On 4 June 2020, FTSE Russell, Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Singapore Exchange (SGX) had announced in their quarterly review that Mapletree Industrial Trust had replaced SPH as a constituent of the Straits Times Index (STI)1. The changes will be applied after business hours on 19 June 2020 and will be effective on 22 June 2020.
What caught my eye in the same article was the STI reserve list (the next-in-line substitutes should the current constituents are to be dropped in the next review), and out of five listed, four are real estate investment trusts (REITs). There were already five REITs in the STI, and with this impending change, there are going to be six.
For the Bedokian Portfolio, as well as the other investment portfolios, the STI served as the representative of the Singapore equities asset class. Depending on your school of thought on asset classes, some...