Iggy's Journal: ETFs Cost 0.03%. Unit Trusts Hit You With 5% First. 21 September 2026, Afternoon I went through my own SRS lineup this week and checked the fee structure line by line, not just the headline expense ratio. What jumped out wasn't the ETF side. It was how much unit trusts are still costing people who probably don't know it. The Numbers Singapore's ETF market just crossed $20.5 billion, with CPF and SRS holdings up 380 percent. But fee compression isn't actually happening here. Banks earn 1.5 to 5 percent upfront sales charges on unit trusts, plus ongoing trailer fees worth 20 to 60 percent of the annual management fee. That structure keeps expensive unit trusts in favour, not because they perform better, but because they pay better to the people selling them. My Personal Take

Iggy's Journal: Growing Faster, Bleeding Less, Still Not Paying You 19 September 2026, Evening Video Release Grab shares are sitting near a 52 week low. I pulled the actual Q2 2026 numbers before writing anything, and the share price wasn't what jumped out at me. The Numbers Financial Services revenue grew 59 percent to US$134 million, while the segment's EBITDA loss narrowed to US$15 million. That's growth with less bleeding, not profitability, and those are two very different things to be excited about. The Atome deal can't even consolidate into results until Q3 2027 at the earliest, so whatever story you're telling yourself about that acquisition today is getting ahead of the actual accounting. My Personal Take If you're holding Grab inside CPF or SRS, I want to be direct about what thi

Iggy's Journal: Growing Faster, Bleeding Less, Still Not Paying You 19 September 2026, Evening Video Release Grab shares are sitting near a 52 week low. I pulled the actual Q2 2026 numbers before writing anything, and the share price wasn't what jumped out at me. The Numbers Financial Services revenue grew 59 percent to US$134 million, while the segment's EBITDA loss narrowed to US$15 million. That's growth with less bleeding, not profitability, and those are two very different things to be excited about. The Atome deal can't even consolidate into results until Q3 2027 at the earliest, so whatever story you're telling yourself about that acquisition today is getting ahead of the actual accounting. My Personal Take If you're holding Grab inside CPF or SRS, I want to be direct about what thi

Iggy's Journal: Growing Faster, Bleeding Less, Still Not Paying You 19 September 2026, Evening Video Release Grab shares are sitting near a 52 week low. I pulled the actual Q2 2026 numbers before writing anything, and the share price wasn't what jumped out at me. The Numbers Financial Services revenue grew 59 percent to US$134 million, while the segment's EBITDA loss narrowed to US$15 million. That's growth with less bleeding, not profitability, and those are two very different things to be excited about. The Atome deal can't even consolidate into results until Q3 2027 at the earliest, so whatever story you're telling yourself about that acquisition today is getting ahead of the actual accounting. My Personal Take If you're holding Grab inside CPF or SRS, I want to be direct about what thi

Iggy's Journal: Growing Faster, Bleeding Less, Still Not Paying You 19 September 2026, Evening Video Release Grab shares are sitting near a 52 week low. I pulled the actual Q2 2026 numbers before writing anything, and the share price wasn't what jumped out at me. The Numbers Financial Services revenue grew 59 percent to US$134 million, while the segment's EBITDA loss narrowed to US$15 million. That's growth with less bleeding, not profitability, and those are two very different things to be excited about. The Atome deal can't even consolidate into results until Q3 2027 at the earliest, so whatever story you're telling yourself about that acquisition today is getting ahead of the actual accounting. My Personal Take If you're holding Grab inside CPF or SRS, I want to be direct about what thi

Iggy's Journal: Growing Faster, Bleeding Less, Still Not Paying You 19 September 2026, Evening Video Release Grab shares are sitting near a 52 week low. I pulled the actual Q2 2026 numbers before writing anything, and the share price wasn't what jumped out at me. The Numbers Financial Services revenue grew 59 percent to US$134 million, while the segment's EBITDA loss narrowed to US$15 million. That's growth with less bleeding, not profitability, and those are two very different things to be excited about. The Atome deal can't even consolidate into results until Q3 2027 at the earliest, so whatever story you're telling yourself about that acquisition today is getting ahead of the actual accounting. My Personal Take If you're holding Grab inside CPF or SRS, I want to be direct about what thi

Iggy's Journal: Growing Faster, Bleeding Less, Still Not Paying You 19 September 2026, Evening Video Release Grab shares are sitting near a 52 week low. I pulled the actual Q2 2026 numbers before writing anything, and the share price wasn't what jumped out at me. The Numbers Financial Services revenue grew 59 percent to US$134 million, while the segment's EBITDA loss narrowed to US$15 million. That's growth with less bleeding, not profitability, and those are two very different things to be excited about. The Atome deal can't even consolidate into results until Q3 2027 at the earliest, so whatever story you're telling yourself about that acquisition today is getting ahead of the actual accounting. My Personal Take If you're holding Grab inside CPF or SRS, I want to be direct about what thi

Iggy's Journal: The Currency That Didn't Get the Oil Shock Memo 19 September 2026, Afternoon Podcast Release Everyone assumes US$100 oil and a 5 percent US 10 year yield should hammer every regional currency equally. The Singdollar just hit a 10 month high against the ringgit instead. The Numbers Singapore isn't reacting like a typical emerging market to this shock. Durable balance of payments surpluses, strong FDI inflows, and MAS's own July tightening are pulling in safe haven money while neighbouring currencies absorb the pain the oil shock is supposed to spread evenly. My Personal Take This cuts both ways depending on what's actually sitting in your portfolio, and I think most people haven't checked which side they're on. A stronger Singdollar means cheaper imports and helps any REIT c

Iggy's Journal: The Bank Everyone Says Wins, and the Yield That Says Not Yet 19 September 2026, Morning Video Release Everyone read this week's Fed hike as good news for UOB. The structural case actually holds up, 43 percent of its loan book sits in Singapore dollars against 37 to 38 percent for DBS and OCBC. But here's what doesn't fit the celebration: UOB's yield gap to my hurdle widened this week, it didn't narrow. The Numbers UOB's trailing yield sits at 3.80 percent against my 4.7 percent hurdle, a 90 basis point miss that's actually 9 points wider than it was three weeks ago. The market had already priced in UOB's structural advantage before the Fed even opened its mouth, which is exactly why the payout hasn't caught up to the good news yet. The margin benefit Macquarie is modelling

Iggy's Journal: A Quick Change to How Videos Come Out 19 September, AM Programme Note Starting with Episode 1824 - UOB Has the Most to Gain From the Fed's Return to Rate Hikes, the YouTube video for each long form piece goes up the same day as the Substack article instead of a week later. If you're on the free side, your video will now play up to the same point where the Substack article's free section stops, then end there, rather than staying members only for a week and then opening up in full. If you're on YouTube Edge (S$5) or Ultimate Value Pass (S$12), nothing changes for you beyond timing: you still get the full forensic video. Find it in the new Members Edition playlist. If you're on Substack Deep-Dive (US$8), that tier covers the full written analysis, not video. The free video wi

Iggy's Journal: Same Overseas Exposure, Very Different Damage 18 September 2026, Evening Video Release I used to treat "overseas exposure" as the warning label on a REIT. I don't think that's the sharp question anymore. The sharper one is which overseas bond market is actually setting the discount rate on those overseas properties, because three REITs with foreign exposure just got treated nothing alike. The Numbers Mapletree Pan Asia Commercial Trust took only a 2.3 percent cut, landing at S$1.71. CapitaLand Ascott Trust and Frasers Logistics and Commercial Trust weren't nearly as fortunate, down 27.5 percent and 27.8 percent respectively. All three REITs hold property outside Singapore. The gap between a 2.3 percent hit and a 27.8 percent one isn't explained by overseas exposure alone. W

Iggy's Journal: The Fed Hiked. Singapore Hasn't Felt It Yet. 18 September 2026, Afternoon Podcast Release Everyone's reading this week's Fed hike as a US story. It isn't, not entirely. The part that actually matters to you sits three steps downstream, in the way SORA tracks global funding costs with a lag. The pressure from a 10 year Treasury yield above 5 percent for the first time since 2007 hasn't even fully reached Singapore's shores yet. The Numbers UOB Kay Hian downgraded DBS to Sell this week on the back of the oil shock story. The rating is the headline, the balance sheet underneath it is more complicated. DBS's net interest margin eased to 1.87 percent from 1.89 percent, a small move in the wrong direction. But NPL stayed flat at 1 percent and CET1 held at 16.6 percent. That combi

Iggy's Journal: The Dividend Raise Everyone's Celebrating, and the Line Nobody's Reading 17 September 2026, Morning Video Release Venture just raised its dividend by 20 percent. That's the headline everyone's clapping for. The number that actually matters is sitting three lines below it in the cash flow statement, and it tells a different story. The Numbers Operating profit before working capital changes came in at S$154.0 million, a healthy figure on its own. What actually reached the bank was S$12.9 million, a tenth of that. The company points to an inventory build behind the growth, and that's plausible, but it means this half's dividend wasn't funded by cash this half actually earned. At S$16.67, the 80 cent trailing dividend works out to a 4.80 percent yield, clearing my 4.7 percent h

Iggy's Journal: UOB Called REITs Calm. One REIT's Gearing Says Otherwise. 17 Sep AM (for you) 16 Sep PM (for me) Podcast Release Same broker note, same day, two very different calls. UOB Kay Hian downgraded DBS to Sell and OCBC to Hold on an oil shock, then turned around and called S-REITs an oasis of calm. That phrase is doing a lot of work, so I went and checked one REIT's actual numbers instead of taking the label at face value. The Numbers Boustead REIT is where the calm-versus-scared framing gets tested. Gearing sits at 36.4 percent, a real miss against my own 35 percent threshold. But interest coverage comes in at 5 times against my 4 times floor, comfortably offsetting the gearing miss rather than compounding it. Occupancy is strong at 98.1 percent with a 5.4 year lease runway, and

Iggy's Journal: Three Fair Value Numbers For One Stock, And I'm Not Picking A Winner 16 September 2026, PM Podcast Release New podcast's up today on UOB, and this one's less about the stock and more about a problem I ran into while trying to answer a simple question. Same stock, same day, same public data, and one data provider's own two models can't agree with each other. Analyst consensus sits near $42.98. That same provider's internal fair value model comes out at $36.37, below where UOB is actually trading. Two numbers from one source, supposedly measuring the same thing, landing on opposite conclusions. I'm not issuing a zone verdict on this one. Not because I couldn't pick a number and move on, but because the sources themselves disagree, and manufacturing certainty where the data ha

Iggy's Journal: The Best Yield In Singapore Isn't On Any Exchange 14 September 2026, PM Podcast Release New podcast's up today on the number I measure almost everything else against, and it's not a stock. CPF Special Account pays 4.0% a year, guaranteed, and it doesn't move when the Fed does something or oil spikes past US$100. That single guaranteed number is the reason my forensic floor sits at 3.2% and my real hurdle sits at 4.7%. Most dividend names and REITs never actually clear that 4.7% bar, and yet they still get called good yields by people who never ran the comparison. The uncomfortable question this episode sits with, if a REIT is yielding 3.8% and carrying real equity risk on top of that, what exactly is it beating. Not the risk free rate on paper, the actual guaranteed rate ma

Iggy's Journal: The Best Yield In Singapore Isn't On Any Exchange 14 September 2026, PM Podcast Release New podcast's up today on the number I measure almost everything else against, and it's not a stock. CPF Special Account pays 4.0% a year, guaranteed, and it doesn't move when the Fed does something or oil spikes past US$100. That single guaranteed number is the reason my forensic floor sits at 3.2% and my real hurdle sits at 4.7%. Most dividend names and REITs never actually clear that 4.7% bar, and yet they still get called good yields by people who never ran the comparison. The uncomfortable question this episode sits with, if a REIT is yielding 3.8% and carrying real equity risk on top of that, what exactly is it beating. Not the risk free rate on paper, the actual guaranteed rate ma

Iggy's Journal: A S$1.39 Billion Deal That Fixes Almost Nothing 13 September 2026, PM Video Release New video's up on Keppel DC REIT, and this one's worth reading past the headline. A S$1.39 billion Tokyo data centre acquisition is being framed as portfolio strengthening, and on paper it should be. Pro forma occupancy only moves from 92.5% to 92.9%, a tiny fix for that much capital deployed. Gearing jumps from a clean 34.0% into the 38-39% band, well outside the range I look for. And the Cardiff vacancy that pulled occupancy below the 95% floor I track is still sitting there, unaddressed by this deal. That's the trade I want people to actually see. A 0.4 percentage point occupancy improvement bought with a meaningful jump in leverage. One of the thresholds I track was already not met befor

Iggy's Journal: A Rough Week On The Index, One Date That Actually Matters More 13 September 2026, PM Podcast Release New podcast's up today wrapping the week that just ended, and I want to be upfront about the angle before you click through. The STI dropping 1.8% for the week isn't really a story about Singapore companies suddenly losing their footing. Friday closed with DBS at S$77, UOB at S$41.26, and OCBC at S$31.60, all three actually slightly higher on the day. My concern with a week like this one isn't the number itself, it's the gap between a visible price move and an explanation I can actually verify. Several of the week's biggest winners and losers still don't have a confirmed catalyst behind them, and that's worth sitting with before anyone builds a story around the chart. The da