Endowus - March 2021

Endowus has recently raised S$23 million in Series A funding which is a piece of big news! So much information was actually revealed in the article. Some of the key points are as follows:

- This is one of the largest amounts raised in Series A funding for a Singapore-based fintech firm
- Endowus has plans to expand in Asia, starting with Hong Kong
- It is on track to hit S$1 billion in assets under advice by the second quarter in Singapore

In comparison, StashAway raised USD $5.3 million in Series A, USD $12 million in Series B, and USD $16 million in Series C. Having said that, we do not have visibility into the shares/equity that were traded for the funding. Besides that, they have also launched Cash Smart Ultra (1.8%-2%) and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) portfolios. Judging by all these, Endowus is doing pretty well and we do not have to worry about it closing down like Smartly.

ESG portfolios are interesting but unfortunately only available for cash investment. Although Cash Smart Ultra is probably offering one of the higher interest in the market currently, it still feels meh to me. If you are considering/looking at cash management account. You might want to consider my way of cash management. US$53.78 was my interest for just 1 week with a deposit of US$30k. 

- Earning High Interest Using BlockFi and Celsius Network

- Earning High Interest Using BlockFi and Celsius Network Part 2

Most importantly, Endowus has finally decided to lower the minimum investment amount to $1,000, making investing more "affordable" to everyone!

Risk Profile

Goal type: General wealth accumulation
Risk tolerance: Maximise returns (loss tolerance -60%)
Monthly investment using SRS: $638

I have modified my monthly investment in order to max out my SRS contribution for the year.

Account Summary

Capital: $13,064.00
Current: $15,484.29 (18.57%)

There are quite a few differences as compared to StashAway. Firstly, all the cash has been invested while StashAway keeps 1% of the portfolio in cash. Secondly, the fees are not deducted on a monthly basis. The Access Fee charged by Endowus will be deducted at the end of each quarter as stated in their FAQ.

As of 20 April 2021, the portfolio value is $16,001.19 (+22.55%).

For the last few weeks, Endowus portfolio was like on steroids. This is the first time it overtook my SRS investment with StashAway given that both portfolios had the same capital/deposit.

Asset Allocation

This shows that the number of shares for each fund that I owned:
- Dimensional Global Core Equity Fund (201.0180)
- Infinity US 500 Stock Index Fund (2,404.0200)
- Dimensional Emerging Markets Large Cap Core Equity Fund (80.7250)
- Dimensional Pacific Basin Small Companies Fund (74.5680)

It will be great if they actually showed my average price vs the current market price. Anyway, the Feb SRS investment was not captured in the same month, hence the above looks identical to last month and you will see that there are no transactions below.

Transactions

Given that Feb was a shorter month, the investment made in Feb spilled over to Mar.

That's all! Overall, I think the statement is pretty straightforward and easy to read. On a side note, StocksCafe does not has the ability to track funds, hence unable to do any form of comparison/benchmark.

Speaking of which, Endowus has finally launched a mobile app:

Apple: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/endowus-invest-cpf-srs-cash/id1531067679

Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.endowus.mobileapp

If you are interested in Endowus, do use our referral link for our readers! You will get S$10,000 managed free for 6 months ($20 equivalent) and we will get $20 too! 

On a side note, Futu's moomoo app attractive sign-up bonus (one free Apple Share besides other benefits) has been extended to 30th April 2021 (1500hr SGT)! Take a look at our review here.

You might be interested in the previous monthly update too:

- Endowus CPF/SRS Review

- Endowus - December 2020 - $12,466.20

- Endowus - January 2021 - $13,080.35

- Endowus - February 2021 - $13,549.30

- Endowus - March 2021 - $15,484.29

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

PancakeSwap and PancakeBunny - Our Experience with DeFi

After trying out CakeDeFi, I had a better idea of what I was getting into and decided to take the plunge and try out the real deal. There are hundreds or even thousands of DeFi platforms/applications so why PancakeSwap?

It is one of the top DeFi platforms based on TLV (Total Locked Value) and the number 1 platform on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) according to DefiLlama. Putting your money/crypto on these top platforms will reduce the risk of an exit scam/rug pull. As mentioned previously, the issue with those platforms that are on the Ethereum network is that the gas fees are too high now which makes it hard for new crypto users to participate. Every single transaction/action requires some gas fees because we will be using/performing some computation on the blockchain. For example, it might cost US$50 on Ethereum vs US$1 on BSC to perform a similar kind of transaction. 

Having said that, does being the number 1 platform means no risk? Of course not! We merely reduce the risk/possibility of an exit scam/rug pull. There will still be smart contract risk and impermanent loss. I have shown an example of impermanent loss in my previous article where I tried CakeDeFi. Smart contract risk is more abstract and probably harder to visualize/understand but guess what? It has actually happened on PancakeSwap before. Take a look at this articles for more information:

- Disclosing PancakeSwap, the first scam and cover up on Binance Smart Chain

- Sorry for exploiting the SYRUP bug

- Update on the SYRUP Incident

Now that we know some of the risks associated, let's get started. Firstly, you will need to configure/set up your personal wallet first. I am using MetaMask and you can follow the instructions here - Connecting MetaMask to Binance Smart Chain. I would like to emphasize that the seed phrase is extremely important and makes sure you do not lose it or share it with strangers or "tech support" because you will not be able to access your wallet without it or anyone with the seed phrase can get access to your wallet.

Next, we will need some BNB (Binance Coin) so I got them through Binance SG and paid through Xfers. Similarly, my initial capital was SG$5k. After that, I realized I cannot transfer from Binance SG to my wallet because the BNB is on another network (ERC20). Please share if you have a more efficient way of doing this!

So I had to transfer from Binance SG to Binance Global before transferring out to my Metamask wallet on the BEP20 (BSC) network. Binance has also put in place some tests to ensure that one knows what they are doing before the transfer because all these transfers are irreversible, once it is sent wrongly (wrong address or wrong network), everything will be lost. Note that there will be no customer support in the decentralized world.

As usual, I am also afraid of doing it wrongly so I transferred the minimum amount then (0.01 BNB with a fee of 0.0008 BNB) to test the water first. lol.

Once the test is successful, I went on to send the remaining ~SG$5k worth of BNB to my Metamask wallet. Once you reach this stage, I would say half the battle is won already. The remaining steps are just to connect your wallet to any of the DeFi app (PancakeSwap in this case) that you are interested in and click here and there. Nothing too complicated.

There are currently 2 ways to earn/get those crazy high yields. Syrup Pool which provides ~100% APR through staking of CAKE and Farms which provides ~9%-600% APR through staking of Liquidity Pool (LP) tokens. Generally, the higher the APR, the higher the risk. For those that prefer the safer approach is to farm the stablecoins (USDC-BUSD or USDT-BUSD) where there will be no/minimum impermanent loss. 

Another thing to note is the difference between the yields that are shown (APR vs APY). In short, APY includes the effect of compounding, hence it will be higher. This is where you got to decide your strategy and game plan. lol. I decided to just go with the most popular option which was the CAKE-BNB pair.

Similarly, to get the LP token, I will need an equal value for both coins, so I swap slightly less than half of my BNB for CAKE. Do take note and remember to keep some BNB to pay for gas fees!

Now that I have some CAKE, I can exchange both my CAKE and BNB for the CAKE-BNB LP token.

With the LP token, let's head over to the Farms section, "enable" that particular farm, and supply/stake the LP token to start "farming" more CAKE. I did not take a screenshot of the active farm then but you can take a look at my current farm. You will be able to see the amount of CAKE earned and an estimation of how much it is worth. 

After farming using CAKE-BNB for a few days, I decided to move most of them to PancakeBunny because it is providing a higher yield for the same LP token and has an auto-compounding feature. However, I also realized it has much higher gas fees when I tried harvesting it. For CakeDeFi, the liquidity rewards are automatically harvested every 12 hours and the DFI are automatically staked for more returns without the need to pay any fees. This is not the case in PancakeSwap. I will have to manually harvest the CAKE and stake them while paying gas fees for every single transaction which I didn't really like/wasn't very used to.

This is my current farming portfolio. I am tracking it using yieldwatch.net. It has grown from SG$5k to US$5.3k (~SG$7.1k) which can be mostly attributed to the increase in BNB and CAKE price. For those that are interested in the real-time view, you can track it by entering my wallet address - 0x91484822b5c0ec385380588425af5ad4afa7bf05.

The question is how are they able to provide such a high yield? Unlike BlockFi and Celsius Network which I have also blogged about previously, there is actually no actual business generating any revenue where part of it is shared with us. The high yields are coming from these governance tokens (CAKE and BUNNY) which are created out of thin air and given to us for providing liquidity to the DEX (Decentralized Exchange). Hence, they can easily lose their value very fast once they lose their popularity and people stop using these platforms. Eventually, the plan should be to convert/swap these governance tokens to stablecoins such as USDC or BUSD to realize the yield/profit.

Currently, I am getting an estimated US$30+ a day with a capital of SG$5k, that's about (30 * 1.33) / 5,000 * 365 ~ 291% annualized return! The plan is to just keep compounding and let the farm gets larger first before I start converting these governance tokens to stablecoins. Of course, there is also a high possibility that things might not go according to plan and I might just lose everything too. High risk high return? lol.

In my opinion, I do think the DeFi space is going to continue to grow. The current TLV is just US$121 billion which is actually very small compared to the existing finance space. To put it into context, it is similar to an AUM for just 1 bank in Singapore. Hence, I do believe that I am still not too late for the game as more and more people (especially youngsters) will probably start to join.

Anyway, I have blogged about different ways to leverage crypto to build wealth for people with different risk appetites:

The safer approach using stablecoins

- Earning High Interest Using BlockFi and Celsius Network

- Earning High Interest Using BlockFi and Celsius Network Part 2

Risky approach but more hassle-free

- CakeDeFi - The Easy Way to DeFi

Highest risk and you are on your own

- DeFi apps such as PancakeSwap and PancakeBunny

The most important thing is to manage your risk - how much are you willing to lose without it affecting your daily life. Why bother wasting time trying to optimize your saving account which is just giving you 1%? lol.

On a side note, Futu's moomoo app attractive sign-up bonus (one free Apple Share besides other benefits) has been extended to 30th April 2021 (1500hr SGT)! Take a look at our review here.

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

Syfe - March 2021

Syfe announced a reduction in interest from 1.75% to 1.5% for their Cash+ portfolio/account recently and it wasn't a surprise for me. It was just a matter of time because they had to "top up" the interest in order to provide higher interest and they just can't do it indefinitely. Personally, I am not a fan of cash management account but if you are risk-averse and relatively older then do sign up for Syfe Cash+. It is definitely much better than those fixed deposits from banks/insurance companies as your cash is not locked up. If you are relatively younger, please do not put most of your money in a cash management account unless you have huge expenses in the near future such as a wedding/renovation, either learn to invest yourself or let the robos do it for you through the more risky growth portfolio!

Alternatively, you can consider my way of cash management. US$53.78 was my interest for just 1 week with a deposit of US$30k. 

- Earning High Interest Using BlockFi and Celsius Network

- Earning High Interest Using BlockFi and Celsius Network Part 2

Our Syfe Portfolio
Composition: 100% REITs
Dividend: Reinvest
Monthly Investment: $1,000

Account Statement (Lifetime)

Our current tier is Blue (<$20,000). This is determined by the size of the portfolio (currently $16,600.89) which in turn determines the fees to be charged. The statement lifetime return is $1,547.61 which includes a $1,290 referral bonus. The actual lifetime return would be $257.61. Thanks to our readers for using our code!

Account Statement (March 2021)

The return for the month is $569.64 which includes a $10 referral bonus. 

As of 13 April 2021, this is our portfolio performance:

Capital: $15,553.28 ($11,000.00 + $4,553.28 from Equity100)

Current: $17,464.07 (25.57% - return is skewed due to referrals)

Capital: $3,700.00
Current: $4,553.28 (52.44% - return is skewed due to referrals)

Transaction Breakdown

There are too many so I will just share a snippet. Anyway, if you want to extract the transaction information from Syfe, do take a look at this article - Syfe Transactions Parser. Anyway, the parser will not work accurately for the Syfe Core, Equity100, and Global ARI portfolios when there are small transactions (<0.01) which I have set them to 0.00 instead. You can refer to this for more information - Syfe - July 2020. The parser will work better/more accurately if Syfe is willing to change its UI and display more decimal places...

REIT+

Equity100

After parsing them into a csv file, I pivoted the data to get the following view.

Management Fee

The management fee can be obtained by $15,993.70 x 0.65% / 365 * 31 ~ $8.82.

StocksCafe
In my opinion, the return captured by StocksCafe will be a more accurate representation of our portfolio return as the referral bonuses are treated as capital. Having said that, I can also understand why Syfe treats them as a return instead of a deposit too. Just a different perspective. 

Anyway, looking at the time-weighted return (20.31%), we can see that Syfe REIT+ 100% is underperforming the indexes/benchmarks. The annualized return/XIRR is 14.24%. Using the Rule of 72, it means that the Syfe portfolio will double our money in 72 / 14.24 ~ 5.05 years. In comparison, the same money if left in the bank account at 2% interest rate will take 72 / 2 ~ 36 years to double. 

If we were to look at the projected dividends till the end of the year based on the existing investment, we can expect $556.02 of dividends or $46.33 per month. Since the dividends >> fees, this is a pretty sustainable portfolio assuming if there's no capital loss.

New Syfe customers will have their first $30,000 managed free for 6 months when they use our new referral code (KPOCZM). We will be receiving a $10 cash incentive for our portfolio if you invest $500 or more on your first deposit.

If you are interested in the smart portfolio tracker (StocksCafe) which I am using as shown above, sign up using my link for a longer trial period :) Refer to our Referrals page for more information.

On a side note, Futu's moomoo attractive sign-up bonus (one free Apple Share besides other benefits) has been extended to 30th April 2021 (1500hr SGT)! Take a look at our review here.

You might be interested in previous months update too:
- Syfe REIT+ (100%) Review

- Syfe - December 2020 - $13,129.55

- Syfe - January 2021 - $14,748.08

- Syfe - February 2021 - $15,531.26

- Syfe - March 2021 - $16,600.89

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

CakeDeFi - The Easy Way to DeFi

The crypto space is really a whole new world. Besides staking and earning high interest using BlockFi and Celsius Network which I have blogged about previously (Earning High Interest Using BlockFi and Celsius Network Part 2), the next exciting thing/crazy high yield (triple digit yield) is to explore DeFi (Decentralized Finance).

Triple yield at PancakeSwap

A reader recommended me to try out PancakeSwap which is on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) instead of some other platform using Ethereum because the gas fees are too high now. While I was reading and researching more about it, it just so happen that Chicken Genius posted a video where he interviewed Dr. Julian Hosp on DeFi, CakeDeFi, and BTC. CakeDeFi was founded by Dr. Julian Hosp and U-Zyn Chua both based in Singapore to make DeFi more accessible. Long story short, I decided to give it a try and used his referral. I will be sharing my experience and the spreadsheet I am using to track the return.

CakeDeFi currently provides 3 features - Liquidity Mining, Staking, and Lending.

Liquidity Mining for these 6 liquidity pairs

Staking for DFI and DASH

Lending for BTC, ETH, and USDT

There's nothing new about staking and lending, what's interesting is liquidity mining which is providing an estimated 90-100% yield. I'm not even going to try explaining what that is in my article because it is going to be too long and complicated so I will leave it up to you to research it and the risks associated if you are really interested. In short, one provides liquidity to a market/exchange by pledging 2 coins of the same value and in return, we get a portion of the trading fees usually in the form of a governance token (in this case, that will be DFI - DeFiChain).

Unfortunately, there is no option to buy/fund the account using xfers/wire transfer if one is based in Singapore. The only way is to transfer the supported coin into the account and I chose to do it through Luno because it has the least transfer fee (I am wrong! It seems that Gemini is a better alternative because it has 10 free transfer per calendar month). So I bought SG$5,000 worth of BTC and transferred it to CakeDeFi.

Luno's withdrawal fee is priced dynamically and I had to pay around 0.00013605 ($10.55) at that time while most have a fixed fee of 0.0004-0.0005 (~$30-$40).

Once the BTC is in my CakeDeFi account, the US$30 worth of DFI from using Chicken Genius's referral was also credited to my account. In order to participate in the liquidity mining, I will need to get/buy an equivalent value of DFI first. One can either buy DFI from the exchanges (it is currently listed on Kucoin and Bittrex) and transfer them in or buy/swap DFI directly using BTC/ETH on CakeDeFi. Do note that DFI is sold at a slight premium of ~7% on CakeDeFi so it is recommended to buy it at the exchanges.

Anyway, I was too lazy and didn't want to create more accounts at these exchanges which I will likely not use so I swap slightly more than half of my BTC to DFI within CakeDeFi. Notice how the total value in my account (top right-hand corner) dropped significantly after the swap! That's because of my laziness for buying DFI at a premium and immediately realizing the "loss" when pricing DFI at market price. My train of thought was I can easily recover from the loss with a yield of 90-100%.

Max-ing BTC not allowed due to insufficient DFI

Max-ing DFI

The next thing to do is to add liquidity to the pool. Doing that is simple, click on the "Max" button for either BTC or DFI. As mentioned previously, an equal value of the coins will have to be supplied in exchange for new LP (Liquidity Pool) shares (in this case BTC-DFI LP share).

As you can see, I was given ~3.89 BTC-DFI shares for the 0.02969 BTC and 514.4476 DFI I have supplied/exchanged. In essence, I no longer own the underlying BTC and DFI which will result in "Impermanent Loss". Again, I am not going to explain here, do read the article I have linked for more information.

With that, I have successfully participated in liquidity mining and just got to sit back, relax and hopefully see it grow.

The rewards are paid out in both BTC (swap fees) and DFI (swap fees and block rewards from the DeFiChain) every 12 hours (except for the first 24 hours) and the DFI coins are then automatically staked for a further 38% yield with staking shares awarded every 12 hours too. Unbelievable number right? Having said that, you should also listen/read up on Mr. Tharman's comment on the risks of cryptocurrencies. lol.

Snapshot of my account 1 week later in USD

Snapshot of my account 1 week later in SGD

As of today (11th April 2021) which is about 1 week after trying it out, I have regained slightly more than my capital. As high as the number looks, I don't believe this is a platform for people to make quick bucks. To realize the gain/profit, we will need to move all these coins to the exchange to sell/convert to fiat. Similar to all other platforms, CakeDeFi has its fixed fee for withdrawal and I am not planning to withdraw it anytime soon. Some of the potential catalysts for DFI to increase further in price are listing in other/more exchanges as well as new products being launched - these were mentioned/discussed in Chicken Genius video. 

Let me show you what is impermanent loss. If you compare the screenshots I have taken on the day I first provided the liquidity against the latest screenshot (1 week later), you will see that the BTC-DFI LP shares are the same but the underlying number of BTC and DFI coins have changed. To put it simply, the value of underlying coins has to be equal so whenever the price moves, the number of underlying coins will change accordingly but it is actually more complicated than that. It has to also do with the total number of underlying coins in the pool too. End of the day, what matters is the total return, as long as the rewards > the impermanent loss, I will be making money.

You can find the CakeDeFi Liquidity Mining spreadsheet here. Simply export all your transactions from CakeDeFi and paste them into the _raw sheet. If you are mining other DFI pairs, just modify the formula accordingly. 

Anyway, I have also tried PancakeSwap after this and in my opinion, CakeDeFi is like the robo-advisors where everything is more hassle-free (no need to claim rewards, no need to stake manually for the coin to compound, and no fees for every single transaction) while PancakeSwap is like picking stocks and investing yourself. Of course, it is also like custodian (CakeDeFi) vs CDP (PancakeSwap or any other DeFi platform where you own the keys to your wallet/crypto) so in the end, it boils down to an individual's preferences. 

CakeDeFi is definitely the easier way to try out DeFi and is more suitable for new crypto investors. I will be sharing more about my experience with PancakeSwap in my next article. Stay tuned!

If you are interested in the platform I am using, do sign up using our referral links for some bonus :)

CakeDeFi - Deposits US$50 or more into your CakeDeFi account, you will earn US$30 in DFI and we will earn US$10 in DFI too.

Gemini: We will both receive US$10 of bitcoin after you buy or sell US$100.

Luno: Sign up using our link, deposit, and buy SG$100 worth of BTC (Luno exchange not included) and we both get SG$5.00 worth of BTC

On a side note, Futu's moomoo attractive sign-up bonus (one free Apple Share besides other benefits) has been extended to 30th April 2021 (1500hr SGT)! Take a look at our review here.

You might be interested in these articles too:

- 1% Net Worth to Crypto

- Earning High Interest Using BlockFi and Celsius Network

- Earning High Interest Using BlockFi and Celsius Network Part 2

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)