The big question is for retail investors is to assess which investment guru made the best picks in 2019. To answer that question, we pit different investment factors against each other and tracked their relative performance over 2019. Specifically, this is what we did:

• We select an investable set of stocks that have the following properties:
  • Listed on SGX.
  • Not a real estate investment trust because REITs are always treated separately in the ERM programme.
  • Not domiciled in China as we do believe that beginners should invest in SGX stocks domiciled in China.
  • Larger than $50 million in size so that ample liquidity exists.
• This results in a set of 300+ counters.
  • We then build a portfolio consisting of half the universe of stocks with the superior factor on 1 January 2019 and hold it for a year before we measured the results.

The final results are as follows:

The winning factor in 2019 was dividend yields even though it meant taking on more downside risk....