Investor Education Archives - Page 2 of 11 - InvestingNote's Signal Blog

Bearish Engulfing Pattern Trading Strategy Guide (Guest Post)

Do you know why most traders lose money when trading the Bearish Engulfing pattern? It’s because they treat them all the same!

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This post was originally posted here. The writer, Rayner Teo is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as Rayner and has 457 followers.

Here’s the thing:

You can have two identical Bearish Engulfing patterns but, one is a high probability setup and the other is to be avoided (like how you run away from a stinky ol’ skunk).

Why?

Because you must pay attention to the context of the market.

I know that’s not useful (like telling a blind man to watch his step).

That’s why I’ve written this trading strategy guide to teach you all about the Bearish Engulfing pattern — so you can trade it like a professional trader.

Then let’s get started… …

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How Covid-19 Has Changed The Whole Dynamic About F.I.R.E (Guest Post)

The Financial Independence Retire Early (F.I.R.E) movement has for the past few decades thrived on the ability to act on whatever you like, whenever you want, wherever you are at the expense of not anyone but yourself who can make that decision.

This post was originally posted here. The writer, Brian Halim is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as 3Fs and has 2169 followers.

The unprecedented case of Covid-19 which we are currently living through has clearly changed the whole dynamic of retiring, which as part of a subset also includes retiring early.
For many white-collar workers, including myself, we’re dealing with actual work by working from home for an extended period of time for the first time in our lives.

I must say it has been a very refreshing and invigorating experience on its own having to deal with it rigorously for the past four months or so, even if it means sometimes having to pick up calls at 8pm or catch up on work during weekends.

It works extremely well for an introvert personality like mine and not for a single moment do I relish the old hate-smell of corporate attire of long sleeve shirt and shoes in such a humid country like Singapore.
Still, the appeal of working from home does not work well universally in consensus with everyone.

While some do appreciate the flexibility of working from home, you may find it a distraction if you are staying in an unconducive environment where you have children running around the house or neighbours that are staggering noisy. Others may also prefer a face to face interaction between colleagues when discussion about work and the frequent use of online tools may be disconcerting at some stage. …

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The Complete Guide to Keltner Channel Indicator (Guest Post)

July 20, 2020 admin

The Keltner Channel is a simple but powerful trading indicator. It helps you better time your entries, improve your winning rate, and can even “predict” market turning points. And if you want to learn how to do it, then today’s post is for you.

But first…

What is a Keltner Channel and how does it work?

The Keltner Channel is an Envelop-based indicator (others include Bollinger Bands, Donchian Channels, etc.).

This means it has an upper and lower boundary to help you identify potential “overbought and oversold” levels.

Note: The Keltner Channel used in this post is the modified version by Linda Rasche.

Now, the default Keltner Channel settings have three lines to it:

Middle Line: 20-period Exponential Moving Average (EMA)
Upper Channel Line: 20 EMA + (2 * Average True Range)
Lower Channel Line: 20 EMA – (2 * Average True Range)

You can think of the Middle Line as the mean.

And the Upper and Lower Channel Line shows you how far the price is away from the mean.

Here’s how it looks like…

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The Beauty of High Yield Bond Funds (Guest Post)

July 20, 2020 admin

When it comes to bonds, many investors still believe in owning individual bonds till maturity. It feels more right in that firstly you do not suffer from capital losses if you held the bond to maturity and secondly you get predictable coupon returns that was promised to you at the start.

This post was originally posted here. The writer, Kyith Ng is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as Kyith and has 1051 followers.

Unfortunately, the investors ran into some problems:

They demanded a certain respectable interest yield on their bonds. If it is too low, they find that it is unattractive and would not go for it.
They need to reinvest into another bond after the previous one matures. This maturity period may take place anytime.
Prefers bonds in local currency
For some, they might not have enough capital to diversify (traditionally the minimum you need to purchase bonds is $250,000)

With these requirements, what tends to happen is that these investors push themselves up the risk spectrum.

When they push themselves up the risk spectrum, they take on more geographical risk, currency risk, default risk, duration risk.

But in their mind, these bonds are as safe as a high quality government bonds. …

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The 50 Day Moving Average Trading Strategy Guide (Guest Post)

July 14, 2020 admin

Here’s the deal: There are endless possibilities when it comes to moving average. You’ve got the 50 day moving average, 100 day moving average, 200 day moving average, etc. So you’re wondering: “Which is the best moving average?” Well, there’s no best moving average out there because it doesn’t exist (as it depends on your objective current market structure).

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Singapore Savings Bonds SSB August 2020 Issue Yields 0.93% for 10 Year and 0.27% for 1 Year (Guest Post)

July 6, 2020 admin

Here is a safe way to save your money that you have no idea when you will need to use it, or your emergency fund.

This post was originally posted here. The writer, Kyith Ng is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as Kyith and has 1051 followers.

The 10-yr and 1-yr Singapore Savings Bonds Rate since the first issue in Oct 2015

The August 2020’s SSB bonds yield an interest rate of 0.93%/yr for the next 10 years. You can apply through ATM or Internet Banking via the three banks (UOB,OCBC, DBS)

However, if you only hold the SSB bonds for 1 year, with 2 semi-annual payments, your interest rate is 0.27%/yr.

$10,000 will grow to $10,946in 10 years.

This bond is backed by the Singapore Government and its available to Singaporeans.

A single person can own not more than SG$200,000 worth of Singapore Savings Bonds. You can also use your Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) account to purchase.

You can find out more information about the SSB here.

Note that every month, there will be a new issue you can subscribe to via ATM. The 1 to 10-year yield you will get will differ from this month’s ladder as shown above.

Last month’s bond yields 0.80%/yr for 10 years and 0.30%/yr for 1 year.

Here is the current historical SSB 10 Year Yield Curve with the 1 Year Yield Curve since Oct 2015 when SSB was started (Click on the chart, move over the line to see the actual yield for that month):

The Application and Redemption Schedule

You will apply for the bonds through the month. At the end of the month, you will know how much of the bond you applied was successful.

Here is the schedule for application and redemption if you wish to sell:
Click to see larger schedule

You have 02 to about 25th of the month (technically the 4th day from the last working day of the month) to apply or decide to redeem the SSB that you wish to redeem.

Your bond will be in your CDP on the 1st of the next month. You will see your cash in your bank account linked to your CDP account on the 1st of next month.

How does the Singapore Savings Bonds Compare versus SGS Bonds versus Singapore Treasury Bills?

Singapore savings bonds is like a “unit trust” or a “fund” of SGS Bonds.

But what is the difference between you buying SGS Bonds and its sister the T-Bills directly?

Both the SGS Bonds and T-Bills are also issued by the Government and are AAA rated.

Here is an MAS detailed comparison of the three:
Click to see bigger comparison table

Once again, this article is a guest post and was originally posted on Kyith‘s profile on InvestingNote.

Become a part of our community and also see what other investors are saying about the current market right now: (click on the view now button)

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Investing vs. Trading – What are the Similarities and Differences? (Guest Post)

June 24, 2020 admin

The reason why I’ve decided to write about similarities as well as differences between investing and trading today is because, of late, I have noticed many newbies mix up between the two – some of them are looking to buy companies to hold for the long-term (but refer to them as “trading”), while there are some who are looking for short-term profits (but refer to them as “investing”.)

This post was originally posted here. The writer, Lim Jun Yuan is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as ljunyuan and has 1230 followers.

I hope that, after reading through this simple post, you will have a better understanding about both investing as well as trading: …

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Thought Process On Picking Your First Stock (Guest Post)

June 18, 2020 admin

I’ve had countless queries in the past and a couple of emails recently from readers who are interested to start investing and one of the commonly asked questions is ways to pick the correct stock to invest. The first stock purchase for an investor is always intriguing.

This post was originally posted here. The writer, Brian Halim is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as 3Fs and has 2169 followers.

The emotions when you first purchase your stock are filled with mystery, excitement, fear and then there’s always the risk and reward. Many will soon get addicted to it and then will proceed with the next second and third purchase and so on.

It’s incredibly difficult to answer this short question to any investors who are asking as there’s legitimately no right or wrong answer. Nevertheless, I’ll try to provide some framework guidance which hopefully can be productive and useful to any investors who’s starting to venture out on their own.

Step 1: Organize a list of companies in your respective region that are big market cap
Your very first step as a beginner should always be looking at the bigger market cap in your respective region. This means looking at the likes of blue chip companies such as Singtel, DBS, OCBC, Sembcorp and SIA in your STI index if you are looking at the Singapore market. In the US market, you will get a list of acquainted well-known companies such as Apple, Boeing, Facebook, Starbucks, Visa and many more.

Don’t buy them yet at this point because there’s many rotten apples hidden in the fundamental of these companies, even for blue chips.

At this point, all you want to do is to get a grasp understanding of:

What is their business model?

What products do they sell?

What competitive advantage do they have over their competitors?

How much market share have they acquired?

Management capability and their historical financial performance

Most, if not all of these information, are easily available in the annual reports or financial statement of the company where typically management would provide operational quantitative updates on how they are doing or coping with the situation.

All you really need to do at this point is just to spend some time gathering the information and writing some notes down and that’s it. No action should be taken yet at this point because the information you have is public, which means anyone else will have the same information as you do so that’s not really helping you to gain any advantage.

You may also want to segregate the list of companies that are appearing in your newsfeed or newspaper because not all the time they are good. The fact that you read in the newspapers that people are queueing up at McDonald’s does not immediately qualify them to be a good stock.

Always be selective when reading and takes information with a pinch of salt. This way, you will have more questions than answers which is good because it leads you to explore more on your questions.

Step 2: Areas of Competency
Your areas of competency is your competitive advantage over the next other person that you have a lead on.

This lead can be achieved through years of working in the industry and getting to know-how the inside operations of how certain things might work in detail. For example, if you are in procurement, you would know how aggressive your competitors are pricing in their bids for the tender or if you are working in supply chain logistics company, you would better understand the details on transit times, delivery performance, freight claims and customs requirement.

Thus, when you select companies that are in your areas of competency, you are able to value-add your experience to the companies you are prospecting and make better informed decisions from there. …

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‘What is the Best Price to Buy Shares of this Company?’ (Guest Post)

June 4, 2020 admin

Recently, I have been getting quite a number of emails seeking my inputs on the “best price” they should purchase shares of a company. For the benefit of everyone, I would like to share with you my personal opinion on this question in my post today – from the perspective of both a short-term swing trader and a long-term investor.

This post was originally posted here. The writer, Lim Jun Yuan is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as ljunyuan and has 1100 followers.

To begin, in my personal opinion, there is no such thing as a “best price” you should buy shares of a particular company. Everyone (whether you are a short-term trader or a long-term investor) have their own preferred prices to buy/sell a company’s shares based on their own analyses – which explains why, at any price point, there are buy and sell transactions (because at any buy price, there will be people who feel comfortable to buy, and at the same time, there will also be people who are looking to sell – hence a transaction takes place between the buyer and seller.)

…

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Components of Passive Income

May 20, 2020 admin

According to Wikipedia, “Passive income is income resulting from cashflow received on a regular basis, requiring minimal to little effort by the recipient to maintain it.”

It is a source of income that most people in this world strives to achieve because of the attributes that I will be going through below.
Almost few people to none started off with having passive income as their first main source of income but this should become each and every single individual’s first choice source of income in the years to come.

Here, we’ll go through some of the components and traits of passive income and dissect why it is so special.

This post was originally posted here. The writer, Brian Halim is a veteran community member and blogger on InvestingNote, with username known as 3Fs and has 2110 followers.

Component 1: High Effort Now, Low Effort Later
If you re-read the definition of passive income from Wikipedia in my opening paragraph, the key word that stands out is “minimal to little effort”.
This is probably one of the most, if not THE most singled out factor on why passive income is so attractive to many people who’s striving to achieve it.
But don’t get it mixed all up.
Low effort later does not means low effort put in the beginning.
In fact, it requires a huge amount of effort to start the ball rolling for the first few years until the system that you’ve built have become a giant on its own. Take rental properties for instance.

Rental properties can be a great source of passive income once you have invested enough money into the properties and get the rental up and running. There might be a few maintenance works or administrative paper works that as landlord you might still have a role to play at times, but the amount of time spent comparatively to salaried workers working is mostly negligible.

The high efforts in this case allude to the amount of capital that you have to save up over the years before being able to afford your own investment property.

Component 2: Physically Discretionary
There is a quote from the famous Warren Buffet that says “If you don’t find a way to make money while you sleep, you will work until you die”.
I’ll do a follow-up to that piece of advice by adding “Count your ROI while you sleep until it’s worth a positive number”.
The idea behind this quote is basically saying that you don’t have to exchange your physical time for money for it to be worth. Built a system such that you’ll continue to get paid even while you are resting, eating or even sleeping.
This is almost not possible for salaried blue or white collar workers because they actually have to turn up to office or sites from 9 to 6 in order to get an exchange for their pay-check.
It’s okay to have this as a starting point as most people did (including myself) but the system has to gradually switch gear.
Okay, we’ll exclude the anomaly of current existing situation because everyone is equally WFH-ing.

Component 3: Regular Basis

The third component of passive income is to have the source coming in on a regular basis.
I wanted to say this usually happens regardless of rain or shine but again the anomaly of the pandemic we are facing today throw this into uncertainty.
For example, we’ve seen some companies in the retail or hospitality sectors that are slashing or deferring their dividend payout to shareholders because they wanted to conserve some bullets to weather the storm.
Nevertheless, when things return to normalcy, strong companies should see a return of their fundamentals and dividend payout should also return back to the norm.

Conclusion
Passive income is probably one of the most exciting project in my lifetime that I’ve managed to figure out early in my career.
For all the plus and minuses, I like what it has to offer in terms of predictability, stability and liberty for freedom.
It’s probably a concept that I would be teaching my own children too in future because I wanted them to rationalize this concept as an option when they grow up and start their career.

Thanks for reading.

Once again, this article is a guest post and was originally posted on 3Fs‘s profile on InvestingNote.

Become a part of our community and also see what other investors are saying about the current market right now: (click on the view now button)

InvestingNote is the first and largest social network for investors in Singapore. Find out more about us here.

Download our free app here:

Also, join our telegram channel here: t.me/investingnoteofficial

We’re here to keep you in touch with the latest investing & stock-related news, happenings and updates!