Yen Kai's Idea Cast

In the past 3 months USD/SGD exchange rates have been quite choppy, with a gap down on April 14 followed by a reversal on May 5 and a decline again on June 17. The charts below illustrate how SOR tracks the exchange rate.

Do

SOR fell to 0.31%, presumably the all time low. This is probably a result of the revaluation of SGD against USD from 1.39 to below 1.38, which makes it cheaper to repay loans denominated in US dollar.

Time flies and before you know it, the second year of my SOR-pegged loan is drawing to an end. The chart above shows my home loan interest rates over the past 2 years.

As promised, here are the details of the loan packages i have been offered:

Bank A (Refinancing, quoted on 12 Feb)

It's been almost 6 months since i last posted an entry, and during this time more than 10,000km has been added to my car mileage, i have quit my job (without first having found a new job.. for the first time), got married, gone for a two weeks plus self-drive honeymoon across 7 countries in Europe, launched a new e-commerce website, started on my new job, and bought a new property (took up a new SOR-pegged loan for it). Yes, much has happened during this time, but fortunately there hasn't been much action on SOR rates.

Honda Jazz 2009 mileage at 17000+ km (60/40 highway/city) : 13.7 km/l. Still a little disappointing. Nowhere near the 16 km/l that a reader is getting (granted, that was achieved on the previous model, and a manual one at that). Nevertheless, the engine runs a lot smoother now and the mileage is improving, hopefully hitting 14 km/l soon.

Here’s a newsworthy event – The 3-month SOR fell to 0.44% yesterday. This is a whopping drop of 1.1% over the last 3 days! This makes SOR more attractive than SIBOR (3-month) which continues to hold at 0.69%. In fact, at 0.44%, the 3-month SOR is at the same level as the 1-month SIBOR. The fall in SOR might have something to do with the falling US dollar.

The recent property buying frenzy has given rise to increased interest in interest rates, as evident from the higher traffic volume to this blog (thanks for visiting!). I reckon it’s time to do a roundup on interest rates.