Pumped In S$41K As Trump Tariffs Sunk The Market

Wow the past week has been wild to say the least. Like plucking a guitar string and watching it vibrate. Markets are just whipsawing every day since Trump tariffs took effect.

I’m not much of a market fortune teller, so I follow a set of guidelines when deciding whether to buy or sell assets in our long-term Family Retirement Portfolio.

Tariffs started on 2 April after market close, and the very next day was carnage in the markets. After taking the weekend to digest what was happening and working out the rebalancing amounts, I pumped as much as S$41K into the stock market on Monday 7 April.

Not a relatively small sum for our portfolio, considering total portfolio value was at S$378K prior to purchase. That works out to almost 11% cash injection. Source of funds came from reserve cash as well as some from annual bonus payout.

So far, total net buys for April amounts to S$48K (also bought some on 1 April) which is by far the most I’ve injected into the portfolio in a month. The next highest were S$19K in March 2020 and S$17k in January 2022.

I set a level of cash for the portfolio depending on the % that the world index (proxy VT ETF) and the Nasdaq (proxy QQQ ETF) are from their respective all-time highs. Then I add the risk-free rate (proxy Singapore Savings Bond current month 10Y yield). At the lowest point, QQQ was down more than 20% and VT down 15+%, so I was at 7% cash + 2.7% SSB yield = 9.7% cash target.

At time of writing though, markets have recovered somewhat, so QQQ and VT are only down 17% and 12% respectively from ATH. I’m not rushing to rebalance again though. Typically, I’ll try to wait a month until next rebalance unless things change radically again.

So far this system of rebalancing has been working pretty well for me. 7 April seems to have been a pretty good buying opportunity for now, unless the market bleeds again next week. So far my buys during the past steep drops have returned well.

Buying spree list:

Crossing my fingers that markets hold up and go on higher from here, until I have time to build up more cash for the next flash crash.