Hey everyone,

This week: SGX are making it a lot cheaper to buy into blue-chip stocks like DBS, what missing the market's best days actually costs you, a few tips on setting up IBKR properly, and 5 Singapore dividend ETFs worth knowing about.

Let's get into it.

If you've been putting off investing because the entry cost felt too high for individuals stocks in Singapore, this is worth knowing. Singapore Exchange (SGX) is cutting board lot sizes for higher-priced stocks starting this October.

Right now, a standard board lot is 100 shares, the minimum you can buy of most SGX stocks in one go. Take DBS as an example. At around $75 a share, a full lot of 100 shares costs roughly $7,500 upfront.

Once the smaller lot size kicks in, the same stock becomes accessible with a lot of just 10 shares, around $750. Same exact underlying stock but just a tenth of the capital needed to get started.

Building an investing habit works the same way as any other habit. It's way less about the actual size of the first step and much more about repetition and consistency.

Someone investing $50 a month for two years (without missing a month) has built something more valuable than someone still waiting for the "right" moment with $10,000 to get started. The power of compounding the habit is as important (if not more so) than the compounding effect on our money.

I got a lot of questions after last week's video about dividend investing, specifically what ETFs actually pay you in Singapore dollars once your global core is sorted. So I put together a full breakdown with tickers.

Five SGX-listed ETFs that pay you something real, multiple times a year. For each one I go through the actual yield, the cost, how often it pays out, and where the real risk is hiding.

Two of these five pay coupons, not dividends. Two are concentrated in a single country's property market. And one is a high-yield credit bet dressed up as a bond fund.

None of these replace a global core, but if you want SGD cash flow alongside your global growth, this is exactly how I'd think about building that out.

I've mentioned Interactive Brokers (IBKR) as my favourite platform a few times now, mainly because of the low costs, universal-UCITS ETF access, and automated recurring investing.

But I got a lot of questions after those mentions about how to actually set it up, since the interface isn't exactly beginner-friendly. So here are a few tips.

Set up the recurring investment once, then leave it alone. That's the whole point.

Once it's running, you're not logging in every month to make a decision, it's just happening in the background.

If you've been putting off opening an account because of the interface, that's honestly the only real barrier. Learn more about why IBKR is my preferred choice. Open an IBKR account here.

Someone asked me this after the STI hit an all-time high: is it too late to start now, or should I wait for a pullback?

No, and the data back that up. Going back to the mid-1960s, Singapore equities have returned around 5.7% to 6% on a real total returns basis (so after inflation), according to the Global Investment Returns Yearbook, put out annually by UBS.

That's roughly in line with global equities over the same stretch, despite Singapore's "boring, low-growth" reputation.

And when it comes to US stock markets, there’s a wealth of data that back up continuing to “buy and hold” as a passive index ETF investor.

Over the short term (so 12-, 24-, 36-, and 60-month holding periods), there’s a negligible difference in your forward returns between investing at an all-time high and buying at any other point. A lot of the time, momentum continues rather than reversing.

Remember, global stock markets rise over the long term.

I'm not saying put a big lump sum in today because it's a great entry point. All I'm saying is that a new high in markets is not a reason to stop investing if your time horizon is still long enough and your plan requires it.

The actual mistake I keep seeing is people pausing their regular contributions, waiting for a pullback that may or may not come (classic “timing the market” behaviour). That waiting has a real cost. And a lot of the time, people end up just watching the market continue to make new highs.

Every month spent in cash is a month not compounding. And if the market keeps climbing while you wait, it's worse than just missing out. You end up having to cave and buy back in later at a higher price than if you'd just kept going.

Look at the US market over the past 30 years, missing just the 10 best days cuts your long-term returns by more than half. Save yourself the stress of trying to time the market and stay invested.

My take: a new all-time high changes nothing if you already have a plan. Stay Calm and Keep Investing.

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.