UOL paid S$508 psf for Dakota Crescent and Chestnut Avenue Sites

There are 13 bids for the Dakota Cresent land! (Its not a freehold land, but just a 99 years one)
And below is the respective bids and how many times over the minimum bid of $201

The winning bid by UOL, paid around 2.5 times of the minimum bid!

There are also 7 developers bidding more than 2 times of the minimum bid!

This tells a lot of the property expectation in the next few years. If you think about it, these land developers will not pay such a high premium of the land, unless they are quite confident that the prices of property will go up. It is possible for 1 developer to make a bad prediction of property prices, but more than 7? I don't think so.

In addition, in the report where I got this information from (DMG & Partners), it is said that, UOL will need a break even selling price of $910. Which is very high! ( I would think this is near freehold price ranges)

So now might actually be a good time to invest in property. Considering that the SIBOR rates are really low now, getting a housing loan that is peg to the SIBOR rate, would mean paying lower interest for the house. Given the 'prediction' by these developers, it might not be a bad idea.

HOWEVER, this is not an inducement to start going out to buy houses. Invest within your means! ( Remember that things can go wrong, and you might be stuck with a monthly loan that you cannot service and thus be forced to sell the house, at a price that might be below the initial price that you bought!)

But I would think, if you intend to buy a property to live in, now much actually be a better time to buy one, than say 3 years time!

Citibank's 'Trust and will' Talk

I just attended a Citibank's Trust and Will talk today at Oriental Mandarin today.

Here is a link to my previous blog post on writing Wills and Trusts.

Basically here is parts of the talk that I found useful and interesting.

1. Private Investment Companies (PLC)

To protect your overseas assets from estate taxes ( taxes that have to paid after you passed away, before they can be transferred to your beneficiaries) , you can make of of PLC. Essentially, these are corporation that helps to hold your assets overseas, but the asset still belongs to you.

Hence legally, when you pass away, all the PLC have to do is to transfer your overseas assets to your beneficiaries.

This is because, in the eyes of the law of that particular county, the owner of the asset, which is the PLC, is not dead! However, such PLCs have to be housed in countries that have no estate taxes, for example Singapore.

2. Universal Life
It is similar to long term structured deposit in my point of view.

What it does is :

• You pay a premium, can be a lump sum or monthly install, or just the interest
• When you pass away, you beneficiaries get a big sum of $$.

Here is an illustration. For example, at 60 years old you will have an rough gearing of 2.
This means that, say you put $100,000 in this universal account. When you pass away, your beneficiaries get $200,000.

Of course when you put in younger, say 30, your gearing is much higher, might even be in the order of 10. Meaning you put in $100,000 and your beneficiaries get $1 million!

As for the payment method of this 'policy', here are the 3 ways (given a scenario of an 'investment' of $100,00)

• Lump sum ($100,000)
  
• Monthly over say 10 months ($10,000 per mth)
• Interest (But you have to pay part of the 'investment' . So it could be a down payment of $30,000. As for the remaining $70,000, you can just pay 3% worth of interest per year. However when you pass away, and your beneficiaries get the money, this reamining $70,000 have to be deducted and be paid back to the bank)

Hope this is useful for people who would like to write a will.

The part on PLC will be particularly useful for people with lost of foreign assets!

Performance report of the world stock market

Just to keep things in perspective, here is the list of stock market indices and their returns so far. STI is one of the best performers!

Click on the picture below to enlarge


*Credit given to Citibank

Phllip Captital Market Watch

Here's a summary of the video:

• Sep/Oct Typically bad months for stock market
• Stock market now is bullish, though the economy is bearish
• Economic indicators are bad
• In fact, investors are 'brainwashed' to think that the economy is better
• This is shown by the lower percentage of cashing holding among people => people are investing more now
• Oct typical has the largest one day drop in history. Eg. Black Monday in 1929 and 1987. Also, in 2008, Dow Jones and S&P drop 7% in day!
• Invest in gold for now, if you are conservative

My view:
Personally I have invested in the STI ETF, and judging from the charts, the STI is facing a resistance now( from the Fibonacci retracement). I have initially decided to do dollar cost averaging on this stock, however if this resistance proves to bee too tough to break, I intend sell the stock, and buy back when the market corrects.

First Trade, STI ETF

Finally made my first trade, bought 3 lots of STI ETF @ $2.64

Bought based on momentum crossover, though the Fibonacci retracement condition is not satisfied yet.

Citibank and Barclays

I had two recruitment talks in NTU in the last week from Citibank and Barclays. Nothing personal about the reviews that I will be doing here, but just an opinion of mine.

Citibank
It was well run, they have very good speakers who shared their working experiences with the audience. The impression I get is that Citibank have very committed and talented people who goes all out to get the job done. They have very good senior management who in turn help to develop very capable future management.

Even during the networking sessions, one of the managers even gave me and my friends his name card and told us to refer any one that we know who are looking for jobs. They are actively doing their jobs! Going the extra mile!

Barclays
Speakers weren't as good and the people do not really know much about what other people in company are doing. Moreover, I feel that they are not as professional when it comes to giving a recruitment talk. However this does not reflect the capability of the company.

I heard that people in this company work very hard, and although its a tough company to work in, if you like challenges, this is the place to be. Also, after talking to a trader from Barclays, it seems that the job is something I might want to do.

Updated FD rates

Rates are really low now. The best I feel is by CIMB bank.

For more details click here