Archive

8percentpa

Are you buying for own stay or investment?

April 10, 2012 by 8percentpa
How many times have we heard this question being touted by real estate agents when we go for property viewing, the most important pastime for Singaporeans today. From a layperson perspective, things cannot be more common-sensical. If you like the place, and if it is within your means, then buy that dream condo. Achieve the [...]

in Categories: Property

Read more →

2nd Level Thinking in Real Life

March 27, 2012 by 8percentpa
2nd Level Thinking works in real life as well. We should not be thinking superficially and derive simplistic answers to some of the problems we face. Again in most cases, consensus would be right, and it’s tempting to just follow the crowd. Sometimes, maybe average is good enough. But in other important issues, we might [...]

in Categories: Personal Development

Read more →

Second Level Thinking

March 9, 2012 by 8percentpa
This is a phrase coined by Howard Marks in his book, “The Most Important Thing”. This book is truly a rarity for investors, with both new and old concepts well thought out and written clearly. The best part: the concepts are even valid for institutional fund managers. Very rarely we find something useful both for [...]

Read more →

How much will you pay for Cecilia Sue?

February 1, 2012 by 8percentpa
Well, apparently to some, this woman is worth a career, a family, reputation and scrutiny of the whole of Singapore. On hindsight, it is easy to ask what is going on in the minds of those who would risk it all for a night (or a few nights) of fantasy and thrill? What the hell [...]

in Categories: Investing

Read more →

More on Kiasu Parents

January 19, 2012 by 8percentpa
In economics, competition is the best thing that can happen. Competition brings about lower cost, innovation, improvement and makes economic development possible. Competition goes on until it is limited by other factors. E.g. until all producers are loss-making and can no longer make money, or until some input resource is depleted. Which is not always [...]

in Categories: Personal Development

Read more →

On Ministers’ Pay

January 11, 2012 by 8percentpa
This is sensitive topic that has angered many Singaporeans. Even with a 30% pay cut, people are not happy. So what if the Transport Minister gets paid $1mn instead of $2mn? The train is still breaking down and the taxi fares just went up damnit. At the risk of getting flamed and BBQ-ed on skewers [...]

in Categories: Investing

Read more →

2012 High Dividend Stocks in Singapore

January 6, 2012 by 8percentpa
I have cleaned up the screen in the last post and this is the newest list of co.s with more or less the same criteria: 1. Market cap more than $100mn 2. Dividend yield more than 4% 3. Past 3 yr average ROE more than 12% 4. Past 3 yr FCF yield more than 6% [...]

in Categories: Investing

Read more →

High Dividend Stocks 2011

December 16, 2011 by 8percentpa
Holiday seasons are here again and here is the long awaited update on the high dividend names in Singapore…

in Categories: Shares and Derivatives

Read more →

Meaningless Millionaires

December 14, 2011 by 8percentpa
We might have reached the end of the line for fiat currencies. This has been talked about in economic circles but perhaps the general public are still not aware of its drastic consequences. While nobody thinks it will be anything like Germany after WWI or Singapore’s banana money after WWII, the end result is not [...]

in Categories: Market Review and Trends

Read more →

Problems and Solutions to Singapore’s Education System – Part 4

November 3, 2011 by 8percentpa
Teachers, or rather the lack of good old-fashion responsible teachers, the inability of the system to retain the talented ones, the low teacher to student ratio, the mind-boggling ECA workload, the long hours are all the woes we hear about teaching. It is said that being a teacher is no longer about teaching. It’s about [...]

in Categories: Uncategorized

Read more →

Problems and Solutions to Singapore’s Education System – Part 3

October 14, 2011 by 8percentpa
The phenomenon of having more private tuition to supplement school education is a very Eastern phenomenon. We see it in almost all East Asian countries like China, Korea, Taiwan and Japan. We might argue that this is a cultural issue. Parents in Asian countries going through this phase of development see the importance of being [...]

in Categories: Investing

Read more →

Blood on the Streets

September 13, 2011 by 8percentpa
We have to digress from our topic on education a bit as the financial markets are entering interesting times. Here is my attempt to answer a question on many people’s mind: time to buy?The last couple of months were pretty awful for those who are involved the markets. Most indices were down double digits. Europe [...]

in Categories: Market Review and Trends

Read more →

Problems and Solutions to Singapore’s Education System – Part 2

September 8, 2011 by 8percentpa
So, what is the solution? As I have alluded to in the last post, it is the elimination of scarcity value. This means eliminating our branded schools, or creating more schools that are as good. It will also incorporate changes to the grading system to make it more holistic, encompassing many more subjects, making the [...]

in Categories: Uncategorized

Read more →

Problems and Solutions to Singapore’s Education System Part I

July 21, 2011 by 8percentpa
This is a discussion dedicated to most parents who suffer from the idiosyncrasies of our education system. I have spent some time thinking about this and have decided to blog this despite its irrelevance to investment, although economics would help us understand how we can try to tackle some of the issues. The discussions here [...]

in Categories: Uncategorized

Read more →

Problems and Solutions to Singapore’s Education System Part I

July 21, 2011 by 8percentpa
This is a discussion dedicated to most parents who suffer from the idiosyncrasies of our education system. I have spent some time thinking about this and have decided to blog this despite its irrelevance to investment, although economics would help us understand how we can try to tackle some of the issues. The discussions here [...]

in Categories: Uncategorized

Read more →

The Many Faces of PE – DCF

July 12, 2011 by 8percentpa
A lot of people like to say that PE is not robust enough. Ultimately a company is the present value of its future cashflow and how does one simple ratio determine it? We need to have a full model of all it’s future cashflow, discount it back to today’s earnings, add it up and we [...]

in Categories: Investing

Read more →

The Many Faces of PE – Quality

June 15, 2011 by 8percentpa
This is the 3rd installment of posts titled “Many Faces of PE”. The previous two posts are: Growth Shiller PE It is important to bear in mind that PE can bear so many different faces bcos we look at just next yr’s PE. This is a practice that the whole financial industry agreed on some [...]

Read more →

The Many Faces of PE – Growth

June 7, 2011 by 8percentpa
This is a continuation of the previous post on the many ways to look at the PE ratio. 3. Growth Angle As the investment world, led by brokers shifted to look at just 1 year PE ie PE using next year’s earnings. A lot of imagination bloomed on how we can interpret this ratio. The [...]

in Categories: Investing

Read more →
Page 1 of 7
1
2
3
4
5
...
7