Super Terrible Index makes everyone in my household a millionaire !

 

In case you're not aware, the Straits Times Index is currently at an all-time high of 4,189.5 points. 

Not too long ago, if you were an investor in the STI, you'd be the butt of jokes. However, thanks to chronic indifference from Singapore's own investors, who prefer US stocks and dividends, older investors who enjoyed dividend investing were able to stubbornly accumulate companies that generate decent free cash flow over the past decade. A few, like myself, who primarily invest locally, currently hold US stocks just to demonstrate the power of my Python Jupyter notebooks. 

I never anticipated that the STI would exceed 4,000 so soon; in fact, I did not even think MAS's moves to stimulate the money could get us there, but my intuition tells me that if Donald Trump wins, I would easily make a 6 figure sum from something, be it my crypto holdings or real estate holdings. AS it turns out, his tariffs caused a movement of capital out of the US markets and into the world, where Singapore primarily benefited from a stable currency, a sane government, and a low inflicted-upon tariff rate.

I always said that if you are a local investor, you are, in essence, investing in a broken clock. However, a broken clock is still correct twice a day, and you only need to be right once in your life. The first time I was right was when I invested all my take-home pay in SGX stocks during the Great Financial Crisis. That made my first million, but it also laid the foundation for me to FIRE early in my life and return to my career as an investment trainer. 

But I kept at it because I was bothered that only the folks talking big on blogs and social media about FIRE are all singles pontificating about life, while families continued to require financial support. And whoever makes a million dollars or has left the workforce would get slammed by salty Sinkies. So I carried on thinking about earning money because I have family members, like my kids, who have not achieved FIRE yet.

However, thanks to recent events, as I tallied the valuation of my real estate holdings, CPF, and investment funds from all sources and countries, converted into SGD, I can say that everyone in my household for this weekend is a millionaire.  

Unfortunately, I won't be able to enjoy my weekend. 

I came down with the flu, despite being thoroughly vaccinated. I was diagnosed with a frozen shoulder, and now I'm deciding whether to turn to TCM or Western medicine. The government system will only grant me a specialist appointment in September. I have slides for a week of videos, but I can't record the voiceover until my throat feels better.

Maybe markets will retrace this week and we will lose our millionaire per pax status next week. There is no functional change in the way I manage my household.

But this surely makes an exciting blog article title. 

Rest assured that a video will follow once this financial position is further secured. I want to review the effects of my earnings and dividends in Q3 before I can really consider this a big win.