Investment

Last month, I wrote a piece in this column that took an honest look at ESG investing. The conclusion was that We cannot conclude the ESG companies will give higher expected returns. Fund managers [...]

It is quite a common occurrence to hear from people that they are into purchasing blue-chip stocks. In fact, I started that way myself by buying a few DBS shares here and a handful of Singtel [...]

Like many people during this pandemic, my husband and I started to go on more and longer cycling trips together over the past 2 years. Usually we will check the skyline before we leave the house. [...]

There have been a lot of talks about ESG investing recently. Financial institutions have been marketing their ESG investments aggressively to attract investors’ money and there are a lot of [...]

A few months ago, I had the privilege to conduct an indoor gardening workshop for our Providend family. Since the start of the pandemic, with more time spent at home now, there is a growing [...]

On 24th October 2020, I wrote in this column about Providend’s courtship with Vanguard funds. It was a 16-year courtship which started in 2004, speaking with 4 country heads to get them to bring [...]

Do you know what are the odds of you getting a positive return when you are invested in any 1-year, 5-year, 10-year and 20-year period? In this episode, I will walk you through a few scenarios to [...]

Two years ago, after a few months of research, thinking and hesitation, I surrendered a whole life insurance policy that I had purchased and replaced it with a term insurance policy. As it was [...]

I love managing my money, no surprises about that. But I also do have a fascination towards psychology, particularly in behavioural economics and cognitive biases. And along the way, I started to [...]

In March 2020, the markets tumbled and the S&P500 fell about 30% from its peak. While many investors panicked, we were busily engaging and assuring clients. The key message that we sent was [...]

Most people are going to end up with a bond fund of some kind. In today’s episode, I will share with you what is the role of bonds and whether you need them in your own investment portfolio. You [...]

7 years ago, my wife braved a 240km charity ride from Malacca to Singapore (Yes, she is the brave and adventurous one!). Of course, being a supportive and responsible partner, I had to go with [...]

Equity investing has always been a popular topic among investors. However, there is so much misleading information out there. In this episode, I will share with you on how you should approach [...]

There are 2 common investment options among many investors – investing in the stock market and investing in rental properties. In this episode, I will outline the features and caveats for each of [...]

In February 2020, my wife and I decided to take my mom and two-year old daughter on a road trip in Australia. After our own backbreaking campervan adventure in 2019, we had always wanted to [...]

Every day, millions of trades take place and billions of dollars exchange hands in the global financial markets. Every second, there is new information flowing through the financial markets and [...]

Are you a pessimist or an optimist? Is your cup half empty, or half full? What about the financial markets? Is it a good time to invest? I ask because I know some people (and I am sure you know [...]

In recent months, cryptocurrency, particularly Bitcoin has been a hot topic. When Elon Musk announced that they bought US$1.5 billion Bitcoins and that Tesla will accept Bitcoins, its price [...]

After knowing how much you need to fund your desired lifestyle in retirement, the next thing you would need to do is to work out where you currently are. In this episode, I will walk you through [...]

The first step to have a successful retirement plan is to know how much do you actually need after you have stopped working. In this episode, I will be sharing with you some tips and guiding [...]

Investors typically look for 2 crucial features in their investments: Their investment must not lose money Their investment needs to keep up with inflation You realize that… #1 and #2 are often [...]

My courtship with Vanguard funds started 16 years ago in 2004. Providend was licensed to give advice only about a year back and while we had an investment philosophy & process in place, there [...]

The anticipation building up to elections often brings with it questions about how financial markets will respond. But the outcome of an election is only one of many inputs to the market. When [...]

In property-centric Singapore, buying an investment property is one of the preferred methods of growing one’s wealth. While it is a good way to add some diversity to your portfolio and [...]

Some investors may have reservations about investing in a fund that is denominated in a currency that is not their home currency. For most of our clients, they hold equity and bond funds that are [...]

To hedge against high inflation, we should own gold. However, I think if you are allocated to equity, they would do well in periods of higher inflation as well. To provide liquidity, smoothed out [...]

Here we are, a few days after National Day and we have had quite an eventful year. We have clients who remained invested. When the markets came down, we explained to them that markets eventually [...]

Many of our clients are invested in investment-linked policies (ILP) and unit trusts, which are usually recommended to them by their previous advisers. We would often tell them to check the [...]

I recently came across an article in the FT which told the story of Victor Haghani, who was a very successful fund manager in the 1990s. He managed billions of dollars for huge hedge funds, [...]

In the last article, we explained that our investment philosophy is largely driven by the needs of our clients.  We developed a set of model portfolios to help our clients achieve a range of [...]