Introduction
Permanent Portfolio is a self-directed long-term passive investment strategy, introduced in 1981 by Harry Browne and Terry Coxon and simplified into 4 asset class in 1987. It aims to provide consistent market returns and protections in different economic cycles of growth, inflation, recession and deflation. The strategy does not rely on market timing, and requires yearly management and minimal monitoring. This site is to provides educational information for learning about my research and implementation of Singapore version of Permanent Portfolio. Readers can also use the Permanent Portfolio knowledge to diversify their stock heavy portfolio into long term government bonds and gold for better portfolio protections in recession, deflation and inflation. Disclaimer: Use of information on this site represents acceptance of the disclaimer at bottom of this page and Disclaimer page.

Tuesday 28 August 2012

What to invest in to start Singapore Permanent Portfolio

What to invest in to start Singapore Permanent Portfolio?

(updated 2/3/2013)
Following is an example plan to show how an investor can start a Singapore Permanent Portfolio. The figures here are for readers to double check against the figures in their own plans to start a Singapore Permanent Portfolio, and are not advices nor recommendations that readers should invest in these particular assets. In the example, an investor starts with minimum sum S$12,000. The investor strives to get as close to 25% initial allocation for each asset as possible. Below figures exclude brokerage fees and annual fees.

Example: Using data from 2 April 2012, to start a Singapore Permanent Portfolio, an investor can invest about S$12,000 all at once in:

25% Stocks: (updated 2/3/2013)

i.1 lot (1000 shares) of SPDR STI ETF (SGX symbol ES3) at S$3.04 per share - total investment S$3040. ES3 is traded in individual board lot of 1000 shares each.
ii. Alternatively, invest 10 lots (1000 shares) of Nikko AM STI ETF100 (SGX symbol G3B) at S$3.04 per share - total investment S$3040. G3B is traded in individual board lot of 100 shares each.

25% Bonds: (updated 30/8/2013)

i. 3 lots (30 units) of Singapore Government 30-year Bond (SGX symbol PH1S) at S$100.0 per unit - total investment S$3000. PH1S is traded in individual board lot of 10 units each.
Note: 30 years bonds are to be held till they are left with near 20 years left till maturity, then the bonds are all sold and newer 30 years bonds, or near 30 years bonds, are bought in replacement. This is to ensure the bonds will always have a "long" time till maturity in order to keep the volatility of the bonds prices high. This also mean that the 30 years bond will never be held till 'maturity'. 
(With effect from 1 April 2013, CDP will remove the administrative fees of 0.08% (8 basis points) of the face value of the SGS per annum.)

25% Gold:

i. Invest 1 lot (10 share) of SPDR Gold Shares GLD ETF 10US$ (SGX symbol O87) at US$161.48 per share - total investment US$1614.80 or S$2023 (USDSGD 1.25293). O87 is traded in individual board lot of 10 units each.
ii. Alternatively, invest 45 grams of gold in UOB Gold Savings Account at S$67.45 per gram (S$2098 per ounce) – total investment S$3035.25 - note that that will incur 1.54 grams (include GST 7%) per year or 3% annual fees, so Gold Savings Account is not advisable for S$3000 investment. At gold price of S$67.45 per gram, investing S$20,000~S$25,000 will incur annual fees of 0.49%~0.39% which is about equivalent to annual fees of GLD ETF. To achieve minimal annual fees of 0.25% from Gold Savings Account, S$38,850 of investment is needed.
iii. For gold investments, there is no need to hedge the gold value back to SGD, irregardless of which currency the gold is bought in - this allows gold to do its job as an inflation protection hard asset against core inflation and SGD devaluation.
iv. Calculate your latest returns on gold in SGD here: http://goldprice.org/Calculators/Gold-Price-Calculators.html

25% Cash: (updated 5/2/2017)

i. Deposit about S$3000 in Philip Money Market Fund. This can be done by depositing the cash into Phillip Cash Management Account by ATMs or internet banking, using Electronic Payment of Shares (EPS) Lump Sum Payment option, or by Online Bill Payment option. Any cash left in the Phillip Cash Management Account will be automatically invested into the Phillip Money Market Fund at no extra charge. Cash can be deposited and withdrawn from Phillip Cash Management Account within one working day.
ii. Alternatively, invest into 2 lots (200 shares) of iShares Barclays Asia Local Currency 1-3 Year Bond Index ETF (SGD) (This ETF holds sovereign bonds only, SGX symbol QL0 "zero") at S$12.62 per share - total investment is S$2524, while remainin S$476 goes into Money Market Fund if possible. QL0 is traded at individual board lots of 100 shares each. Investing in short term bonds is still subjected to some forex and interest rate risk, so make sure investor has sufficient cash for living or emergency use to minimise the need to sell this short term bond ETF for liquid cash. (Investing in short term bond fund is not proven replacement for cash component... invest at own discretion.)
iii. Alternatively, invest S$3000 in 1-year Singapore Treasury Bill – total investment S$3000. Singapore T-bill is a fully 'insured' asset as the Singapore government fully backs the Singapore Treasury Bill. For Singapore Treasury Bill, there is a CDP administrative fees of 0.04% or minimum S$1.50 to be deducted every half yearly during interest payment.
(With effect from 1 April 2013, CDP will remove the administrative fees of 0.08% (8 basis points) of the face value of the SGS per annum.)

iv. (Best Option) Alternatively, invest S$3000 in Singapore Savings Bond (SSB). Unique features: Maximum 10 years term - able to do early redemption in any month before the bond matures, with no penalty for exiting the investment early. Meaning, accumulated interest on the redemption amount shall be paid, together with 100% of your initial investment. Interest rate increases every year, so the longer you hold the Savings Bond, the more annual interest you receive. Criteria to invest this Savings Bond: a. A bank account with DBS/POSB, OCBC or UOB; b. An individual CDP Securities account linked to any of your bank accounts; c. Apply through ATMs or Internet Banking. Savings Bond is issued every month, and total amount of Savings Bonds held across all issues cannot be more than $100,000.

Rebalancing - Managing Portfolio: After starting the Permanent Portfolio fund, the investor does not need to monitor the portfolio frequently. The only time to manage the portfolio is during rebalancing event. Rebalancing can happen in 3 ways.
  • In first method, the investor will leave the portfolio alone untouched, until one of the asset reaches 35% or 15% of portfolio, in which case the portfolio will be rebalanced back to 25% equal spilt among the 4 assets - this rebalancing band method is to be used when there will be no fresh fund entering portfolio, and aims to follow momentum of portfolio and let profits run.

  • For second method, if there is fresh fund to put into portfolio, the fresh fund will usually buy into the worst performing asset at every year end, or at regular monthly or quarterly interval, so that each asset becomes 25% of portfolio again - this is to reset the risk/reward ratio of the portfolio and buy assets when they are cheap. 

  • The third method of rebalancing is to use fresh fund to buy into different assets, while keeping the asset ratio unchanged - this aim to let profits run and to only rebalance when one of the asset reaches 35% or 15% of portfolio.
All the 3 rebalancing methods have very similar long term returns, so choice of rebalancing method can be based on whichever method is the lowest cost and suits the investor more conveniently.

An investor should understand and plan their investment strategy well, including reasons for asset allocations, how and when to rebalancing portfolio, and the benefits and disadvantages of a particular portfolio strategy. An example of a well designed investment portfolio strategy is the Permanent Portfolio strategy, and detailed description of Singapore Permanent Portfolio investment strategy can be found on this website.
 

31 comments:

  1. Hi

    I do not understand why we need to choose a money fund for the cash portion? Would it not be simplier just to keep that portion in the bank. Or alternatively, just allocate 33% of what we want for investment into Gold, Stocks and Bonds?

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  2. Hi. Money market fund has slightly higher returns than bank savings, is relatively very liquid and convertible to cash, and generally there is very low risk of losing significant money. Of course one can still keep all or part of ones cash in bank savings, but if the cash is really spare cash (beyond what you need for emergency cash) then it makes sense to try get higher returns on the cash portion.

    A 33% split between stock, gold and long bond can produce higher returns in non-recession period. However, during recession, such portfolio will suffer bigger losses, and needs bigger gains after recession to recover losses. To minimise losses, cash portion is needed to buffer and minimize portfolio loss in recession. Another reason, cash can be used at end of recession to buy very cheap stocks to rebalance... sounds like a good deal. Cash will be good to have during recession also... when one may encounter loss of income or inability to get loans easily. Can read more about cash component in the long FAQ link in the 'Basics' page above.

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  3. Hi, I have a query in re-balancing, with respect to bonds. Suppose you bought sgov 30 yr bonds with maturity on 1 Apr 2042. In a scenario, where assuming you had to buy more bonds to rebalance the portfolio, do you buy exactly the same bond with the exact same maturity date ?

    While it is obvious to buy/sell the same etf for the gold/stock index components, it is less obvious to me for bonds as the sgov could issue other 30 year bonds with similar but not exact maturity dates like 1 oct 2042. Given the long time horizon for long bonds, can one reasonably expect the price of the 2 bonds mentioned to be identical ?

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  4. As a simple guide, when rebalancing into bonds, normally i would keep things simple and buy the exact same bond if difference in maturity date between existing and new 30 years bond is less than 5 years apart. If an investor is more sophisticated, he/she can also analyse if the newer 30 year bond is offering much higher yield and then choose accordingly. Below is my layman answer to your second question, hope you have some knowledge of bonds to understand it:

    If the two 30 years bonds are issued 6 months apart, then logically speaking their price will be different by a few dollars at least.

    The price difference is not important, what is important is that the two bonds will have same yield and the same percentage increase/decrease in returns say 2 years later - since both bond are half year apart only, practically they are almost the same bonds. If one bond is slightly cheaper than the other, more people will buy the cheaper bond and push up its price.

    So when is one bond considered cheaper than the other? When both bonds have very close and similar maturity dates, their yield should be practically the same, so in this case, the bond with higher yield should be the cheaper bond.

    First, you should know that bond price and bond yield are mathematically and inversely correlated - when bond price goes up, bond yield goes down - when more people buy higher yield bond, its price goes up and yield goes down and become more expensive. Second, both bonds with similar maturity will be issued with different yield, so on a short term basis, they can have different prices but have same yield. Third, if one bond has higher yield than another, more people will buy the higher yielding (cheaper) 30 year bond, push up its price, and lower its yield, thus ensuring both bonds have similar yield.

    Practically speaking, for both bonds with similar maturity dates (6 months apart only), you should be using bond yield to compare both bonds instead of price. In this case, either one of the 2 bonds can be bought because they should have practically same yield and same magnitude of price increase/decrease in the future. In which case, you probably want to stick to always buying the same bond as previously bought so that it is easier to track performance.

    If both 30 years bonds have big difference in their time till maturity, you may wish to calculate which bond has higher yield and act accordingly. On the other hand, we as average investor can also keep things simple by investing in the same bond, then when the bond is approaching 20 years remaining till maturity, then we can sell off all these 20~21 years bonds and buy all into latest 30 years bonds. As average investor, we do not have to analyse about bond yield in so much details just to squeeze that 0.3~0.5% more in long term returns. Either way, as long as you buy long term bonds (20+ to 30 years), any maturity period between 20+ to 30 years will work, so you don’t have to be so particularly precise about choosing based on bond pricing or yield.

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  5. Hi, thank you for taking the time to explain, really appreciate it as I m a investment noob.
    I took some time to digest the above, the key takeaway for me is that , as we don't hold the bonds to maturity, what really matters is the yield and magnitude of price movement , I.e the delta, so to speak.Thanks !

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  6. Hi, if I have 20k to start off with a SPP, should I approach a investment house, financial adviser or DIY? Can I creat an account with a online portal and DIY? Which portal charges the lowest admin fee currently. Is it a good time to do it now amid the volatility in the market.

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  7. Hi. I believe you should DIY a Singapore Permanent Portfolio - after reading and educating yourelf as much as possible about the strategy, the assets involved, and the logic behind the strategy. An investment house or financial adviser will likely not understand or agree with the unusual PP strategy because they are not trained and exposed to PP concept.
    DBSV cash-upfront online account charges the lowest S$18 min. commission. However they are very restrictive on placing bond pricing, so i use UOBKH instead for buying Singapore long bond.
    Portfolio returns has dropped a few percentage since start of this year, so now is a 'cheaper' time to start portfolio compared to few months back. There is no best time to start the portfolio, so jus start with all assets when the portfolio is 'cheaper'. Just remember this strategy is a long term investing strategy with a good track record (overseas and local) and does not gaurantee 'no risk' - the rest is based on research and 'having faith' in this long term strategy.

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    Replies
    1. Could you please elaborate on the phrase 'However they are very restrictive on placing bond pricing, so i use UOBKH instead for buying Singapore long bond.'

      I plan to open a DBSV account shortly and allocate my bond investment into PH1S.

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    2. In DBSV online platform, if the PH1S last done price is 94.000, you can only place queue at +/- 30 bids, or between 94.030 to 93.970... just 3 cents away! for a counter trading at near 100 dollars... a bit impractical. I haven't check whether DBSV changed this recently, so can do your due diligence and call them to verify,
      For UOBKH online platform, they allow to queue at 1 dollar away from last done price,

      Delete
  8. Hi, you mentioned that DBS V is quite restrictive on placing bond pricing, I don't quite understand this point. Shouldn't the bond price be independent of which trading platform you use ? Is there a significant difference or impact to retail investors ?

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  9. If bond is trading at $103.500, DBSV online platform only allow placing orders between prices $103.520 or $103.480... that's +/- 2 cents or +/-20 bids in exact accordance with SGX guideline... which in turn is strange because for a counter trading at $100.00, investor is only allowed to trade 2 cents away from last done price? Problem is, long bond price easily moves 20cents, 50cents, 1 dollar from last done price, hence if bond price moves more than 2 cents away from last done price, DBSV online platform is useless for placing bond orders! DBSV management refused to correct this issue and said they are just following SGX guidelines (!), and DBSV said for bonds, if online platform does not allow putting of bond price (due to the +/-2 cents restriction), then please call DBSV broker to place bond trade but insist on online pricing which investor is entitled when current buy/sell price is far away from last done price.

    I tried UOBKH and Lim&Tan both of which allows placing bond price +/-$1.00 away from last done price, which is more practical and reasonable for bond trading.

    Yes bond price is same for all trading platform for retail investor, but the 'placing' of bond price is terrible for DBSV online platform - if you cannot place the bond price you want in DBSV online platform, call DBSV broker or use another brokerage online platform.

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  10. Hi, as a follow-up to your previous comment that DBS V is quite restrictive on placing bond pricing, I was just wondering, won't the problem be solved if you placed a market order or limit order and just key in whatever is the current trading price ? I guess it just takes a few mouseclicks in a few secs and of course I am assuming the price of long bonds are fluctuating so greatly within that few secs.

    For the purpose of rebalancing bonds in the PP strategy, why do we need to be concerned with bidding for the bonds at some price away from last done price ? Shouldn't we just buy/sell at whatever is the current trading price for bonds when rebalancing calls for it ?

    Sorry, I am a noob here, not sure if I am missing something. As I intend to use a single platform to trade and currently leaning towards DBSV, would appreciate your sharing, thanks.

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  11. sorry, typo in previous comment
    "... price of long bonds are NOT fluctuating so greatly within that few secs."

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  12. Hi. Let me give a realsitic example. Let's say on Day 1 the PH1S long bond last done price at end of day is 104.50.

    Then on Day 2, 3 and 4 there are no trades in long bond. On Day 5 you decided to buy long bond, but the market makers / primary dealers are quoting buy/sell price of 103.500/103.800. If you want to put online order now, you can only put 104.47 (on DBSV platform)... well, your online trade request may not go through, or even if you managed to submit the order, you may still get the long bond at 103.800 (i doubt), or, a dealer may take advantage and sell you at 104.470, or your order at 104.47 will not be filled...

    But when you want to put the online order for long bond at 103.600, then there's no way to do that in DBSV online platform -whereas UOBKH allows you to place the online order at 103.600.

    It is always good to have at least 2 online brokers - in case one online platform has a problem, you can use the other online platform. I use UOBKH online platform for long bonds. If you are investing for long term, the 7 dollars difference in minimum commission between DBSV cash-upfront and UOBKH should not be much of an issue. Hope i answered your question.

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  13. Hi, I was wondering where REITs would fit into this allocation model. If I want to hold REITs, would it be under the allocation of stocks or bonds?

    When this strategy was created in 1980s, my guess is that REITs was not really around/popular, hence it was excluded from the strategy.

    Any thoughts? Thanks.

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  14. It seems Singapore REITs would be better under the allocation of stocks, as S-REITs have very high correlation to the STI - when stocks fall, generally REITs fall together too, and vice versa.
    see this quick comparison table of FTSE Index of S-REITS vs STI yearly returns:
    http://i.imgur.com/CsSqMR4.jpg

    You may want to be selective about owning good REITs, or you can consider the REITs fund by Phillip Capital.

    There are some arguments about not using REITs in PP - you can read about them in Craig Rowland's book on Permanent Portfolio. Personally I am OK with using only STI which seems volatile enough. Although S_REITs outperform REITs in other countries, I have not seen evidence or research yet that adding S-REITs to local PP will make significant improvement, given STI and S-REITs are so closely correlated.

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  15. Hi Epps,

    I notice that there is very little bid and offer for ES3 and PH1S. Wouldn't this lack of liquidity lead to larger bid-offer spreads? How do you deal with this problem when you want to buy or sell?

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    Replies
    1. ES3 stock index ETF is usually liquid enough with spread of 0.01 so there is no issue. PH1S Long bonds are generally traded less often so liquidity can be lower and spread wider. When buying bonds, I monitored bond price and try to queue a price at mid point of buy and sell price, hoping another person or the market maker will buy from me - this work better for bigger lots. Sometimes if buying just a few lots, I may try to queue at last done price, because the person who traded at last done price might want to trade some more at that price. Last resort is to just buy at which ever the selling price. This is a long term strategy, so buying one time 0.3%~0.5% more expensive for bonds is not that significant in the long run.
      More important is to keep yearly running cost low.

      Another thing to note is to use online brokers like UOBKH or L&T that allows to put queue price for bonds up to $1.00 away from last done price. DBSV online is not so good for bond buying because it only allows queuing at a price $0.03 away from last done price (that's a ridiculous +/-3 cents from last done price for something that is trading at near $100!) - but according to DBSV, if bond trading is restricted by their online platform due to this +/- 0.03 limitations, can call them up to help you buy bonds but pay at online rate.

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    2. Thanks for your response.

      On quite a few occasions, ES3 buy and sell queue show very few shares for buying and selling. And the trading seems to move very slowly. Seems like a challenge to get your orders filled. Do the market makers play an active role to get orders filled?

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    3. When buying, if you queue at a price that is lower than the current quoted sell price, there is no obligation or incentive for market maker or other traders to full your order, so it may or may not get filled.

      If you really need to get your order filled, you can always buy at the current ask price (sell price) that is quoted. It may be 1 or 2 cents more expensive per share than you wanted, but it may be better than not getting your order filled. If you are investing for long term, 1 or 2 cents extra is not that significant. I may be wrong, but I think the market maker will ensure there is sufficient supply of shares to be sold or bought, to keep the ETF tracking the index closely.

      Sometimes ES3 may show very few shares for buying and selling at the current buy/sell price only, for example if current buy/sell price of 3.27/3.28 shows few shares being queued, what can happen is that at further buy/sell price there can be more people wanting to buy at 3.26 or wanting to sell at 3.29. so in fact there can be quite a number of orders being queued at further out prices.

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    4. Thanks for your comments.

      Although Permanent Portfolio is quite a static one with just the occasional rebalancing once set up, this lack of trading liquidity on ES3 is not an ideal situation. On a intra-day basis, I have noted that STI might be up and yet ES3 can be down. So the tracking is not as good as you would like. When you need the volume available to transact, you cannot just queue and be confident that your orders get filled. You will need to monitor the buy-sell queue to get your orders filled. If you have a larger portfolio, it can be a problem.

      Delete
    5. What you say can be true. Tracking may not be perfect, but is good enough for me, I accept the minute deviation of ES3 from STI itself. This is because there is no point aiming for ideal tracking or trading condition, because even with perfect tracking, simple things such as one's decision to buy the ETF in the morning or afternoon can cause the one's buy/sell price to be more expensive or cheaper also. Besides, most alternatives funds can be more expensive to own in the long term due to yearly cost.

      Regarding the volume available to transact, there are different ways you can look at it. Perhaps you can ask yourself whether the maximum volume you may wish to transact is bigger than the average daily trade volume of ES3? If your volume is lower than daily average, I guess you don't have to worry about getting all your orders filled within 1 to 3 days. Realistically, I guess yes your order may not get filled at your queue price that you want given your huge volume. If you want to sell a huge volume, you may get trades at lower and lower prices, which is not optimal but should not be a deterrent to totally avoid using this ETF. I have noticed buy/sell queue volume of 100 or 1000 lots several times - my guess is that could be the market maker providing a backstop price to prevent too much deviation from STI - I could be very wrong that it was a backstop, so please verify this assumption if you need to.

      So there could be a solution to your concern about ES3 volume. consider splitting your stock portfolio into several funds - some in ES3 STI ETF, some in unit trust of Singapore Companies (I hear there are the rare SG unit trusts that outperform STI), some in regional stocks (if you want), and you may also consider the more expensive iShares MSCI Singapore ETF (EWS) (traded in U.S. exchange, though I am not sure about its liquidity).

      Final thoughts, to me there is no point aiming for ideal trading conditions, because like driving a car, to me there is no point to aim for ideal conditions to minimise gasoline usage to save money, because there are too many uncontrollable factors throughout journey. So long as I get from Point A to Point B safely and surely, there is little concern whether I use a bit more or less gasoline. Just my personal opinion, I am sure there are other who choose to adopt different opinions from mine, and that's just alright.

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    6. Thanks for your prompt comments. Appreciate it.

      One thing to note for using actively-managed funds is taking on fund manager risk. Over the very long-term, it is difficult to tell how that will pan out, but higher costs is guaranteed.

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  16. Hey Epps,

    Just curious why you chose O87 for the gold portion instead of iShares Gold Trust(IAU) which has a lower fee (0.22% vs 0.4%) ?

    Regards
    Gugz

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    Replies
    1. Sorry, missed out on your comment. Good question, I bought O87 because O87 is traded on Singapore Stock Exchange, so I can trade it with local brokers and hold the shares in my own Central Depository (CDP) account. Other than that it would seem IAU has the advantage of lower expense ratio which is good. IAU only lowered its expense ratio to 0.25% in 2010.

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  17. Hi
    If I do not use my CPF OA for my mortgage, can I substitite OA monies as the bond component of my investment portfolio?
    I do realize I cannot rebalance yearly with respect to my stocks value but I do get a confirmed 2.5-4% returns in my OA and SA accts.

    What is the "best" workaround to balance my portfolio assuming I have 10k to invest every year?

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  18. CPF OA is more suitable as Cash components in Permanent Portfolio, Cash component requires stable value, and CPF OA is stable, with a 2.5-4% returns bonus. The Bond component needs ability to rise significantly in value when stocks are dropping, to negate or minimise drop in overall portfolio value. Hence CPF OA is unsuitable to be bond component since CPF OA value will not fluctuate with market. To balance your portfolio, If your CPF OA and cash is more than 25% of total portfolio, you may consider to use cash and/or CPF OA to buy into STI ETF/30 year long bond/gold to rebalance portfolio back to 25% for each component.

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  19. Hi nice And informative blog. How are your returns for 2014? some of us are having negative returns. But we are using A35 Singapore bonds etf to replace SGS bonds.

    Hope you (and your blog) are still doing well.

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    Replies
    1. Hi, thank you for your comment. This blog is meant to contain information for making informed decisions about investment. I haven't been tracking my 2014 returns closely, been busy with (nice) events in life. Frankly, some time back I made amateurish mistake of chasing after returns by investing in more gold than I should in my cash portfolio. Now I learn better, I will just stick to the investment ratio and plan... investment is a long term thing, better learn now than never. Even without my mistake in gold, the rapid drop in gold price did put a noticeable dent in portfolio performance... again, investment is a long term goal, the flip side of assets decreasing in value also mean they are cheaper to acquire at the moment...

      I wonder why you use A35 bond... according to PP logic it is not sufficiently volatile enough to counter drops in stocks, unless you are willing to suffer more volatility to the downside or upside in total portfolio over time.
      I like my 30 years Singapore Long bond PH1S (for now), it is doing great now - macro reason being, worldwide economies are facing deflationary forces, and deflations are very good for long bonds and not so good for gold.

      Haven't time to blog about it yet, I have been following A. Gary Shillings, esteemed economist with track record for forecasting major economic trends - according to him the world is in age of deflation now, with at least 3 more years to go, perhaps more. Point is, I won't bet hugely on gold now (figuratively speaking), and with the issues in global economies especially Europe, bonds, especially U.S. bonds and long bonds, are still looking quite favourable in medium term. for stocks...no idea where its heading, and doesn't matter for this portfolio.

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  20. Hi
    Thanks for sharing your knowledge on the Permanent Portfolio. I am planning to get started with $10K in each asset. Which option should I choose for Gold?

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi. As written above, to minimize commission cost:
      "25% Gold:
      i. Invest 1 lot (10 share) of SPDR Gold Shares GLD ETF 10US$ (SGX symbol O87)."
      Alternatively, consider buying the physical gold from UOB or others, if you have a safe place to keep it.

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