Sunday, November 19, 2017

Some Corporate Bonds and their Yield to Maturity

To me, investing in corporate bonds is easier than investing in equities, because all one needs to care about is not whether the company makes more and more money in the future, but whether the company can make enough money to survive the holding period of the bond. 
However, needing to fork out generally $250k a unit ( except retail ones) adds to the risk. Given that there is little capital appreciation, the greediness to leverage looms large. I really need to give myself a slap in the face if i ever think about it and thank God, i have not levered ...yet.
The fall of Swiber, Marco Polo, krisenergy is a lesson for bondholders. Other than just simply looking at pure numbers, it is imperative to know what kind of assets a company holds. A company holding computers as assets does not give one peace of mind. 
Perpertual securities and preference shares are a very tricky lot and they must be adjusted for by deducting them from equity and adding to liability in the balance sheet.
From the table, generally, the higher the liabilities/equity, the greater the yield to maturity (ytm). The further the maturity of the bond, the greater the yield to maturity.
Heeton seems very "value" from the perspective of it having a lower liabilities/equity than Tuan Sing, Oxley and Aspial but commanding a higher ytm.
(ytm taken from bondsupermart. liabilities/equity taken from financial statements.)

Wednesday, October 25, 2017

Committing Financial Harakiri and the ICBC Travel Mastercard

I will be going overseas to splurge on luxury watches (looking for Pateks and Audemars Piguet) hence committing financial harakiri. Sweat.... Actually, its a gift to people special so damn it, better make it bang for the buck. Save on the taxes. I can't possibly be carrying more than ten thousands of cash overseas. Fortunately, a special shoutout to a forumner called BBCwatcher who alerted the public on the ICBC Travel Mastercard. No link nor picture, as i am not advertising for them nor paid by them.

My motive of this post is for constructive feedback in case i did my calculations improperly or for any alerts if there is a better card out there for overseas foreign transaction because every cent counts.

The ICBC Travel Mastercard has a bank fee of 2.5% and an unlimited cashback of 3% on foreign transactions.

I used the following 2 websites.
1) The official Mastercard website that lists the indicative forex rates. We can input the bank fee which i inputted as 2.5%.
2) A money exchange website that lists the exchange rates that one can find in Singapore ( i am not being paid so no link).
Official Mastercard Website
Money exchange website
Nett cashbacks for transactions in stated currencies after bank fees 
(done on 25/10/2018 11.10am)
YEN = 0.41%
USD = 0.53%
AUD = 0.22%
MYR = 0.43%
NZD = 0.74%
EUR = 0.46%
KRW = 1.4%

The KRW and NZD are aberrations. I will need to observe them again as what Mastercard does is to convert foreign currencies to USD before converting to SGD. Since all foreign currencies have to be converted to USD first before being converted to SGD, it is unlikely that the nett cashback on any foreign currency to be higher than the nett cashback on USD. Perhaps the money exchange website isn't showing correctly for these rates.