Joshua Giersch, better known as “Shiny Things”, is an investment guru who has been generously giving investing advice on HardwareZone and his blog. His advice are consistently dished out with the SG context in mind, and his book “Rich by Retirement: How Singaporeans Can Invest Smart and Retire Wealthy”, is, in essence, the consolidation of all of his tips and hacks on being a successful investor in SG.

The most interesting component of his philosophy is his very simple portfolio strategy. Whether it is too simple for your liking is for you to decide, and in this post I will summarize, from my perspective, the key points in his book. Enjoy.

Emergency fund

• Keep an emergency fund with 6 months worth of expense

Insurance

• Get hospitalization plan (paid in part using Medisave), and term life if you have dependents
• All other forms of insurance are neither necessary nor worthwhile
• Especially avoid ILPs and endowments

Brokerage accounts

• Only pay <= 0.2% for trading SG stocks, <= 0.3% for US/UK stocks; UTs/ETFs with <= 0.5% expense ratio are ok
• Anything beyond these percentages are not acceptable
• Ideally regulated in SG or US
• No custody or dividend handling fees
• Recommended: SCB, Interactive Brokers
• Exception to the <= 0.2% recommendation: POSB Invest-Saver, because of the lack of min amount per txn. Good for small investors who are just starting out

Asset class allocation

• Stocks: 110 – current age; bonds: the rest
• For stocks, 50:50 on SG and int’l
• For bonds, only SG

Exchange traded funds

• ETFs are great because of the instant diversification. The ideal ETF would be one with <= 0.3% expense ratio, > 100mil in assets, and is a physical ETF

The Shiny Things 3-ETF portfolio

• IWDA.LN (iShares Core MSCI World UCITS ETF – for Int’l exposure)
• ES3.SI (SPDR Straits Times Index ETF – for SG exposure)
• A35.SI (ABF Singapore Bond Index Fund – for SG bonds)

CPF/SRS

• Keep CPF in cash, don’t buy any counters
• Consider using SRS top-ups for tax breaks; can use SRS to buy ES3 (use OCBC BCIP – though A35 is not available)

Dollar cost averaging

• Don’t time the market – “time in market” > “time the market”
• POSB Invest-Saver is great for DCA

Portfolio rebalancing

• Only rebalance in May and Nov every year

Simple enough? Pick up his book from Amazon or NLB (I had to make a reservation – $1.55 reservation fee) and you will be able to understand his justifications for each of these pointers.