Comparison of Integrated Shield Plans (Singapore Nov 2021)

Recently, I have entered into a sort of family planning stage where my spouse & I thought of having baby in the coming year & we thought of getting Integrated Shield Plans. Its definitely not easy to compare across all the different plans, many insurers also hyped certain wordings like "lifetime coverage" to make it as though its exclusive when its a common feature across all insurers.

I spent hours and hours reading through various sites which provided good tips but none is conclusive of which is good or detailed why its good. The insurers also avoid price competition by having different features, pricing which makes comparison really difficult across the board.

Eventually & kudos to MOH our paternal government which lists a comparison of integrated Shield Plans across the 7 insurers (link here)in a pdf format, which I converted into excel & use color formatting to help me visually see which plans have the best "features" and the average premium costs across lifespan.

You can refer to the source excel here 

The dark green color showed the top feature / benefit in that row.

Lighter green implies comparable but lesser benefit or with restrictions.

Dark red implies lack of or absence, lighter red indicates certain restrictions.

The overall idea is to have an overview visually which plan give the best or most benefits & I ranked the first or second for each table. Do note there's some bias in me, for example, I value "inpatient palliative care" highly after my late Dad's been "chased" out of his restructured hospital palliative ward as stage 4 cancer patient to hospice care which do not have any medishield coverage & the costs are easily $4-5k+/month. Fortunately (or unfortunately) his condition deteriorated in his last few days & thus no longer conducive to move out to the planned hospice thus he managed to stay on & passed away. Thus for me, this is a vital benefit that I valued should I ever face the same situation.

Next benefit that I valued are the pre- and post- hospitalization treatment, which I want it to be as long as possible, as quoted by this Today article in April 2021 "complex diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease or gastroesophageal reflux disease, long-term follow up is important, as most of these conditions would not be resolved within three months of the time of diagnosis".

As I am in my late 30s, the final table which I inserted as excel formula to calculate the average across the premiums for each age groups. I also simplified the figures by taking the upper figure of the range for prudent estimate. The final results that I chose is probably GE's SupremeHealth P Plus based on the cost versus benefits (most greened benefits) though the final purchase depends on the level of exclusions as I do have a mild condition that's non-life threatening and in fact no medication needed at all with no functional impacts in any way, but have a potential to lead to cancer if the viral load somehow take a turn for the worst despite being dormant for past 25 years since its discovery. The Today's article highlighted earlier had many good tips that you should ask before purchasing any ISP; I will be asking them when I fix an appointment with my friend's agents. This will be my first time sitting down in a serious discussion with a Financial Planner / Insurance Agent. I do think its prudent from risk management perspective to divert say 5-10% of my annual income into various insurance plans (ISP, pregnancy, critical illnesses, accident, disability, children's education) etc. After all, like the options premiums that I earned, the cost is a necessary protection to my "downsides" in life & my family, provided the protections are comprehensive & trustworthy enough to rely on. Otherwise, I might as well rely on the standard government mandated ones & myself in building my rainy day funds.

Reversal of Fortunes, Investing in my Education & Community Support

Reversal of Fortunes

What a big change in the past 2months, I remembered updating my yearly resolution plans when I realized all my financial goals for 2021 were hit, setting new targets of repeating the gains which led to "performance stress" where I begun to oversell to max out the limit (ie.utilized nearly every available dollars balance in my ThinkOrSwim platform).

Initially, my portfolio started with about 10 different counters which I sold put options on, then the series of China clampdowns drove down prices so fast that the usual tactical maneuvers of rolling over results in double & double & double down, before I know it, my put options losses ballooned to 3-4x. Over the past month, I closed off other counters which results in risk concentrations over 2 specific counters, BIDU (Baidu) and BABA (Alibaba) to raise available dollars for roll overs. Until the deltas hit .90+ so much so that, towards expiry, I cannot even roll them over without taking debits as the time value (of even 3months+) are not enough to cover the ITM losses. My paper profit of almost USD70k late July reversed into losses (currently $2-3k losses YTD that hit my capital), a reversal of +USD70k to -USD3k! Ouch!! 😭

Most of the losses were taken when I closed my BIDU put options sold & reduced my exposure to BABA.

I took assignment of 200 BABA shares at strike of USD220 when the price closed at USD157.96 on 21 August 2021.

This experience forced me to research & explore other tactical maneuvers to reduce losses, other than simply taking the losses, I also sold calls at expiry price to reduce the losses (2x premiums from put sold & new call sold), hopefully as price recover, the premiums from puts roll over & call sold at or above put's strike I will be able to gradually recover my account.

This reversal of fortunes also reminded me to be humble & always remember the risk management & diversification rules as well as setting cut loss of 1% limit & avoid rolling over more than once to avoid becoming "married" to the position & suffer huge losses with a prolonged downtrend like many of the Chinese tech shares.

Investing in my Education & Community Support

Adam Khoo & his team launched a new "Beat the Market" sale, as shared in my earlier post, knowing the techniques is only at most 1/3 of the winning share, the critical part of risk management if not monitored can easily reversed the fortunes like what I did. Also, I am lacking of social support of other options traders to discuss & exchange ideas, hopefully with the investing into my own education, am purchasing bundle 5: Ultimate Profits (promo price until 1 Sept 2021 https://btm.piranhaprofits.com/sale), I know I can make the money many folds back. With the community support, hopefully I can avoid drawdowns like what I been through the past 2months.

God bless & may the trends be with you! 🙏🍀

1H 2021 Investment Results

Haven't been active in posting as I was in a sort of discovery journey on options trading, mainly selling putting options, experimenting various options strategies such as the wheel & going through hours of Adam Khoo's videos on Options Ironshell & Ironstriker...

I will talk abit on my personal review of the 2 options courses in general as well as my 1H2021 results thus far.

Review on Adam Khoo (or rather Bang's) Options Ironshell & Ironstriker courses

Firstly, the videos I watched was shared by someone & wasn't the latest (I think its 2019 version) so there's probably some changes / updates since. However, based on Adam Khoo's free & open sharing on his youtube , the changes are minor (eg. Bull Bang / Protective Bullish Synthetic to Collar Synthetic Strategy, the only one I noticed) but the rest are largely the same. Well strategies are like principles, such as Value investing, Swing trading etc. these strategies remains the same past decades, abit of tweaks here & there, depending on individuals' style. With that set, here's my review.

The courses comprised of useful tools (excels - linking TD Think or Swim platform to color code options with rich / poor premiums, portfolio plan, tracking table etc.), power slides (for those who prefer hardcopy to read) and hundreds of hours of step by step videos with examples of trades. I personally learnt alot and find it absolutely enriching.

In terms of takeaway, which you I will attribute a good part of credits to AK, my return had breakthrough to a whole new level I never thought I can achieve. However, those strategies that I like & use to achieve these returns, are actually the most simplistic & basics which almost every options trader are well aware but different level of appreciation & mastery. My strategies thus far are mostly selling put options with occasional bull put spread or hedging on VIX, I experimented abit on diagonal (lease to rent - buy long dated call (lease), sell short dated call (rent); but my most preferred are still selling puts - simple but abit of arts (like what to sell). On this, I combined by usual trading methodologies of catching bottoms or pullbacks with a search on high Implied Volatility (IV) stocks to sell put options on. In addition, the "ah ha" moment was when I struggled to cut loss on stocks that went against me (eg. TSLA which fell from peak of $850 to low of $550 & SI which fell from $170 to $80), both caused me quite abit of drawdowns which I managed to recover from. As I read from various groups' comments, I learned more from others such as diversification over various counters, rather than selling 6-10puts with weekly expiry consecutively in upcoming 45days and so on.

In conclusion, the cost of the courses are definitely worthwhile to invest in, but it takes alot of dedication to research, learn, test & also adapt (carefully) to suit one's style. However, the materials are already out there, at least those that led me to my profits; much of the other strategies are not so comfortable to me at this stage, maybe because I still haven't master them or I dont like the number of legs needed to execute. You can actually learn almost 70% of the materials just from his videos on youtube (yes all his videos added up already cover more than 70% of his strategies taught), but the most valuable part which cannot be bought is the community (AK or Bang's Telegram group - like minded peers' money making ideas & sharing). So, even though I already have the videos, I will be keeping a lookout for AK / Bang next Black Friday sale, will take some profits & invest to learn continuously to practice & trade skillfully over time.

1H 2021 Investment Returns

My return for 1H2021 is 18.9% or USD 34k out of invested capital of USD 181k (rounded to nearest k). Adding back the 100 VRTX share assigned, the return is about USD57k or 30%.

The chart above illustrates the deposits of capital & drawdowns.

I opened my TD Account on 26 August 2020, was experimenting around & gotten my first assignment of KR which I took loss as it fell despite a positive earning report then (8 Sep 2020).

There were some drawdowns related to BABA which was affected by China government's clamp down, but gradually my appreciation of the strategy & risk management increased & I pumped in capital (marked by major blue bars for the horizontal increase in balance). At the end of 2020, I was net equal to the capital I put in then, thus instead of removing 2020 transactions I continued the entries in Excel & included it in the chart.

The slow gradient increase over time are the premiums sold which some I covered but mostly at profits, still there's some drawdowns which is only part of the investing journey. On the right edge, I was assigned 100shares of VRTX which I held & sold call option on it.

Overall, 1H2021 that is, the return in USD has been quite impressive for my standards, I hope to be able to keep up my rational & wise judgements to generate more returns consistently overtime.

Hope you enjoy this & may the trends be with you...

CPF Interest 2021

Its that time of the year again, where everywhere i browse i see bloggers sharing how much CPF interest they got...

So, i decide to share mine as well, but abit of demographic info.would probably give more context as undoubtedly readers will be comparing this to theirs individual situations, which is likely to be different from mine.

I'm aged 36 this year, attached but not married yet; no housing obligation as i took over my late Dad's 3 room flat with 62years lease (but likely plan to BTO this yeat). So please note the balance is only possible due to 1) early cash top up to SA, 2) transfer of OA to SA several years ago & 3) no mortgage debt.

Needless to say, 4% from SA balance of $215k contributed to the bulk of the $12k interest. This put my trading to shame as neither my cash capital (including my personal saving) nor my returns could beat CPF returns in the past 8 years.

Maybe ETFs n long term holding instead of trying to time the market, is the way to go for 2021.

Before ending this post, one should be reminded of their greatest assets, that is HEALTH!

When we are in our active years, our expenses are low. I cant remember if the $699.40 outgoing from Medisave was it purely for Medishield Life premium alone or does it include any medical expenses in 2020. In any cases, the fact you are reading this means your have survived Covid19. Being alive is the greatest gift because it means there's still chance to make changes if you want to.

All the best to 2021!