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What You Need to Know About Bonds!

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Lately, I've received some questions regarding finance from some close friends that got me thinking, with one of them revolving around  bonds  which you also may know as " Fixed Income ". Prior to this, I'll be the first to admit that I always thought of bonds as rather boring; I had this preconceived notion that bonds were simply less volatile with less reward compared to equities, which I've come to realise isn't necessarily true. With this article, I hope to present the compiled information I've managed to gather about bonds in an easy-to-understand way!  Firstly, what exactly  are  bonds?  Go easy on the design critique, please. Bonds are a financial instrument that represents a loan made by a creditor to a debtor. Most bonds have a specified maturity, which is when the  principa l (The Original) amount gets repaid from the date when it was issued, typically paying out  coupons  (Interest Payments) semi-annually to bondholders.  For example, let's

Has United Hampshire US REIT Done Well In FY2022?

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 It's been a while since I wrote my initial investment thesis on UHREIT, and I think it's about time that I reviewed their recent FY2022 performance and see if it still falls in line with my original idea, albeit I do admit that I'm quite late to the party. Nevertheless, let us delve deep and see how did UHREIT perform! Brief Overview of FY2022 Income Sheet: Source: SGX UHREIT Announcements For simplicity's sake, we will be comparing the financial performance of the REIT on a YoY basis. At a glance, it seems like property expenses have outpaced gross revenue percentage-wise with a 26.4% increase as opposed to 22.2%. Nevertheless, Net Property Income still increased a significant 12.2%, with adjusted distribution per unit (DPU) increasing from 5.35 US cents to 5.85 US cents. You may be wondering why is there a section regarding DPU with Top-Ups and Stipulated Damages. This is due to the absence of income support for UHREIT's Self Storage properties, coupled with the

Silicon Valley Bank Deposit Guarantee & Ramifications

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 I'm sure we've all recently seen the myriad of news article headlines highlighting the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) Collapse  that arisen from a bank run, with many people drawing comparison between it and the 2008 Lehman Brother's collapse. Additionally, if you're into Cryptocurrency, I'm sure you've realised the sharp drop of the crypto market recently, along with USDC (Celsius) losing its peg, which is rather natural given the fact that it has a large amount of collateral with SVB.  Source: RTE News In this short article, I'm not here to explain what happened that led to the collapse, since many articles have already done a great job of that. Instead, I'm here to discuss the potential ramifications regarding the recent  unprecedented move  by the US Government that ensures all deposits in SVB would be guaranteed by Monday, which is today.  The reason why it's unprecedented is the fact that the guarantee includes deposits over $250,000 in US Dollars