Cat A COE price drops 10%, premiums down in almost all categories; Singapore home prices set to rise in 2025: Singapore live news

More than half of Singaporeans – 51 per cent to be exact – turn to social media as their primary source of financial advice.

The findings came from a study conducted by MoneySmart, which saw 1,000 Singaporeans interviewed.

Of the top five social media platforms used, YouTube ranked first with 70 per cent of the respondents using it. It is followed by Instagram (44 per cent), Facebook (43 per cent), TikTok (36 per cent), and WhatsApp (31 per cent).

Almost half of the respondents (44 per cent) said that social media has improved their financial knowledge, with 21 per cent using it daily to seek financial tips and advice.

According to the study, millennials are most frequently turning to social media for financial advice, with 61 per cent seeking information at least weekly.

The most popular topics across all age groups include investing (59 per cent), saving (59 per cent) and budgeting (39 per cent).

Investments, in particular, were heavily influenced by social media, with 37 per cent of respondents making investments based on advice seen online. Popular choices include US stocks (40 per cent), cryptocurrency (35 per cent) and bonds (28 per cent).

However, with greater access to financial information, comes greater risk.

Almost 1 in 5 (16 per cent) respondents lost money on investments influenced by online advice, while a further 16 per cent fell victim to financial scams after following social media recommendations.

Additionally, 14 per cent of respondents reported feeling more confused or overwhelmed by the sheer volume of financial information on social media, highlighting the need for better guidance.

For a full breakdown of the study, read here.

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani has been indicted for his alleged role in a US$265 million (S$355.73 million) bribery scheme.

According to US authorities, Adani, and seven other senior business executives, including his nephew Sagar Adani, promised the bribes to Indian government officials to secure solar energy contracts.

The multiple counts of fraud levelled against Adani and his business executives caused shares and bonds of Adani firms tumbling on Thursday (21 Nov).

Adani is one of the world's richest people.

For more on Gautam Adani's alleged bribery scheme, read here.

Former talkshow host Ellen Degeneres and her wife, actress Portia de Rossi, have reportedly moved to the UK.

The move was first reported by The Wrap, which obtained the information from a source close to Degeneres.

According to the report, the pair have moved to rural England for good and put their Montecito estate on the market. They told friends that their primary motivation for the move was the election results, which saw convicted felon Donald Trump re-elected as the US president.

The source claimed that Degeneres has already moved to the Cotswolds, a rural area in south-central England.

For more on Ellen Degeneres leaving the US, read here.

Zayn Malik attended the funeral of Liam Payne, alongside his other former One Direction band members Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, and Niall Horan.

The service was held in a church on the English countryside outside of London on Wednesday (20 Nov).

Malik, who left the group in 2015, had never been seen together publicly with his former band mates till now.

Payne, 31, died on 16 Oct when he fell from a third floor balcony at CasaSur Palermo Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

For more on Liam Payne's funeral, read here.

Think artificial intelligence (AI) is far removed from us? Well, you might have already been training an AI.

That is, if you're still playing Pokemon GO.

According to a blog post on Niantic, the developer behind the hit mobile game, the company is building a a Large Geospatial Model (LGM) using millions of scans taken from the smartphones of Pokemon GO players and other Niantic products.

Like how ChatGPT trains itself on an enormous amount of existing text to produce text on its own that sounds normal, the LGM uses the same principal but it's meant to produce what real-world places (think a church, playground, or a house) might look like.

Niantic wrote, "When you look at a familiar type of structure – whether it’s a church, a statue, or a town square – it’s fairly easy to imagine what it might look like from other angles, even if you haven’t seen it from all sides.

"As humans, we have 'spatial understanding' that means we can fill in these details based on countless similar scenes we’ve encountered before. But for machines, this task is extraordinarily difficult. Even the most advanced AI models today struggle to visualise and infer missing parts of a scene, or to imagine a place from a new angle."

Niantic possess an edge in creating this 'spatial intelligence' for their LGM because they can go to places which are only accessible to pedestrians, via users of their products including Pokemon GO.

Over the last five years, the company has been focused on building their Visual Positioning System (VPS).

"[This sytem] uses a single image from a phone to determine its position and orientation using a 3D map built from people scanning interesting locations in our games," they added.

With VPS, users can position themselves in the world with centimetre-level accuracy, Niantic explained. That means they can see digital content placed against the physical environment precisely and realistically.

An example is in a feature they rolled out on Pokemon GO called Pokemon Playgrounds, where the user can place Pokémon at a specific location, and they will remain there for others to see and interact with.

The developer shared, "Niantic’s VPS is built from user scans, taken from different perspectives and at various times of day, at many times during the years, and with positioning information attached, creating a highly detailed understanding of the world.

"This data is unique because it is taken from a pedestrian perspective and includes places inaccessible to cars."

Certificate of Entitlement (COE) premiums dropped in Category A by 10% to $89,889, down from $99,889 previously.

This marks the biggest drop for Category A in 2024, a category meant for smaller and less powerful cars and electric vehicles (EVs), since January 2024 when it fell by $19,990

A similar downward trend has been seen across most of the categories – namely, Category B, D, and E.

Category B, used to register larger and more powerful cars and EVs, dropped to $105,081, down from $108,001 previously.

Category D, used for motorcycles, dropped to $8,669, down from $9,089 previously.

Category E, an open category used for any vehicle type but end up being used mainly for large cars, fell to S$107,501 from S$109,000.

Category C was the only category which saw a rise of 1% from $68,340 to $69,000.