To The Moon

Iggy's Journal: The Real Price of a Debt-Free $4,500 a Month in Retirement Is $711,000, Not $1.8 Million. 25 September 2026, Evening Video Release The biggest distortion I found in this comparison wasn't the retirement target itself. It was treating CPF as though it contributes nothing, then asking a portfolio to fund the entire S$4,500 a month alone. The Numbers Once CPF LIFE is actually counted, the FRS to ERS tranche produces an estimated 9.04 percent annual payout ratio, a genuinely strong number, but it comes with a real cost: that money stops being liquid capital the moment it goes in. At the Enhanced Retirement Sum, the remaining portfolio gap falls to S$1,060 a month, which requires S$270,638 at my 4.7 percent yield hurdle. Add that to the ERS itself and you land at roughly S$711,0

Iggy's Journal: Three Out of Four Singapore REITs Trade Below Book Value. Here's Why Almost Nobody Is Merging Them. 24 September 2026, Afternoon Podcast The average S-REIT trades at 0.77 times book value. If markets worked the way textbooks say they should, that gap alone would trigger a wave of mergers. It hasn't. The count sits stuck at 39. The Numbers External managers earn fees on the size of the REIT they run, so a merger that fixes the discount also erases someone's income. That's why consolidation only happens within the same sponsor's stable, fees never actually leave the building, they just move from one entity to another under the same roof. The pressure on the sector isn't easing either. DBS just cut target prices by 9.6 percent after the Fed hiked to 3.75 to 4 percent, adding a

Iggy's Journal: Three Out of Four Singapore REITs Trade Below Book Value. Here's Why Almost Nobody Is Merging Them. 24 September 2026, Afternoon Podcast The average S-REIT trades at 0.77 times book value. If markets worked the way textbooks say they should, that gap alone would trigger a wave of mergers. It hasn't. The count sits stuck at 39. The Numbers External managers earn fees on the size of the REIT they run, so a merger that fixes the discount also erases someone's income. That's why consolidation only happens within the same sponsor's stable, fees never actually leave the building, they just move from one entity to another under the same roof. The pressure on the sector isn't easing either. DBS just cut target prices by 9.6 percent after the Fed hiked to 3.75 to 4 percent, adding a

Iggy's Journal: The Fed, the ECB, and the Bank of Japan Are All Raising Rates. The UK, India, and China Are Not. Here's What That Means for Your CPF and SRS. 23 September 2026, Morning Podcast Everyone assumed hiking banks are the hawks and holding banks are the doves. That's the wrong frame entirely, and it took me a minute to see it too. The Numbers The BOJ hiked to 1.25% even though Japan carries one of the most indebted governments in the world, while China held for a sixteenth straight month despite industrial production actually strengthening. The real split isn't hawkish versus dovish. It's whose demand needs restraining versus whose credit demand is too weak to justify tightening at all. MAS doesn't set a policy rate the way the Fed or ECB does, but SORA mortgages, T-bill yields, a

Iggy's Journal: EP1828 - Singtel's Yield Looks Like 4.3%. Strip Out the One-Off Dividend and It's 3.1%. 22 September 2026, Evening Video Release UOB Kay Hian's $5.50 target and my 4.3% yield reading aren't actually disagreeing with each other. One is pricing a Nxera transaction that hasn't happened yet. The other is measuring the cash Singtel is paying out right now. The Numbers A stock can clear the first test and fail the second at the same time, and that's exactly what I found when I ran the current numbers. Strip out the one-off Value Realisation Dividend and Singtel's core yield drops to 3.08%, below what CPF Special Account already pays with zero equity risk attached. The balance sheet itself isn't the issue. Gearing sits at 23.3% and interest coverage at 19.0x, both clearing with wi

Chip Controls, a Boeing Deal, and a Taiwan Arms Sale All Converge on One Meeting. Here's the Singapore Read. 22 September 2026, Afternoon Podcast Everyone's watching whether Trump and Xi get along on September 24. I'm watching a different question. What happens to the equipment makers sitting underneath the chips, if nobody in that room even mentions them. The Numbers Export controls have been the sticking point through every round of talks this year, and the base case going in is that nothing changes on that front. That's the boring, correct expectation, not a surprise. AEM Holdings isn't on any export control list, but it posted 1H2026 revenue up 30 percent year on year to S$247.2 million on AI and high performance computing demand, the kind of order book that moves when the rules shift

Iggy's Journal: Food Empire's Worst Day on the Board, Two REITs Went Quietly the Other Way 21 September 2026, Evening The STI closed at 5,672.3, up 16.16 points, a quiet 0.29 percent day for the index. But quiet at the index level hid a rough one for at least one name on the board. The Numbers Food Empire fell 10 percent to $1.89 on the day, its sharpest single-session drop in a while, on volume of about 8.9 million shares. I don't have a confirmed catalyst for today's move and I'm not going to guess at one. Elsewhere, the REIT space was mixed rather than uniformly weak. Keppel DC Reit slipped 1.40 percent to $2.12 on light volume, while ManulifeReit USD moved the other way entirely, up 5.88 percent to US$0.036, the biggest percentage gainer among the more liquid names today. My Pe

Iggy's Journal: ETFs Cost 0.03%. Unit Trusts Hit You With 5% First. 21 September 2026, Afternoon I went through my own SRS lineup this week and checked the fee structure line by line, not just the headline expense ratio. What jumped out wasn't the ETF side. It was how much unit trusts are still costing people who probably don't know it. The Numbers Singapore's ETF market just crossed $20.5 billion, with CPF and SRS holdings up 380 percent. But fee compression isn't actually happening here. Banks earn 1.5 to 5 percent upfront sales charges on unit trusts, plus ongoing trailer fees worth 20 to 60 percent of the annual management fee. That structure keeps expensive unit trusts in favour, not because they perform better, but because they pay better to the people selling them. My Personal Take

Iggy's Journal: ETFs Cost 0.03%. Unit Trusts Hit You With 5% First. 21 September 2026, Afternoon I went through my own SRS lineup this week and checked the fee structure line by line, not just the headline expense ratio. What jumped out wasn't the ETF side. It was how much unit trusts are still costing people who probably don't know it. The Numbers Singapore's ETF market just crossed $20.5 billion, with CPF and SRS holdings up 380 percent. But fee compression isn't actually happening here. Banks earn 1.5 to 5 percent upfront sales charges on unit trusts, plus ongoing trailer fees worth 20 to 60 percent of the annual management fee. That structure keeps expensive unit trusts in favour, not because they perform better, but because they pay better to the people selling them. My Personal Take

Iggy's Journal: ETFs Cost 0.03%. Unit Trusts Hit You With 5% First. 21 September 2026, Afternoon I went through my own SRS lineup this week and checked the fee structure line by line, not just the headline expense ratio. What jumped out wasn't the ETF side. It was how much unit trusts are still costing people who probably don't know it. The Numbers Singapore's ETF market just crossed $20.5 billion, with CPF and SRS holdings up 380 percent. But fee compression isn't actually happening here. Banks earn 1.5 to 5 percent upfront sales charges on unit trusts, plus ongoing trailer fees worth 20 to 60 percent of the annual management fee. That structure keeps expensive unit trusts in favour, not because they perform better, but because they pay better to the people selling them. My Personal Take