27 September 2026, Morning
Looking back at the week, I don't think any single piece was the story. The story was underneath all of them, and I only really saw it in hindsight, once I lined the numbers up next to each other.
The Numbers
It started quietly with a fee comparison, ETFs costing 0.03 percent against unit trusts front-loading 5 percent in upfront charges. That felt like a standalone piece at the time. Then the T-bill auctions started climbing, 1.60 percent, then 1.70 percent, then 1.92 percent, three prints in two weeks, each one a little sharper than the last. By midweek the 10-year US Treasury was retesting a 2007 high, and the Fed, ECB, and BOJ were all hiking while the UK, India, and China held. Singapore's own core inflation ticked up for a third straight month to 2.2 percent, its highest reading in two years. None of these happened in isolation, they were the same pressure showing up in five different places.
What struck me by the end of the week was how differently individual names handled that same pressure. City Developments couldn't absorb it at all, 0.99 times interest coverage means its operating profit doesn't even cover the interest bill, landing it in Zone 5. Singtel's headline yield looked fine at 4.3 percent until you stripped out a one-off dividend and found 3.08 percent underneath, a real number wearing a flattering one. The REIT sector's 0.77 times book value discount turned out to be a structural problem, not a temporary one, external managers earning fees on size have no reason to fix a discount that a merger would erase. Meanwhile DBS's lot-size cut and the retirement math piece, S$711,000 versus the naive S$1.8 million figure, were reminders that not everything this week was about stress, some of it was about access and about correcting a distorted comparison.
My Personal Take
I almost treated the first T-bill jump as noise. It's the third print that made me go back and actually connect it to the Treasury move, the central bank divergence piece, and Singapore's own inflation number, and once I did, the shape of the week changed for me. This wasn't a week of unrelated headlines, it was one macro pressure, tightening conditions showing up as real, checkable yields, and five different assets responding to it in five different ways depending on what was actually sitting on their balance sheet. Some names had nowhere to hide, CDL's coverage ratio doesn't care how good the RNAV story sounds. Others just had a headline number doing more work than the underlying cash flow could support. If there's one thing I'm carrying into next week, it's to keep asking that same question earlier rather than after three data points force it on me: is this number telling me something real, or is it the flattering version of a harder one.
📩 The Substack Articles
ETFs Cost 0.03%. Unit Trusts Hit You With 5% First.
investingiguana.com/p/an-etf-can-cost-003-a-unit-trust
Chip Controls, a Boeing Deal, and a Taiwan Arms Sale All Converge on One Meeting
investingiguana.com/p/chip-controls-a-boeing-deal-and-a
Singtel's Yield Looks Like 4.3%. Strip Out the One-Off Dividend and It's 3.1%.
investingiguana.com/p/singtels-yield-looks-like-43-strip
The Fed, the ECB, and the Bank of Japan Are All Raising Rates
investingiguana.com/p/the-fed-the-ecb-and-the-bank-of-japan
Three Out of Four Singapore REITs Trade Below Book Value
investingiguana.com/p/three-out-of-four-singapore-reits
The Real Price of a Debt-Free $4,500 a Month in Retirement Is $711,000, Not $1.8 Million
investingiguana.com/p/the-real-price-of-a-debt-free-4500
T-Bills Jump to 1.92%. What It Means for Your CPF and SRS Cash
investingiguana.com/p/the-t-bill-auction-just-had-its-biggest
UOB Kay Hian Puts an $11.85 Target on City Developments
investingiguana.com/p/uob-kay-hian-puts-an-1185-target
From October, DBS Gets Ten Times Cheaper to Buy Into
investingiguana.com/p/dbs-gets-ten-times-cheaper-from-october
Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.
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