What seems to confuse most investors about Exchange-Traded Funds, or ETFs, is that they seem to be funds - but aren't. Investors like unit trusts and funds, because they spread risk by diversifying investments. However, most do not like the management and operating expenses associated with actively managed mutual funds which typically can range from 2-5% for the sales charge, as well as a 1-2% annual management fee. That is why index funds (designed to track the major indexes such as the STI, Dow Jones, S&P and even Gold price) have become so popular - they may not be actively managed but their returns are in-line with the benchmarks they were designed to mirror. Similarly, ETFs are not actively managed but they are designed to mirror other indexes and offer a number of significant advantages to investors.

In the public offering of an IPO, the applicant is not guaranteed success in obtaining the IPO shares. In fact, IPO shares are given out based on balloting system. So how does that work? How can you increase your chances?

In IPO balloting, it is a pure random balloting system. What this mean is that those who applied for the IPO earlier do not get any special priority. It is however, based on the number of shares you have applied during the IPO.

Refer to this balloting result document (For the IPO application of Centraland).IPO balloting results are only released AFTER the IPO application and selection is over. So it will not help you in deciding how much to ballot.

In Singapore, the terms stock broker, dealer, remisier, trading representative all mean 'generally' the same thing. They are the people who you call when you want to make a trade or when you have problems during your transactions with that brokerage firm.

Back in the 1970s to 1990s, being a remisier is a very lucurative business. Commissions was around 1% of the trades done, and a remisiers cut could be around 40-50% of that commission. However, the advent of internet trading has resulted in commissions going as low at 0.275%. Even with a 40% cut of that, you would still need a substantial amount of trading volume going through you to make a decent amount of money.

So why be a remisier?

IPO stands for Initial Public Offering.

When a few people come together to start a company, they would pool their funds together. Rather than recording the amount of money contributed, pieces of paper with a fixed value are allocated to them. These pieces of paper are known as shares or stock or equity. These type of companies are known as private corporations. What that means is that the shares are held by a small group of people who do not intend to trade the shares.

Most people want to make a million dollars, however, most people do not know how long does it take, what does it require, and how much is required initially to make a million dollars.

Assuming that a person starts of with $100,000. How long does he need to hit a million? What kinds of returns annually does he need to achieve?

Given that most well performing equity funds achieve 10-15%, if you are an individual investor in the stock market, you should be aiming higher. 20%? 30% Or even 40%? Assuming 20% returns annually, it would mean it will take you 13 years, with a $100,000 initial capital, in order to hit a million dollars. Thats actually not too bad, considering you can save $100,00 by the age 30, you should be able to have a million dollars in assets by the time you are 43 years old.

The exact calculation for this is below

There are typically 3 types of orders in the stock market.

A limit order is an order to transact at a limit price or better. What this means is that a buy order will be done at the limit price or lower, and a sell order will be done at the limit price or higher. Another way to look at it is that you are queuing to transact at that price or better.

A market order, is an order that transacts at the current market price. So for example, if the current bid/ask is $1.01 buy, $1.02 sell and you would like to buy the stock, it would be done at $1.02. In essence, a market order is saying that you want the stock, regardless of the price. In Singapore, a market order is not available. However,  you can simulate a market order by entering a limit order for a price higher than the current price (EG: Limit buy at $1.02 or higher)

In a stock market, most transactions are conducted in lot sizes. In the case of the Singapore market, most lot sizes is actually 1000 shares, as compared to the US market for example, which tends to use 100 shares per lot.

For example, if you want to buy a stock X that cost $1.50, you would have to buy 1 lot at a time. Thus, 1 lot of stock X would cost you 1 x 1000 x $1.50 = $1500. This is before commissions though.

In certain stock the lot size might be 100 shares or 10 shares or other lot sizes. This would then be denoted on the stock symbol itself.

A few examples are,

GLD 10US$, which means 1 lot is 10 shares and it is priced in US$
JMH 400US$, which means 1 lot is 400 shares, and it is priced in US$
Shang Asia 2k HK$, which means 1 lot is 2000 shares, and it is priced in HK$

Thus, don't try to act cool in front of your remisier and ask him to buy 1 lot. Just tell him straight, how many shares you want to buy.