Intro to Purchasing Shares Part 1 - Accounts and Commissions

For those of you who have been constantly reading my blog and have the interest to trade, this post will explain the steps to take to make your first trade :)

1) Opening an SGX (CDP) account

Firstly, you are required to have an SGX CDP account. This account is responsible for holding your shares for you. Whenever you purchase a stock, it would be shown here. As long as you are above 18 years old, you are eligible to open an SGX CDP account. Using this account, you are able to make your first purchase of stock (but not sell). 

Whenever new companies request to be listed on the stock market, they would issue shares known as Initial Public Offering (IPO). This would be the indicated price by the company after considering how much they think their company is worth.

2) Opening a brokage account
There are countless brokage firms in Singapore which you could open your account with. But in order to open an account on your own, you have to be 21. If you'd like to open an account at an earlier age, you may open a joint account instead. The brokage firms around Singapore generally offer the same commission rates (min. $25 or 0.28% of the total trade)

Using this brokage account, you are then able to buy and sell shares. Another alternative to opening a brokage account before 21 would be to open a cash deposit brokage account. This account requires you to deposit money into the specific brokage firm account and trade using that amount of money.

With these 2 accounts set up, you are all prepared to step into the market. Money is waiting for you out there, may the market ever be in your favour :)

I'll be blogging more on investing terms on the next post! Stay tuned~

Signing off~
Billy

Keppel Corp purchasing Keppel Land

The shares of both Keppel Land and Keppel Corp had been halted for 3 days during which the results for both companies were reported.

There were various speculations for the stoppage of trading, some thought it to be a special dividend being announced while others thought it to be a takeover by Keppel Corp. The latter provided the precise speculation! Keppel Corp is buying over Keppel Land for $4.38 / $4.60 (if it hits the 90% mark). This is after the Special Dividend of $0.14 announced by Keppel Land & $0.30 by Keppel Corp as well! Thereafter, Keppel Corp would acquire the Keppel Land shares at $4.24 / $4.46 (90% approval)

Now, for Keppel Land owners, it's a 26% premium compared to the last traded price. I'm sure most of you have read about such statistics therefore I'm gonna provide a more interesting insight on this situation.

Keppel Land closed at $4.54 today (27th Jan 2015). Assuming the price at which Keppel Corp would purchase would be $4.46 (after dividends + obtain 90% approval), one would be able to make a slight profit from this!

Let's take the total commission as $30 (rounded up), Therefore it would be an additional 3 cents to the purchase price, which adds up to $4.57. After the Books Closure Date, I highly doubt that Keppel Land would fall below the acquisition price of $4.46. However, if Keppel Corp is true to their words and purchase Keppel Land at $4.60 (before dividends are paid), you can see from here that one is able to gain $30 for every 1000 shares! Oh well, it may not be a lot, but if you purchase many lots, you'd be able to make quite a small sum!

These are just thoughts of mine and it may or may not turn out that way. Hope that those of you who take on this method would be able to gain some cash! (:

I'm Back!

Hey readers! It's been a long hiatus since I last posted :X

Feeling so guilty cos I couldn't afford the time to constantly blog with my NS life hogging me. But setting my mind of investing really provides me with my side passive income besides the allowance which NS gives.

Just a quick update on my portfolio:

Figure 1

Figure 2

So as you guys can see, there's not much movement in Figure 1 as they are considered high-yielding stocks and thus are less volatile. 

I added a new position in October 2014, bought Singapore Exchange at 7 bucks when the whole economy was down and as it was Ex-Div. It fell 20cents to 7.03 after the books closure date on 1st October. I entered this position at $7 on 2nd October (I indicated $7.06 after factoring in all the commissions after buying and selling)

Now, what were my reasons for purchasing this share at $7?

A quick look at it's past trend showed that upon reaching $7, there is a higher chance of an upside as compared to downside. Furthermore, SGX is crucial for everyone to trade. Although there's news that the stock market would be kindda quiet and thus reduced trading volume, I gambled upon the news of the new reduced lots size from 1000 shares to 100 shares per lot, hoping that the trading volume would increase in the long run and that SGX would rise again. This is what you call using both fundamental and technical research to enter a position.

Shall blog about the Keppel takeover next time! Ciao~

Signing off!

Billy~