TheInvestingIguana

Iggy's Journal: A Growth Story That's Also a Cash Burn Story

9 September 2026, PM

Podcast Release

New video's up on Alibaba SDR, and this one's a genuinely sharp split. Cloud revenue up 45% last quarter, that's real, strong growth. Free cash flow ran roughly 45 billion yuan negative in the same quarter, funding the AI buildout that's driving that growth. Real capital, not accounting noise, and shareholders are absorbing it right now through margin compression and a fresh HK$80 billion equity raise.

The optics say AI story finally landing. My Ledger runs on a different question entirely, whether the yield is there to support income, and on that measure this misses badly, dividend yield sits under 1%, nowhere close to the 4.7% hurdle. Zone 5, Red Zone, Not an Income Vehicle, Sub-Floor Yield. Worth being precise about what that actually means here, it's not a business quality problem, the balance sheet is fortress-clean and the leverage gate clears with real margin. It's a structural mismatch, Alibaba is built to reinvest into its own growth, not to distribute cash to you.

My Personal Take

Genuinely respect the cloud number, that's not a hedge, 45% growth funded by real capital deployment is a legitimate story. But I keep seeing CPF and SRS holders drawn to names like this because the growth headline is exciting, and exciting isn't the same question as "will this fund my drawdown." Two completely different portfolios asking two completely different questions. Worth the watch if the AI story has your attention, just be honest with yourself about which portfolio you're actually building before you let the numbers speak for something they're not built to say.

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/CTGSNj5Bl5I

📩 Substack: https://investingiguana.com/p/alibaba-sdr-3-gems-vs-3-red-flags

Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

Iggy's Journal: A Growth Story That's Also a Cash Burn Story

9 September 2026, PM

Podcast Release

New video's up on Alibaba SDR, and this one's a genuinely sharp split. Cloud revenue up 45% last quarter, that's real, strong growth. Free cash flow ran roughly 45 billion yuan negative in the same quarter, funding the AI buildout that's driving that growth. Real capital, not accounting noise, and shareholders are absorbing it right now through margin compression and a fresh HK$80 billion equity raise.

The optics say AI story finally landing. My Ledger runs on a different question entirely, whether the yield is there to support income, and on that measure this misses badly, dividend yield sits under 1%, nowhere close to the 4.7% hurdle. Zone 5, Red Zone, Not an Income Vehicle, Sub-Floor Yield. Worth being precise about what that actually means here, it's not a business quality problem, the balance sheet is fortress-clean and the leverage gate clears with real margin. It's a structural mismatch, Alibaba is built to reinvest into its own growth, not to distribute cash to you.

My Personal Take

Genuinely respect the cloud number, that's not a hedge, 45% growth funded by real capital deployment is a legitimate story. But I keep seeing CPF and SRS holders drawn to names like this because the growth headline is exciting, and exciting isn't the same question as "will this fund my drawdown." Two completely different portfolios asking two completely different questions. Worth the watch if the AI story has your attention, just be honest with yourself about which portfolio you're actually building before you let the numbers speak for something they're not built to say.

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/CTGSNj5Bl5I

📩 Substack: https://investingiguana.com/p/alibaba-sdr-3-gems-vs-3-red-flags

Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

Iggy's Journal: The Minister Pay Story Isn't Really About Minister Pay

9 September 2026, PM

Podcast Release

Everyone's talking about this one right now, ministers' pay going up 65%, and I get why it's the headline. But that's not actually the interesting part of the story, and it's not what the new video's about. Buried in the fine print are four economic targets now tied directly to that bonus structure, unemployment tightened to a 3 to 3.5% target, median income growth pushed to a genuinely stretch level, and GDP expectations actually lowered to 2 to 4%. Put those three together and there's only one way the math works, a smaller economic pie needs to send a bigger share into workers' pockets rather than staying with businesses, for that bonus formula to actually pay out.

Here's the part most people covering this story are skipping. Those exact same four indicators are also your scorecard, the same numbers that tell you whether your CPF Special Account and your broader retirement portfolio are actually keeping pace with inflation or quietly falling behind it. That's the angle the video and piece actually dig into.

My Personal Take

Slightly annoyed, honestly, that most of the coverage on this is stuck arguing about whether ministers deserve a raise, when the far more useful question for your own money is sitting right there in the same announcement. That's usually how it goes though, the loud headline distracts from the number that actually affects your wallet. Worth the watch if you've been scrolling past this story as just political noise.

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/OR8aNouK88Q

📩 Substack: https://investingiguana.com/p/singapore-ministers-pay-just-went

Not financial advice.  

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

$OCBC Bank(O39.SG) Iggy's Journal: When Analysts Say Buy and My Ledger Says Something Else

7 September 2026, PM

Podcast Release

New podcast video's up, and it's built around something that looks like a contradiction until you sit with it for a second. Two names on UOB Kay Hian's Alpha Picks list, OCBC and Keppel, are both sitting in my Red Zone. OCBC rallied close to 10% in August, but its ordinary yield actually fell to 2.79% because the dividend never moved while the price did. Keppel's in a similar spot at 2.91%, and it's also trading roughly 12% above what InvestingPro's models say it's actually worth.

Here's the thing that isn't a contradiction. UOBKH is picking these for what might happen to the share price over the next few months. My Ledger is checking whether the dividend still holds up over the next few decades. Watch the podcast to find out more.

My Personal Take

Not going to pretend this doesn't put me in an awkward spot next to a well-regarded house view. But my framework isn't built to chase the next few months, it's built to protect the next few decades, and those are genuinely different jobs. Two respected calls, two different questions being answered. Worth watching if you've been tempted to follow an Alpha Pick into either of these without checking what the yield's actually doing underneath the price move.

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/MilLSfsbAHY

📩 Substack: https://investingiguana.com/p/two-of-uobkhs-alpha-picks-are-sitting

Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

Maybank Targets STI 6,800, Lock In SGX Gains Now?

Straits Times Index targets just climbed across local brokerages with consensus reaching 6,140 points, but higher price targets carry hidden trade-offs for retail cash flow. When benchmark index multiples expand toward seventeen times earnings, incoming dividend yields compress below standard income hurdles despite resilient bank profits. Headline capital appreciation often masks the reality that you are paying significantly more money for the exact same underlying distribution. Are you letting brokerage target upgrades tempt you into chasing Singapore blue chips at lower dividend yields?

Iggy's Journal: Starting the Week a Little Sore

7 September 2026, AM

Market Data

Quiet start, genuinely. US markets are shut today for Labor Day, so there's no fresh overnight print to react to, last real session was Friday, and I covered that in Saturday's post. What's new since then is mostly the weekly wrap. The STI closed out its first week of September up 46.60 points, 0.81%, with Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, Hongkong Land and Singtel doing the heavy lifting Friday. Separately, MAS's own survey of private economists just showed the odds of a S$NEER tightening move in October climbing to 45%, up from 30% back in June, alongside an upgraded full year GDP call. Worth watching, not reacting to yet. One thing I'm not going to state with confidence today, there's conflicting reporting on what's actually happening in the Gulf right now, some sources say tensions have eased, others describe an active disruption to tanker transit through Hormuz. I'd rather flag that I don't have a clean answer than pretend I do.

My Personal Take

Still feeling Saturday's leg day if I'm honest, walking down stairs this morning was its own little cardio session. Nice quiet Monday to ease back into it though, no SGX today either with the US holiday knocking the usual rhythm off. Been sitting with that MAS survey number over coffee, 45% is not a coin flip, it is not a certainty either, and that in-between zone is exactly where I find myself rereading the same paragraph three times. Nothing urgent to do about it today. Just filing it away for now.

Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

Iggy's Journal: The Question Most Dividend Screens Skip Entirely

5 September 2026, PM

Masterclass Release

New free Masterclass piece is up, part of the "Before Any Dividend Stock Earns a Place in Your Portfolio" series. This one's built around a trap that catches even careful screeners, a company can look completely disciplined on debt and still be quietly thin on interest coverage, and gearing alone won't show you that gap.

The example in the piece is a real one, a REIT with a genuinely strong balance sheet by the debt-load measure, comfortably inside the ceiling, but its actual interest coverage tells a different story once you look past the headline gearing number. The yield on that name looks perfectly healthy today too. Point of the piece is that the yield you can see right now and the yield you can actually count on a few years out aren't automatically the same thing, and that gap is exactly where retirement income portfolios take quiet damage nobody notices until it's too late.

My Personal Take

This is one of those Masterclass topics I keep coming back to because almost nobody checks it. Everyone looks at the debt number, ticks the box, moves on. The coverage ratio question is less intuitive, and that's exactly why it matters. Free for everyone this one, no paywall, because I think this specific mental checklist is worth more people having in their back pocket before they buy anything for yield.

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/bSUwnvtB-kA

📩 Substack: https://investingiguana.com/p/before-any-dividend-stock-earns-a

Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

Iggy's Journal: Why Your Real Benchmark Isn't the S&P 500

5 September 2026, PM

Podcast Release

This episode is built around something Chris Watling at Longview flagged recently, six signals he thinks point to a possible stock market pullback within the next one to four months. Weak technical follow-through, record-low cash buffers, earnings expectations stretched thin, that kind of thing. Most of that is US-market noise as far as your SGX portfolio is concerned. But two of the six actually matter directly for you, rising bond yields and credit spreads that are priced for perfection, and together those tighten the math on yield and refinancing for anything you hold here in Singapore.

That's the real point of this episode. If you own REITs or dividend stocks, your benchmark was never really the S&P 500, it's the Singapore government bond yield, and that yield has been climbing. When the safe alternative gets more competitive, the hurdle for everything else rises with it, even if nothing about your company's actual fundamentals has changed. That distinction, market noise versus the one number that genuinely moves your hurdle rate, is what the video and Substack piece walk through.

One housekeeping note, this was meant to go out yesterday but hit a YouTube upload error partway through, so it's landing as tomorrow's, Sunday's, release instead.

My Personal Take

Genuinely one of my favourite kinds of episode to make, the ones where the headline scare (market crash warning!) turns out to matter less than a boring number most people scroll past (bond yield up two basis points). That's usually where the real risk actually lives. Annoyed about the upload delay, but the argument doesn't go stale overnight, the yield math holds up whether you watch it today or  tomorrow.

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/IwcNs24mFOo

📩 Substack: https://investingiguana.com/p/six-warning-signs-one-bad-reaction

Not financial advice. 

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

Iggy's Journal: A Small SGX Name With a Big Satellite Partner

5 September 2026, PM

Analyst Rating

Maybank Research reiterated a BUY call on Addvalue Technologies (A31), unchanged target price 34 cents, based on 30 times FY27 forecast price to sales. The call is built on two new orders totalling US$5.0 million, US$2.8 million for its Inter-Satellite Data Relay System products and US$2.2 million for its Advanced Digital Radio System products, the latter covering both design work and repeat supply to defence-technology customers. Addvalue's reported orderbook now stands at US$20.2 million.

The bigger story behind the number is the Viasat partnership. Viasat plans to fold Addvalue's satellite relay terminals into its HaloNet portfolio for US government and government-supplier opportunities, with Addvalue as the lead US-facing provider. Maybank reads this as third-party validation of Addvalue's technology and a possible path to longer, recurring US space-programme orders, potentially including NASA-adjacent work. Worth being precise here, that specific customer exposure is Maybank's own expectation, not a signed Addvalue contract. The whole bullish case leans on orders that haven't been booked yet, so timing, margins and actual cash conversion on that US$20.2 million figure are the things to watch as this plays out.

My Personal Take

Not going to lie, the Viasat name attached to a small SGX satellite-comms player got my attention faster than most analyst notes do. Addvalue's not one I've run a proper forensic screen on yet, no zone call from me on this one today, just relaying what Maybank's saying. But given how much this name has been coming up in the news lately, I'm going to put together a full audit on it, not a quick take like this one, the real numbers on cash burn, order conversion and how much of that US$20.2 million actually turns into revenue this year. Let the numbers speak on this one once I've actually pulled them. Watch this space.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

Iggy's Journal: A New Reference Page for Elite Members

5 Sep 2026, PM

News My Personal Take

I've just published something I've wanted to build for a while: Iggy's Forensic Zone Tracker, a single running page showing where my screen currently stands on every SGX name I've covered. Sasseur, AEM, the rest, zone and label, updated the moment a call changes. No more digging back through old posts to remember where a stock landed last.

This isn't a new audit. It's a shortcut back to the audits I've already done, kept current as new results come in. If a name moves zones, the page moves with it.

It's Elite-only for now, one more thing that comes with the membership beyond zero-day access. If you're tracking more than one or two names on my coverage list, this should save you real time.

Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.

📩 https://investingiguana.com/p/iggys-forensic-zone-tracker

Cheers, Iggy 🦎

Iggy's Journal: Record Highs Before Leg Day

5 September 2026, AM

Market Data

Wall Street pulled back a touch overnight. Dow down 0.51% to 53,414.25, S&P 500 off 0.38% to 7,718.60, Nasdaq down 0.29% to 26,506.99, on a stronger than expected August jobs report that pushed the 2-year Treasury yield up to 4.37%. VIX actually eased, down to 14.30. Brent crude firmed, sitting somewhere between US$95 and US$96 a barrel depending on which source you check.

Back home, the Straits Times Index didn't get the memo on caution. It closed Friday at a fresh record, 5,801.96, up 0.94%, led by Hongkong Land, OCBC and DBS. DBS crossed S$220 billion in market cap along the way, touching S$79 intraday before settling at S$78.65. Quick side note since OCBC's in that gainers list, the balance sheet there is genuinely strong, but the yield side is still the one part of the picture that hasn't cleared my own floor, that's an old flag on my end, not new news.

My Personal Take

It's Saturday, no SGX today, but Friday's numbers are worth sitting with over coffee. Gut reaction seeing DBS quietly cross S$220b while I'm about to head out for my usual weight training session, compounding works a lot like training does, boring for a long time, then suddenly it isn't. Wanted to get this out before I leave since a record STI close is worth more than a headline scroll-past. Nothing I'm watching has shifted from what I've flagged before, a big milestone number and a clean forensic pass aren't always the same thing. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.

Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

Iggy's Journal: A17U and Sasseur Both Yield Near 6-9%. The Reason One Worries Me and the Other Doesn't

4 September 2026, PM

New Video

New video is up. Four REITs cleared my 4.7% yield hurdle this week. One of them passed every single balance sheet gate I run, gearing, coverage, occupancy, all of it. That's the one I'm actually sizing smallest. Sasseur REIT sits at 9.28% yield, 25.6% gearing, 5.6x interest coverage, and zero gate failures on paper. The risk with this one doesn't live in any of those ratios. It's China concentration, renminbi exposure, and a sponsor structure tying income to consumer spending in ways gearing and coverage were never built to measure.

My Personal Take

Okay, this one genuinely sat with me for a bit before I recorded it. A stock passing every single gate I check should feel like the easy call, and this is the first time in a while a clean sweep made me more cautious, not less.

Here's why. My whole framework is built to catch balance sheet problems. Gearing, coverage, occupancy, that's the stuff that shows up in a spreadsheet. Currency exposure and single-country concentration don't show up as a ratio anywhere, they show up as a completely separate question you have to remember to ask yourself. Sasseur passing clean doesn't mean the risk isn't there. It means the risk isn't the kind my gates are designed to catch.

That's the whole point of this episode, really. A high yield and a clean balance sheet can both be true and you can still owe yourself one more question before you size the position.

📺 youtu.be/94r0ioeBqaI...

📩 investingiguana.com/...

Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖 Have a great weekend!

Iggy's Journal: 52 Singaporeans arrested in China over suspected involvement in illegal pyramid scheme

4 September 2026, PM

Just Reporting

There's been recent news out of China involving a large pyramid scheme crackdown. I'm not going to get into the specifics of that case here, it's an active legal matter and not mine to comment on. But it's a good prompt to talk about how these schemes actually work mechanically.

The pattern is almost always the same. An entry fee upfront, often framed as buying into a development project, a business venture, or "investment shares" in something that sounds official. And often, some form of isolation, moving somewhere unfamiliar, group activities that keep you around only people already inside the scheme, limited contact with outside voices who might ask an obvious question.

The recruitment itself is rarely a stranger with a pitch deck. It's usually someone you already trust, a friend, a family member, sometimes framed as a job opportunity or even a relationship. That's what makes it work. You're not evaluating a stranger's claims critically, you're trusting someone you already have a relationship with.

My Personal Take

Here's the thing that actually gets me about these schemes every time. The red flags are almost never subtle once you know what to look for. Guaranteed high returns, a big cash sum you're told to pay upfront, and the actual product being "recruit more people," not a business that makes or sells anything real. If someone can't explain in one sentence what the underlying business does, that's the whole answer right there.

I know none of you reading this are the target for something this crude. But your kids might be, or a friend going through a rough patch and looking for an easy way out. Send them this if it's useful. The best protection is just knowing the shape of the thing before someone you trust hands it to you.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

Iggy's Journal: No Track Record, a Higher Fee, Heavy REIT Exposure. Here's How I'd Actually Judge the Q50

4 September 2026, PM

Podcast Release

New Iggy Answers episode is up. A new Singapore ETF just launched, the CGS Fullgoal Singapore Next 50 Active ETF, at a 0.65% fee with 39% REIT exposure. The Business Times piece defending it reads like the fund's own pitch. That's actually the real lesson in this episode, not whether Q50 is worth buying, but how you read a piece like this critically when the person presenting it has a reason to want you to land on one side.

The episode breaks down three things. What the fee comparison leaves out, 0.65% looks cheap next to active funds but is roughly double a passive STI tracker. Why "no track record" is the answer every unproven manager gives, and what Fullgoal's actual history in China and Hong Kong does and doesn't tell you about a Singapore-specific mandate. And why 39% REIT exposure is a real number that means completely different things depending on what's already sitting in your own portfolio.

My Personal Take

This one's less about Q50 specifically and more about something that bugs me every time a new product launches with a friendly writeup attached. The article isn't necessarily wrong. It's just written from one side of the table, and most people reading it don't stop to ask whose side that is.

"No track record" sounds like an honest disclosure. It's also the exact same sentence every single new fund manager uses on day one, so on its own it tells you nothing useful either way. And 39% REIT exposure, that's not automatically good or bad, it depends entirely on what you're already holding. If you're already REIT heavy, this fund just made you heavier. I 

Anyway. Go listen, then go check your own portfolio before you decide which side of that REIT number you're actually on.

📺 https://youtu.be/2zXJJbdDXoE

📩 https://investingiguana.com/p/no-track-record-a-higher-fee-heavy

Not financial advice.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖

$Sasseur Reit(CRPU.SG)

🦎 IGGY TRADE JOURNAL, 3 SEP 2026

Not a brief today, Iguanas. A journal entry. I put fresh capital to work this week and want to walk through it the way I walk through everything else.

WHY I MOVED

Cash had been sitting since my last REIT exit. Before deploying it I ran the same checklist I run on every income name: yield against my minimum hurdle, gearing, interest coverage, occupancy. Two names cleared the bar well enough to act on.

👁 CRPU Sasseur REIT

My read on this name has shifted. Yield clears my minimum hurdle with real room to spare. Gearing is among the lowest I track on the whole exchange. Interest coverage is comfortably above the floor I look for.

Occupancy is holding well above my threshold. The watch item has not gone away though, this is a single market bet, all four malls sit in mainland China, and the income comes back to me in renminbi before conversion. Cost of debt was just refinanced down to a record low, and lease renewal talks with the landlord group are already underway, so the near term renewal risk is being actively managed rather than sitting unresolved. Sized this smaller than a full position given the new country exposure.

👁 AJBU Keppel DC REIT

My read here has shifted too. Gearing now sits within the range I look for. Interest coverage is comfortably above my floor, the strongest of anything I checked this round. The one metric outside my range is occupancy, one facility came off contract and dragged the portfolio figure down. Strip that one facility out and occupancy is back above my threshold. Management says it is being actively re-leased, no confirmed timeline yet. Sized this smaller than Sasseur given that open item.

IGGY'S TAKE

Two different risk profiles, same discipline underneath. I do not buy a yield number on its own. I check what is holding it up before I commit capital, and I write down what would change my mind before I am three

weeks in and rationalising.

Not financial advice.

Iggy's Journal: AEM's Profit Jumped Nearly Tenfold and the Stock Still Dropped. Here's Why That Isn't As Strange As It Sounds

3 September 2026, AM

Podcast Release

New Iggy Answers episode is up. Three SGX names, AEM Holdings, UMS Integration, and Frencken Group, are all riding the same AI infrastructure demand right now, but "AI beneficiary" is one label sitting on top of three very different stories. AEM's H1 net profit went from S$3.1 million to S$30.8 million, guidance raised twice this year, and the share price still fell against my last confirmed check. UMS Integration posted a 66% profit jump. Frencken moved the other way. The episode walks through growth trajectory, income reliability, and valuation as three separate questions instead of one combined verdict.

My Personal Take

Okay, I need to tell you about AEM because this one genuinely bugged me for a bit. Profit up almost tenfold. Guidance raised, twice. And the price still dropped. My first reaction was the same as yours probably is right now, that makes no sense.

It does make sense, just not the kind of sense a headline gives you. A growth story and an income story are not the same test, and AEM is still short of my yield hurdle even after a result like that. Good business, still doesn't clear my bar for retirement income, those two things can both be true at once. That is basically the whole episode in one sentence, but listen to the full thing, because UMS and Frencken each fail that same test in their own separate way, and none of them fail it for the same reason.

Anyway. Kopi in hand, episode's up, go listen.

📺 https://youtu.be/-Gzsf3ijqXo

📩 https://investingiguana.com/p/three-sgx-chip-suppliers-are-riding

Get everything, zero-day access on both platforms, full Red Zone watchlist, institutional-grade cheatsheets, with Iggy's Elite Investors, S$12/month.

Not financial advice. Iggy's Forensic Compliance Standards apply.

Cheers, Iggy 🦖