Fake News : Dividend Income from STE

<Image credit: to cnbc.com>

With the increasing usage of the internet as the main platform of social media for us to communicate and as the source of news replacing traditional printed media, corporate and government starts to pay more attention to the problems and consequence of  “fake news “ and its impact on society at large.

What is “ Fake News “: from Wikipedia 

Quote “The relevance of fake news has increased in post-truth politics. For media outlets, the ability to attract viewers to their websites is necessary for general online advertising revenue. If publishing a story with false content attracts users, it may be worthy of producing in order to benefit advertisers and ratings. Easy access to online advertisement revenue, increased political polarization, and the popularity of social media…. “

Why Facebook and Google are struggling to purge fake news ( from  The Washington Post )

And

The latest fake news saga in Singapore :

AGC has written to the man who posted 'fake news' about a lawyer who defended City Harvest Church leaders. ( full story here )

As financial bloggers, although we often said that we are just writing and presenting our thought and readers have to do their own due diligent in using the information or facts given. It is also undeniable that some may have their own agenda to gain some revenues in whatever form, be it advertising or promoting his/her own courses.

image credit to hitechnectar.com

In most of the case, when readers asking me or questioning me about the “ genuine “  of the dividend the amount we are getting (STE and Mrs ) from what I have published every quarter, I will just reply politely that I would like to maintain some “confidentiality” of my portfolio and financial status, and sometimes just brushed it off completely if the questions were rude or too demanding. I think my immediate response was quite common as most of us may think “ WTH..., this is just a blog and free web-side which for me to pen down my thoughts and earn nothing from the web ), if you think this is another “fake news / blogs”, may just close it and move on to the other website, continue reading.

But as times goes by, I start to think that with so many “ fake news “ going around social media, it would not be too much for readers to demand “authenticity or genuineness “ of news and articles they are reading, including from fellow bloggers. A such, I have decided to published our CDP accounts as to confirm the amount of dividend we are collecting every quarter and hope to put this (requesting for a prove) to rest once and for all. I may also use this blog as a link for future inquiry and doubt from readers who wanted to verify the amount of dividend we collected each quarter if they have doubt.

The dividend is still our source of income and even with the current market turmoil, we will continue to hold the majority of our shares and take advantage of “market irrationality “ with our war-chest when the market drops to a certain level after severe correction or entering the bear territory.

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, while the market may continue to be volatile but we are happy with our dividend collected each quarter and of course can sleep well at night. By all mean, this is definitely not to show-off our portfolio but I guess it could act as "inspiration " for future F.I.R.E to be as we built up this portfolio from scratch and be able to enjoy the "fruits " after 18 years of "saving and investing", of course, the most important is " live within your means " !! & the danger of " Lifestyle Inflation ", some update on this on  My Investment Strategy Part 3 ...here ).

You may read more " About Me " ( here ) on our background as we were not born with a silver spoon.

Stay tuned for our next dividend and portfolio update.

Cheers !!   😉

Quote Of The Day :

“ Market turmoil is the best possible news for us. The more “Chaos” and uncertainty in the marketplace, the better.” By David Stanton

Appendix: Our CDP statement ( STE & Mrs )

**FYI, since this statement is downloaded for Jan 2018, our portfolio value has gone down much ( more than -$120K ) after the recent global market turmoil and correction since weeks ago.