Endowus Insights

Champions League Glory and Retirement

Whether you are a soccer player for the best teams in the world, or the best engineer, or in management at the biggest companies around the world, when our career ends and we enter retirement, we are faced with the same reality. We will live with whatever we’ve earned, saved and invested.

CPF

Guide to understanding fees for investing in unit trusts under the CPF Investment Scheme (CPF-IS)

The CPF Investment Scheme (CPF-IS) allows CPF members the option of investing their CPF savings in various investment products such as stocks, bonds, unit trusts (mutual funds), fixed deposits and insurance. Here’s a look at the fees and sales charges to invest in unit trusts via CPFIS:

CPF

Here Are 6 Things You Can Do With Your CPF Accounts

While CPF contributions are primarily meant for you to accumulate enough money to enjoy your retirement, there are a few ways to withdraw your CPF monies and use them prior to retirement if you need the extra money.

Personal finance

Goals-based investing and why it matters

When you invest with a defined purpose of achieving a certain goal, you can better identify the right strategy, how much you need to invest and the appropriate level of risk to take to get you there.

CPF

What you need to know before investing your CPF

One of the ways to grow your retirement funds over the long-term is to invest your CPF. But before you proceed to invest your CPF savings, you should first understand a few important things about the CPF Investment Scheme (CPFIS).

Investing

Raja Ampat and the rewards of time rather than timing

Raja Ampat lies on the edge of the Indonesian archipelago off the west coast of Papua. Apart from having the greatest marine biodiversity on the planet, magical coral gardens, and lots of fish, Raja is a stomping ground for the ginormous oceanic manta.

Behaviour

Is it time to kick your coffee habit?

But if you take a step back for a second - it really adds up! If you have a coffee a day, that's $1,825 a year. In fact, a survey by Acorns found that 40% of Americans spend more on coffee than they invest!

Investing

Markets are roaring back, which begs the question...

Especially when markets rally, the crowd divides into largely these two main camps. Those driven by greed and fear. These are primitive and natural desires that drive the impulse to chase market rallies or to lock-in the profits and flee.

Personal finance

The real cost of staying in cash

If your cash deposits are yielding ~1%, you’re losing purchasing power every year due to inflation. Holding a sizable portion of your portfolio in cash will cost you over the long-term.

Personal finance

Sparking joy: How to Marie Kondo your finances

Personal finance doesn’t really spark joy in many of us. In fact, it has been proven that people would rather talk about death then money. But as Marie Kondo says: “Tidy up your space (finances), transform your life.”

Investing

The lesson of Hyflux: What water and diversification have in common

34,000 individual investors have lost a lot of money in Hyflux Perpetual bonds(“Perps”). When they were first introduced in 2011, they looked fantastic. It offered a high yield of 6% from a household name we thought we could trust.

Investing

The very annoying efficient market hypothesis and how to beat it

Eugene Fama, 2013 Nobel Laureate, is credited with developing the Efficient Market Hypothesis, on which intelligent investment decisions can be made.

Investing

True giants of the investment world: Buffett, Templeton, Booth, Bogle, Swensen

There are a few good men over the past century who we can call the true giants of the investment world. They made a deep lasting impact on future generations of investors because of their contributions to the industry and to the broader society.

Investing

On surge pricing, institutional share classes, and sales incentives: mutual fund (unit trust) investing 101

Institutional shares classes: What investors need to understand about different share classes before investing in mutual funds (unit trusts)

Investing

Mutual fund investing: How to read a mutual fund factsheet

Every mutual fund has a factsheet which is updated on a regular basis. By understanding the information displayed on a fund factsheet, you will be able to quickly assess how each fund operates. Factsheet formats tend to vary between different fund managers, but they will contain similar information.

Investing

A (lack) of forecast for 2019: the key to stock market predictions

It’s safe to say that short-term predictions are fairly worthless, and paying attention to forecasts is a wasted effort.

Investing

“Hindsight is 20/20” - we all love to say: why timing markets is difficult and risky

Over the course of 20 years from 1970 to 1989, Japan market rose over 6,100%, US market rose 890%, and the rest of the developed world rose just over 1,100%.

Investing

When you can’t see the forest for the trees: a holistic approach to asset allocation

Sometimes you need to take a step back to see the bigger picture. Money, or rather our investments and life assets are no different.

ETFs & Funds

What Singapore-based investors need to know before investing in unit trusts or ETFs

Before you decide to park your money in a unit trust or ETF, it’s important that you first understand some of their key characteristics. Doing so can help you identify the right funds to invest in.

Investing

Durians and diversification

As Howard Marks said: “You must be diversified enough to survive bad times or bad luck so that skill and good process can have the chance to pay off over the long term.”

Behaviour

Why we are not wired to invest: how our brains respond to financial losses and what we can do about it.

Financial losses are processed in the same area of the brain (the amygdala) that responds to mortal danger.

Investing

What to expect when you're expecting: the average stock market return is nothing close to its average annual return

If you buy an index fund or ETF tracking the MSCI All Country World Index, you will expect it to give you an annual return in-line with its long-term average (minus costs).

Investing

Are good investors skilful or just lucky?

Michael Mauboussin believed that the reason why luck is so important in investing is not that investors are not skilful - it’s actually the opposite.

Investing

"I'll invest when the market crashes" is flawed. It's about time in the markets rather than market timing

Even the worst market timer can be a way better than average investor.

ETFs & Funds

An inconvenient truth: tax on US-listed ETFs.

Why US-listed ETFs are not necessarily cost efficient for you and me. Tax, if not careful, can shoot low-cost investing in the foot.