2020: A Year in Review

Time really flew past in 2020 and it's time for a review of the year again.

 

Here is goes. 

Family

We have a new addition to our family in 2020. Our son arrived safe and sound in August to meet his parents and sister.

This means less personal time for myself but more bonding time with kids on the other hand.

It's a hard juggle some times though.

Our hope is for our kids to grow up healthy, happily and with the right values in life.

Healthy Lifestyle

My health in the past year is generally good except for the last week of the year where I came down with a sore throat. 

 

I think that was the first time I visited a doctor in 2 ~ 3 years.

 

Other than that I am pleased and thankful for the healthy body in an otherwise unhealthy year for the world.

 

Earlier this year I came up with an exercise regime that can be done at home. It trains most of the major muscle groups of the body and combine resistance training with cardio respiratory training.

I've blogged about it here previously.

 

I did the training almost daily till July / August where I stopped and the effect on the body is pretty visible. Both internally and externally.

 

I have restarted the training this week and hope to do it as often as my time allows.

 

Guess this, together with the cold showers that I've taken since years ago, really helps to keep one healthy. 

Oh the cold weather these few days makes the showers even shioker!

 

Recently I have also attended a certified personal trainer course to learn how to train more effectively. Hopefully I can pass with flying colours.

Work

With my financial year ending in February 2021, I still have two months to charge ahead.

 

Results so far for this FY are terrible. Business secured and project value both dropped tremendously.

This FY is expected to be a loss-making year.

 

The circuit breaker earlier this year means no new business coming in for most part of the year. Projects that were in discussion were put on hold. And I couldn't go out for sales talk due to the travel and social distancing restrictions.

 

But no excuses here. I should have work harder.

 

On the bright side, I made use of the time to get some certifications for the company which will come in useful especially when bidding for public projects.

 

Good thing is that the company is still surviving due to the good performance of the past two years.

Hopefully this year onwards we can more than cover the shortfall of the precedent year.

Moving forward, my focus is to grow the business and start hiring if company performance improves.

Financials and Other Incomes

Previously I have set these targets for 2020.

Targeted Passive Income	Actual Passive Income Achieved
$7,200.00	$6,687.14	vs $4,471.25 in 20199
Targeted Side Income	Actual Side Income Achieved
$6,000.00	$2,563.49	vs $5,314.78 in 20199

Results: Both targets not achieved.

For 2021,

Targeted passive income: S$8,900
Targeted side income: S$11,500

Investments

Received my last round of dividends for the year in December consisting of:

 

1) ESR REIT @ $79.80

2) MNACT @ $115.04

3) Netlink Trust @ $202.40

4) DBS @ $108

5) MLT @ $201.30

6) CRCT @ $220

7) Ascendas REIT @ $287

 

Total: $1,213.54

 

Moving forward investment-wise, my plan for this year is to:

 

1. Get rid of the dead wood in my portfolio (was planning to do it last month but the price had a drastic fall on the day I wanted to sell)

 

2. Allocate a portion of my investments into crypto currencies (probably 1% of my portfolio for a start)

3. Invest into the US market

My investment style remains the same: Income investing.

 

Hence main focus will still be concentrated in the local companies where the yield is still attractive.

 

My holdings as of 31/12/2020:

S/N	Counter	No. of Shares	Cost incl. Fees	Price at 31/12/2020	Value at 31/12/2020
1	OCBC	1,055	$9,310.49	$10.060	$10,613.30
2	SingTel	8,000	$25,820.21	$2.310	$18,480.00
3	CICT	5,400	$9,307.87	$2.160	$11,664.00
4	Suntec REIT	4,000	$6,629.59	$1.490	$5,960.00
5	CapitaLand	4,000	$11,969.70	$3.280	$13,120.00
6	ISOTeam	50,000	$21,070.79	$0.130	$6,500.00
7	Netlink Trust	8,000	$6,337.19	$0.965	$7,720.00
8	Mapletree Logistic Trust	10,000	$13,820.80	$2.010	$20,100.00
9	RHT Health Trust	10,000	$1,460.58	$0.019	$190.00
10	ESR REIT	10,000	$5,334.46	$0.395	$3,950.00
11	Mapletree NAC Trust	4,000	$4,455.20	$0.970	$3,880.00
12	Ascendas REIT	7,000	$20,419.89	$2.980	$20,860.00
13	CRCT	9,100	$12,973.67	$1.390	$12,649.00
14	DBS	600	$13,148.49	$25.040	$15,024.00
				Total Value:	$150,710.30

 

Took part in several preferential offers in 2020 including Mapletree Logistic Trust, Ascendas REIT and CapitaLand Retail China Trust with the latter two happening in the last month of the year.

 

Also applied for excess for all three POs and received it for both MLT and Ascendas.

For CRCT, I had applied for a total of 13,000 units (allocation + excess) but ended up only getting 4,000 units.

 

All the above are quality businesses which I have no qualms in taking the opportunities presented to add to my investments.

Back in March 2020, I have identified CRCT, DBS and OCBC among the counters in my watch list to focus my funds on.

So far I have added 3 batches of CRCT and 2 batches of DBS and OCBC each.

 

As of year end 2020, number of holdings in my portfolio increased to 14 counters compared to 13 in 2019.

 

Portfolio value at end of the year increased to S$150,710 (vs S$122,453 in 2019).

 

Tabulated summary:

Year end portfolio cost incl. fees		$162,059
Year end portfolio value		$150,710
2020 dividend collected		$6,094
2020 net realised P/L		$3,516
Total accumulative dividend collected		$22,029
Total invested to long term portfolio in 2020		$59,269

 

Again, the overall portfolio was dragged down by ISOTeam which I have the intention to realise the loss and place the remaining fund elsewhere.

Other than that, the realised P&L is a positive.

My transactions for 2020:

S/N	Counter	No. of Shares	Cost incl. Fees	Type
1	OCBC	500	$4,615.63	Bought
2	OCBC	500	$4,257.27	Bought
3	OCBC	31	$241.49	Bought
4	SingTel	3,000	$7,452.73	Bought
5	CCT	3,500	$5,716.86	Bought
6	Mapletree Logistic Trust	2,483	$4,942.17	Bought
7	Japfa	10,000	$5,002.00	Bought
8	Japfa	40,000	$24,716.05	Sold
9	Ascendas REIT	2,000	$5,921.00	Bought
10	Ascendas REIT	5,000	$13,596.40	Bought
11	Ascendas REIT	5,000	$13,902.24	Sold
12	CRCT	5,000	$7,680.40	Bought
13	CRCT	3,000	$4,005.27	Bought
14	CRCT	1,100	$1,288.00	Bought
15	DBS	300	$7,194.36	Bought
16	DBS	300	$5,954.13	Bought
17	DLC SG5xShort DBS	5,000	$6,275.00	Bought
18	DLC SG5xShort DBS	5,000	$5,075.00	Sold
19	DLC SG5xShort DBS	10,000	$17,800.00	Bought
20	DLC SG5xShort DBS	10,000	$15,300.00	Sold
21	DLC SG5xShort SIA	10,000	$8,027.55	Bought
22	DLC SG5xShort SIA	10,000	$7,794.96	Sold
23	Keppel DC REIT	5,000	$11,519.69	Bought
24	Keppel DC REIT	5,000	$11,709.77	Sold
		Total Bought:	$121,489.95
		Total Sold:	$78,498.02

 

Quite a number of transactions done for my standard. Unfortunately not all turned out to be good trades.

 

Highlights include averaged down on Japfa in batches which turned in a profit and some bad trades on DLCs.

 

Hopefully I will improve on my trading skills in the year ahead.

 

Lastly, here's wishing everyone a blessed and healthy 2021.

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.