STE's Stocks Investing Journey

We do understand that most of the time, " yield"  is the main consideration for investors to invest in REIT and of course other than P/NAV, gearing, interest coverage ratio, asset quality, occupancy rate etc. Other than normal property expenses such as interest & finance cost and operating expenses, the  management fee is also the major cost for a REIT.  How often do we really look at the management fees as one of the criteria in selecting a REIT to invest?

European markets and Dow Futures seems to celebrate   on the news of today’s French Presidential Election result. FTSE, DAX and CAC 40 all up by 2-4% at the time writing and Dow Future also up by more than 200 points.  Recently, investors seem given more concerns to geopolitical issues  where it has dominated the market move base on their preliminary or final results, since BREXIT referendum on June 2016 and followed by US Presidential Election on Nov 2016.

image credit to TheBusinessTime.com On 19 th April, The Business Time published an article on issues related to ETF, “ Vanguard is growing faster than everybody else, combined !! “. No doubt, ETF which is tracking indexes from all over the world is getting so popular because of lower cost as compared to active management. “In the last three calendar years, investors sank USD$823 billion into Vanguard Funds, by any measure, these are staggering figures. Vanguard’s asset under management have skyrocketed to USD4.2 trillion from USD 1 trillion seven years ago. “ according to the company.

Image credit to Nianticlabs.com You might have noticed that the frequency of me updating my blog post has reduced recently.  Yah .. I have been busy catching “Pokemon” and running around many parks which I never or have no time to explore before during full time working.   Places like “ MacRitchie Reservoir “,” Woodland Water Front Park”, “ West Coats Park”, Fort Canning Park “, Changi Village “, “ Bishan-Ang Moh Kio Park “ and of course the usual “ Garden By the Bay and East Coast Park ”..etc. Believe me, money or even after achieving financial freedom has nothing to do with    “ Happiness"   Happiness is not about how much money you have, it is  " not a state of being or having but it is a state of mind and mentality". There is no guide, no rules, no manual that will teach you how to live a “happy” life and of course there are advice or books that can teach you how to approach certain situations to gain the best result.  Hap

For a company or organization , “ Human Capital” is a measure of the skills, education, capacity and attributes of labour which influence their productive capacity and earning potential. According to the OECD , human capital is defined as: “The knowledge, skills, competencies and other attributes embodied in individuals or groups of individuals acquired during their life and used to produce goods, services or ideas in the market circumstances”. The human capital of the economy – The aggregate human capital of an economy, which will be determined by national educational standards

image credit to fatpitchfinancials.com What is a 'Special Situation' Investing? You may or may not hear about this before but below shall give you some clue or a clearer definition : Time to explain : From Wikipedia : A special situation   in finance is an event turning business to go not as usual and materially impact a company's value. The notion covers   restructuring   of a company and corporate transactions such as   spin-offs ,   share repurchases ,   security   issuance/ repurchase , asset sales, or other catalyst-oriented situations. A conflict of shareholders is also considered a special situation. To take advantage of special situations, a hedge fund manager must identify an upcoming event that will increase or decrease the value of the company's equity and equity-related instruments.