GYC Insights

Articles on real-life financial issues written to educate and enlighten.

Carl Chay Carl Chay

Conflicting Signals

A $3 million portfolio may sound like a successful milestone, but not when just 3 years ago, that same portfolio was $13 million. A real-life cautionary tale for those investing based on opinions.

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Bruce Tan Bruce Tan

Private Equity Woes

Goldman proudly states that their investment into Swedish battery maker Northvolt was worth more than 4 times than what it had paid, expecting it to rise to six by next year. This weekNorthvolt filed for bankruptcy.

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Carl Chay Carl Chay

A Geopolitical Tragedy

Markets don’t go down on war worries alone. Although it could spills over and affects the global economy, the slowdown will be captured in relevant market data. This is something that we constantly keep track of.

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Bruce Tan Bruce Tan

How Tennis Can Help Us Become Better Investors

Federer actually only won 54% of all points he’s ever played. This small advantage leads to a win-rate of 76% of sets and 82% of matches. The numbers for the stock market are strikingly similar.

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Carl Chay Carl Chay

Election Season

With Trump currently ahead in the polls around 10 days to the election, investors may be worried about increased tensions with the US and other countries and the resultant impact to the market.

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Bruce Tan Bruce Tan

Interest Rates Down, Bonds Also Down

Many investors believe that when interest rates fall, bond prices should rise. However when the Federal Open Market Committee cut the discount rate by 0.50%, the 10-Year Treasury fell in price.

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Carl Chay Carl Chay

Anything But Average

While the annual average return of the global market in the past 20 years is +5.69%, the actual annual return ranges from -42.77% all the way to +49.14%.

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Bruce Tan Bruce Tan

Gotta Risk it For The Biscuit

An average annual return of almost 20% with close to 20 years of consecutive positive returns, it sounded too good to be true. It was.

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Carl Chay Carl Chay

The ‘Ex’ Has Issues

A record 38 emerging market ex-China funds have popped up in 2023 and 2024, with a rise of 2300% flowing into these funds in the in past 3 years. Have you jumped on the bandwagon?

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Carl Chay Carl Chay

Rates Got You Down?

The US Federal Reserve has lowered interest rates by 0.5% during their September 2024 meeting. So far, stock markets have responded positively, but interestingly, bonds have not started to rally as expected by many.

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Carl Chay Carl Chay

Easy Come, Easy Go

Peloton is down -95%, Zoom -88%, Moderna -84%, and Etsy -83% since their peaks during the Covid-19 pandemic. Such a severe wipe out over a couple of years is pretty terrifying to imagine, especially when it comes to your portfolio.

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Carl Chay Carl Chay

Positively Uncertain

The long term average return from investing in the global market is around +7.36%/year. But in reality, what we get each year can be very far from that number (e.g. almost -20% in 2022, or almost +30% in 2019).

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Carl Chay Carl Chay

Current-cy Pains

The lack of SGD investment options as well as the need for a global opportunity set naturally comes with exposure to foreign currencies. Is your wealth poised to take on forex movements?

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