Dividend Is King

REITs  Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs) are a trust that pools money from investors to acquire income generating real estate. REITs will then pay back investors with dividends (AKA money) at regular intervals. They generate income by renting out the properties to tenants and through the appreciation of the properties they acquire. The dividend yield for Singapore REITs are usually high as they are required to pay out at least 90% of their taxable income to shareholders in the same financial year to enjoy a unique tax transparency status. REITs are a popular asset class in Singapore due to its reputation of being a stable blue-chip stock that provide investors with both dividends and capital growth. (Who doesn't like passive income?) REITs can be classified by the type of properties they invest in. There are mainly 6 types of REITs in Singapore: 1. Commercial Commercial REITs invest in high quality office buildings and rent out to companies. For example, CapitaLand Commercial Tr

1. DBS DBS is one of Southeast Asia's largest bank and has a market capitalisation of $53 billion in Singapore. DBS earnings has grown 8.9% over the past 5 years and earnings are forecast to grow 12.65% per year. Moreover, DBS has managed to always maintain a healthy balance sheet and are constantly improving the digitalisation of their financial and banking services. As of 2019, they had a net profit of $6.39 billion and paid out a dividend yield of 7.2%. They have a high and sustainable dividend payout ever since they adopted a more aggressive dividend payout strategy from 2018 (8.17% in 2018, 7.2% in 2019, 6.35% in 2020). In my opinion, DBS is extremely good blue chip stock to add to your portfolio now (Current Share price at $20.5) and you will definitely reap its rewards through both its dividend payouts and share growth. The management has been proven to be exceptionally capable and they are constantly putting in effort to innovate to ensure that DBS stays at the forefront of

Everyone knows the simple rule to get rich – Save and invest your money. So why is everyone not rich? I will be going through my top 3 reasons why some people do not become rich despite already knowing the formula to be rich. 1. Lack of Discipline The first and top reason why people are not rich is a lack of discipline. Everyone has their own financial plan in mind – Save a portion of their income, invest it, and spend the rest. The difference between the people who eventually become rich and the people who remain poor is simply discipline to stick to their financial plan. For example, disciplined individuals would force themselves to invest 20% of their income no matter what and live off the remaining 80%. On the other hand, undisciplined individuals would spend their paycheque first before using the rest to invest. Simply put, the importance of discipline to stick to your financial plan is unparalleled if your goal is to become rich. 2. Laziness The second and most popular reason why

1. Calculate your own personal balance sheet The first step is to come up with your own personalized balance sheet. A balance sheet is essentially a combination of all your assets and liabilities. To simplify things, assets are anything that puts money into your wallet while liabilities are anything that takes money out of your wallet. Below is an example of a simplified balance sheet: Assets                                                                  Liabilities -Dividend Stocks                                             -Student debt -Growth Stocks                                                -Housing Loan -Rent                                                                -Monthly expenses  -Job income After coming up with your own balance sheet, you need to determine your own cash flow. To simplify things, cash flow = Assets – Liabilities. We are trying to achieve a positive cash flow to invest in more assets to get even higher cash flow. After calculating your balance she

1. CapitaMall Trust CapitaMall Trust is one of Singapore’s largest and oldest retail REITs. It is considered a blue-chip REIT that is included in the STI. It boasts a solid portfolio consisting of 15 properties valued at $10 billion. It consists of famous retail malls including Junction 8, Raffles City Singapore, Bugis +, Tampines mall. If you live in Singapore, you would definitely have been to at least one of its malls. CapitaMall Trust is sponsored by CapitaLand Limited which is one of Asia’s largest property developers which further adds to its attractiveness. It consists of an extensive tenant network with more than 3000 leases and a high tenant occupancy rate of 98.3%. It has a 18 year consistent dividend history and the average dividend yield across the past 5 years is 5.3%. Furthermore, it has an appropriate debt gearing ratio of 32.9% which is well within the threshold level of <40%. In my opinion, its current share price of $2 due to the coronavirus outbreak and circuit br

1. Consistent Dividend History A high-quality REIT will have an impressive dividend history with consistent dividend payments at regular intervals. Our main goal in buying REITs is to receive dividends regularly and the last thing we would want is for the REIT to stop paying their dividends. The dividend history of REITs can be broken down into three categories: <5 years of consistent dividend history, <10 years of consistent dividend history, and >10 years of consistent dividend history. Longer consistent dividend history is associated with higher quality and lower risk REIT. A good example is Ascendas REIT which has an impressive 18-year consistent dividend history. This means that Ascendas REIT has been paying out dividends at regular intervals continuously for 18 years without fail. You can check a REIT’s dividend history by going to websites such as dividends.sg or to the REIT portfolio directly.   2. Strong Sponsor A sponsor is a company that provides the properties into

When I first started investing in the stock market in Singapore, quite a few of my friends were curious about the process to start investing in Singapore. Thus, I decided to write this article to show a simple 3 step guide to start investing in the Singapore stock market. 1. Open a CDP account The first step to start investing in the stock market in Singapore is to open a CDP account. A Central Depository Account (CDP) is an account to store all the shares you bought through Singapore Exchange (SGX). It is operated by SGX and acts as a save for all the stocks that you bought. You can apply for a CDP account online here . 2. Open a Brokerage account The second step is to open a brokerage account to access and buy the stocks listed in the SGX market. There is a wide variety of brokerage accounts to choose from online. The top 3 most popular brokerage accounts in Singapore are OCBC securities, DBS vickers, and Standard Chartered trading account. OCBC securities and DBS vickers have simil