To The Moon

Indonesia's $908B Gamble — What Prabowo's Resource Nationalism Means for Your SGX Portfolio | EP1620 Indonesia says it has lost up to US$908 billion from underpriced resource exports, and its answer is to seize the steering wheel of every coal and palm oil shipment leaving the country. That sounds like a Jakarta story, but it really means one state agency will sit in the middle of cash flows that used to move quietly through Singapore’s banks and refineries. The ships will still move; the question is how long the money takes to reach you. If you are counting on S$400 or S$500 a month from plantation, coal or bank dividends to top up CPF and SRS, a rule that forces 100 percent of export earnings to sit in Indonesian state banks for 12 months is not a headline, it is a liquidity trap. You ca

Singapore Exchange | RHB Neutral S$20.90 | A Monopoly, a 2.06% Yield Is Not Income Stock | EP1622🦖 Everyone keeps calling Singapore Exchange a safe, boring monopoly. But at today’s price, it behaves a lot more like a low-yield growth stock than a cornerstone income position. The balance sheet is pristine, the cash pile is huge, yet the one number that decides whether it belongs in a retirement portfolio is quietly flashing red. If you are drawing from CPF or SRS, a 2.06% yield on a stock trading at 34.8 times earnings means you are taking full equity risk for less income than your CPF Ordinary Account. That gap matters when your electricity bill and groceries are not standing still. In this episode I unpack why a S$21.67 entry price turns a fortress balance sheet into a weak income asset,

Kimly | DBS Research S$0.52 Carries S$147.8M Debt | EP1611🦖 Most people hear “defensive F&B” and relax. I couldn’t, not after seeing S$147.84 million of debt sitting behind S$1.50 kopi and S$5 noodles. The more I dug into Kimly, the clearer it became that the comfort comes from the net cash story, but the real risk lives in the gross gearing that never shows up in the headline. If you are using Kimly’s 4.88 percent yield as part of your CPF or SRS income plan, you are effectively accepting 37.09 percent gearing and a flat S$0.02 dividend at a time when profits have already slipped. That can still work, but it is no longer a set-and-forget kopi money counter; it is a Zone 4 monitoring task where a single poorly timed acquisition or a stubborn inflation cycle can turn that comforting “de

Still Holding That REIT? Read This First | EP1614🦖 The key forensic tension in this script is that your apparent “safe” yield from S-REITs has almost no spread left over the new global risk‑free baseline, just as a structural energy shock keeps US ten‑year yields pinned near four point six per cent and Singapore six‑month T‑bills at only one point four per cent. I’ll build the teaser and carousel to surface that tension without giving away the portfolio stance. A sovereign wealth fund asking Washington for an emergency dollar swap line while the US ten year sits around four point six per cent is not a normal macro backdrop. It is a warning flare for anyone funding retirement from leveraged yield. I wrote this piece for the Bedok and Toa Payoh investor whose “safe” REIT income now sits on t

Your T-Bill at 1.4%. America at 4.6%. Here's Who's Protected and Who Isn't | EP1615🦖 Everyone is staring at that 1.4 percent T-bill and feeling short-changed, but that is not where the real danger sits. The uncomfortable bit is this: the same system that keeps your daily prices stable is also quietly pushing some of your “safe” income assets toward a global debt wall. The yield gap with America looks like the story, but the real tension is hiding in the balance sheets of the trusts you already own. For a Singapore retiree, the split is brutal. Your CPF Special Account quietly pays 4.0 percent while your six-month T-bill scrapes along at 1.4 percent, and some of your REITs are staring at 4.6 percent refinancing costs in US dollars. If you treat all three buckets as equally protected just be

Chips Fly, Casinos Fall — What SGX Movers Are Telling You | Weekly Best & Worst 17 May | EP1613🦖 When AEM’s price rockets but the dividend yield sits at 0.18%, something is badly off for a retiree trying to pay SP Group instead of just staring at a green chart. The same week Genting’s net profit collapses 55% to S$65.2 million and ComfortDelGro’s net profit drops over 16%, yet both still wear the “defensive” label with pride. My tension this week is simple: the SGX leaderboard is screaming “winners”, but the cash engines under those tickers are quietly telling CPF investors a very different story. If you are building a drawdown portfolio, you cannot afford to mistake a momentum rally for a reliable monthly transfer into your POSB account. For a 55‑year‑old HDB household, S$50,000 in AE

The Most Turbulent Bond Market in 28 Years — What It Means for Your Singapore REITs | EP1612🦖 Most Singapore REIT investors still think “bond market volatility” is some faraway Wall Street drama, but a 5.8–5.9% 30‑year UK government bond and a 4% Japan 30‑year yield change the basic maths of your income portfolio overnight. When “risk-free” or near risk-free assets suddenly pay what your S‑REITs are paying, the big funds that supported your Mapletree and CapitaLand prices now have every reason to rotate out and let prices and future DPU take the hit instead of them. The forensic tension for me is simple: the buildings can stay full, the malls can stay busy, and yet your CDP statement and your retirement cashflow can still get punched just because global bond traders re-priced what “enough

Venture Corp | Phillips Securities BUY @ $22.10 | EP1606🦖 Phillip Securities is calling Venture an AI winner at S$22.10, but the dividend maths tell a very different story. You are being offered a 4.18 percent yield supported by a payout ratio north of 100 percent and a three-year staircase of falling revenue and profit, while the market prices the stock just under its 52-week high on a 25x earnings multiple. The tension for me is simple: a fortress balance sheet can buy time, but it cannot turn a rounding-error yield into a genuine retirement income engine. If you are 45 to 60 and using SGX to fund CPF top-ups, SRS, or future drawdown, that 4.18 percent headline has to be weighed against a 4.0 percent CPF Special Account floor and Iggy’s 4.7 percent minimum yield hurdle. Accepting a stock

Singapore Airlines FY25/26: The Profit Collapse Behind the Record Revenue | EP1609🦖 Net profit fell fifty-seven point four percent year-on-year to one point one eight four billion Singapore dollars — yet management led their presentation with record revenue and a thirty-nine percent rise in operating profit. The disconnect is not cosmetic. A fifty-thousand-dollar holding just lost eight hundred seventy-seven dollars in annual dividend income, and the lagged jet fuel cost buried in the March accounts means the full fuel shock has not yet hit the bottom line. If management can celebrate a profit collapse this severe while headlining a revenue record, what does that tell you about the priorities protecting your retirement capital? 📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/6Ju-amdVzLM 📩 Substack: https://in

DBS, OCBC, UOB All Report This Week. Which One Passes the Retirement Test? | EP1608🦖 The most expensive bank in Singapore just passed my retirement screen while the market darling trading at a twenty-eight point five percent premium failed outright. DBS yields five point three percent but costs you a four point one percent entry premium, which is a single soft flag on timing. OCBC yields four point four percent, fails the four point seven percent minimum hurdle, and the market has already priced in all the optimism, leaving zero margin for error. A one percent yield gap on fifty thousand Singapore dollars compounds into a thirty-five thousand dollar longevity hit over thirty-five years. That is not an abstract percentage, that is years of your living expenses vaporised because you chased a