A savvy saver in his thirties

I was having lunch with a friend last week and we were talking about how difficult it is now to find value stock when STI is near to all time high and US market has been breaking new high. Both of us agree that this is probably not the good time to be aggressive. He shared that recently he has become more conservative, and increasing his cash holding so that he will be able to tap on in the near future when better opportunities present themselves. 

Source: UOB

Just recently, he went to UOB, a local Singapore bank, and placed $100K of fixed deposit(FD) with them. The conversation stopped here and I also stopped eating literally, He is in his late-thirties and he has managed to save more than $100K, I think this is a commendable achievement. He noticed the surprised look on my face, and I then asked how did he manage to do it. 

Maximum Pessimism - GOLD

People has a love and hate relationship with this piece of metal, and yes, I am talking about Gold. Just not too long ago, many people love IT and were chasing to high of above $1800. Now, if you asked these people again, they have all shunned the metal as it has corrected much since 2013. But then again, most of the old folks prefer to keep this precious metal, my grandma was one of them. When she was alive, she always said that Gold is very good to use during war.

What are you doing with your OCBC rights

In the past few weeks, the news about OCBC rights issue has been most discussed in social media. By now, whether or not you are existing shareholder, you would have heard about the bank giving the shareholders to own rights share at $7.65 each.

If you have been following my blog, you know that in May I have written about this bank. You can still read it from here. I was at the bank this morning as I was having problem with my ATM access. The bank was particularly crowded as it was weekend and also maybe lots of people were there for the rights issue. While waiting for the staff to help me, I overheard people enquiring about the rights shares. I dont mean to eavesdrop but you can just hear people talking in the closed environment. One nice thing about this bank is that they always have few of their staffs walking around in the waiting area offering help. Interestingly over the span of 15mins, this is what some of these people asked the staffs who were there in many to help. 

1. One lady was asking the staff, how many rights shares she can apply. This is amazing, didnt she received the letter.
2. Another lady was asking how many excess of the rights shares can she apply. And when she tried to apply, she realised she does not have enough cash in her bank account.
3. On seeing the long queue, an old lady asked when is the closing date for the application.

Although this is just observation at one of the branch, I believed this is the same phenomena across all other branches, as many shareholders are interested and will be applying the rights shares. As such, the probability of getting the excess shares will be low. 

Have you applied for yours?