Stocks Discussion

Try to stay away from penny stocks. Many people get burned there. No liquidity, can be suspended or halted anytime then you will be stuck. Short term or long term depends on yourself and your strategy. Which ones are you good at? There are successful day traders and forex traders, there are also successful long term investors.

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Price to earnings ratio is a measurement of valuing the company relative to the earnings per share. So if your PE ratio is 15, you'd expect that for every dollar invested, it will take 15 years for the company to make that dollar back. As the company makes money, they may decide at their discretion to retain the profit for future expansion, repay debt, or distribute part or all of it to you. If they distribute in the form of dividends, that would be the dividend yield. So a stock of P/E 15 with a yield of 4% would pay you your $1 invested over 25 years (1/0.04=25).

Full disclosure: I am using IB and have no intimate knowledge on TD. Yes. Singaporeans can buy ETF listed in the US using IB. Please be aware of the 30% dividend withholding tax for US-listed ETFs.

Tip: If you look at analyst reports, they generally will give you a list of comparable companies for that theme (For eg. Chinese Internet companies), they will give you the current P/Es for the comparable companies (eg. Alibaba, Tencent etc). Of course, they generally will provide commentary on whether the company trading at higher multiples compared to peers is justified. This could be a function of many things - some examples including: - Brand value, allowing them to command a premium - Network effect - Benefits from economies-of-scale, leading to consistently higher margins compared to peers - Etc.

I would say, before going into what to buy, you can identify what's the return you are looking at, what are the risks that you are able to stomach, the timeline that you are looking at, and liquidity factor (whether you have enough extra cash) ETF and the individual company are two different assets. So for STI ETF, you are investing Singapore Market at large, as it is a basket of companies, the risk is comparably lower, as it spreads across 30 companies. For Singapore Airlines, your return will only be based on Single Company, in other words, your risk is tied to a single company.

My personal take is that I would dollar cost average in asset classes that have very low or even zero transaction costs, case in point, I DCA UTs myself as I know every cent is invested. For stocks, I prefer to wait for a good entry price (what is a good price is however very subjective), unless you have a large amount to DCA every month, the brokerage costs may be significant.

Hi there ! Personally my current stashaway portfolio's risk index is 36%. I did not pay much attention to the changes to the portfolio but I believe that the new updates will help make it much more diversified !! Don't worry, as long as you stay invested and continue investing for the next 3-5 to even 10 years down the road, you'll be making money for sure ! Good luck on your investing journey !

Unfortunately, the REIT market has rallied quite a bit since the beginning of the year, especially the good ones. Each person may have a preference for a specific sector. Not sure what is yours. You may want to find a sector then look at the list of REITs that focus on this. Look at each REIT's model and past performance. Are dividends stable or increasing? Or is it taking a beating due to management decisions? Look at oue as a case in point. Once you find a REIT then look at each REIT's nav and current price. Find a point where the current price is below the nav ideally. If not possible find the point where the spread between nav and price is at lowest and enter at this point. Hope this helps!