When I first started this site, my intention is to go a bit advance to share Cryptocurrency as I believe in the future of Cryptocurrency and still believe so. However, after receiving questions from readers/friends etc, I realized that I should also include more basic investment stuff in my site. Hence, the most fundamental question to anyone who want to start investing is
Many people heard about investment, but they don’t know how to start. Many people heard about Cryptocurrency, but they don’t know how to start.
How to start?
Many people would outsource and go to the “Financial Advisers” for advice. In most case, most of these people are salesman. They sell you their investment link policy, endowment etc and draw charts to “projected” how much you would get in xx years should you buy their products etc. However, if you ask them further on what the investment strategy of this fund are, what shares/bonds they invest in, which sectors, which companies, do these funds hedge, are there rebalancing, I bet most of these “Financial Advisers” couldn’t answer. Hence, don’t go to them to ask about investment especially for Cryptocurrency. So how to start? Please see the steps below.
Always remember:
Step 1: Understand yourself
This is the first step regardless of what kind of investment that you wish to go in (forex, growth stocks, value stocks, ETF, dividend stocks, crypto etc). Many people tend to just go and buy without plan and thinking in advance first. Very likely this will result in losing your precious earned money sooner or later. Before you start doing any investment, the first thing is to understand yourself.
- Know your risk profile. Are you someone who can sleep well with higher riskier instrument? Can you sleep well if your portfolio drops 50%? Are you someone who prefer regular income from your investment?
- What is your objective of investment? Grow your money, finding 10x bagger? Just collect income?
- Know your end target/objective. How much do you target to achieve? This will determine the risk profile and the method to use.
Step 2: Plan your high-level portfolio management
This is call money management, knowing how to manage your own portfolio/money. First please know your own monthly/annual expenses, saving, income and how much you have available for investment from income monthly as well as lump sum currently. Amount available for investment means you won’t need it for at least 3-5 years or even better 10-20 years given that big markets cycle is typically 10 years. Please keep money for emergency funds too. After knowing your monthly cash flow and the amount you have available for investment, please plan your plan.
For example, if you have a million available and after understanding your own risk profile, you can work out a table like something below.
Step 3: Open relevant accounts
Before your can start investing, you will need to open brokerage accounts. You can consider to use my referrals below. Personally I am using all these accounts.
For Singapore shares, I would suggest you to open CDP first link to the local brokerages (example DBS Vickers, Iocbc, POEMS, Uob Kay Hian etc). Do try to keep your shares in CDP if possible so as to has less custodian risks. Typical transaction cost is about $30+ for $10k SGD worth of investment. If you want cheaper, you can consider Fundsupermart (FSM which charges about $10-14 for $10k SGD worth of investment. The shares bought will be custodian under FSM. I am using FSMOne.com to invest in funds & ETFs (including money market funds). FSM is good due to the low comms and the free transfer from FSM to CDP (typically takes less than a week to transfer). If you do not have an account, you can sign up here. Please use my FSMOne referral code: P0413007.
For foreign shares, I would suggest to open Interactive Brokers. The commission is very cheap and only cost cents to trade overseas shares and options.. Directly from the site itself, Interactive Brokers conducts its broker/dealer business on over 150 market destinations worldwide. In its broker dealer agency business, IBKR provides direct access (“on line”) trade execution and clearing services to institutional and professional traders for a wide variety of electronically traded products including stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, gold, crypto* and funds worldwide. Interactive Brokers Group and its affiliates execute over 1,968,000 trades per day.
For Cryptocurrency, you can use FTX as your centralized exchange to on/off ramp. However, please take note to put in hardware wallets (please see step 4 for guides). Another alternative which I am currently also using is Crypto.com. This is another platform that I am using the trade, on ramp, off ramp SGD to Crypto. One good point about this platform is you can do FAST transfer to and from your Singapore Banks. Use my referral link https://crypto.com/app/h92xdfarkq to sign up for Crypto.com and we both get $25 USD 🙂
Step 4: Do research
Regardless of what investment that you plan or will be doing, please don’t blindly listen to other people/gurus/crypto twitter shilling etc. Please spend time to read, research and learn and only invest in what you are comfortable in. Hours need to be spent and there is no shortcut. Even after you have invested, you should continue to read to learn about the coins, stocks etc that you are invested in. One key indication that you have done your due diligence is that you can sleep well without keep price monitoring every now and then after you have clicked the buy button.
For Cyptocurrency, you can refer the articles which I have wrote previously to learn more.
- Newbie starter guide for Cryptocurrency
- List of useful sites in Crypto such as Coingecko
- Risks and managing risks in DeFi
- Type of Crypto Coins
- De-mystifying terminologies in Crypto
- Don’t be fooled by APY/APR
- Investment using Metaphyiscs
- Achieving Financial Freedom FIRE In CRYPTO!
- What is Bitcoin Dominance
- Shark monitoring in Crypto
- Index Investing in Crypto
- For crypto you should use hard wallet if possible. You can refer to Guide to create Metamask wallet and Guide to understanding and managing Ledger/Crypto wallets
- Regression analysis in Crypto – example BTC and ETH
- Learn how to win in sideway or downtrend market
- Guide – How to send your precious Bitcoin to Ledger
- how-to-buy-real-physical-gold-in-the-cryptocurrency-world-using-paxg/
- Guide – How to send ONE from Metamask to Harmony ONE wallet or CEX which only show ONE address
- Future of Cryptocurrency – SBT!
- Crypto: Sick of Rug-pull by CEX?
- Free Money in Crypto – Airdrops
Step 5: Wait for the best opportunity to strike
Gut and patience to buy
Always have a plan (see sample below for a Singapore Stock Investor). After which think of what to do should the opportunity really arrive so that you will not panic when it come. You will need both Gut and Patience after planning. Don’t always think to buy at the absolute bottom, good price can just buy. We are plan for good price but can’t always buy at the absolute bottom.
Sell
Most often, the most difficult button to click is sell. What if you click sell and price goes up further? Remorse? No, you shouldn’t. You have already earned. What if it is the opposite case? You can’t predict exactly predict the market. For those who invest for years, buy and sell is always easier than buy and hold. Additionally it take real patience to wait for the best time to strike.
Doing nothing is the most difficult part of investment. There is always an urge to do some buy/sell/trading.
Personally I am holding some cash and waiting now. You can refer to my updates here. However, please do your own due diligence, don’t just blindly follow me. I could be wrong. Remember that your money your investment is your own responsibilities. I am just sharing that I am doing now.
See quotes from the famous investors below:
Step 6: Track your progress for MANY years and review regularly
After you buy/sell/invest for a few days/few months, always track your own progress. You can use the calculators/charts given by the brokerages to monitor you return or simply use XIRR function in excel to do so. Continue to track and track for many years, take note of your mistakes, take note of your own risk profile, take note of what kind/which investment make you can’t sleep well and of course those that make you sleep well. Then review and improve. Always aim to win your past self.
Additionally, please remember to read widely and learn more everyday from anyone around the globe. This will let you see your blind spots and make you a better investor.
Lastly..don’t forget
Life is not just about money. Money is just a means to your life.
No one CaRe about Your PresenT more than yourself. Please take regular breaks and care for your own life.
Good articles that you should read!
People are drawn to dividend investing.
Why? Firstly, dividends provide a regular stream of income, allowing investors to receive a portion of the company’s profits on a periodic basis. This can be particularly attractive for individuals seeking consistent cash flow or looking to supplement their existing income. Additionally, dividend investing is often viewed as a more stable and predictable investment strategy compared to relying solely on capital appreciation.
I always write and share articles, especially on dividends which many people love them. Do read them!
- Simplified Guide to the Key Gist of Grant of Probate and Estate Planning
- Cheapest and best way to trade Singapore Stocks with CDP
- Mastering Dividend Investing: 5 Evergreen Investment Principles
- Unlock Lucrative Returns with IAPD: A High-Yield ETF Providing 7% Annual Yield and Quarterly Payouts
- Unlock Lucrative Returns with SDIV: A High-Yield ETF Providing 11% Annual Yield and Monthly Payouts
- If I am a dividend investor, this is what I would do….
- 7 Things to consider before buy a dividend stock
- 4 Dividend ETFs that can let you sleep well even in the scary bear market
- 5 Best Counters for Passive Dividend Investing
- The Three MOST Important Traits of an Investor
- What is the best investment strategy in the world?
- Ultimate Strategy of buying REITS: XXX instead of X000?
- Ultimate Free 2 Days Reit MasterClass: Exclusive at Careyourpresent.com only!
Alternatively, you can go the right side of my page, there is a search bar where you can simply search “dividend” to see all my articles related to dividends!
Of course, you can search for other things that would interest you such as “Careyourpresent”, “Reits”, “Side Hustles”, “Fixed Incomes”, “Savings” etc.
CAREYOURPRESENT
Money just buy you the chance of freedom.
When you are young and working, you exchange time for money. When you are old, you can have lots of money but you can’t buy time back, especially the things that you have missed while busying striking out in career. Of course, if you love your career, and consciously know that you are missing out the first time your child walk or talk, that’s ok, but if you are the other spectrum, please do something about it.
Your kids grew up and they no longer need you to accompany them. They no longer want to sit on your lap to share/do things with you…all these time you spent in your 9 to 6 or even longer cubicles…can the money that you have earned by you back these?
We always thought we have more time with our old parents, but we are wrong. Time with them is ticking away every day. One day it will suddenly be gone. There is no regret medicine, no reset in time. Gone is gone and cannot come back. No matter you are billionaires or millionaires, you cannot reset this.
We always thought that we have more time with our spouse every day, but we are wrong. One day they will be gone too. When you read this, please go tell your spouse that you love him/her and he or she is the best thing that you ever had in your life.
I have picked out some of the more life reflecting articles of the CAREYOURPRESENT series. Do read them:
- The Best Advice to Parents and Child
- What if Later never come?
- What will you bring with you on your last day on Earth?
- Time is the ultimate currency, not money
- Our Life only have 5 short Days – we should live the best for every day
- Truly understand Living in the Moment now
- 11 Important Unexpected Life and Money lessons to learn from Your Children
- The days are long but the years are short
- Ditch your mobile phone to build real life
- Careyourpresent: Time is the most important
- Careyourpresent: What is your purpose of life?
- Careyourpresent : Greatest Regrets in life
- Careyourpresent : You might not believe it. It’s little unexpected things that make up a real life
- Careyourpresent: Something only happen once in life, if you missed it, it’s gone forever…
- Careyourpresent : Why is Gold useful?
- Careyourpresent: Frozen. Let it go!
You can read more about my articles on Careyourpresent via the Category “Careyourpresent” or simply click “Careyourpresent” via the main menu bar.
REMEMBER:
Love your life daily.
You have one less day with your spouse, parents, children and yourself.
Time is ticking away.
For each passing day,
Enjoy and Treasure your Life!
For those who are interested in regular updates of my articles, please join the others to sign up for my free newsletter to has my newest blogposts sent to your mailbox for free!
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You may also contact me via [email protected].
If you’re looking referral codes, do check out my referral and ebook page. Give it a try and who knows? You might end up loving these platforms! To be absolutely fair to all the readers, I am definitely using all these companies and they are useful to me! Likely will be useful to you too!
At the same referral and ebook page, you can also download my free ebooks and other free resources.
For quick references to these resources, you can see below.
- Ebooks and other useful resources on enhancing productivity (Investment, Excel, Notion etc). Currently most of it are free at this moment (subject to change).
- WeBull: A powerful brokerage with nice free welcome gift. You can refer to my guide here on how to signup! 4 Simple step only! Click here to register a new account!
- MoneyOwl: You can use this 6SHU-93MC to get free grab vouchers and highly safe liquid cash fund account.
- Trust Bank – You will enjoy free FairPrice E-Voucher referral if you sign up via my referral code KNDBPEPT. Simply download the Trust Bank SG App on the App Store or Google Play Store. Tap on “Use referral code” immediately after you start the app and key in: KNDBPEPT
- FSMOne: P0413007. Good account to keep liquid cash in autosweep and to purchase investment at low fee.
- Hostinger: You can use this link for hosting your new website. 20% off hosting!
- Crypto.com: Use my referral link https://crypto.com/app/h92xdfarkq to sign up for Crypto.com and we both get $25 USD 🙂