President’s Message – October 2025

Date: October 1, 2025

Dear Members,

Since my last message to you, there have been four interesting developments for the investment landscape.

First, the US has back-tracked on or renegotiated many of its tariffs which were originally announced in April, and this has led markets everywhere to recover all their tariff-related losses.

Second, the US Federal Reserve has cut its short-term interest rates by 25 basis points in September and its “dot plot’’ signals possibly two more reductions this year.

Both these events augur well for stock markets everywhere, including Singapore’s.

The third and fourth developments are specific to Singapore and should add to the optimism has helped the Straits Times Index in early July to cross 4,000 for the first time in history, followed by 4,300 in early September.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) announced on July 21, 2025, that it would allocate an initial $1.1 billion to Avanda Investment Management, Fullerton Fund Management and JP Morgan Asset Management to invest in the Singapore stock market.

This allocation is part of the $5 billion Equity Market Development Programme (EQDP), which aims to boost investor interest and liquidity in Singapore equities, especially small to mid-cap companies. A subsequent batch of fund managers is expected to be announced in the fourth quarter of 2025.

Then in Sep, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) launched two new indices – the iEdge Singapore Next 50 Index where the components are weighted by market capitalization, and the iEdge Singapore Next 50 Liquidity Weighted Index which has the same components but weighting is by turnover to capture the relative liquidity of the constituents.

The 50 constituents of both indices are the largest and most actively traded stocks outside of the 30 components of the STI. The obvious intent is to focus attention on stocks in the broader market beyond just STI members.

The iEdge Next 50 index is designed to be a barometer for the performance of Singapore’s mid-cap segment and its members are a mix of well-known companies from the industrials, financial, energy sectors as well as real estate investment trusts.

The iEdge Next 50 Liquidity Weighted index gives greater prominence to stocks that are more actively traded. The weight of each constituent is by its median daily trading value over a specified period, thus highlighting stocks that are of high interest to active traders.

These indices may become the performance benchmarks for future funds that may be issued on the mid-cap segment and I am confident that in due course we will see exchange-traded funds or ETFs launched on both these indices.

Equally possible would be new indices that could be launched on the small-cap segment so we shall have to wait and see.

With an upcoming injection of S$1.1b and two new and relevant indices to look forward to which will bring the wider market into play, these are exciting times for the local stock market. You can rest assured that SIAS will always be there to guide investors throughout all these and future developments.

Until next time, I wish you all the best. Happy investing!

David Gerald
Founder, President & CEO, SIAS