The trouble with dividend yields

WHEN I completed full-time National Service in 2017, I left with some savings that my dad insisted I invest.

Not knowing how investments worked, I opened my brokerage’s Web portal and looked for different companies’ shares to buy. In particular, one of the things that I paid attention to were indicative dividend yields, which reflect an annualised estimate of how much a stock pays out in dividends based on its latest dividend and its current share price.

My first move was to purchase Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) shares for S$2.75 apiece in September 2017. As I was pursuing a degree in communication studies, I thought that it was a large blue-chip institution that I would work at, and one that would continue to exist long into the future.