyes to more opportunities for buying entries. There is always a time an investor will face where he says “I’m waiting for the right time to enter”. It could be a fundamentally sound company but simply trading too expensively and this is when technical analysis will tell you when the right time is. Or rather, give you a hint of when the right time is. Of course, hindsight is 20/20 and the chart above could have gone in a totally different direction and crashed through $1 rather than stay supported on 2 more counts on Nov 2011 and May 2012. I used an old chart for the purpose of effectively sending my point across rather than try to teach based on current prices where even I don’t know where the future is. No one can predict how the future price will move, they can only get a vague idea of it. By effectively utilising both fundamental and technical analysis, you would put yourself in a profitable position where the odds of a profitable trade is higher.

Important Disclaimer

The above chart is for teaching purposes only and is not a recommendation to buy/sell.

Property investment

Personal Finance & Investment

Feng Shui and Fortune Telling

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