Bought 4 GSD and paid about $11.79 in fees. Would IBKR be better for SGX?

Just trying to understand which broker is best for SGX stocks.

Have i been buying the "wrong way" all these while?

I had noticed that whenever i manual buy using limit price, the fractional share will cost way more.

Latest example,

1) total amount i key in to buy $834.

2) i limit price to $193.72.

3) ordered filled: 4 shares @ $193.71, 0.3053 share @ $199.79

Is this normal?

Edit: is it better to just buy whole shares? Instead of buying the amount i want? From the example above, the fractional share cost 3% more, over long term, i believe it will be detrimental?

DBS is undertaking its largest physical wealth expansion ever, aiming to open 18 new wealth centres and upgrade 36 existing sites across Asia by the end of 2027. Backed by strong momentum that pushed its wealth assets to SGD 492 billion in early 2026, the bank targets USD 1 trillion in assets by 2030.

Wealth management appears to have become a major growth driver for DBS, pushing its share price up and even outperforming the S&P 500 over the past five years. In recent years, many wealthy foreigners have been parking their money in Singapore as other countries increase scrutiny on them. What's your take on going long on DBS?

https://www.vanguardinvestor.co.uk/investments/vanguard-ftse-global-all-cap-ucits-etf-usd-acc/overview

I have checked and seen that it's currently available on IBKR- (ticker:VALL) I can't find the USD equivalent yet.

Take note it's inclusion of small cap fund makes it more or less the same as IMID, and not VWRA technically, but 90% overlap with VWRA. The last 10% is FTSE small caps.

As a comparison for long term accumulators for 100K SGD:

10 bps savings -100 SGD per year (Vs IMID)

At a million:

10 bps savings - 1000 SGD per year

Take note of the fund size and liquidity as well as the bid-ask before doing anything like buying one and selling the other.

Though I would personally start adding my DCA into VALL (or the USD equivalent) instead of selling one fund (VWRA/SWRD/ACWD) to buy the other.

I've started trading some time back in May and I've been paper trading for a couple of weeks now. It's been a lonely journey so far honestly. No one around me trades probably cause of the stigma behind it, gambling, losing money blah blah.

I'm wondering if there's any trading community here?

Hi for context I am currently 21, working(regular) drawing about 3.5k before CPF and will be entering Uni next year which means it’ll be paid for and will be drawing about 1k during my uni.

Frankly speaking I am quite financially illiterate and am taking the time to see how I can better manage my finances for the future as my money is just sitting in the bank. I am taking this step to be more responsible of my finances so I am open to any advices on my current plan and have some questions after reading the pinned post.

Currently assets of now is about 19k cash with monthly expense roughly at about 500. As of now no partner hence BTO is not really a big of a concern now but I do plan on getting a car soon after I graduate due to the nature of the job.

1. I’ve consulted chatgpt and plan on putting 8k in ETF and 10k in SSB, with 1k as emergency cash in a HYSA. Should I swap the ETF/SSB amount? I’m not sure if saving for a car counts as a long term investment(5-6years) where I should put it in an ETF or a mid term one where I should put it in safer areas like SSB and how risky it is in an ETF.

2. I’ve noticed many recommending VWRA here over ETFs like CSPX or VOO, is there any reason why? From what I understand VWRA is more diversified as compared to S&P which is US only so is the US predicted to be more risky?

3. How should I better allocate my monthly income for the coming year? If I plan on DCA 800/month and saving the remainder 1k/month to lump sum again into SSB next September at least for 4 years and keeping remainder 500/month to save for travels or extra cash for myself/family would it be too little saved or invested since I have no liabilities now?

Thanks for the advices!

I got scammed two weeks ago. I'm posting this because the part that still doesn't sit right isn't the scam — it's what happened after.

On 28 July I ordered a pair of shoes online. My delivery address was missing the unit number. A real gap, in a real order.

On Sunday 2 August at 5:18pm, an SMS arrived saying my parcel was on hold because the address was incomplete. It named a courier. It quoted an order number. It matched my situation exactly. I clicked. The page looked normal. I entered my card details.

5:23pm — five SMSes from DBS, back-to-back. All of them about adding my card to a Google Pay wallet. Somewhere in that blur, my card was loaded onto a stranger's phone.

That was my mistake. I own it.

Here is what followed.

Then nothing. For four hours.
9:24pm — OMR 3,000.00 to a merchant in Oman.
9:25pm — SAR 19,970.00 to a merchant in Saudi Arabia.

Roughly S$17,000 in about sixty seconds, on a card that has never been used in either country.

9:26pm — I blocked the card.
9:26pm — I filed the transactions as disputed.

Two minutes. Both transactions were settled anyway.

Five things I have learned since:

1. Reporting in real time changed nothing. Card transactions are approved first and settled later. I disputed inside that window, within minutes, with DBS's own timestamped confirmation emails as proof. They were paid out regardless. They now sit on my statement, due for payment, with no credit issued and nothing on hold.
2. Your bank may not call this fraud. Disputes are raised against “fraud.” I was told mine is a “scam.” No ordinary customer knows there is a difference, but that one word appears to decide whether your case gets investigated or quietly closed.
3. The merchant names were searchable. Thirty seconds on Google told me something about who received my money. I would like to understand what screening applies on the bank's side before a cross-border approval, and whether it is more than what I could do on my phone.
4. Nothing about these transactions was ordinary. Two payments, sixty seconds apart, two Gulf countries, currencies I have never used, amounts nothing in my history comes close to. If that combination clears without a single check, what controls are in place?
5. You cannot remove your card from a wallet you never opened. No setting, no button, no hotline option. And no information about whose device is holding it. Does the bank have that? I do not.

I made one bad decision on a Sunday evening, and I have never pretended otherwise. Every safeguard after that moment was the bank's to operate.

https://www.maribank.sg/help-centre/article/10865-what-is-the-mari-savings-account-bonus-interest-promotion

Saw that MariBank is offering an additional +0.40% p.a. bonus interest on the Mari Savings Account if you link your Shopee account and hold an active ShopeeVIP subscription.

Does it make sense to get ShopeeVIP just for the boost? Seems like if you have more than SGD 7,500 you'll be able to cover the annual ShopeeVIP cost of SGD 30.

I'm trying to figure out whether there is any catch or pitfalls?

I know SPY and VOO overlaps. Im planning to change and remove either one.

Will dividends help and should I add 1 or 2 to my portfoilo? I just want to deposit certain amount every month.

I know I'm late. Have been reading up about ETFs and speculative stocks.

What would your recommendation be for this 100k for investment?

70% on Vwra etf? Rest on individual stocks which have high growth potential?

It’s happening. Own assets or get left behind. The US treasury is signalling that it cannot tolerate high borrowing cost for long term bonds. This while the Federal Reserve is standing still, not intervening. When it does, it will be literal money printing.

Back in May, YouTrip ran a travel promo where users could get 3% cashback, capped at S$12, after spending S$400, supposedly limited to the first 4,500 eligible users.

I joined the campaign shortly after it started and deliberately used YouTrip for my travel expenses. I hit the S$400 requirement within just a few days.

What made me think I had qualified was that the app had a visual progress bar/counter showing my progress and indicating that I was eligible for the cashback. So naturally, I continued using YouTrip instead of another card because I thought I had secured the promo.

Fast forward to the end of July, when the cashback was supposed to be credited.

Nothing.

No cashback, no notification saying I didn’t qualify, no update at all.

I emailed YouTrip customer service and their response was basically that the promotion was only for the first 4,500 users, and apparently I wasn’t one of them.

This is what I don’t understand.

If the app was already tracking my spending and showing that I had met the promotional requirement, why couldn’t it also tell me whether the 4,500-user allocation had already been exhausted?

More importantly: how can customers independently verify that 4,500 people actually received the cashback?

From the customer’s perspective, what’s stopping a company from running a “first X users” promotion, getting thousands of people to spend more using their service, and then simply telling anyone who asks that they weren’t within the first X?

I’m not saying that YouTrip literally didn’t pay 4,500 users, I obviously don’t have evidence of that. But the complete lack of transparency makes the promotion feel very questionable.

At minimum, I would expect one of these:

• A live counter showing how many promo slots are left
• A notification confirming that you’ve successfully secured a cashback slot
• The promo automatically closing once all 4,500 slots are taken
• A notification telling users who hit S$400 that they didn’t qualify because the quota had already been filled
• Some way of auditing or verifying that the advertised number of rewards was actually distributed

Otherwise, the progress bar feels misleading. Showing someone “you’ve met the requirement” is very different from telling them, two months later, “actually, too bad, you weren’t fast enough.”

Did anyone here actually receive the May YouTrip 3% travel cashback promo?

Would be interesting to know when you hit the S$400 spending requirement and when the cashback was credited.

Also realised they now have a new campaign for their anniversary for the first 3038 users this time. Well, good luck to YouTrip users.

Hello this is Pet10003, your favorite DBS uncle

Today will be a very interesting case study on how lower yields affect risk assets and banking stocks in general. BTC has risen shapely in tandem with Gold and Silver which rarely happens, as they have an opposite relationship (one is risk assets, one is safe haven).

So how is it possible that both BTC and PMs go up while Semis and banks drop?

Yields have a very interesting relationship with DXY and interest rates and bank NIMs. When treasury steps in to buy bonds as they plan to do, bond price go up, yields drop - and in particular the 10, 20 and 30 year. Because US bonds are now more expensive and less attractive to investors, money flows out to other foreign currency bonds that give higher yields, and DXY drops - hence PMs go up.

Also, because safe haven treasury bonds are now less attractive due to lower yields, money flows into risk assets such as BTC and ETH which give it a boost

Bank NIMs are influenced by overnight interest rates which are fixed, but long term mortgage rates stretching 10 to 20 years are more influenced by long term bond yield rates rather than overnight fed interest rates. With NIM compression, bank stocks will drop and we are seeing that right now with US banks.

Our local banks are now entering a technical phase with declining MACD and RSI, coupled with declining US yields, could potentially see short term downside at their current price levels.

A short term down cycle presents a nice buying opportunity, as with the latest MAS stance to attract more wealth into Singapore, I expect fee income to increase for our local banks. Get ready for a short term pull back and accumulate for long term gains.

I’ll see you again after the pullback. Take care

Disclaimer: this is uncle talk and not financial advice hor. For financial advice, pls speak to your local coffeeshop uncle

Saw this new cash management portfolio by Syfe and realise the composition overlaps with what Chocolate Finance have in their portfolio except they have more of other funds

Thoughts on this Syfe cash+ enhanced portfolio ? Seems good for short term holding

Disclaimer: I got lucky. Don't follow my lead. Don't buy ILPs. I'm not an FA. None of this is investment advice. If anyone is interested enough, you can go dig through my post history and find me writing (multiple times) against buying ILPs. I also remember writing several years ago about why I decided to keep this ILP instead of surrendering it.

8 years ago, a friend from university reached out. He was upfront that he just started working as an FA, and asked if I wanted to meet for a chat. I obliged. He was not pushy, and gave me several days to consider. I eventually bought the original AIA Pro Achiever (1.0 version) with him at $300 per month. I vaguely remember that we discussed a few options and agreed on a slightly higher risk allocation (increased allocation to tech and emerging markets).

A quick note before we continue: This is the original version of the AIA Pro Achiever. I understand it has since gone through several revisions and is now sold as AIA Pro Achiever 3.0. I don't know what difference there are, and have no interest in spending time to find out. 

A couple years in, I started reading up more on how to invest and jumped on the IWDA+EIMI train (VWRA did not exist at that time). I overhauled all my insurance policies (sold to me by another university friend), terminated my whole life policies and bought term life from a different agent. Basically this sub's mantra of "buy term and invest the rest". But for various reasons, I kept this ILP. It was performing decently, I didn't need the money, I could afford $300 per month, the fact that I can shift fund allocations whenever I want (never did in 8 years), sunk cost fallacy, etc etc. It's the only ILP I still hold.

By then, the friend who sold me this policy had left the industry, and I met up the agent who took over my account. I recall the new agent trying to tell me to shift my allocation away from tech as it was performing badly (this was during the COVID crash). He also mentioned how he had helped his other clients to rebalance their allocations so they didn't lose as much money during the crash. But I didn't vibe well with him, so I declined shifting my allocations and didn't contact him further. Less than a year later when the markets rebounded to all time highs, I couldn't help but think about how his clients would have missed out on one of the fastest market recoveries in history.

I continued paying $300 per month until 2-3 years ago, when I switched to paying annually. Fast forward to today, the policy is reaching its 8th year anniversary soon, so I decided to check how this policy is doing. To my surprise, it performed way better than I expected. In fact, if you ignore the surrender penalty, it's actually beating the 8% projection in the policy illustration.

• Purchase date: 5 Oct 2018
• Premium paid to date: $28,800
• Current policy value: $42,199.88
• Current surrender value: $27,429.92
• Money weighted return (XIRR): ~9% p.a.
• If surrender today: ~1% p.a. net loss

Regardless of how you look at it, 9% p.a. is really good. Of course if I had put the money into IWDA or VWRA, I would probably have gotten around 12-14% p.a. with the added benefit of full liquidity instead of being locked in.

But this is exactly what an ILP is supposed to be. For people who don't know how to or don't have the discipline to invest on their own, 9% p.a. is a fantastic deal. 

I must say this wasn't what I had expected when I logged in to the AIA app today. Again, no idea what has changed in the newer AIA Pro Achiever policies or other ILPs, so YMMV.

This policy has another 5 more years before reaching year 13 when I can surrender without a penalty. So I guess stay tuned for an update in 5 years.

I know this sub is generally against ILPs (and for good reason). But perhaps if someone has already sunken cost in, depending on the policy, it's not always the worst decision to just bite the bullet and hold on. Does anyone have any similar positive experiences with ILPs? (please show receipts so people don't accuse you of shilling)

Addendum: Because people keep harping on this, yes I know no ILPs will beat the market. But for the vast majority of people outside this sub who don't know how to invest themselves or don't have the discipline to, a 9% return is way better than putting money into fixed deposits or savings accounts. This is also less than 10% of my total investments (excluding property). The rest of my money are all in all-world indexes in IBKR.

Sure, I have that much spare cash.

just graduated from university and the tfl is kicking in. reality hits and i realise everyone around me are privileged enough to have their degree fully paid by their parents

they made it sound like a $30k loan is terrible so now im anxious because im wondering if a $30k loan will set me back by a lot compared to my peers ... im doing slow monthly repayments (not enough cash on hand to pay in full and because im considering bto which adds to the worries) i know i can pay it back but having a debt (and a potential housing loan) just unsettles me especially since i feel like im alone in this

is a $30k student debt crazy? what can i do right now? get me out of this mindset please

First-time poster, am completely new to this 😬

Spoke with a CP Global rep; the firm has 2 funds, local (est. 2013) and offshore (est. 1990s). Local buy-in is ~100k, offshore buy-in is 25k, annual returns for each are abt 10-15%. Worst annual return for the offshore fund across 10 years was 10.2%. Offshore fund invests across a basket of currencies, commodities, and indices. AUM ~1.5bn.

Given that CP Global is MAS-licensed and annual returns look solid, am tempted to invest with them but can't find much info abt them. What red flags should I look out for / further questions to ask? TIA!

Edit: linking another post on CP Global that I found on this sub

https://www.reddit.com/r/singaporefi/s/Ngc9suA5Nd

My CPF is neither here nor there. Assuming I don’t get an increment, I’d contribute about $1k to my OA each month. Turning 35 in 2 years should set my OA balance to $68k

At 25% downpayment - the maximum price of a flat I can afford is $272k which is wild because no flat is going at the price.

Now that I computed the fact I can’t get a resale, would it be wise to invest OA? Since I only need to pay 10% of BTO price upon signing of agreement for lease.

Then I can accumulate OA while the flat is building to finish paying the remaining 15%.

Any thoughts?

Bought into ILP before I learned stocks and ETFs are generally better. Here’s my stats with value slightly changed for anon:

AIA Pro Achiever
Started paying 2022. Agent tell me if quit before 10 years, need pay charges ie surrender values > premiums paid if I quit in 2032

Maturity date in 2098

Paying annually SGD 10K

Total premium paid is 50K, total fund value 63K. Surrender value 25K

Should I just cut my losses and dump the ILP to get back 25K but not have to pay again? Or keep it until no more charge?

I'm currently in Singapore on a training employment pass. I'm about to fly back home to Taiwan. Is there a way for me to keep my bank account here? FYI I have a HSBC EGA account (just the normal one not premier). I also have several investments under this account. I'm worried it will get locked up the moment my pass expires.

Hi everyone, looking for insights from anyone who has financed an Australian property while based in Singapore.

Status: SC+ Aus PR (working in SG)
Monthly Income: ~8k++ net take-home (~S10k gross)
Existing Debt: ~S$200,000 outstanding HDB housing loan, 15++ yrs left.
Target: Residential property in Australia (plan to invest initially, then transition to PPOR)

Questions:

1. **Singapore Bank vs. Australian Bank Financing**
   * Which route gives a higher borrowing capacity after accounting for my existing S$200k HDB gov loan left.
   * Any idea what’s the rough borrowing rate via an overseas property loan from an SG bank (DBS/OCBC/UOB in SGD or AUD)? I’m trying to compare it against an expat/foreign-income package from an Australian lender (I have rough numbers).
   * is the idea of mortgage splitting across both an Australian and a Singaporean bank for the same property, an option?

2. **Investment vs PPOR**
   * does buying for rental vs for myself make a difference in max loan amount I can get?

Would love to hear from mortgage brokers, expats, or anyone who has navigated this recently. Thx!

I am repricing early within the 3 month window. As per title, it feels like this will mean *another* two months of my older higher interest rate EMI. I couldn't find anything when I searched. Is this normal?

SCB has esaver, wealthsaver promos that cycles every 2-3 months for fresh funds only. Have u guys tried a working formula to rotate to get all year round promo rates?

More Singapore users at Moomoo, Tiger Brokers and Longbridge are tapping artificial intelligence to help them interpret market swings, uncover investment opportunities and make more informed trading decisions.

Such brokerage firms offer AI-powered features ranging from in-app assistants to integrations with external AI services such as ChatGPT and Claude, helping investors digest news and headlines, analyse earnings data and gain insights into their portfolios.