Investing in Shares (2021) – MoneySmart Guide to Buying SGX Stocks

These days, owning Apple stock is as much a status symbol as owning an Apple watch. (Well, they’re both expensive…)

But apart from making you more attractive, stocks and shares are also investment vehicles and can help grow your money. Sounds great, right? So why don’t more Singaporeans invest in shares?

One reason is that the stock market is a big and confusing place. It’s hard to know where to start. If that sounds like you, read this 101 guide to investing in shares in Singapore.

Contents

1. What are stocks/shares?
2. What kind of returns can you get from shares?
3. How do you choose what shares to buy?
4. Top 10 SGX stocks in 2021
5. How can you start investing on SGX?
6. Can Singaporeans invest in foreign stock markets?

What are stocks/shares?

I’ve been using the words “stocks” and “shares” interchangeably, but technically there’s a slight difference between them. Stocks can be used as a general term (“I own a bunch of stocks”) whereas shares are always of a certain company (“I own Alibaba shares”).

All right, so where do stocks/shares come from?

Most companies start off as entirely private endeavours. For example, Meta used to be owned entirely by Mark Zuckerberg and pals.

But in 2012, Meta launched (technical term: initial public offering, or IPO) on the Nasdaq stock market in the US. From that fateful day onwards, anyone with money can buy Meta shares and thus become part-owner of the Zuck’s social media empire.

Why do private companies go public though? No, it’s not because they love you and want to give you a share of their profits.

It’s usually because they want/need capital. When you buy Meta stock, you’re giving them extra money to grow their business, hire developers, fight lawsuits, etc.

Shareholders usually do get a slice of the profits, if any, and these are usually paid out as dividends at intervals. (No promises though – it’s entirely up to the company’s discretion.)

Also, as part-owners, shareholders get the right to vote on certain business decisions at the company’s general meetings. On a day-to-day level, each publicly listed company has a board of directors to look out for shareholders’ interests in the company’s business decisions.

These perks apply to ordinary shares. There are also preferred or preferential shares, a special subclass of shares, which give you better voting rights and better or even guaranteed dividends.

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What kind of returns can you get from shares?

Here’s where things get complicated.

When it comes to returns, it all depends on what type of investor you are. Not everyone buys shares for the same reason. I’ll highlight 3 main types of investors and you can figure out which one you are.

Type of investor	Strategy	Type of stocks to buy
Growth investors / traders	Actively buy low and sell high. Mainly looking for less established companies with plenty of room to grow.	Low priced stocks that are rather volatile
Value investors	Buy “hidden gems” in the stock market at lower than expected prices. Sell when the price adjusts back to expected.	Undervalued stocks
Passive investors	Hold on to stocks for a long time and earn passive income from dividends.	Blue chip stocks with consistent performance

Growth investors or traders mainly try to take advantage of that constant share price fluctuation. They can buy stocks at low prices and sell when the prices are high – the profit is called capital gain. This can happen in a matter of days or even hours, so it requires a lot of time and effort. There’s also the risk of losing money if you’re looking at more volatile stocks.

Value investors primarily look for “undervalued” stocks, for example, in a little-known company that’s running a highly profitable business. Their goal is to buy shares in that company before other people realise it. But such investing requires a lot of analysis and hard work – boring stuff like reading prospectuses and crunching numbers.

Passive investors describe the bulk of Singaporeans who don’t have the time or financial literacy to do growth or value investing. The strategy here is to buy a blue chip stock (i.e. very mainstream, established, and unlikely to fail) and hold it for a long time, making money through its dividends.

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How do you choose what shares to buy?

Unlike common investments like Singapore Savings Bonds or the STI ETF, there are gazillions of options when it comes to buying shares.

Even though Singapore only has one stock market (Singapore Exchange, more commonly known as SGX) there are some 700 listings to choose from.

So where do you even start!? Here are some factors you can look at.

Industry: How well a company does is related to wider economic conditions. For example, if the healthcare sector is growing, it might be a good time to buy healthcare stocks.

Business model: How does the company make money? How about its expenditure? Is it an efficient company? Assess if the company’s business operations and revenue generation model are sustainable.

Management: Are the management actually competent and smart? Or are they bumbling fools? If you’re going to be part-owner of a company, make sure that the showrunners actually know their stuff.

Growth indicators (share price or dividend yield): No one wants a stagnating stock on their hands. For growth investors, look at the share price history – is there a possible upward trend? For passive investors, look at the dividend yield – you want consistency as much as decent returns.

Stability (debt/EBITDA ratio): Another indication of a company’s stability is the debt/EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization) ratio, which shows you how deeply it’s in debt. If the number is high, it might be borrowing more than it can handle… which can either excite you, or sound alarm bells.

Valuation (price/earnings or price/book value): For value investors, you want to look at either the price/earnings (P/E) or price/book value (P/BV) ratio which tells you how much people are willing to pay for a share. P/BV of 1 indicates perfect equilibrium. <1 means the stock might be undervalued, while >1 suggests that investors are very confident in the company’s ability to perform.

Don’t be too intimidated by the terminology – you don’t necessarily need to hire an investment banker to help get all this information (unless you want to, of course).

All the data you need to start investing is available for free on SGX and there are plenty of databases like sginvestor.io. However, it does take some investment knowledge to understand what all these numbers mean.

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Top 10 stocks on SGX in 2022

There’s no way to say exactly which stocks are best because the picks would be completely different for each investor profile, and they would change every day.

What I’ve done instead is compile a list of the 10 most popular stocks on SGX so you practise doing a very simple analysis of key data points. The numbers are from SGX Stock Screener.

Company	Share price	Market Cap (approx.)
DBS Group	$35.20	$90.4 billion
OCBC	$12.47	$56.0 billion
UOB	$29.96	$50.1 billion
SingTel	$2.43	$40.1 billion
Wilmar International	$4.27	$26.9 billion
CapitaLand	$3.45	$17.7 billion
Thai Beverage	$0.66	$16.5 billion
Singapore Airlines	$5.00	$14.8 billion
CICT	$1.94	$12.8 billion
STE	$3.73	$11.6 billion

(information correct as of 3 Feb 2022)

Most of these are blue chip stocks and most likely attract mainly passive investors. Therefore, they’re arranged by market cap (from best to worst), but that is by no means the only factor to look at. Also, I’m no stock market analyst so please don’t rush out and buy the stocks listed here!

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How can you start investing on SGX?

Good that you asked, because we’ve written a whole article about it! Buying stocks on SGX is an easy, 5-step affair, but for your ease, below are the most important steps.

First, open a CDP account. Then, set up a trading account with the brokerage firm of your choice. (Some brokers let you do both at the same time.)

Many Singaporeans save up thousands of dollars as an investment fund before they start investing. But you don’t really need to set aside a huge amount.

SGX shares come in lots of 100. That means your minimum investment is only 100 x share price of your desired company.

Suppose you plan to buy shares in Singtel, and the price of a single share is currently $2.43. Your minimum investment is $243, excluding any transaction fees. Of course, you might want to increase the amount to make your brokerage commission fees worth it.

Alternatively, instead of investing a large lump sum, you can also start investing from as little as $100 a month using a Regular Savings Plan – read our comparison of RSPs in Singapore here.

The amount sounds measly, but this “monthly subscription” method is a legit investment tactic called dollar cost averaging. When you invest a big lump sum, there’s always the chance that you’re buying stocks at the wrong time (e.g. prices are about to fall). Buying a little bit each month helps spread out that risk, hence “averaging” your potential costs.

Most beginners start off as passive investors. That requires you to choose your stocks well so that you can get returns in the long run. But if you’ve chosen well, you needn’t worry too much about the stock market’s daily fluctuations. Don’t go crazy and hit the panic button every time the share price wobbles!

If you have a higher appetite for risk and want to try growth or even value investing, start with a smaller amount to get your feet wet. The great thing about shares is that they’re highly liquid. If you decide that you prefer passive investing after all, you can always sell your shares and buy new ones. So, don’t feel like you need to get it perfectly right from the get go.

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Can Singaporeans invest in foreign stock markets?

I’ve been talking about SGX shares this whole time, but what if you want to invest in Alibaba or Tencent in China? Or Apple or Google in the US?

You absolutely can, but it’s harder and riskier. If you’d like to get started, we’ve come up with an easy, 3-step guide on how to buy US stocks.

Some brokerage firms let you invest in foreign stock markets for additional fees. But know that there are more risks to investing overseas due to foreign exchange fluctuations and differences in regulations. For more info, you can read this MoneySense article about buying shares locally and in foreign markets.

Your other alternative is to go through a professionally managed unit trust, although you’d have no say over which particular companies you want shares in.

Do you invest in shares in Singapore? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments.