Many of my friends are complaining this year: some got only tiny salary increases and for others their salaries even stayed flat. Gone are the days when companies in Singapore had to fiercely compete for good people and nowadays firms embark on cost cutting and optimization while cutting employee benefits. The only solution: we need to give ourselves a raise.
June 2016: Monthly update
June was a rather weird month featuring Great Britain’s exit from the European Union, a decision that might just be remembered as an historic blunder for the country. Only time will tell. How did my investments fare in this turbulent month?
HSBC wants us to make bad financial decisions
As I was walking by an HSBC branch the other day I saw an advertising banner promoting taking a personal loan for a dream vacation. Are they serious?
Standard Chartered introduces minimum commission in Singapore: what does this mean for you?
Some days ago I found a letter in my mailbox from Standard Chartered bank. This is not a rare occurrence, given that this bank is not able to issue e-statements for online trading and instead sends monthly statements and letters after every single transaction.
Unfortunately this time the letter contained some bad news: “a revision of minimum brokerage amount”…
May 2016: Monthly update and short review after 2 years of blogging
Two years ago I published my first monthly update for May 2014. Two years later a lot of things have changed…
April 2016: Monthly update
April was a crazy month and I invested a total of SGD 45,189. Why did I invest so much more than usual? What happened?
March 2016: monthly update
March proved rather happening and my portfolio rebounded from a very difficult January and February. I enjoyed a wonderful holiday in Taiwan and spent way too much money, so am I still on track with my goals?
February 2016: monthly update
Another month passed by and the year of the monkey has now officially started. How did the portfolio perform? Am I on track?
January 2016: monthly update
January was one of the worst months in the short life of my portfolio. With stock prices dropping in Asia and around the world I incurred some heavy paper losses, but as I wrote before it is very important to stay calm and focused on the long term objectives.
Here is how I fared in January…
The market is dropping. What to do?
Asian stock markets had a tough January so far: Indexes around the region have been falling and our Singaporean Straits Times Index is below 2,600 points at the moment. Now we should all panic and run around with our heads on fire, right?