Experience in clearing SQ redemption waitlist

 

I was thinking of a Gold Coast holiday in June. Unfortunately, that only coincides with the June school holidays so prices are higher and there are no Business Saver Awards but you can put yourself on a waitlist. I decided to try out putting myself on a waitlist for business class saver redemption ticket (72,000 miles) for a desirable red-eye flight to maximise the time I have there, and 7 hour flight is just enough to sleep on the plane. Flights to Japan a bit too short for a good sleep.

About a month later, I get an e-mail with the nondescript message "Ticketing time limit" which meant that the waitlist had cleared and I can redeem the biz class ticket I had waitlisted. I had to pay taxes/fees of about $100 over and above the 72,000 miles but it still beats buying the ticket.

For the return to Singapore, I selected an afternoon flight and redeemed an economy class ticket (no need to waitlist, all available), since a 7 hours day flight is just about manageable.

While it is pretty likely that PPS members get priority waitlist clearance, I don't even have Krisflyer Gold at the moment so it's pretty nice that I still managed to clear the waitlist for a school holidays flight. I plan to try to book my October holiday through the waitlist method as well.

3010.HK ETF First chips, now India

 

Just last month, I talked about how I have been buying 3010.HK to gain exposure to the India stock market, just in case India benefits from the China tariffs, but ended up benefiting because the ETF holds a lot of TSMC as well as Korean chip companies. With the US announcing a trade deal with India last night, we should see a decent rally in India stock prices.

In other news, I bought a bit of ETHA just to do some trading during the crypto crash. I've talked about my Gold & Silver holdings a little but I'm not interested in accumulating more. It seems that there is a disconnect between the physical market and the paper market (which might be seeing some manipulation).

Good start to the New Year

 

The first month of the year has flown past. A 3.95% gain and beating the S&P500 is nice. I will be happy with a high single-digit gain in 2026. I think a correction of some sort is inevitable and will give me the opportunity to deploy some spare cash or even CPF-OA.

Silver

The last trading day of the month was significant with a 25.5% one day correction in silver. Which to me seems totally reasonable since Silver prices had gotten out of touch with reality. With the amount of derivatives out there, who knows whether there was a 'pump and dump' performed by hidden actors, especially since commodities are traded on different exchanges and under different regulators.

Can day traders beat algos?

I'm always on the lookout for investment books to borrow at the NLB and came across this book Flash Crash. Highly entertaining (I have already read Flash Boys and Dark Pools, also available from NLB and highly recommended) look at HFT and algorithmic trading, in this case, spoofing of S&P e-minis. Hence I wonder if the recent Gold/Silver price moves involved predatory algorithms (now powered by AI) trading with each other. 

No more TACO trade?

 

The headline says it all. Trump threatens tariffs against Korea. Korea market hits record high. If the market is now ignoring tariff threats the TACO trade is no more....

TACO

 

Barely one day after threatening tariffs, Trump walks back his tariff threats. At least I bought VUSD and some Lion Global All Seasons fund.

Finally a Dip in the market

 

It took more threats by Trump of Greenland-related Tariffs to cause a market dip which is of course a buying opportunity. I bought VUSD last night and will continue buying throughout the week. Hopefully the market doesn't reverse too quickly.

This is obviously a "TACO" trade (Trump Always Chickens Out) and I'm not sure he has a sound basis for imposing tariffs (they will of course make something up). 

3010: Benefiting from the Chip Rally

 

Since you need chips and memory for AI, it is perhaps no surprise that chip stocks have been rallying (including Intel, which I had exited some time back). One beneficiary of this rally has been the ishares Asia ETF (3010.HK) which I have been buying every month via RSP and fortuitously have been deploying my excess HK$ dividends into this counter as well (create a separate RSP which deducts from my HK$ in addition to the RSP which deducts from my S$ account).

The reason why I have been favouring 3010 had actually nothing to do with chip stocks but with the fact that it had a sizeable India component (18%) and I thought I had better get some more exposure to India just in case India becomes a beneficiary of tariff wars at China's expense. I viewed TSMC's weightage at 13.43% of the whole ETF as a negative thing (overconcentration in ETFs is not good)  that I could live with but as it turns out, TSMC prices has moved up by a lot for a megacap.

My plan is to continue monthly RSP because it provides geographical diversification with exposure to India, Thailand, Indonesia, and Malaysia.