March 2020 Updates

Mar 2020

Portfolio Value after market close

S$109,576.22

Wifey's Portfolio Value after market close

S$70,896.22

Purchase

1) 3,000 shares of CRCT @ $1.33 (Added the same for wifey's portfolio)

2) 300 shares of DBS @ $23.90 (Added the same for wifey's portfolio)

3) 300 shares of DBS @ $19.78 (Added the same for wifey's portfolio)

4) 500 shares of OCBC @ $9.20 (Added the same for wifey's portfolio)

Sold

1) 40,000 shares of Japfa @ $0.62

Dividends

1) Ascendas REIT @ $175.35

2) Mapletree Logistic Trust @ $102.53 

3) ESR REIT @ $85.50

4) Mapletree North Asia Commercial Trust (MNACT) @ $66.84

5) CapitaLand Retail China Trust (CRCT) @ $180.50

Short-Term Transactions

1) Intraday trade on 5,000 units of DLC SG5xShort DBS

2) Intraday trade on 10,000 units of DLC SG5xShort DBS

3) Weekly trade on 5,000 units of Ascendas Reit

Summary

Received a total of $610.72 of dividends this month. 

Portfolio value dropped by $20.9k when compared to last month's portfolio value of $130,500.85. The decrease is of course driven by the downturn of the market caused by COVID-19 and partially offset by the capital injection of around $21.7k in DBS, OCBC and CRCT.

I have added another batch of CRCT to my long term portfolio at $1.33.

I have also made my maiden entrance into DBS which is a counter I have always wanted to own.

So far I have bought in two batches of 300 shares each.

As for OCBC, it is a counter I have owned previously so this is a return of one of my favourite counters.

Letting it go back then was one of those decisions where I regretted so I'm glad the chance came for me to own it again.

So far I have bought 500 shares as a first batch.

This is one of my busiest months in the market after a long time.

If you have been following my previous update posts you will know that I hardly trade at all. The total no. of trades I did for last year can be counted by the fingers of my hands.

I'm still more of a long term investor than a trader.

So for this month, I sold off my total holdings of Japfa at $0.62. Average cost price is $0.59. 

I held it for slightly over a year. Decided to sell it to take profit since the market situation is worsening and this is not my core holding after all. 

Funds collected will be used for some short term trading and investment for my long term portfolio. 

I've also bought 5,000 shares of Ascendas Reit at $2.71 for a short term trade and sold them at $2.79 after a week for some small profit.

This month also marked my first foray into Daily Leverage Certificates (DLCs). It wasn't a pleasant virgin experience. See below for more.

COVID-19 and My Investment Strategy

Since February this year, I have amassed about $40k of funds to be used for my long term portfolio.

Beginning from last month, I have observed that the share price of a number of counters in my watch list are starting to approach my target price.

With a long watch list but limited buying power, I decided to add another selection parameter to help me narrow down the counters to buy and focus my fire power on.

This additional selection parameter is in the form of a calculation and it indeed helped me to narrow down on the counters to buy during this period to three and they are DBS, OCBC and CRCT.

So far I have made my purchases in these 3 counters in batches.

Perhaps I will write a separate post on this calculation and how I narrowed down to the above 3 counters.

Buying in batches is always my to-go approach as I'm not very good in catching the bottom.

Time in the market is always better than timing the market for me.

And also to quote something from Michael Batnick when he was asked about when is the right time to buy stocks: "It doesn't matter when you buy, only that you buy."

Target Price

Below are my target prices (TP) for the three identified counters and the reasons for setting the prices.

While the term is called 'Target Price', it is by no means a static figure to me. Rather, I treat it as an area, a fluid figure to adjust according to the present trend when the target price is hit.

For example, I had wanted to add more CRCT at $1.37. But eventually I added it at $1.33 as the down trend was going strong then.

Last but not least as I always said, do not blindly follow.

Daily Leverage Certificates

Made my first foray into Daily Leverage Certificates (DLCs) when I traded DLC SG5xShort DBS twice.

Made a loss of about $3.9K in total.

I can probably break down the reasons for the loss to bad luck, personal factor and external human factor.

Bad luck because the market, especially DBS share price has been dropping steeply for the one week before I entered my first DLC trade. However on the very day I entered, dear Donald Trump decided to make a certain tweet that made the market rebound that day.

I promptly cut loss. And the market resumed the drop the next day.

For the 2nd trade, I was actually looking at some gains in the morning until the bank stocks suddenly moved up sharply and quickly around noon. There seems to be no reason for the sudden uptrend. Probably only the insiders know.

I decided to hold on till the later part of the day as the chart suggested the bears and bulls are still fighting.

However when I finally cut loss around 4.15 pm, the share price began to drop again. I could have lessen my loss if I have held on for a few more minutes.

Sometimes it seems like someone or something is plotting against every of my moves.

Personal factor reason is because I did not monitor the market closely enough and my trading skills have lots of room for improvement. No excuses here.

External human factor is because according to my MBKE broker, the DLCs can only be traded via them (the brokers) as it is a volatile product.

This partly contributed to my loss due to the higher commission involved and more importantly, trading through the broker is less nimble as compared to making the trade myself using my online account.

I have checked with my other brokerages, apparently they did not mention having to trade DLCs through the broker.

Another important factor that will turn your winning trade into loss is the bid-ask spread.

I have observed that the spread for some DLCs can be rather wide at times and it's not easy to enter at a favourable price.

Despite the bad first start, I won't rule out trading DLCs again especially if a good setup is present.

However I won't be using my MBKE account for this product. I very much prefer to do it on my own online.

Anyway my focus is still building up my long term income portfolio.

Sustainability

While I have an emergency fund to sustain myself and my family for about two years, I can't rest on my laurels as everything so far points to a protracted downturn in the economy.

Hence this pot of cash is one that won't be touched for my personal investment no matter how tempting the market has becomes.

This is something I have to constantly remind myself of recently.

Already I can feel my business slowing down in these two months. No. of enquiries have become lesser. Potential projects seem to be taking longer to be confirmed.

The company cash flow is still healthy but I can't help but become more concerned as the days go by.

I am still evaluating how will the two rounds of government stimulus help businesses like mine. Hopefully I can get some assistance from them.

Meanwhile I am making use of this period to get some certification for my company and also attend some training courses listed in Skillsconnect.

Portfolio Page of this Blog

Lastly I have also updated the Portfolio page of this blog. I realised I have been getting quite a number of page views on the portfolio page but the portfolio displayed was still that of 2016's.

My apologies for that.

I have now uploaded the latest year end portfolio (2019 end) for the readers' reference. Moving forward I will try to keep the page updated yearly.

I am also thinking of adding some graphs to depict the yearly performances such as portfolio value and dividends received.

Cheers.