Usually important headlines and events are delivered straight to your phone’s notification centre — urging you to click on them to read more. But the media, no matter how learned and talented, is not always right, nor has it the ability to definitively predict the future.

Human beings are wired to have emotions — but relying on them to guide decisions may not always pan out. Here are some steps you can take to help you set your emotions aside and build confidence in your investing approach, no matter how the markets are doing.

It seems like every month, the financial industry churns out an endless array of fresh investment options. Amidst the multitude of products, the choices can seem overwhelming. Fortunately, there is a simple process of evaluating their merits, even if the themes or names of these products change.

The stock market has seen its worst start in 50 years — people are asking: Are there more declines coming? What about recession? When’s the best time to invest? Perhaps past events can provide some perspective.

Barely two years out of the pandemic recession, we are met with negative market returns and an aggressive interest rate hiking plan by the US Federal Reserve. Knowing how markets work during these circumstances can provide some perspective and allow you to make the right decisions for your portfolio.

When markets go up, many investors always claim that they can stomach volatility. After all, volatility that pushes the prices of assets upwards is always welcomed. Only when we experience downward volatility, our true investment stomach is revealed!

Many investors may feel uneasy over news that the US is currently in a bear market, but what exactly is a bear market? What does that mean for your goals and dreams? Is it a signal to sell or buy? The uncertainty and the weight of not knowing what to expect is very often too much for many investors to bear.

In April 2022, Singapore’s core inflation rate reached new heights — the highest it's been in a decade — with this in mind, sometimes playing it too safe in your investments can be a risk in itself.

Sometimes past success from the concentrated investing in well-known companies discourage investors from diversifying their assets. Unfortunately, this can lead to one of the most well-known cautionary tales in finance:
Tragic declines in wealth resulting from losses in single securities.

How should investors react to market declines? Should they prevent losses by selling or buy more stocks at a favourable discount? Even then, when is the best time to do so?

You’ve done everything right: You’ve set a long investment horizon to ensure positive returns, and reduced your equity allocation to make room for bonds to absorb shocks in the market. So what should one do when the invested assets suddenly don’t seem to behave anymore?

In early April, investment strategists and the financial media were buzzing with what they determined to be a recession signal. In this data-rich world, we find ourselves asking, this yield-curve-inversion, is it important?

With greater access to technology equipping yourself with a few apps, real-time news, and data feeds can make you feel like a pro-trader. Does keeping up to date with everything that’s happening around the world give you an edge in investing?

Volatility and downturns are part and parcel of investing, and it happens more often than you think. As long as you are holding a diversified global portfolio, staying put throughout the turbulence would have given you a long-term return over 7% in SGD terms.

When the US Federal Reserve committed to raise interest rates in the face of rising inflation, investors and financial media like Bloomberg, Morningstar, and Yahoo Finance were quick to predict that bonds will underperform cash. Looking at over 30 years of International Government Bond data, we examine the validity of these forecasts.

Uncertainty is built into our world. How should we approach the idea of the unexpected when looking at the financial markets and its expected return?

National debt is rising everywhere around the world with the US sitting at the top at $22 trillion dollars (at end 2020). However, in terms of debt to GDP ratios, it is not the most indebted country in the world.

Volatility is back in the markets after one and a half years of relatively smooth sailing and rising asset prices. But just how common are market declines and what do they mean for annual returns?