How do I buy shares of SME companies in Singapore for investment purposes?

For listed companies, you can buy from Singapore stock exchange. Set up a local brokerage account first.

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Well...this is what I do. It's one of my only specialties outside of my Financial Advisory business, hence the credentials above.

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I've invested in quite a few SMEs, specificially local ones which have a higher emphasis on E-Commerce (ironically, my tech skills suck big time and I rarely understand the e-process). This is because banks and even kickstarter campaigns/crowdfunding sites tend to be quite unfavorable towards SMEs with very little of their own capital invested. But a good idea is a good idea.

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Addressing your question - I've invested in two contact lens companies - where I yielded 17% and 500% respectively before my exit. Of course, each time I only invested $2000 each and quite frankly speaking I had no idea what I was doing at the time, nor did I have a lot of capital, much like you. It could easily have gone badly and my hard earned money post NS would have gone to waste, and I would never have gone on to yield close to 50% in 2017 in one asset class net of fees because I would have given up on investing entirely.

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Like the others have said, I would urge you to try investing in public funds, etfs or stocks first to get a feel of it. Lose a little capital, make a ridiculous gain, but see how it makes you feel. Only experience tells you what your risk profile is really like. Personally, since you're young I'd ditch some money in something really aggressive like China and India so you get a feel of what high risk, high return is really like...because thats the kind of return you should expect from investing in SMEs as well.

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It's extremely tricky to invest in such SMEs like I showed in the example above because you have to have a solid business sense. You need to see if the entrepreneur can be trusted, has strong expertise in their field as well as financial expertise...one of the issues I'm seeing today is that most business owners are good at what they do (e.g. baking cakes) but they have no idea how to do sales, how to juggle their accounts - its one thing to have an amazing product and it matters for jack if the person isn't capable of swallowing rejection every day in order to sell it. And unfortunately, most businesses aren't, which is why the majority of them fail.

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I would highly advise against it for someone your age unless you have some experience running a business yourself, in which case it would be much easier for you to see if someone is likely to succeed or fail or not.

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So like I said, try investing in something high risk first to test yourself while you're young - and during the time that passes for your investment to bear fruit or not, learn about the nuances of investing in SMEs.

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I wouldn't mind talking to you further about it as this is one of my passions, and maybe kicking you off your investment journey. You can always drop me a private message if you feel comfortable, and I'd get back to you by September 1st. https://www.facebook.com/luke.ho.54

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