Hey everyone,

I was reading a recent article in the Business Times that covered a study published last week by Lombard Odier, a Swiss private bank.

It found that nearly half of wealthy investors across Asia Pacific expect a market crash or correction in the next three years, with two in five planning to move to cash over the next 12 months. These are investors with over US$1 million in investable assets.

My takeaway from that? Having more money doesn't buy you better market timing because the reality is that no one can time the market. The allure of switching to cash when markets feel uncertain is exactly the same whether you have $100,000 or $100 million in the market.

Always remember that there is no correlation between level of wealth and investing success.

A few things this week:

How to set up your investing so the monthly decision doesn't exist. The 12 investing questions I get most in Singapore, including the one mistake most investors here are copying from American YouTube channels without realising it.

And what a recent interview with a large private bank CEO tells you about how banks actually see their clients.

Let's get into it.

This week's Quick Action: take the decision out of your own hands. Here is what I do every month to remove emotion from investing entirely.

On payday, a fixed amount leaves my account by standing order and goes straight to my IBKR account. No login and no checking the market. No deciding whether now is a good time.

I don't do this because I'm fearless. Everyone feels that anxiety when markets are volatile. But I do it because having a system means I never have to rely on being “brave” or “smart” by trying to time the market.

Therefore, it simply runs quietly in the background whether the market is at an all-time high, a war breaks out, or everyone starts chasing the same AI trade.

Your move this week:

That is the whole thing. Once it runs, investing stops being a monthly decision to agonise over and becomes a default part of your life.

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Some questions come up so often that I stopped answering them one at a time. So I sat down and went through the 12 I get asked most, pulled from my Instagram DMs, my masterclass and Investing Made Simple. Real questions from people investing in Singapore, locals and expats alike.

A few of the answers go directly against what most finance YouTubers will tell you. The clearest one? If you're a Singaporean buying VOO, VT or QQQM because an American channel said to, you're walking into a tax trap.

The US withholds 30% of your dividends before they ever reach you, and there's no tax treaty for you to claim it back. The fix is the UCITS equivalents listed in London (and domiciled in Ireland), where that withholding tax drops to 15% and the dividends compound automatically inside the fund.

Over a few decades, that gap is real money. It's the single most common mistake I see Singapore investors make, and most don't know they're making it.

I also go through where to actually start with $1,000, which brokers are worth using, how to think about gold versus silver, and the mistake that quietly costs people the most over time.

I came across an interview this week that tells you more about how banks really work than any disclosure document ever will.

The Business Times sat down with the CEO of Bank of Singapore, OCBC's private banking arm, and he was refreshingly honest about their strategy. The bank is doubling down on the ultra-wealthy and hiring aggressively to chase them. Three things he said stuck with me.

1. Covering a US$100 million client takes roughly the same effort as a US$10 million one, so the bank may as well go for the bigger account.

Read that again. The deciding factor isn't who they can help most. It's who is worth the most. If you're not in the nine-figure bracket, you're not the priority for them.

2. A new "CIO Lab" service has clients hand over their entire global portfolio, and the bank produces a report that can run past 70 pages, pitched as a financial health check-up.

Seventy pages. I've spent 15 years in this industry, and I can tell you a report that long is not built for clarity and, instead, it’s an opportunity to cross-sell or up-sell. It looks impressive, sure, and can help justify the relationship. At the end of the day, though, length is not the same thing as insight.

3. The bank is setting formal internal targets on two things: wealth income and bancassurance revenue.

Bancassurance is insurance sold through the bank, which in practice often means ILPs. So the actual performance targets are built around the products that earn the bank the most, not the products that serve investors best. That's not a criticism of any one individual but it's simply just what the machine is designed to do.

None of this is a scandal. It's a private bank behaving exactly like a private bank. The useful part is knowing it, because it tells you what your bank is and isn't for.

So here's where I land. Your bank is good at two things, holding your cash and issuing miles/rewards credit cards. Use it for those and that's really about where its usefulness ends.

Be far more careful when the same bank wants to manage your money. Investing, portfolio advice, structured products, ILPs, even your FX conversions. These are where the (juicy) margins are, which means these costs land on you.

You can replicate almost all of the investing part yourself, at a fraction of the price, with a low-cost broker and a global ETF.

Don't give banks any more reason to make money off you. They're profitable enough as it is.

If there's a topic you'd like me to break down in a future edition, hit reply and let me know. The best ideas in this newsletter come from your replies.

Until next week,

— Tim

1. Investing Made Simple: A self-paced course that walks you through building a proper investment portfolio from scratch. ETFs, allocation, brokers, and the mindset to stay consistent. Everything you need to start and keep going. Join here.

2. Miles Made Simple: A strategy guide for earning and redeeming KrisFlyer miles the right way. If you're flying out of Singapore and not optimising your credit card spend, you're leaving a lot on the table. Get the guide here.

3. Got a question? Submit it here and I might answer it in a future edition.