STI ETF

Hi Anon! I will just share some thoughts on this. This might be quite intuitive to say, but you should stop your DCA when you realise that what you have invested in is bad. This is probably easier said than done I believe, for 2 reasons. Firstly, evaluating the strength of the business isn't as easy as people tout it to be. The average retail investor may find it challenging to evaluate the strength of businesses which are more complex, such as technology, commodities or banks. DCA is also more for investors who have less time to monitor market peaks and troughs, so if you are already pressed for time, you might not even have much time to evaluate your investments. I think this can be mitigated if you monitor your porfolio more consistently rather than sporadically, and pick businesses that you actually understand. It also greatly helps if you have an investment thesis, on why you are buying the investments in the first place. Buying shares from hearsay or speculation, isn't a good strategy at all. Secondly, one of the strong suits of DCA is that technically you don't end up entering at a too high a price, and that you can in the long run capture the market upswing either through capital gains or dividends. However, if you use share price as an arbiter of a company's expected performance, then this would confuse your investments strategy. I suppose one way to mitigate against this is to be concerned less with share price alone, and more with company fundamentals. I am reminded by Benjamin Graham's point that stocks do well because the businesses behind them do well, which makes common sense. Apart from looking at company's fundamentals, you can also look at financial ratios, profitability and metrics. Such resources can be found here on Seedly and on other sites like Investopedia.

SDIC protects up to $75k in deposits, so savings should be safe. If more than $75k and you are worried then put extra into other bank savings. As for vickers, if you linked to CDP then your singapore shares will be protected under CDP not DBS. STI ETF from DBS invest saver is held in custodian under your account name.

You can short STI futures with CFDs. You cannot directly short the STI index. Most local brokerages will offer CFD products but this is a leveraged product and lossess might exceed your input capital.

Great work on your freelancing income. Quite a feat at your age. You may want to set aside an emergency fund before you go further, perhaps 6 months' worth of expenses or more. This is to help cushion any periods where you are unable to arrange for accretive projects. For investing, if you can stomach a higher risk, consider learning how to manage an options portfolio. Returns can be upwards of 30-40%pa. Best to find a mentor to guide you on this

Given that you've chose investment funds, in this case an exchange-traded fund (ETF) and index funds (through roboadvisors), I'm gonna assume that you're not incline to stock-picking. If I were in your position, I would explore other assets such as real estate investment trusts (REITs), which pay out relatively generous dividends. If you like funds, you could opt for a REIT fund such as the Lion-Philip S-REIT ETF and the Nikko AM STC Asia REIT, just to name a few. However, instead of investing in the STI ETF, which has lower volume and is less dynamic, I would opt for an ETF that tracks the S&P500 for growth.

Hello! i personally feel that there is a lack of diversification in the STI ETFs since it is heavily weighted in favour of financials, which makes up a very large percentage of the index (if im not wrong its 59%) The top 3 constituents of the STI are banks, DBS, OCBC, UOB, which together comprises about 40%, thus i feel that it is too heavily concentrated in one area. Also, investing in th STI ETFs would also mean that you are investing locally, thus you are potentially putting all your eggs into one basket if you are also working in SIngapore. If Singapore were to one day lose its competitiveness, it is likely that your investments would suffer as well as your job.

I agree with Nicholes, S&P500 has made a good rally post reccession as compared to the STI. Just by looking at the chart, it the STI didn't seem to move much at at all, whereas the S&P had the historically longest rally since 2008. Buying to the S&P might be expensive now, especially if a potential recession is coming. So just be more careful on that. Also, a DCA strategy may not make sense during a recession. Since the markets are going downhill during a reccession, you might be better off postponing your investments.

If the index was tracked perfectly without fees, yes. But that's not how it works. ETFs will have fees and sometimes have tracking errors. But you'll be quite close to the index return. But the STI earning 9% year on year is kinda doubtful. It hasn't even recovered from its peak in 2008.

Honestly speaking STI is pretty mediocre. Like you said, heavily weighted towards banks, it only hold 30 companies and mediocre returns. Investing in S&P 500, MSCI world index or other global index might be a better choice if you are comfortable in investing overseas but do your research first before u buy.