TJJ Learning Journal | Dividend Investing for FIRE

November is coming to an end and markets have been hectic with noise about bubbles, crypto and rate cuts. My investments are much less of a thrill ride and more like simple, diligent housekeeping. This post will talk about my purchases this month and how they strengthen the foundation of my portfolio. Yesterday, I executed my final trade for the month: adding to my position in DBS Group Holdings at $54.15 . I am aware that I bought at an expensive price, but it's not something for me to worry about. Price is what you pay, cash flow is what you eat.  Overall, this month I added shares in  DBS, MIT, FCT and SGX . These shares are blue chip stalwarts that pay a fantastic dividend.  SGX  may be the odd one out, with its dividend yield of 2.4% being the lowest in my entire portfolio ,  but it's a stock that I've been particularly excited to purchase and talk about. Brief Mention: MIT and FCT I have added shares in both these REITs as their price has seen some weaknes...

Large Language Models (LLMs) have taken the world by storm. But if you have ever tried to build a real application with just a raw LLM API call, or if you remember what 2022 ChatGPT was like, you know the truth. They are powerful, but they are also chaotic. They hallucinate, they get distracted, and they struggle with multi-step logic.  Recently, I’ve been diving into Agentic Design Patterns , and it’s changed how I view AI development. The LLMs are just the engines, not the entire machine, when we look at Agentic systems. I will be sharing some of the design patterns in Agentic Design Patterns that augment these LLMs and turn them into something truly intelligent. Structure And Control  Prompt Chaining : The "pipeline" pattern which introduces sequential logic. In typical software design, we never write one massive function containing the logic for everything. It is too long, messy and difficult to debug.  Yet, we often try to force LLMs to "read this file, extract ...

I love it when technology makes life simpler. But I love it even more when it keeps life cheap. Recently, Moomoo launched their direct CDP linkage feature . Finally, we can trade on a slick, modern app and have the shares land safely in our own Central Depository (CDP) account, not a custodian wallet.  It sounded like the best of both worlds for me, until I saw the bill. The $15 Surprise I recently checked the numbers for one of the purchases I wanted to make: Buying 1 lot of DBS for ~$5300.  Option A: moomoo's Custodian Account would have costed me $5. Option B: moomoo's CDP Linked Account would have costed me $15.  That's a 300% markup for the privilege of direct ownership. It is a hefty price which I could hardly justify paying, and here's why. The Fees Comparison As dividend investors, we are willing to pay for quality and peace of mind. I prefer CDP holdings for my long-term banks and REITs because I want that direct relationship with the company. I want the AG...

 Just a month ago, markets were popping champagne for a guaranteed Fed rate cut in December. The narrative was clear: inflation is easing, rates are falling, and stocks are going to the moon.  But if you’ve been watching the screens in November, you know the mood has shifted. Economic data has come in hotter than expected, and suddenly, that "certain" December cut has become a coin toss. This uncertainty has spooked the bond market, pushed Treasury yields back up, and sent S-REITs into a minor correction. For the short-term trader, this is a headache. For us—long-term dividend investors—this could be a second chance to load up.  The Expectation Gap The strong rally we saw in S-REITs throughout most of 2025 wasn't purely driven by booming earnings; it was largely driven by multiple expansion , investors were willing to pay more because they expected aggressive rate cuts. Now that the market realizes rates might stay "higher for a few months longer," prices are ad...

If you’ve ever looked at DBS’s share price and thought, “I don’t have $5,000 just to buy one lot,” the Singapore Exchange (SGX) has finally heard you. In a major announcement just yesterday (19 November), SGX revealed plans to slash the standard board lot size from 100 units to just 10 units for securities priced above S$10.  This is a great shift for our local markets, and I want to break down what exactly it means for us: our portfolios , the timeline , and taking note of fee traps .  The Affordability Leap For decades, the "entry ticket" to the Singapore market has been the standard 100-share board lot . If a stock traded at S 1 , yo u  n ee d e d  $ 100. Manageable.    But for some of our best performing blue chips, this created a high barrier to entry .  Take DBS for example, at a ~$53 share price, one lot would cost an investor more than $5300. Similar for other blue chips like UOB, OCBC, Great Eastern, SGX, Haw Par and more, your cost pri...

Last week, I had attended the Singapore Fintech Festival 2025. This is something that struck me about AI adoption in businesses. For years, business strategy had a simple mantra: Be asset-light. The most valuable companies in the world—Google, Microsoft, Facebook—were celebrated for scaling globally without owning the physical assets. Meanwhile, traditional institutions like banks were seen as slow, capital-intensive, "heavy" businesses. The rise of AI has quietly flipped this playbook. Today, the companies building AI infrastructure are becoming some of the most capital-intensive businesses in history. At the same time, forward-thinking institutions like DBS Bank are becoming more efficient by strategically not owning those assets. This is the “Great Inversion” of the AI era. Big Tech Have Become Industrial Giants The public still thinks of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Meta as software companies. In reality, they now look more like 21st-century utilities. Training fronti...

This post will talk about my journey with AI as someone who experienced the rise of ChatGPT and other fields of AI in the past few years. I want to talk about how this blog could be integrated with a new personal project I will explore about Agentic AI.  This blog has always been about documenting my journey, both in finance and in life. This project is the next step in my technical journey, and I’m excited to share all about it. Do read on if you are someone interested in the capabilities of AI and Machine Learning, through the eyes of this young person who watched it all unfold. The Spark (2022) I remember the "magic" of 2022, when models like ChatGPT and Stable Diffusion were new and hot. These models burst into the scene and made it felt like a new era of technology had arrived overnight.    I was, and still am, a user of this new "magic". I spent hours on interest groups online, just trying to keep up with the new developments and use cases in image generation....

The Q3 2025 earnings season has been a rough one for some of the most popular blue chips on the SGX. UOB reported a profit miss, while Singapore Airlines (SIA) also showed signs of weakness with slowing growth. When this happens, it’s nerve-wracking. A sea of red appears on our portfolio screens and the first, most powerful instinct is to ask, "Should I sell?" My philosophy is clear: we should never make rash decisions based on a single quarter's results. One quarter is just 90 days—a blink of an eye in our decades long investing journey.  Is the Business "Bruised" or "Broken"?  A " Bruise"  is a temporary, short-term problem caused by one-off headwinds. One clear example would be the dip in UOB's net profits caused by extra allowances and card expenses for the quarter.    A " Broken"  business has a permanent, structural problem. The business may be having a "Kodak" moment—its technology is obsolete, its brand is perm...

The Q3 2025 bank earnings for our "Main Dish" holdings—DBS, OCBC, and UOB—are out. This is a time when the news is full of noise: "earnings beats," "analyst misses," and short-term price targets. As investors, we're not playing that game. We are part-owners, and this is our quarterly health check. We're not looking for a reason to sell; we're looking for confirmation of the long-term health of our golden geese.  A common critique of simple financial blogs is that they are "a waste of time for anyone financially savvy." My goal is to be both accessible and insightful . So, here is my 2-Layer analysis—the simple check-up, and the "under the hood" deep dive that gives me true peace of mind.  Layer 1: The Simple Health Check This first layer looks at the simple, high-level metrics. These are the symptoms of a healthy (or unhealthy) business. They are perfect for a quick, 5-minute check to see if our dividends are safe.  The Div...