73% of Singaporeans Think Their Pay Is Fair. Only 37% Are Happy With It. This Gap Will Tell You Everything.

By Qiongster  ·  June 2026  ·  Singapore Finance, FIRE, Salary

A bombshell survey dropped last week. Most Singaporeans admit their salary is reasonable — yet we're one of the most salary-dissatisfied workforces in all of Asia-Pacific. That contradiction is not a bug. It is the entire point.

Let me give you the numbers first.

Jobstreet by SEEK's Salary Pulse: Singapore 2026 report, released in late May, surveyed over a thousand working Singaporeans aged 18 to 64. The headline finding was stark: 73% say their pay is proportionate to their job responsibilities. Only 37% say they are satisfied with their salary.

Read that again. Slowly.

Nearly three in four of us look at our paycheque and go: yes, this is roughly what someone doing my job should earn. And then more than half of those same people go: I'm still not happy about it.

That is not a negotiation problem. That is not a communication problem. That is an existential problem — and if you're reading a FIRE blog at this hour on a Sunday, I suspect you already know what it is.

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73%Think their pay is proportionate to their work

37%Are actually satisfied with their salary

7%Feel "extremely comfortable" asking for a raise

4.0%Real wage growth in Singapore in 2025

The Wages Are Growing. Nobody Feels It.

Here is the confusing part, on the surface: the data says Singaporeans are doing well.

MOM's Report on Wage Practices 2025 — released just days before the Jobstreet survey — showed that nominal wages for full-time resident employees grew by 4.9% in 2025. With inflation easing sharply to just 0.9%, real wages grew by a solid 4.0%. That's actually better than the 3.2% real growth clocked in 2024.

So wages are up, inflation is down, purchasing power is higher. On paper, Singaporeans should be feeling pretty decent right now.

And yet — second-lowest salary satisfaction in Asia-Pacific. Among those who say their pay is "about right," seven in ten are still dissatisfied. Knowing you're paid fairly and feeling satisfied about it are, apparently, two completely different things.

So what's going on?

The actual quote from Jobstreet The head of Compensation and Benefits for Asia at Jobstreet put it plainly: the issue is not that employees feel underpaid. It's that they feel their efforts are going unrewarded. Many workers are taking on greater workloads and staying loyal to their organisations — and not seeing meaningful returns through higher salaries, promotions, or recognition.

You're Being Paid for the Job. Not for You.

This is the crux. When a salary is "fair," it means the market has priced your role. It says nothing about you.

The market doesn't care that you've been doing three people's jobs since your team was restructured. The market doesn't care that you stayed late for six months to save that project. The market price is the market price — the median outcome for someone in your seat, with your years of experience, in your industry.

And for a lot of Singaporeans, especially in the post-reorg, AI-is-coming, freeze-headcount-first environment of 2025 and 2026, the gap between what you actually contribute and what the market will pay for your title has never felt wider.

Only 7% of Singaporeans say they feel extremely comfortable asking for a raise. Among women and entry-level workers, that number drops to around 36–38% who feel comfortable at all. Most of us know what we're worth; fewer of us believe the system will reward it.

"Knowing you're paid fairly and being happy about it are two completely different things."

The Sector Breakdown: Who's Actually Getting the Money?

Not all industries are equal. If you're in the wrong sector, you've been running on a treadmill — moving but not going anywhere.

Sector	Wage Growth 2025 (Nominal)	Notes
Admin & Support Services	7.5%	Highest in 2025, still slowing from 8.7% in 2024
Insurance Services	6.6%	Bucked the slowdown trend
Financial Services	5.9%	Demand for PMETs holding up
All-sector average	4.9%	Slowing from 5.6% in 2024
Accommodation	3.9%	Sharpest slowdown; post-pandemic boom over

About 72% of firms raised wages in 2025 — down from 78% the year before. Nearly a quarter of firms left wages completely unchanged. If you're in that quarter's territory, your real raise was zero, and your real-terms purchasing power only held because inflation happened to be low this year. Don't count on that luck continuing — MAS is already forecasting inflation back up to 1.5–2.5% in 2026.

Here's What the Dissatisfaction Is Actually Telling You

The gap between "my pay is fair" and "I am satisfied" is not an emotion. It is information.

It is your brain doing the math and coming up short — not on what the market pays, but on whether your current arrangement is a good trade for your time, your energy, and your one life. You are being compensated for a function. You are not being compensated for your trajectory, your ambitions, your compounding growth, or the life you actually want to be building.

That dissatisfaction is a signal. The question is what you do with it.

Most people do nothing. They swallow the discomfort, re-anchor to the market rate ("at least I'm not underpaid"), and carry on. Some people job-hop for a 15–20% bump, which helps until the new employer becomes the old employer three years later. A few people — the ones reading blogs like this one — actually use the signal to build something else.

The FIRE reading of this data The entire premise of Financial Independence is that your salary is not your financial life — it is an input. The goal is to convert that input into assets that generate income independently of your effort. When 63% of Singapore's workforce is dissatisfied with their primary income source, and wages are projected to slow further into 2026, the case for building a second income engine isn't idealistic. It's logical.

What You Can Actually Do About It

I'm not going to tell you to "negotiate your salary" or "know your worth." That advice exists everywhere and does not move the needle on the structural problem.

The structural problem is that a salary — however fair — is a single point of failure. One employer. One income stream. One relationship that can be ended by either party, often at a bad time.

1. Stop treating your salary as your financial life. It is an input to your financial life. The output is assets — REITs, dividend stocks, CPF top-ups, investment properties. Your salary's job is to fund the engine. The engine's job is to eventually run without the salary.
2. Run the number that actually matters: your passive income coverage ratio. Divide your monthly passive income (dividends, rental, distributions) by your monthly expenses. When this hits 100%, the salary becomes optional. Knowing this number changes how you feel about every paycheque.
3. Use the dissatisfaction productively. The 63% who are unhappy but do nothing will be unhappy again in two years. The ones who channel that energy into building a side income, topping up their SA, or increasing their investment allocation monthly — they're buying back optionality. One year of disciplined investing does more than one year of negotiating.
4. Think about job moves differently. If you're going to switch employers (53% of Singaporeans in one survey said they would if unhappy with their raise), at least choose the one that gives you a meaningful salary jump and use the delta to invest, not to lifestyle-inflate. Job-hopping for $500 more a month that disappears into a nicer apartment is not a strategy.
5. Track wage growth versus your actual investment returns. Real wage growth in Singapore in 2025 was 4.0%. Singapore banks yielded 5–6% in dividends last year. Quality US equities compounded significantly more. The market isn't hiding this from you — it's just that most people are tracking their salary and not their portfolio.

The Thing Nobody Says Out Loud

Salary satisfaction is partly a function of lifestyle expectations. Singapore is expensive, and the social script here is aggressive — private housing, private school, car, overseas holiday, the works. The median income buys a decent life, but it does not buy the aspirational life that advertising, comparison, and social media have trained most people to want.

The gap between what your salary provides and what you think you should have is not a salary problem. It is a values problem. And no pay rise will close a values gap.

I've written before about achieving FIRE, and the honest truth is that the most important moment in that journey wasn't a particular investment gain or a salary milestone. It was the moment I genuinely stopped benchmarking my life against the people around me — the ones with the condo upgrade, the family car, the annual Japan trip — and started benchmarking it against what I actually needed to feel free.

Once that shift happened, the salary mattered less. The gap closed — not because the pay went up, but because the target moved to somewhere I could actually hit.

73% of Singaporeans think their pay is fair. Only 37% are happy. The answer isn't a bigger number on the payslip. The answer is building a life where the payslip is no longer the main event.

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Thanks for reading. With love & peace, Qiongster.

Retirement Age Wake-Up Call. Singapore Just Pushed Retirement to 64

Singapore Just Pushed Retirement to 64. Here's the Wake-Up Call Nobody Wants to Hear.

By Qiongster  ·  June 2026  ·  FIRE, CPF, Singapore Finance

From 1 July 2026 — which is, quite literally, next month — Singapore's statutory retirement age rises from 63 to 64. The re-employment age goes from 68 to 69. Most people will scroll past this like it's a footnote. It isn't.

Let me be direct with you: the government just told you, officially and legally, that it expects you to be working until 64. And if your employer wants to keep you around, they can keep you on until 69.

Congratulations. You've been re-employed by the system.

Now before anyone gets defensive — I get that this is framed as worker protection. It is, technically. Employers cannot force you out before 64. That's the law. But ask yourself honestly: is the goal of these changes to give you more freedom, or to keep more of you in the workforce for longer because Singapore needs it?

The government has been consistent. The direction of travel is clear. And if you're not building your own exit, the exit is being quietly moved further away.

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64New retirement age (from 1 Jul 2026)

69New re-employment age

65CPF payout age (unchanged)

4%CPF SA/RA floor rate (held to end-2026)

The Numbers Are Working Against You

Let's put this in concrete terms. If you're currently 35, the goalposts have shifted at least twice in your working lifetime already. When you started working, retirement age was 62. Now it's heading to 64. Nobody would be surprised if it hits 65 or 67 before you get there.

And here's the brutal irony: CPF payouts still start at 65. So they're extending the working age, but the money doesn't arrive any earlier. That 1-year gap between the new retirement age (64) and your CPF LIFE payout age (65) is a year you either fund yourself, or stay employed to bridge.

Reality check The CPF OA is earning 2.5% per annum. Your SA and RA are held at 4% until end-2026 — after that, no guarantees. Meanwhile, Singapore's private residential property prices are near all-time highs, and a plate of chicken rice costs $5.50. Tell me again how 2.5% is adequate.

So What Are They Actually Giving You?

To be fair, I'll give credit where it's due. The government isn't doing this in a vacuum.

The CPF monthly salary ceiling went up to S$8,000 in 2026 (from S$7,400 in 2025). If you earn more than that, more of your wages now flow into CPF — which means more forced savings. Whether you see that as a gift or a shackle depends on how much you trust CPF to be the right vehicle for your retirement.

For those aged 55 to 65, CPF contribution rates will increase from 2027. The intent is to boost retirement adequacy for senior workers. The CPF Transition Offset — a wage subsidy for employers — has been extended to December 2027, softening the cost impact on businesses.

There's also a new CPF life-cycle investment scheme coming in the first half of 2028. Glide-path mechanism, professionally managed, capped fees. Think of it as CPF OA money being put to work more aggressively when you're young, then de-risked as you approach 65. On paper, sound. In practice, we'll see how the returns compare to just buying VOO in an FSMOne account.

Positive note, seriously Eligible Singaporeans aged 50 and above with CPF balances below the Basic Retirement Sum get an automatic top-up of up to S$1,500 this year. It's not a lot, but it's targeted, and it acknowledges that the system has left some people behind. That matters.

The Part Most People Miss

Here's what I actually want you to sit with: the retirement age change doesn't affect CPF payouts. Those still start at 65. The government was explicit about this. These are separate mechanisms.

But that's precisely the problem — because most Singaporeans have been mentally conflating the two. They assume "retirement" means "CPF kicks in and I stop working." That's never been entirely true, and it's less true now.

Your CPF is a retirement income tool. Your freedom to stop working is a separate matter — and it's one that the system will never hand to you. You have to build it yourself.

"The retirement age increase applies to employees born on or after 1 July 1963."

That's most of us still in the workforce. If you were born after July 1963, you are in scope. The clock is not your friend unless you make it so.

What FIRE People Already Know

Those of us in the FIRE community didn't need this announcement to tell us something was off. We've been watching the trajectory for years. The goalposts move. The official retirement age is a ceiling — a floor is what you need.

Your floor is the passive income number that lets you stop working because you want to, not because the law says you have to. It's not 2.6% HDB loan interest. It's not your CPF RA balance. It's dividend income, rental yield, capital deployed into assets that compound whether you're at a desk or not.

For me, Singapore banks (DBS, OCBC, UOB) and quality REITs form the income spine of my SGX portfolio. The US Growth Portfolio does the heavy lifting on capital appreciation. They serve different functions. Both matter.

The point isn't to be smug about achieving FIRE. The point is that if you don't build an alternative — if you leave your financial fate entirely in the hands of CPF and an employer — then announcements like this one will keep chipping away at whatever sense of control you thought you had.

Practical Moves You Can Make Right Now

1. Top up your SA (if under 55) or RA (55 and above) to the FRS. The 4% floor is held through end-2026. Don't overthink it — that's risk-free guaranteed return on cash sitting in a savings account doing less.
2. Check your CPF OA balance and housing refund obligations. If you've drawn OA for a property, that accrued interest compounds. Know your real net CPF position, not the gross number on the dashboard.
3. Build income outside of employment. Dividends, covered calls, rental income — whatever your vehicle. The goal is passive cash flow that doesn't care about your retirement age.
4. Don't anchor to the FRS as your retirement sum target. The FRS gets adjusted upward periodically. Plan for the BRS in absolute worst case, and treat ERS as your real aspiration if longevity risk is a concern.
5. Think about what 65 actually means for you in cash flow terms. CPF LIFE payouts are a fixed annuity, not a dividend. They don't grow. If inflation runs at 2.5% for 20 years, that payout buys meaningfully less at 85 than at 65. Plan for that gap.

The Bottom Line

Singapore is a well-run country with serious people making considered policy decisions. I'm not here to tell you the government is out to get you. They're not.

But they are optimising for the country, not for your individual freedom. Those two things are not always aligned. The retirement age going to 64 is rational from a macro perspective — longer lifespans, tighter fiscal constraints, an ageing population that needs to remain productive. It makes sense at a societal level.

At an individual level? It means one more year of your life that someone else has a legal say over — unless you've built a life where that law is simply irrelevant to you.

That's the actual goal. Not beating the system. Not hoarding money for its own sake. Just building enough freedom that you can choose — with full agency — whether to work at 58, or 64, or not at all.

The government just moved the default. Your job is to make the default irrelevant.

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Thanks for reading. With love & peace, Qiongster.

The Market Just Crashed Because Good News Is Now Bad News.

The Market Just Crashed Because Good News Is Now Bad News. Here's What Happened — And What You Should Do About It.

By Qiongster  ·  June 8, 2026  ·  US Stocks, FIRE, Market Commentary

Friday night Singapore time, Wall Street had its worst day since October. The Nasdaq cratered 4.2%. Over a trillion dollars in market cap vaporised in a single session. And the trigger? A company beat its earnings. And the US economy added more jobs than anyone expected. Welcome to 2026, where good news sends markets into a tailspin.

If you woke up this morning, opened your brokerage app, and felt your stomach drop — you're not alone. If you're in any tech or AI-adjacent stocks (and frankly, who in Singapore's US Growth Portfolio isn't), the weekend just got a little heavier.

Let's break down exactly what happened, why it happened, and most importantly — what you should actually do about it.

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-4.2%Nasdaq Composite Friday close

-2.6%S&P 500 drop — worst day since Oct

-13%Broadcom (AVGO) single-day crash

172KUS jobs added in May — double expectations

Two Hammers Hit at Once

Friday's selloff wasn't caused by one thing. It was two separate storylines colliding on the same day, each bad enough on its own, lethal in combination.

Hammer #1: Broadcom's guidance disappointment.

Broadcom — one of the biggest AI chip plays in the world — reported Q2 2026 earnings on Wednesday night. The numbers were genuinely impressive: revenue of US$22.19 billion, up 48% year-on-year. Earnings per share beat Wall Street estimates. Free cash flow surged 60%. By any normal measure, a fantastic quarter.

The market sold it down 13%.

Why? Because Broadcom didn't raise its full-year guidance. In the AI trade, beating isn't enough. You have to beat and raise — deliver better results than expected, then promise even better results ahead. Broadcom said their AI chip business remains strong and they still expect semiconductor revenue to exceed US$100 billion next fiscal year. But they didn't upgrade the near-term number. And for a stock that had run hard into the print, that was enough for investors to head for the exit.

The AI expectation problem in one sentence When a company grows revenue 48% year-on-year and its stock drops 13%, you know the market has priced in something much better than 48%. That gap between reality and expectation is called valuation risk — and it's been building quietly in chip stocks all year.

The selloff rippled immediately. NVDA dropped nearly 6% on Friday. The Philadelphia Semiconductor Index — which tracks the chip sector — plunged over 6% before recovering to close down around 2%. Samsung and SK Hynix in Seoul got absolutely battered the following morning, with SK Hynix dropping nearly 10% in a single session.

Hammer #2: The jobs report from hell.

On Friday morning US time, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released May's nonfarm payrolls data. The consensus expectation was around 85,000 new jobs. The actual number? 172,000 — roughly double what anyone anticipated.

In any normal world, a strong jobs report is unambiguously good news. More people working means a healthy economy. But the market isn't living in a normal world right now. It's living in a world where a strong economy means the Federal Reserve has less reason to cut interest rates — and might even have to raise them.

The 10-year US Treasury yield immediately jumped above 4.5%. The 30-year crossed 5%. Those are psychologically important levels. Higher bond yields make fixed income more attractive relative to equities. They also raise borrowing costs for the companies spending billions building AI data centres. The math on the entire AI infrastructure trade gets harder when money costs more.

"The economy is doing too well. The market hates it."

The Timeline of the Carnage

Wednesday Night (SGT Thursday)

Broadcom posts strong Q2 earnings — revenue up 48% YoY — but fails to raise FY2026 guidance. Stock drops 13-15% in after-hours.

Friday Pre-Market (SGT Friday evening)

US May jobs report drops: 172,000 new jobs vs 85,000 expected. Bond yields spike. Rate cut expectations collapse. Futures already down hard.

Friday US Session

Nasdaq -4.2%. S&P 500 -2.6%. Dow -695 points. Meta drops 5.5% on news it may issue stock to fund AI infrastructure spending. Investors rotate into healthcare and consumer staples — Colgate +4%, Coca-Cola +3%, J&J +2%.

Saturday Morning Asia Open

Korea leads Asian losses. Kospi -5.5%. SK Hynix -9.9%. Samsung -6.4%. Nikkei -1.3%. Singapore STI slightly lower but relatively insulated.

Is This a Correction or a Collapse?

Let's be honest: nobody knows with certainty. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.

What I can tell you is what the data actually says. Before Friday's drop, the S&P 500 was up 7.9% for 2026. It had just posted nine consecutive winning weeks. It had hit a series of all-time highs. The AI trade had driven a furious run that pushed valuations in chip stocks to levels that assumed flawless execution for years into the future.

Friday was the first losing week in ten. That's not a collapse. That's a correction within an uptrend. The S&P 500 is still up on the year. The Nasdaq, despite Friday's 4.2% drop, is still materially higher than it was in January.

The uncomfortable truth is that corrections like this are normal. They feel catastrophic in the moment because our brains anchor to last week's portfolio value and experience the drop as a loss, even when the longer-term picture is still positive. That's human psychology, not market reality.

Context matters The last time the Nasdaq fell this hard in a single session was April 2025, during the tariff tantrum when the Trump administration threatened 100% tariffs on Chinese goods. That looked apocalyptic at the time. The S&P 500 subsequently rallied back and hit record highs. Markets have a way of making every correction feel like the end — and then recovering anyway.

What's Actually at Risk Here

I want to be straight with you, because I know a lot of Singaporean retail investors are sitting on US tech and AI positions right now. Here's what the real risks are — no sugarcoating.

Valuations were stretched. The AI trade has been running on narrative and expectation as much as fundamentals. Broadcom is still trading at a forward P/E of around 37 even after Friday's drop. NVDA's valuation has baked in extraordinary growth for years. When expectations are this high, any stumble — even a small one — can trigger outsized selling. We knew this going in. That's the nature of growth investing.

Rate cuts are now off the table for longer. With 172,000 jobs added in May and the Fed already watching inflation, the market is now pricing in the possibility of a rate hike later this year. If that happens, high-multiple tech stocks face a genuine headwind. The AI infrastructure buildout becomes more expensive to fund. That's not fatal, but it's a real constraint.

Bond yields above 4.5% are a problem for tech valuations. The discount rate used to value future cash flows just went up. Mathematically, that compresses the present value of those cash flows. All else equal, higher long rates = lower fair value for growth stocks. The "all else" never stays equal, but the direction is real.

What's not broken The actual business of AI. Google just committed US$920 million per month to rent 110,000 NVDA GPUs from SpaceX. Meta is spending aggressively. Microsoft and Amazon continue building data centre capacity at scale. The demand for AI infrastructure is not gone — the question is whether the stocks had already priced in more than the near-term fundamentals can support. That's a valuation question, not a business viability question.

What I'm Actually Doing With My Portfolio

I'll be direct, because I know some of you come here for the honest take, not the reassuring take.

I'm not panic selling. Nothing in Friday's action changed the long-term thesis for quality US tech. NVDA still dominates AI chip infrastructure. The hyperscalers are still spending. The secular tailwind is still real. A 6% single-day drop in a stock I've held for a year doesn't suddenly make that thesis wrong.

That said, I'm watching my NVDA position closely. I've been running cash-secured puts on NVDA in the US$215–220 range. Friday's drop is actually relevant context for where the real support is — if we test that zone this week, I want to be clear-headed about whether that's a buying opportunity or a falling knife. My DCF has NVDA's fair value north of current prices on conservative assumptions. If the price comes to me, I'll consider it.

What I'm not doing is extrapolating one bad Friday into a market thesis. Corrections within bull markets are the price of admission for the returns that bull markets generate. The investors who sold in April 2025 when the tariff headlines looked catastrophic missed the entire subsequent rally.

The Singaporean Investor's Specific Read

A few things worth noting for those of us managing SGX and US portfolios simultaneously.

The STI is relatively insulated from this. Our Singapore banks and REITs don't move in lockstep with the Nasdaq. In fact, if US rates stay higher for longer, Singapore bank NIMs could benefit — higher rates mean wider spreads. DBS, OCBC, and UOB have been generating exceptional returns in a higher-rate environment. That's one reason the SGX Income Portfolio is genuinely useful as a diversifier. When your US Growth Portfolio has a bad Friday, you want something that doesn't.

For those with USD cash sitting in brokerage accounts — this correction might be the entry window you've been waiting for. If you've been watching NVDA, AVGO, or other chip names and thought valuations were too stretched, they just got cheaper. Not cheap. Cheaper. There's a difference.

And for anyone who woke up this morning thinking about selling everything: ask yourself honestly whether the thesis changed, or just the price. If the answer is "just the price," then selling locks in a loss without solving anything. The thesis is either valid or it isn't. Price action doesn't change the underlying business.

1. Don't make permanent decisions based on temporary pain. Every major correction in history has felt like the beginning of the end. Most weren't. The ones that were — 2008, COVID — gave ample warning signs beyond a single Friday's earnings disappointment.
2. Recheck your thesis, not your app. Refresh your conviction in the underlying business, not your portfolio balance. If your investment case for NVDA or any other AI name was built on real fundamentals, one bad session doesn't invalidate it.
3. If you have dry powder, a plan is better than a reaction. Know your target price for adding. Know what would change your thesis. Have clear rules so emotion doesn't drive the decision at 2am on a Sunday.
4. Use your SGX income portfolio as the anchor. Dividends from banks and REITs land whether the Nasdaq is up or down. That passive income is exactly what you built it for — psychological ballast when the growth side is volatile.
5. Watch bond yields this week. If the 10-year settles back below 4.5%, some of Friday's selling will likely reverse. If it pushes higher, brace for continued pressure on high-multiple tech. The bond market is telling the equity market what to do right now.

The Bottom Line

What happened Friday was jarring but not irrational. Broadcom delivered strong results that failed to exceed sky-high expectations. A blowout jobs number killed hopes of near-term Fed cuts and sent bond yields surging. Those two events, landing on the same day, were enough to shake confidence in one of the market's most crowded trades.

That's the AI trade in 2026 in one sentence: extraordinary business results, extraordinary expectations, and very little margin for any disappointment.

The underlying story — that AI infrastructure demand is real, growing, and transformational — has not changed. The question is what price fairly reflects that story. Friday's correction is the market recalibrating that answer. It won't be the last time.

Stay invested. Stay rational. Know your thesis. And maybe hold off on checking your portfolio every twenty minutes this week.

The market will be fine. Whether any individual stock will be fine depends entirely on whether the business is fine. Do that homework now, while the prices are lower and the pressure is real. That's when the best decisions get made.

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Thanks for reading. With love & peace, Qiongster.

The Market is Lying to You (And Why I'm not Panicking)

Something deeply weird is happening in markets right now, and I think most retail investors are misreading it.

Let me lay out the situation plainly.

Following a hotter-than-expected inflation report in mid-May, market pricing took virtually any chance of a Fed rate cut off the table between now and end-2027. More strikingly, traders in the fed funds futures market are now pricing in an interest rate increase as soon as December, with a March 2027 hike carrying better than 71% probability.

So rates going up. Got it.

Now here's the punchline: over the past month, the Nasdaq surged nearly 15%, the S&P gained almost 10%, and the Dow added over 6%. Year-to-date, the Nasdaq is up nearly 40%.

Stocks. Going. Up.

How does a market that's pricing in rate hikes simultaneously make new all-time highs? This feels like it shouldn't be allowed. 

And yet, here we are.

What's actually happening

Fed rate expectations have reversed from pricing 2–3 cuts three months ago to now expecting hikes totalling roughly 30 basis points through 2027, driven by sticky inflation from oil tariffs and AI cycle demand, alongside resilient equity valuations.

The culprit is the Iran war. Elevated energy prices from the conflict have kept inflation above the Fed's 2% target, with headline PCE accelerating to 3.5% in March 2026, up from 2.8% in February. BofA has now pushed its rate-cut forecast all the way to July 2027.

But AI spending and corporate earnings are strong enough that equity markets are, for now, shrugging all of this off. The rally is being driven primarily by artificial intelligence infrastructure spending and surprisingly resilient corporate earnings.

So we have two narratives colliding: rates going higher for longer vs AI-driven growth is unstoppable. Markets, for now, are betting on the second one.

What this means for us Singaporean investors

Here's where it gets personal.

In 2025, S-REITs benefited from the sharp decline in 3-month SORA as the Fed cut rates. But the recent shift towards a slower pace of rate cuts — and now potential hikes — has started to weigh on sentiment. S-REITs and property stocks have pulled back as investors reassess how long borrowing costs may stay elevated.

For those of us holding S-REITs, this environment is uncomfortable but not catastrophic. Let me tell you why.

First, around 75% of Singapore REIT debt is on fixed rates or hedged through floating-to-fixed interest rate swaps. The damage from rate spikes is partially insulated. REITs aren't as naked to rate moves as you might fear.

Second, the selloff creates opportunity. Analysts expect refinancing of REIT loans expiring in 2026–2027 to see up to 200 basis points in savings, and project up to a 40 bps increase in sector yield, pushing headline yields back towards the 6% level — spreads that investors were historically happy to re-enter.

Third, and this is the nuance people miss: Singapore banks — DBS, OCBC, UOB — are currently guiding for broadly stable income in 2026. The key risk to watch is a sharper-than-expected global slowdown, especially if oil prices stay elevated, which could raise non-performing loans. But banks actually benefit from higher rates on the NIM side, so the portfolio balance between banks and REITs matters here.

My honest take

The market is in a paradox that won't last forever. Either:

Inflation stays hot → the Fed hikes → equities eventually reprice lower → REITs stay under pressure but their yields become genuinely attractive

Growth slows from high oil prices → inflation falls → the Fed cuts again → REITs rally, tech pauses

Neither scenario is an emergency. Both are navigable.

What I'm not doing: panic selling my REIT positions just because the macro headline is scary. What I am doing: being patient with new capital deployment, collecting distributions, and using this volatility to sell cash-secured puts on names I'd happily own at lower prices anyway.

The market is loudly broadcasting contradictory signals. The right response isn't to shout back. It's to have a plan, stick to it, and collect your dividends in the meantime.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. It's crucial to conduct your own research or consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

Thanks for reading.

With love and peace, 

Qiongster

Portfolio Update May 2026

 Here is a portfolio update for May 2026.

My SGX Income Portfolio value climbs to $463k from $457k, driven by continued strength in the banks with DBS and UOB both riding positive earnings momentum and a healthy rebound in Aims Apac Reit and Frasers L&C Trust. Frasers L&C hitting the $1 psychological milestone. Partially offsetting were softer prices across the Mapletree family and CICT, though nothing alarming given the broader sluggish S-REIT environment.

My US Growth Portfolio increases to US$101.3k from US$83.2k due increased investment in NVIDIA from cash secured put option assignment and sustained strength of growth stocks such as MSFT, PANW and AMZN.

My SRS Ultra Long-Term Portfolio value rises to $287k from $270k mainly due to SRS contributions and dividends received from local banks.

Portfolio Actions

1. Buy 100 shares of NVDA at $217.50 from cash secured put option assignment.

2. Sell 100 shares of FTNT at $100 from covered call option assignment.

3. Close AMZN covered call option by buying back and replacing with a Dec 26 $250 PUT.

Portfolio Dividends

1. Received $613 of dividends from SSB on 4 May.

2. Received $2,100 of dividends from OCBC on 8 May in SRS.

3. Received $710 of dividends from UOB on 8 May.

5. Received $229.50 of dividends from Comfortdelgro on 13 May in SRS.

6. Received $150 of dividends from Wilmar on 15 May in SRS.

7. Received $810.81 of dividends from DBS on 20 May.

8. Received $648 of dividends from DBS on 20 May in SRS.

9. Received $184.10 of dividends from Astrea 7 Class A-1 PE Bond on 28 May.

10. Received $42 of dividends from OUE on 29 May.

11. Received $96.80 of dividends from Suntec Reit on 29 May.

12. Received $981.76 of dividends from Frasers Centrepoint Trust on 29 May.

The 2026 investment landscape remains defined by competing crosscurrents — Iran war fears that gripped markets earlier in the year have meaningfully subsided, yet sticky inflation and a "higher-for-longer" rate narrative continue to keep investors on edge. The brief spike in volatility, however, proved to be exactly the kind of emotional overreaction that long-term compounders should welcome rather than fear.

The barbell strategy continues to do its job quietly. On one end, SGX banks and REITs provide the defensive ballast as DBS and OCBC delivering stellar results, while the broader S-REIT complex stages a gradual recovery on the back of decent earnings and easing geopolitical noise. On the other end, US tech leaders are rewarding patience: NVIDIA, Amazon, Palo Alto and TSMC all pushing higher as AI infrastructure spending and cloud demand prove resilient to the macro uncertainty.

The playbook remains unchanged — anchor in quality cash flows, accumulate during periods of fear, and resist the temptation to trade the headlines. As the geopolitical dust settles and rate expectations gradually normalise, the portfolio is already positioned where it needs to be. Volatility was the opportunity. Staying invested was the edge.

SGX Income Portfolio

Stock	Qty	Price	Value	Weight
DBS	1,001	S$62.840	S$62,903	13.6%
Aims Apac Reit	35,000	S$1.580	S$55,300	12.0%
Mapletree Industrial	26,000	S$1.940	S$50,440	10.9%
CICT	20,506	S$2.270	S$46,549	10.1%
UOB	1,000	S$37.600	S$37,600	8.1%
Frasers Centrepoint	16,000	S$2.270	S$36,320	7.9%
Frasers L&C Trust	30,000	S$1.000	S$30,000	6.5%
Capitaland Ascendas	11,900	S$2.500	S$29,750	6.4%
Mapletree Logistics	21,879	S$1.280	S$28,005	6.1%
Mapletree PanAsia	20,000	S$1.280	S$25,600	5.5%
Guocoland	4,500	S$2.260	S$10,170	2.2%
Capitaland Ascott	10,000	S$0.895	S$8,950	1.9%
Far East Orchard	6,546	S$1.220	S$7,986	1.7%
Suntec Reit	5,000	S$1.470	S$7,350	1.6%
Capitaland China	10,687	S$0.645	S$6,893	1.5%
IREIT Global	22,000	S$0.235	S$5,170	1.1%
Netlink Trust	5,000	S$0.995	S$4,975	1.1%
OUE	4,200	S$1.070	S$4,494	1.0%
UI Boustead Reit	5,000	S$0.795	S$3,975	0.9%

Total value

S$463,430

US Growth Portfolio

Moomoo

Equity positions

Stock	Qty	Price	Avg cost	Mkt value	Unr. P/L	%
AMZN Amazon	140	$270.64	$221.94	$37,890	+$6,818	+21.9%
NVDA NVIDIA	170	$211.14	$200.12	$35,894	+$1,873	+5.5%
MSFT Microsoft	10	$450.24	$407.83	$4,502	+$424	+10.4%
AAPL Apple	11.1	$312.06	$127.61	$3,464	+$2,047	+144.5%
PANW Palo Alto	10	$281.69	$165.00	$2,817	+$1,167	+70.7%
TSM TSMC	5	$418.45	$117.20	$2,092	+$1,506	+257.0%
BB BlackBerry	2	$9.00	$9.87	$18	$-2	-8.8%
NOK Nokia	1	$14.84	$5.88	$15	+$9	+152.4%

Options positions

Contract	Type	Strike	Expiry	Unr. P/L	Portfolio %
AMZN 250P Short (CSP)	Put	$250	18 Dec 26	+$455	-1.54%
GOOGL 250P Short (CSP)	Put	$250	21 Aug 26	+$882	-0.07%
MSFT 380P Short (CSP)	Put	$380	18 Jun 26	+$995	-0.04%
NKE 50P Short (CSP)	Put	$50	18 Dec 26	+$138	-0.77%

Tiger Broker

Syfe Trader 

Total value

US$101.3k

SRS Ultra Long-Term Portfolio

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. It's crucial to conduct your own research or consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions.

Thanks for reading.

With love and peace, 

Qiongster