Passive Loss

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 ...

Everyone and their grandma is talking about an imminent economic recession right now, and it does seem  frightening . Even as I write this, I can just  feel  my entrails shivering in a cold sweat. Jokes aside, it would be wise of us to not take everything at face value when we read articles or opinion pieces on the Internet. Yes, we've all seen those sensational headlines that warrant some concern, such as the recent  tech sector layoffs  or Prime Minister Lawrence Wong warning that there is a multitude of potential uncertainties faced by the economy in his  Singapore Budget 2023  speech. In this article, I'll be tackling the big questions that are on everybody's mind: Are we seriously heading into an economic recession? Or can everybody's concerns be dismissed as overblown pessimism?  Source: iStock Firstly, I just want to point out there's actually no consensus on what constitutes a recession. Yes, that recession definition of having two or more...