November Update

As previously mentioned, I am adding to Alibaba stocks till the end of the year for it to become my largest holding.

However, instead of investing my money into Alibaba Stock (BABA), I am investing into Altaba (AABA) instead.  A colleague has highlighted the differences for me. For those who may not be aware, Altaba is the remnant of Yahoo that was not sold into Verizon. It is essentially a investment holding company that holds Alibaba stock (15% of total Alibaba stock), and a few patents that Verizon was not interested in purchasing from Yahoo when it was bought over.

In light of this, especially since it has then sold its Yahoo! Japan holdings, it is essentially an alternative (ALTaba geddit) to Alibaba. The key differences are that it is valued slightly under Alibaba stock, due to the company being considered an American company, and thus having to suffer withdrawal tax should they liquidate Alibaba at any time. However, in return, one can actually hold Alibaba equity, as compared to buying it in the form of an ADR.


The idea is that if there is ever a time that Altaba liquidates its Alibaba stocks, there is a high likelihood of there being tax reliefs that will in fact make Altaba a better purchase than Alibaba.

Intending to employ more cash into other US stocks such as Activision Blizzard. Will highlight reasons why going further ahead.

11.11 is coming and I am looking to get some great deals on Lazada (Go Alibaba!)

Cheers!

Has Singtel truly became Sinktel?

Singtel. The telecomm company you choose just because everything else sucks. Or so until circles came riding along.

I am still wondering why I bought Singtel awhile back at $3.38. The irony of the matter is I went against Peter Lynch's advice of BUYING WHAT YOU KNOW. I was a singtel user for quite a few years... and then I changed my plan to Circles. and bought singtel stocks.

Shame shame.

the circle here indicates the buffering circle that was my thought process in buying Singtel. 

What the heck was I thinking.

The main considerations here for Singtel is that it is facing cost competitors EVERYWHERE.
From the Philippines to Singapore, and its Indian investment facing fierce competition from a startup with a warchest that would make everything go to pieces.

In Australia, it faced falling profits, as can be seen from this link - https://www.afr.com/business/telecommunications/optus-sees-profits-plunge-on-nbn-rollout-halt-20181107-h17n80

In India, the new entrant is crushing prices and causing Airtel's margin to shrink.

Let's also not talk about the increased capital expenditure required to get 5G in, and the anti-monopoly laws in Singapore that will require Singtel to essentially "share" this tech with the other telecommunication companies.

Another possible long-term end to Singtel's dominance might be that of new technology in another country, and literally far far away - SpaceX, Elon Musk's plan of building Starlink, a global satellite based wifi, to put it crudely. While this is still a few years away, this just highlights how easily telecommunications can be just a commodity and there is no differentiating factor, and highlights also how easily a new entrant can disrupt everything.

(Link for this here)
https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-first-starlink-internet-satellites-go-live-in-orbit/

Those are the downsides, and also a potential end to a once large and deep moat.

I bought the stock on four premises - a good dividend yield (still there I guess) , first mover to 5G in an IOT environment (still the only hope for redemption, yet at great capex ), great market share (not anymore) and dominance in all its subsidiaries (bye) , and a good profit margin (sigh).

The truth of the matter is this is not a stock nor market I should have invested in. I think out of all my purchases, even for those which might have fallen more, this is probably the most senseless stock I bought. I don't see the point in holding this stock for anything more than dividend yield, and yet even that seems to be pointless if the stock price is falling.

The story I bought into was a company that would be able to defend its dominance, but it is obviously not the case. I fell for the irrationality that "Singtel has always been around/protected by gahmen!". So was Hyflux.

I have to admit I dropped the ball on this one. I am considering selling all my shares in Singtel tomorrow and to move the cash to a better company.

Sometimes you just have to admit you made a mistake.

Cheers!

"Poor Singaporeans can lead lives of quiet desperation and not really experience what living is"

A friend of mine posted this in response to a link being shared around facebook: https://www.malaymail.com/s/1689316/economic-outlook-2019-wages-increment-promotes-economic-growth?fbclid=IwAR0eg5OWLWc27x9_oXxhfrvXvRkHL4s7cBhjp-vcL0MK63ETgyB8maAyHJA#.W95h5bWyWTZ.facebook

tldr; the article is about supporting minimum wages and Singaporeans were sharing it around as a basis that we should actually enact minimum wage in Singapore.

I will admit that perhaps I am not equipped adequately to comment fully on the impact of a minimum wage, I can say that based on what I know that this seems to make sense in the argument for equity in Singaporeans.

On a more personal anecdote, I remember my younger days when my father was retrenched and we had to tighten our belts significantly. My father has always been a person that spent money carelessly; there were many quarrels in my family involving financial issues, what with my mother being the exact opposite.

Shortly after he was retrenched, he started working as a taxi driver. During the time when I was young, I remembered him as the taxi driver, not the engineer he was for a good part of his life.

I remembered my mother's constant reminder to save and to be frugal, and that we were not a well-to-do family, and that it was important not to compare. 

I kept this mindset throughout my childhood all the way to university. It was during university that I actually got curious about how much my family was earning in comparison to the Singaporean average. This was after my sister graduated from university and my brother was working as well, alongside my father finding another engineering related job after a hiatus of nearly 5 years.

We were now considered a middle-income family, to my surprise. I didn't feel like that. We rarely traveled; a tze char meal was considered a luxury that we rarely went. I was not jealous nor envious of my friends that drove cars and had the latest phones. I remembered being one of the last in my class to even get a working broadband internet. 

Only when in university did our family really start "living" and not just struggling to survive. I will admit I never was poor to the point of having to worry about food on the table. I am grateful for that. I would just want other families to be like that too. 

On a side note, that tough period in my life shaped my mindset on finance and investing. I realized that my father was not wise with his money, and that led to tough times when it was not necessary to be so.  He swiped the credit card for paying the house to giving me my allowance for school. It was a financial trap brought about by bad financial literacy. I am grateful for what he has done to bring me up, nevertheless.

I guess that's the point of my post. I cannot blame my father for not knowing enough about financial literacy; he did not have the luxury of a father to teach him that (my grandfather passed away when he was 17, and my grandmother was a gambler). Yet, being born in this time and age allowed me to have access to so many ways to educate myself on finance which my father did not, and I would want others to learn as well.

The whole point of wanting to retire young for me is to never be a slave to money, or the lack thereof. I would want to truly experience what life is, and in that same thought, I would want less well-to-do Singaporeans to have that opportunity too (Go minimum wage!) For many others stuck in between poverty and truly living, I would like to think that this blog helps a bit in educating my readers just a little bit more on the true essence of saving, investing and to never be indebted to consumerism, yet still being able to live a good life.

 

Musing over. Cheers!