There was a report on Wednesday’s (13th April) edition of The Straits Times about the staggering returns that a novice fund produced in 2009 (Novice investment fund outperforms big guns). I decided to check out that fund’s website.

According to the article, the fund was named by Thomson Reuters as the “best [...]

In Singapore, we are used to the practice of adding new rules and regulations whenever we encounter problems. This would seem logical, new problems, new solutions right?

By applying new rulings, we would probably be adding complexity. The problem may be solved, but new issues can be created a well.

A investor claimed he lost $350K of his CPF monies investing in shares in a ministerial dialog. 1 minister was quoted as saying “Most investors lost money because they are not savvy”.

Does this mean that savvy investors don’t lose money? What’s the meaning of being ’savvy’? The freedictionary.com [...]

Instead of making money, many investors have done exactly the opposite. One of the reasons is the focus on the returns instead of the outcome. Read the Don’t Miss The Big Picture why an investor should focus on the big picture.

Investment scams have become more creative. No longer can the investor just rely on tell tale signs of unrealistic returns to separate the sheep from the goats. We offer some questions to ponder before investing. Read the article – Sounds To Good To Be True? It Probably Is to [...]

“Do you play the stock market?” “Which stock are you playing now?” Do these sentences sound familiar to you? Many ‘investors’ invest (speculate is a better word..) with a gambler’s mentality, attempting to ‘play’ the market through series of buy and sell. By associating investing with the word ‘play’, investment becomes a game, [...]

Advisers are constantly bombarded with email updates and sales kits from fund houses, especially the well performing ones. The account managers are just doing their job promoting their funds. This can also be a good source of information for advisers, be it for performance ranking, latest economic conditions or even academic information. However, [...]

A couple of weeks back, I received the same sms from 2 friends on the $49 worth of free calls by the 3 telephone operators to celebrate Singaporean’s sending out 60 billion local smses. I smell a rat immediately and ask my friend:”Are u sure?”. Both gave the same reply:” No harm trying!”

The ongoing legal tussle between tycoon Oei Hong Leong and Citibank was reported in the Prime News section in today’s edition of The Straits Times. Such lawsuits have been reported in the past and more such lawsuits can be expected after the market meltdown, according to The Straits Times.

From our conversations [...]

“She rented private properties and dressed to the nines to give the impression that she was a big-time player in the oil trading and shipping industries.” writes the first paragraph of the article “$1.4m scam: Thrice-convicted cheat gets 12 years” in the May 9th issue of The straits Times. Yet another investment scam. [...]