“Is this a good stock?”
It’s the question we get asked most.
And here’s the awkward answer: it depends on who is asking.
Not because we’re being flippant.
It’s because investors don’t all hunt the same way.
Put three of them in front of the same market on the same morning and they will go looking in three completely different places.
Let me show you what I mean.
The bargain hunter
Walk into any NTUC and you’ll find a corner set aside for things on sale.
You’ve seen it before.
Bargain hunters milling around the area, looking for a deal.
Notice what they are not doing.
They don’t plan what to buy upfront.
Instead, they go to see what’s on offer first before deciding what’s worth their money.
That is the classic value investor’s method, more or less.
They go hunting in the bargain bin.
Their aisle is the 52-week low list — stocks that have been beaten down, the ones nobody wants.
Take Genting Singapore (SGX: G13).
Shares recently traded at around S$0.65, a fair way below the S$0.81 high.
The dividend works out to a yield of roughly 6.2%.
Now, the value investor doesn’t look at that and assume they have found free money.
Instead, they assume the opposite.
In their mind, something must have gone wrong for the stock to be on sale in the first place.
As I discussed with Michelle Martin on MoneyFM 89.3 two weeks ago, Genting Singapore suffered tremendously during the pandemic and is facing a huge investment cycle in the coming years.
There could be a payoff come 2031 and beyond.
But they ponder: is it worth the risk?
So, the value investor asks the only two questions that matter to them.
Is whatever’s wrong with the business acceptable to me?
Are these challenges temporary?
That’s the whole method: “Why is this stock on sale, what went wrong, and can I live with it?”
Waiting for the right price to come to you
The growth investor sits at the other end of the spectrum entirely.
They do not wander around looking for a bargain.
The growth investor already knows exactly what they want before they walk in.
And here’s the key difference: while the value investor goes looking for things that are broken, the growth investor is looking for businesses that are decidedly not broken.
Take iFAST Corporation (SGX: AIY).
In last week’s Business Times article, I noted that its dividends have increased from S$0.048 in 2021 to S$0.084 in 2025.
And for this year, the fast-growing firm expects to pay out at least S$0.12 per share.
If you bought shares at the beginning of 2020 at around S$1.04 apiece, that expected payout would give you a yield on cost of over 11.5%.
That’s the payoff.
So what does the growth investor do?
They sit and wait for the right price to come to them.
They don’t go hunting for a discount without knowing what they want.
Like the patient hunter, they pick their spot, then wait.
Deliberate. Patient. Nothing like the bargain bin.
The investor who wants the income
Then there’s the dividend investor.
Here’s what sets them apart from the other two: they aren’t focused on the share price at all.
Dividend investors are focused on income — and on whether that income can gradually grow over time.
Reliable income. That’s the entire objective.
Take CapitaLand Integrated Commercial Trust (SGX: C38U).
At around S$2.50 a unit, its trailing distribution per unit (DPU) of S$0.1198 cents works out to a yield of roughly 4.8%.
But it’s not just the size of the yield that matters.
For income investors, it’s about reliability.
CICT is one of a handful of REITs that have increased their DPU over the past five years — through the lockdowns, through the sharpest run of interest rate increases in four decades, through last year’s tariff chaos.
That’s the thing about the dividend investor.
In one way, they are a lot like the growth investor.
They care deeply about the business, because they need it to stay sustainable long enough to keep paying them income for years to come.
In another way, dividend investors are a lot like value investors.
Dividend investors want to buy shares at a price low enough to give them a yield that’s actually worth their time.
They borrow from both. And that’s exactly the point.
Get Smart: You don’t have to pick a side
Here’s what I want you to take away.
You don’t have to be one type of investor or another.
You can build a portfolio that has room for all three.
Put the dividend-focused stocks at the bottom.
That’s your base — the reliable income that shows up whether or not the market is in a good mood.
Above that, add a layer that’s more growth-orientated.
These are the businesses that give you growth for your dividends, so your income doesn’t stand still.
And right at the top, if it suits you, a smaller speculative section.
A bit of upside, but with high uncertainty attached — which is precisely why it sits at the top and stays small.
Put those layers together and you stop asking whether a stock is good in the abstract.
You start hunting for the right stock for you. Not for someone else.
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Disclosure: Chin Hui Leong owns shares of CICT and iFAST.
