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Friday, 31 January 2020

January 2020 Updates

Jan 2020

Portfolio Value after market close: S$130,401.20

Wifey's Portfolio Value after market close: S$64,721.20

Purchase: 

1) CapitaLand Retail China Trust (CRCT), 5,000 shares @ $1.53
2) Japfa, accepted allocation of 3,000 rights and applied for another 7,000 excess

Sold: None

Dividends: SingTel @ $340

Portfolio value increased to ~$130K this month with the addition of the 5,000 shares of CRCT. This is one of the counters in my watch list and when its share price fell to my comfortable level, I proceeded to queue and managed to get it at $1.53.
 
Have written a short piece on this in the previous post.
 
Have decided to take up my Japfa allocation and apply for some excess as I view this as a nice opportunity to increase my holdings at a lower price than market.

There are a few other counters with price getting near to my TP. Will be watching closely.

My focus this year remains non-REITs, particularly banks, as part of my portfolio balancing.
 
Share price of DBS has fallen by quite a bit today before recovering slightly in the last two hours. However it is still above $25 which is still too high in my opinion.

Tuesday, 28 January 2020

First Purchase of the Year

Today STI closed 1.8% down. Barely catastrophic if you ask me. However the mini bloodbath presented some opportunities for entry. 

While share price of some counters in my watchlist remained quite resilient, some dropped and started to recover during mid day like the banks. For some, the price dropped and hovered at that level and that gave me some food for thought. 

Made my first purchase of the year today when the opportunity arose. CapitaLand Retail China Trust (CRCT) was trading at $1.54 / $1.55. I queued at $1.53 and managed to get it in the last hour. It might not be the bottom price but it is comfortable enough for me. Slightly below NAV with >7% forward yield. 

Just not my style to go all in in one go. Prefering to enter batch by batch. Hence the same for this counter. 

I don't know whether this is the start of a black swan or just a temporary response to the  Wuhan coronavirus outbreak. My feel is leaning towards the latter. 

If the price drops further I might buy in again. 

Time in the market is better for me than timing the market simply because I'm real bad at the latter.

Crisis = Opportunities

Wednesday, 22 January 2020

My Monthly Fixed Expenses

Yesterday while driving, mum struck up a conversation with me about my monthly expenses. I know she has been concerned about this especially after baby M was born and she has repeatedly told me to give her less monthly.

In fact recently she told me not to give her the monthly 'jiak kueh lui' anymore.

So yesterday she asked me how much are my monthly expenses and I told her $3K plus. I know as I have a fixed expenses list and an overall tracking list for my income and spending.

I found these lists helpful in my budgeting and tracking ever since I created them some years back. I would encourage everyone to do up their own lists as well.

Attached below is my monthly fixed expenses list for sharing purpose.

Sometimes certain items such as credit card and food / entertainment will exceed the budgeted amount. Sometimes these will be much less than the budgeted.

Budgeted amount for almost all the items are over-catered as a prudent measure.

Some items have their annual cost broken down into monthly cost such as road tax and insurances.

Overall my monthly fixed expenses totaled to $3,920 thereabout, plus minus abit.

And this is fairly accurate on an annual basis.


Thursday, 2 January 2020

Taking Stock of 2019


Is it me or time really seems to fly when you are getting old. We have reached the end of 2019 in the blink of an eye. Time to take stock for the year again!

Family

Wifey and I are spending most if not all of our free time we have with Baby M who arrived on Father's day 2018.

Having turned 1.5 years young recently, she has been getting more active by the day. Grabbing our hands to walk around, dictating where should we sit, dancing when there's music and basically exploring all stuffs around her.

Her vocabulary is also expanding everyday. Sometimes she surprises me by saying a word or pointing out the correct thing when I ask her where is it. 

I have noticed this little cutie likes three things in particular - music, dancing and reading. If she wants to pursue interest or enrichment in these areas I will support her.

On the other hand I do not want to be like some parents who send their kids to tons of classes and tuition, thus depriving their kids of the happy childhood that all children should have.

Sometimes we should draw a line against kiasuism.

Our biggest wish for her remains the same. That is for her to grow up happily and healthily.

Healthy Lifestyle

I feel I have done quite well in this area. As far as I can remember I have not fall sick for the past year or two. Touch wood!

I attribute this to my healthy lifestyle which I try to adhere to as far as possible. Aspects of this lifestyle includes:

1) Cold shower

I have not been using the water heater since at least two years back. Whether it's the morning shower before I go out or the night shower when I get back, it is always a cold shower for me and I firmly believe it helps in building up my immune system.

A cold shower helps in muscle recovery too especially after an intense workout.

2) Exercise

I always try to start my day with a workout after I get off bed. This helps to jump start my day and secondly, builds up my fitness and muscle mass obviously.

Most importantly, it acts as a counterweight against my diet which I do not restrict because I can't! There's just too much good food in Singapore which pushes my will power to the abyss.

I do not have a fix routine for my workout. The type of exercise and repetition varies but generally it is something like this.

50 ~ 100 x Pushups
50 x Toe Touch Crunches
2 min x Plank
50 ~ 100 x Bicep Curls
25 x Squats

I try to do the above during the evenings too but that doesn't always happens especially when baby M is around..

I run for cardio exercise. I enjoy running for the longest time. It's good for de-stressing and helps to clear my mind. Mileage-wise of course the more the merrier. But for 2019 I only done about 216 km.

Last run did for 2019: A morning run near my neighbourhood. 



Healthy lifestyle, healthy body. Totally worth it!

Work

With my financial year ending in February 2020, I still have two months to charge ahead. 

Results so far are not bad. I can't say I'm totally pleased as the targeted turnover has not been hit yet. However bottom line is encouraging due to the high margin in several projects.

Year-to-date top line is already higher than whole of last year while bottom line is close compared to whole of last year.

I expect the latter to exceed last year's when we close the book by year end.

Moving forward, my focus continues to be growing the business and buy an office space as part of my recurring income plan.

Financials and Other Incomes

Bought a new car this year due to the expiring COE of my previous car. Luckily did not have to touch my investments but it did affected my cash flow.

Previously I have set these targets for 2019.

Targeted passive income: S$7,200
Targeted side income: S$3,000

Actual passive income achieved: S$4,471.25* (vs S$6,069.08 in 2018)
Actual side income achieved: S$5,314.78 (vs S$3,042.86 in 2018)

Results: One target achieved.

For 2020,

Targeted 2020 passive income: S$7,200
Targeted 2020 side income: S$6,000

Investments

My holdings as of 31/12/2019:


Relatively quiet year for me. Opted for scrips for MLT and ESR REIT.

Total number of holdings increased to 13 compared to 12 last year. 

However portfolio value at end of the year decreased slightly to S$122,453 (vs S$123,356 in 2018). This is due to several reasons:

1) Cash received from my sold transactions have not been fully redeployed to the portfolio.

2) Share price of Japfa has not recover fully to the pre-swine flu level.

Tabulated summary*:

As shown in the above summary, I am actually at a slight paper loss excluding dividends. However the power of dividends is evident here.

The overall portfolio is mainly bogged down by ISOTeam of which I am having a S$9K paper loss currently.

Although the dividends help to cushion the lousy feeling abit, the opportunity cost is mounting. I will make a decision on this counter within this year or two depending on the share price.

This year ISOTeam should be presenting a nice set of results due to the following:

1) The numerous contract wins which add to the already high order book.

2) SG Bikes which should turn profitable this year.

3) Integration of Pure group into ISOTeam which will further contribute directly to ISOTeam's expected good results.

4) The election year which should means more public projects out for tender in ISOTeam's area of expertise.

Of course whether these will serve as catalysts for the share price to move up is anybody's guess.

My transactions for 2019:


Not much transactions done for 2019. Accumulated Japfa in batches. Yeah it's not really a dividend stock which goes against my style. But I can't resist my itchy fingers. Bad habits die hard.

On the other hand, wifey's portfolio performed much better.

 
Did some re-balancing for her. Number of stocks remained the same as compared to 2018.

However year end portfolio value increased to S$63,158 (vs S$52,371 in 2018).

Tabulated summary:


Her paper gain + realised dividends hit S$11,981. Looks good I must say.

You can see the risk attitude I adopted while managing her portfolio as compared to managing my own.

If I had been as prudent in managing my portfolio it would have performed much more beautifully.

So this is it. A long post of 2019.

Last but not least, I wish everyone a happy new year ahead. Good health and good wealth!

* Reclassification of RHT special dividends