How I track my dividend income as a Singapore Investor – StocksCafe Review & Referral Code

I get a lot of questions on the best way to keep track of dividend income as a Singapore investor.

I’ve never really had a good answer for that.

Most of the other tools out there are designed for US or European investors.

And the dividend tracking for Singapore REITs / Stocks is pretty mediocre at best.

I ended up just using Google Sheets to track portfolio returns, which I must say was not the best solution.

That was until Evan from StocksCafe asked me to try out their portfolio trackers.

And having played around with StocksCafe quite a bit – I must say I am very impressed with StocksCafe as a way to track dividend income for Singapore investors.

What I like about StocksCafe – to track dividends

To sum it up, there are 2 big things that I like about about StocksCafe to me:

1. Keep tracks of dividends (most accurate tool I’ve found so far)
2. Has access to all the exchange you would likely need as a Singapore investor (even stuff like LSE, HKEX, Malaysia, SSB, T-Bills)

Keep tracks of dividends (most accurate tool I’ve found so far)

I’ve tried a whole host of other portfolio trackers in the past.

But in my experience, most of them are designed for an international audience.

Their dividend tracking for Singapore REITs / Stocks is pretty mediocre, and you get quite frequent errors.

That is why before this I didn’t really recommend any tool for dividend tracking, other than a simple Google Sheets or Excel Spreadsheet.

Having played around with StockCafe for a bit though, I can say that it has the most accurate dividend tracking data for Singapore REITs / Stocks I have tried to date.

When I asked Evan how the data was compiled, this was his response: “We purchase the data from third party vendors. We also perform sanity checks on them and also scan official websites (such as SGX) to cross-check our dividends.”

Whatever the case though, it works – I was very impressed by the accuracy of the dividend data.

Has access to all the exchanges you would likely need as a Singapore investor (even stuff like LSE, HKEX, Malaysia, SSB, T-Bills)

I’ve set out the full list of exchanges supported by StocksCafe below.

It’s basically everything you would need as a Singapore investor.

The usual SGX, Hong Kong, and US.

And I also like that the London Exchange is included.

A lot of Singapore investors (myself included) like to buy dividend stocks on the London Exchange because of withholding tax treatment, and it’s not easy to find a portfolio tool that can track dividends on the LSE. So this is a great addition.

It even includes support for Singapore Savings Bonds and T-Bills, if you want to track dividend income from there.

Use the FH x StocksCafe Referral Code for 1 month free trial (3 months free if you sign up)

My full review of StocksCafe is below (and I suggest reading it first).

But there’s really no substitute for trying it out for yourself.

So if you want a portfolio tracker that can track all of your dividend income, do give StocksCafe a try.

If you sign up using the referral code below you’ll get 1 month free trial with all features unlocked.

And if you decide to sign up for a 3 year plan you’ll get 3 months free as well.

Use Referral Code “financialhorse” when you sign up!

FH x StocksCafe Referral Code: https://stocks.cafe/user/tosignup?referral_code=financialhorse

StocksCafe Review – Keep track of all your dividends across multiple exchanges

As with any portfolio tracker, the first step is to key in your transaction data.

So you’ll enter the date that you bought your shares, the number of shares, the price paid and so on.

If you have a lot of transactions to add you can import them via Excel.

You can split them up by portfolio too.

So you can have one portfolio for Singapore REITs, another for US stocks, another for Hong Kong / China stocks and so on.

Which Exchanges are supported by StocksCafe?

As shared above, this is the full list of exchanges supported, which is very extensive and should contain almost everything you’ll need as a Singapore based investor.

For me the bulk of my stocks are Singapore, Hong Kong, London and US, so this was definitely enough for me.

StocksCafe computes the returns for you – inclusive of dividends

And that’s it!

StocksCafe will compute the returns for you, showing you how much you’ve made – with and without dividends.

I’ve entered a sample portfolio below so you can see the results.

You can see how the P&L for DBS is only 55% in terms of share price gains.

But the dividend income alone is 62%.

So a conventional portfolio tracker that doesn’t account for dividends will not tell you the full picture here.

If you don’t account for the dividends you’ll think you’re only up 55% on DBS, when in reality you’re up 118% if you count dividends.

This is a big problem for Singapore REITs / Stocks which tend to be very dividend heavy.

And that’s where I found StocksCafe to be very useful.

You can also benchmark the returns against the S&P500 or STI ETF to see how you are performing.

StocksCafe can calculate how much dividends you get each year

StocksCafe can also show you how much dividend income you’re getting each year.

This is a very useful tool to visualise your dividend income.

Before this I was pretty much tracking dividend income manually via CDP statements, which suffice to say was not a fun exercise.

Visualise the asset allocation via StocksCafe

StocksCafe can also help you visualise your asset allocation in pie chart form.

So you can see how much exposure you have to each stock.

And even split it by industry, to give you an idea of whether you’re overexposed to one industry:

I like this a lot, before this I was pretty much doing up my own pie charts in Excel to get the same thing done.

And having it done automatically is a big time saver.

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Pricing of StocksCafe

Pricing of StocksCafe is set out below.

If you only want access to one exchange (eg. SGX) then you can sign up for the cheaper plan:

If you want access to all the exchanges then you’ll have to sign up for the Global plan.

The Global plan is only slightly more expensive than the single exchange plan, and it’s worth it in my view if you’re invested across multiple exchanges.

For example I have quite a few dividend stocks on London (for the lower dividend withholding tax) and Hong Kong, so the global feature was worth it for me.

What is the alternative to StocksCafe?

Simply put, I don’t think there is any alternative to StocksCafe.

Like I share above, there are other tools out there like Portseido that you can use to keep track of your Singapore stocks / REITs dividend income.

But having played around with most of the alternatives before, I just find the accuracy of their dividend data isn’t there. You do get quite frequent errors in the data.

It’s not like the other tools are free either, with other tools like Portseido you’ll eventually end up paying $100 USD monthly. That’s more than double StocksCafe’s price, for a product that isn’t necessarily better.

Whereas with StocksCafe you can get all the features at 45 SGD a year, which price wise is very competitive.

In fact if you sign up for the 3 year plan, Evan has agreed to give all FH readers an extra 3 months free.

That works out to 125 SGD for 39 months, which is just $3.20 a month.

At that price, I do think it’s worth at least checking it out.

My Personal Views on StocksCafe – Worth it or not?

Like I said, as Singapore investors we tend to invest in dividend heavy names like DBS, UOB, OCBC, Ascendas REIT, Mapletree REITs etc.

If you don’t account for your dividend income, you’re really only seeing half the picture of your investment returns.

And realistically, there’s no other portfolio tracker I’ve found that has the same accuracy of dividend data as StocksCafe.

Your only other alternative is to track manually via Excel or Google Sheets.

So personally I found StocksCafe useful for me.

Almost half of my portfolio is dividend stocks, and being able to track dividend income automatically is a life saver.

So I like it, and I will probably sign up for a 3 year plan once my trial period is over.

But don’t take my word for it.

Use the referral code below for a 1 month free trial and see if StocksCafe works for you.

There’s really no substitute to playing it around for yourself, and inputting your own portfolio details.

FH x StocksCafe Referral Code for 1 month free trial (3 months free if you sign up)

If you sign up using the referral code below you’ll get 1 month free trial with all premium features unlocked.

And if you decide to sign up for a 3 year plan you’ll get 3 months free as well.

Use Referral Code “financialhorse” when you sign up!

FH x StocksCafe Referral Code: https://stocks.cafe/user/tosignup?referral_code=financialhorse

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Looking for the best investment books to improve as an investor in 2023?

Check out my personal recommendations for a reading list here.

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Looking for a comprehensive guide to investing that covers stocks, REITs, bonds, CPF and asset allocation? Check out the FH Complete Guide to Investing.

Or if you’re a more advanced investor, check out the REITs Investing Masterclass, which goes in-depth into REITs investing – everything from how much REITs to own, which economic conditions to buy REITs, how to pick REITs etc.

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