Is there any way which we can buy SGS online and to purchase or sell SGS on the secondary market ? One way to do this is through POEMS, which is the online trading platform for Philips Securities, one of the local brokerages in Singapore. You can access the website here. To open an account with them, you will have to make a trip down to one of their investor offices.
Currently, POEMS charge a commission of 0.1% that will be taken off the auction cut-off yield for the SGS t-bill that was auctioned on the primary market. Before you purchase the SGS t-bill, do ensure you have enough funds in your brokerage account by transfering funds to it through the ways below.
POEMS has written a user guide on how to make use of their trading platform to buy SGS T-bills and I will be adapting some of the information from their user guide on how to buy SGS T-bills from their account.
Once you have opened an account with them, you can login to your online account by keying in your account number and password on the main website of POEMS here.
After you have login successfully, you can sign up to apply for the Electronic Statements and Contract Notes. It means that all the relevant trade documents such as contract notes and monthly statement will be sent to an email address which you have specified instead of receiving postal mail through your address.
To make your purchase of SGS t-bills, click on T-Bills as highlighted by the red rectangular red box. Afrer this, you can click on Trade as highlighted by the red rectangular red box and you will arrive at a page where it will display the different T-bills available for purchase.
After you have made your selection on which SGS T-bill to purchase, you can click on either the ask price or the ask yield as seen in the picture above. Subsequently, you can key in the amount of SGS T-bills which you wish to buy and click on the buy button below after that
. Do bear in mind that the minimum amount of units for purchase is 1000 units.
The Buy Order Confirmation window will pop up subsequently. If the details are correct, you can confirm the submission by keying in your password at the bottom of the window.
After you have confirmed and submitted your order, another window will pop up, indicating whether your submitted order has been executed or done, is still pending or rejected. You can also check the status of your order by clicking on the order status.
An example of the order status page is being illustrated in the picture above. You can see the status column to check on the status of your order.
POEMS has another useful function which is called the rollover function and this is one of the advantage of the POEMS platform. Rollover is a function allows you to automatically purchase the next SGS T-bill issue when the SGS T-bill you are holding matures.
Upon maturity of your existing SGS T-bills, the money will be credited back into your cash management account. On the following Monday, POEMS will bid for you during the auction of the next issue of SGS T-bill in the primary market. The yield that you will getting will be the cut-off yield at the auction less 0.1% or better. Rollover has to be opt-in at least 5 days before the maturity date. If the auction bid is unsuccessful, your order will be processed at the yield available in the secondary market, without deducting an additional spread. This is particularly useful as you will not have to log in to your POEMS account to select which SGS T-bill to buy as POEMS will do it for you automatically.
I hope this article will prove to be useful and informational for those who wish to buy SGS T-bills online. Feel free to leave comments and I will get back to you.
Posts
This is something I am always looking for. But, The recent treasury bill auctioned (Maturing 14-May) has only an cutoff yield of 0.25%. That is way less then even a savings bank interest rate. Also a latest 2 year bond (Maturing 1-feb-2011) is having a cut-off yield of 0.65% which is way less than some of the FDs. If you place the money in an money-market fund, it yields between 1.5 to 1.6 percent and much easy to liquidate. I always thought bonds / T-bills are better. Am i missing something?
ReplyDelete- Lakshmanan
Hi Lakshmanan,
ReplyDeleteUsually, the yield offered by SGS is better than fixed deposits. However, due to the current economic crisis, banks have up their interest rates some time ago in a bid to attract more depositors so as to bolster the amount of cash they have. Thus the current situation we are seeing now is really peculiar.
Kay
hi kay this is danielxx from hotstocksnot. sorry for late reply, just included your link on my blogroll.
ReplyDeletenice site!
Hey DanielXX,
ReplyDeleteThanks for adding me.
Kay
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThis is a very good guide on buying SG T bills. but what does this sentence mean? "If the auction bid is unsuccessful, your order will be processed at the yield available in the secondary market, without deducting an additional spread."
Does it mean "any" yield available in the secondary market? even if I may not like the yield, it will still automatically buy?
"without deducting an additional spread.": does this mean no more 0.1% deduction, in this case?
Thank you.
--
Warren
Hi Warren,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your compliment. Unfortunately, there is a better way of buying SGS and that is through the ATM but I have not had the time to do a guide on this. With regards to the processing of order available in the secondary market, I'm not that sure so you may have to check this out with Philips Securities. You are correct with regards to your 2nd question for the deduction of an additional yield.
Kay
Hi,
ReplyDeleteAm looking forward to your guide of buying SGS via ATM.
Thanks for all your wonderful info!
- LB
Hi LB,
ReplyDeleteThanks for your compliment. I hope to put up a guide for buying SGS via ATM soon in the future but currently, the interest rate for SGS is very low so I have not bought any SGS recently.
Kay
Hi,
ReplyDeleteAs i am very new to this POEMS stuff, would like to ask some noobie questions before opening a POEMS account.
1)Is POEMS Cash Management Account safe?
2) What happen if POEMS go bankrupt and what will happen to the $$$ in the Cash Management Account?
3)Any Deposit Insurance Coverage as POEMS is not a bank?
4) Does $$$ in Cash Management Account earn any interest if i parked my $$$ in there while waiting for the right time to buy?
Thanks
Hi,
ReplyDeleteAssuming that you did not opt for the excess fund facility management, I'm not sure what will happen to the funds in the PCMA the event that Philips Securities goes bankrupt as I can't find any details on the website. It is also not a member of the Deposit Insurance Scheme. The money parked in the PCMA will only earn interest if you have more than S$50,000 parked inside and the interest is only 0.10%. Any amount which is lesser than that will not earn any interest.
Kay