Hazelle
in Memos & Musings · 3 min read
Income Without Strategy Is Just Risk in Disguise
There’s been more buzz around REITs lately, especially following the recent REITs Symposium.
And while we continue to do our part in educating investors looking for income through REIT investing—we also won’t pretend that frustration on the ground doesn’t exist.
Let’s be honest: for an asset class that has fallen by about 25% over the past five years, understandably it’s more than just “a bit of pain” for many retail investors out there.
Screengrab from InvestingNote
If you’ve experienced losses, chances are you might have followed some common advice below (that we actually personally never advocate):
- “Just buy and hold.”
- “Simply dollar cost average/RSP and ignore the ups and downs.”
- “Capital loss doesn’t matter if you’re getting dividends.”
- “The best time to start dividend investing in REITs was yesterday.”
If they all sound too familiar, it is because the above are the common narratives that you might probably have heard from the mainstream financial media as to how to approach investing of any kind, including REITs investing.
In our view—REITs are not a ‘set-and-forget’ asset class unless capital gains/losses do not matter to you. In our YouTube videos, we have laid out the hard truths of dividend investing in REITs, and those lessons still hold true today. We also shared on our lifestyle blog Endless Weekends that dividend investing is not an ATM machine that prints money magically without putting our capital at risk.
From Drawdown Defense to Dividend Growth: Our REIT Playbook in Action
We believe that REITs being a cyclical asset class, demands thoughtful analysis, strategic entry points, and deliberate position sizing.
For context, we started building our REIT positions during the COVID crash and until today. Despite the significant price decline, our portfolio drawdowns have remained largely in the single-digit percentage range—compared to the 25%–40% drawdowns in either some of the major REIT indices or by the individual REITs themselves. At the market close on 30th June 2025, our capital drawdowns is only about 3.7%.
Our REITs portfolio held up despite the large drawdowns
And if we look at the Total returns which includes the dividends collected, we are pretty positive overall.
That’s because we:
- Took partial profits during the post-Covid and occasional rallies to de risk with active capital management,
- Collected consistent dividends along the way, and
- Deployed approximately 70% of our capital allocation to REITs only in the past one year, when valuations became even more compelling.
Some of our inner community and fellow investors in InvestingNote have also mentioned about their robust performance by doing some of these above actions as well.
With the first half of 2025 coming to an end, let’s take a quick look at the past 1 year performance in one of our REITs portfolio.
P/L for the past 1 year as of 30th June 2025
The majority of the positions were made with thoughtful capital management.
The income received and capital gains in this portfolio are close to about 100k for the past 1 year and we are just barely getting started from the 10 year multi-lows if we look at the chart of iEdge S-REIT Leaders Index.
Source: SGX Securities
Conviction Pays: Building Yield Even in Uncomfortable Times
Going forward, we expect our dividend portfolio to generate yields of over 5.5%, as most of our positions were accumulated steadily over the past year. For context, the average distribution yield across the 40 S-REITs stands at approximately 6.8% as of 31st May 2025.
Source: SGX Securities
Back in April 2025 recently, we also deployed our SRS funds into a Singapore-focused REITs ETF. For SRS, we typically aim for just a single transaction each year to be cost-efficient —so we chose our entry point carefully. Admittedly, it wasn’t the easiest time to be buying Singapore REITs back then. In fact, we entered during one of the most pessimistic days on 9th April 2025. But that’s precisely when conviction matters most and provides the most upside overtime.
Screengrab from InvestingNote
Price performance of Lion-Phillip S-REIT the past 5 years.
We shared our key purchases with InvestingNote Portfolio members during the recent April 2025 crash, along with a timely reminder: opportunities don’t linger. When the window opens, we must be ready to act decisively. In fact we also shared in our public blog posts and YouTube video back in October 2023.
Timely reminders sent to InvestingNote Portfolio members when it matters the most.
You Can’t Control the Market — But You Can Control Your Play
As investors, we may not know exactly when the turnaround will come — but the truth is, that’s not what matters most. Markets are uncertain. That’s a given. What’s not a given is how we respond. So rather than being fixated on the problems, start focusing on the opportunities.
Because in the world of REIT investing, it’s not the conditions that define your outcome — it’s your strategy. Your preparation. Your mindset. Many get caught up in the pain of past losses. But the path to recovery — and eventual outperformance — lies in being intentional, thoughtful, and strategic before you even put money to work.
In hindsight, it’s easy for others to say we made good money because we bought near the bottom. But the truth is, we consistently make our moves when most others hesitate. That discipline and ability to make probabilistic assessments—not luck—is what sets us and other investors apart in terms of alpha generation.
That’s exactly what we’ve done — and what we teach in practice. Our proprietary methodology is built with risk management at its core, helping us navigate the same volatile REIT landscape as everyone else. Over the past five years, our results have held up respectably, all things considered. For us, it’s never been the “Silent Wealth Destroyer” that some make it out to be. The storm may be the same — but sometimes, it’s not the storm that determines your fate. It’s the sailor.
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About Hazelle
Chief trainer of The Moneyball Investors Playbook program and founder of The Joyful Investors, a financial education firm that seeks to help avid investors learn to invest better and make the journey a joyful one. I graduated with a first class honors in Bachelor of Accountancy from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and started my auditing career in one of the Big Four. I believe that once we know how to build our wealth sustainably, we can then live our best lives ever.
Important Information
This document is for information only and does not constitute an offer or solicitation nor be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any of the investments mentioned. Neither The Joyful Investors Pte. Ltd. (“The Joyful Investors”) nor any of its officers or employees accepts any liability whatsoever for any loss arising from any use of this publication or its contents. The views expressed are solely the opinions of the author as of the date of this document and are subject to change based on market and other conditions.
The information provided regarding any individual securities is not intended to be used to form any basis upon which an investment decision is to be made. The information contained in this document, including any data, projections and underlying assumptions are based upon certain assumptions and analysis of information available as at the date of this document and reflects prevailing conditions, all of which are accordingly subject to change at any time without notice and The Joyful Investors is under no obligation to notify you of any of these changes.
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