Post General Elections 2015 + Portfolio Update. Do have a read!

And so, the people of Singapore have spoken. In what was a rather surprising result, the tailwind shifted to the sails of the PAP party's ship. The electoral results were pretty conclusive which resulted in a much better performance of the governing party. The picture below shows the soon-to-be party coverage of Singapore. I won't state too much comments with regards to the electoral result as this would not be the appropriate forum. However what I will say is that I do hope to see a more balanced parliamentary coverage in future elections. This should only benefit a first-world country like Singapore truly is, or is trying to become.

As shared previously, I would be sharing a brief update of my portfolio progress. As can be seen in the Bloomberg screenshot shared below, the portfolio is still deep in red territory. However, what is positive is that we have shifted somewhat from the steepest declines seen in mid-August when overall losses were in the double digit % terms.

Stock Portfolio as of 12 Sept 2015

Moving ahead, I will be holding unto the direction of my portfolio steadily. The course has not changed and in the months ahead, I most probably will be adding unto select positions. It is highly probable that I will be adding positions in either Jardine Matheson (JMH) or Singtel. The main emphasis for me is to identify companies that either have large existing moats (JMH) that are trading at temporary lower prices or those that are able to use technological innovations to improve both the efficiency and diversity of their businesses (Singtel). In other words, businesses that are able to grow and sustain either their top-line growth or profit margins.

There are certain components of the portfolio that I have a keen eye on in terms of looking out for potential headwinds. This would be the REITs segment (with rising rates and increased penetration of online shopping) and Sembcorp Ind. (weak oil prices). I do not expect to be adding unto those positions at the moment given the uncertain macro risks they still face.

Lastly, there are the quality stocks which I own but with still lofty valuations. These would be the likes of Raffles Medical and ComfortDelgro. They remain great businesses but I remain hesitant to build those positions until the prices make more sense from a valuation perspective.

Dividends for the portfolio remain strong and by the end of 2015, a total of $2,500 worth of dividends will have been paid (based on the current positionings). I'm really glad as this presents a small step in my journey to investing full time and building a solid and sustainable passive income stream.

Will look to write some detailed analyses on both Jardine and Singtel in days to come. In the meanwhile have a wonderful Sat. and a good post election day ahead! As usual, back to my books and more reading on financial statement analysis :)

Signing Off

Transitioning Stock Investor

Closer look at Singtel

As I hold unto my breath and small cache of investable funds, I am busily planning the next strategic move for my portfolio.

Singtel was not on my immediate radar as the price did not initially drop as much as it did in recent weeks. However, the price has fallen to around S$3.69 which makes it a pretty good level below my average cost of $3.97 for this counter. Additionally, the dividend yield has now picked up to a decent yield of around 3.7%p.a.

I still favour its major share of the Singapore telco market and the fact that most of its financial ratios (especially solvency related ones) remain one of the more robust vs its telco peers in the Singapore market. What I also find encouraging is its diverse spread of businesses and not being over reliant in individual countries like China or India. Most of us still are heavily reliant on their services and I see increased value in adding on positions in this company given the overall challenging environment ahead whereby telcos should still remain relatively unscathed.

Again, nothing overly fanciful. Just adding unto quality positions as and when opportunities arise.

Singtel Holdings Update:
# Current Holdings: 3,000 shares. Looking to add 1,000 more in Sept. To be updated.

What do you feel about Singtel at its current price? Glad to hear more from you!

Signing Off
Transitioning Stock Investor

Interesting Dilemma: Sharing my Thoughts

Good Saturday morning folks!

It's election fever here in Singapore as we are in the midst of our elections to vote for the next party to be in parliament. My vote is still undecided as a myriad of topics emerge for both deliberations and considerations. Usually in the past, there is an 'election effect' that we would see for Singapore stocks. However, with the current overall market volatility this effect has been completely dilluted.

Nonetheless, I remain steadfast in having strong belief in our local companies. More so of the ones that I have invested in. In recent weeks I have been faced with a dilemma.

- Do I average down only on some of my heavily beaten down positions?: OCBC Bank (11% down), Jardine Matheson (11% down) & Sembcorp (17% down).

- Or do I maintain allocation discipline and add evenly across all names?: Currently I have 8 names in the portfolio which has not changed for the last 6 months: OCBC Bank, Sembcorp Industries, Jardine Matheson Holdings, CapitalandMall Trust, Mapletree Commercial Trust, Singtel, ComfortDelgro and Raffles Medical.

- Or do I add positions to the ones that have continued to hold up well?: Comfortdelgro and Raffles Medical, both positions are the top performers in my portfolio.

As I type this and with limited resources at any one point, I'm still pondering on the next step to take. However and I say this with immense pride, I am glad that I rejected the urge to panic sell or to re-consolidate certain positions indiscrimately. With proper planning and selective stock picking, it became apparently clear and more so during the recent market madness that the companies which I have chosen are solid names that I would want to add even more when markets rotate.
So I'm glad my decision moving forward is skewed towards where to ADD rather than where to SELL as there is no impairment I see at all to any of the 8 businesses that I have stakes in. Nonetheless and on the flip-side, in a bullish market if any of the positions have risen to levels that I feel are prime for trimming, the appropriate rebalancing will be done. This was done a couple of times on both the Comfortdelgro and Raffles Medical positions earlier this year (for those of you who have been following my blog you may have read those earlier posts).

So remember, to empower your portfolio you need to have faith in the companies you put your hard earned money in. Not blind faith I have to reiterate, but faith stemming from hard work and research in the companies you own.

If you are new to investing and would like to construct a portfolio for a start, you may wish to follow my selections and get updated via this blog. However, please do not take this as buy-sell recommendations but they are suggestions on how to construct a proper stock portfolio. This will hopefully set you on the course to a better financial future and less reliance on your active work income.

Ending off with sharing some of my dividend updates for Sept below:

*Dividend Update for Sept
- Scrip reinvestment elected: OCBC Bank $360
- Scrip reinvestment elected: Jardine Matheson US$38

Signing Off and Have a Great Weekend
Transitioning Stock Investor

Earnings Season - Portfolio Update

Hi all, it's been a week since I last blogged as I was away on holiday in HK and what a hot holiday it was as the temperatures there just were sky high.

Nonetheless, as I was in HK I still kept a close watch on the markets in general. It was earnings reporting season for a host of companies in Singapore, which included names like Comfortdelgro, Singtel, Sembcorp Industries, Jardine Matheson Holdings. Of these names all reported solid earnings except Jardine which saw a firm-wide knock on the profits of its businesses.

I would be expecting a bumper crop of dividends for Sept of around $500 plus in which they will be entirely reinvested in their existing holdings.

What we also saw recently was a massive sell-down of many stocks mainly due to flowover concerns from China's recent devaluation of its RMB, not once but twice. This leaves many of the prices of the companies within my portfolio at rather attractive levels. I may consider either adding unto my REIT positions (ie. Capitaland Mall Trust and Mapletree Commercial Trust) or adding unto a postion to Comfortdelgro, Singtel or Sembcorp Industries. I am still undecided at the moment but will commit the funds later this month.

Meanwhile, it's more studies on my CFA Level 2 and just monitoring the market dynamics in general. Will update again when I further consolidate my portfolio with new additions to my existing holdings + reinvestment of the incoming dividends.

Signing Off
Transitioning Stock Investor

Market Catalysts and Quick Portfolio Update

Looking at the current market today, there will be some short term catalysts that will be of interest.

Firstly, it has just been confirmed that an agreement has just been reached on a Greek bailout plan. This deal when voted into the Greek government will hopefully keep Greece in the Euro and Grexit will not occur. In fact, it further shows the solidarity of the Euro and keeps the other countries that went through austerity (ie Spain, Portugal, etc) happy. I see this as a positive catalyst.

In the Chinese stock market, I see a longer term systematic issue. Nevertheless, the recent moves by the Chinese government to steady the ship and prop the market up has went some way to steady the market. To me, in the long term the Chinese investor needs to learn from past lessons, but at least for now things look better than a few weeks ago. I similarly see this as a positive situation.

In terms of the local stock market, a slew of companies are poised to announce earnings with the next month. All of the stocks in my current portfolio are slated to announce earnings during this time period. I attach a nice screenshot of the positive price action today:

Watchlist of My Current Stock Portfolio (Source: sgx.com)

I await better results especially from the less performing companies: Sembcorp Industries and Jardine Matheson. I hope that my trust in these companies will pay off in terms of better earnings numbers.
I continue to be fairly confident in the earnings of the core companies in my portfolio: Singtel, OCBC, ComfortDelgro and Raffles Medical. I similarly expect the REITS in my portfolio to continue their good performance: Capitamall Trust and Mapletree Commercial Trust.

I will be taking a break from adding to positions in the current month as I continue to build my warchest. I recently sold a holding of Raffles Medical (at a profit of c.S$700) to fund a watch purchase. Oh well, all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, but I definitely look to lessen such activities moving forward.

The markets do look very interesting now and some of the positions in my portfolio looking prime for adding, especially Singtel, ComfortDelgro and Raffles Medical. Will closely monitor these positions and update accordingly when I make stock additions. As of now, I relaxingly sit back and let the portfolio recover and continue to churn out its dividends.

Signing Off
Transitioning Stock Investor

Portfolio Update - June 2015

Good Sunday Morning Folks!

Today's an interesting day as I sum up my portfolio for June and share the recent developments for the month.

In terms of portfolio additions, as shared earlier in the month I have added 1 lot of Singtel at $4.13. Subsequently in early last week, I added another lot of Sembcorp Industries at an attractive price of $3.91. Overall, I'm quite glad with the prices I paid for both companies as I thankfully managed to capture the downside of the price curve for both stocks. I also now see a nice recovery in the price of Sembcorp and hopefully the price recovers even further.

In terms of portfolio subtractions, I took profit on 2 lots of ComfortDelgro just last Friday before the market closed, locking in a 18% (36% annualised) profit. This leaves my current holdings of the counter at 2 lots. I pondered extremely long over this decision and as can be seen I seldom try to take profits as I do hold my holdings over the LT. However, I do have some concerns on the overall market with the bubble in the Chinese 'A' share market + Greek talks I found that it was a good opportunity to take some money off the table especially as I had made some good percentage profits already. I continue to overweight this company and will definitely accumulate more in future on price dips (this also means I am still overweight transport as an industry and I seek to maintain that).

Finally, in terms of dividends it was a really good month for me as other than May & August, June sees the most dividend payouts as I saw dividend inflows from Mapletree Comm. Trust, Raffles Medical and OCBC (both of which I elected to receive dividends by DRIP).

Here's a summarised look of my holdings and dividend records and trends at the end of June 2015:

Transitioning Stock Investor - Portfolio Holdings June 2015

Transitioning Stock Investor - Portfolio Dividend Trends June 2015
*Note that future dividend trends are projected based on historical dividend payouts

I still love the look of my portfolio and struggle to find good companies to add unto it. As such my near-term strategy over the next 6 months is to continue to find good opportunities to add unto my current holdings and to increase my dividend stream consequently. That's it from me this weekend and have a great week ahead!

Signing Off

Transitioning Stock Investor

Portfolio Update

A quick update on my portfolio. As shared previously 1 lot of Singtel shares was added earlier this week. And the market subsequently recovered strongly after that, so that was a rather good call in terms of timing.

Nevertheless, at this mid-point stage in the year, my overall portfolio is looking in rather good shape. There was some recent volatility but with a long term view, volatile markets always represent opportunities rather than risks. 

Quick commentary on some of my holdings and what transpired over the last week months:

1. Raffles Medical - Obviously, a strong catalyst for the recent share price strength was the news of its expansion in Shanghai and the collaboration on a hospital there. None withstanding this piece of news, I continue to expect strong organic growth from the business, especially in Singapore. I visited the sites that are being developed at both Bugis and HV recently and I was very impressed with the locality and scale of the projects. I also was impressed at the potential synergies that will be provided by these two developments in the healthcare industry moving forward. I will continue to add positions when there are price dips.

2. Singtel - As shared, a lot was recently added at $4.13. That was a very good price point as the share price has rallied towards the end of the week. Again, the scale that Singtel has, coupled with the heavy reliance on telecoms gives me strong conviction in owning this quality holding.

3. Mapletree Commercial Trust - Now, this is a stock that I currently have only 2 lots in. I will most probably add a couple more lots soon. Just go visit Vivocity over the weekend and you will immediately see why I have a strong conviction on this stock. The other holdings in the REIT are also quality ones, that span nicely across the south-central part of Singapore. That being said, Vivocity is the obvious jewel in the crown and I continue to love this mall and that is the main reason why I would be adding positions soon. (Not forgetting that this is a 'DRIP' applicable stock).

I will be writing more about the other positions I have in my portfolio in due course. I would love to hear from you as well and what other stocks interest you at the current moment. Keep those posts coming in!

Signing Off

Transitioning Stock Investor

Thoughts on the Market - 10 June 2015

Dear Friends,

Good wednesday afternoon! In the midst of the SEA Games which is being held in Singapore, our focus of course is still very much on the market.

In the recent market weakness, did any of you take the opportunity to add into your positions? I sure did, as shared in my previous posts, I was focussing on adding a position in Singtel and I did when the price suffered the recent correction. In Singapore we call this 'Lelong!'

Great stock at a cheaper price, so a lot was added. Really looking forward to its continued growth in the 4G space as well as its Digital Life offerings. Dividends galore!

Although my portfolio took a hit overall I was not worried much as I knew that I was invested for the long run. In fact I was pretty excited as I saw many great stocks trading at a lower price for the taking. Today, the market has recovered strongly and my portfolio's performance is looking nice. 

Always remember, buy on dips and do not be afraid to add unto quality positions. Market dips are just a test of your patience and the conviction of the portfolio you have built over time. Those who have passed this small test, kudos to you! 

Signing off

Transitioning Stock Investor

Continuing Stock Focus - Singtel

I blogged a week ago about focussing on Singtel. Well, the price went down and has now rebounded to S$4.17 as of today's close.

This has proven and especially over time that having confidence in a stock really does matter. It matters, because as an investor when the price of the stock that you are confident in drops, you simply buy more of it. It really is not rocket science and sometimes investing is just that simple.

The hard part is to get to know the stock extremely well and that is why a concentrated high conviction portfolio does have its set of benefits.

I will be continuing to monitor the other stocks in my portfolio, especially those that have recently taken a hit and probably share which are the ones that I would be looking to add. Remember I am not looking to add new positions, but new holdings to my existing positions. This practice when done over time in a disciplined manner, does reap its rewards.

Signing off
Transitioning Stock Investor

Thoughts on the Market - 29th May 2015

Day's off for me today. As I settle down for the long weekend, I'm at my laptop thinking about what has happened in the market during the week. Yes, we may ask.....what happened???

As most of us may know, the Chinese Stock Market plunged more than 6% yesterday. As I'm watching CNBC, I'm also seeing a lower pre-opening price for most of the Chinese stocks. Pundits are gunning for a 3% rebound, so let's see where that heads.

What does the above Chinese market sell-off spell for the Singapore stock market? Inadvertently, there is a similar spooking of the market. Most of the stocks in my portfolio (barring Raffles Medical) are trading mostly downwards this morning. 

In the past, whatever that we have witnessed would have similarly spooked me and I may have just closed my laptop and just avoided the market with a ten foot pole. However, as my investment maturity grew (that was of course due to witnessing the 2008 GFC, Fed taper tantrum, Oil shocks, etc) I begin to look at this period as a great opportunity to invest in the stocks that I like. 

This brings me back to my previous post whereby I wrote at length about Singtel. The current price of $4.09 does look extremely attractive and I would probably add another lot if the price hovers around those levels for the next couple of weeks. We'll see. 

OCBC Bank does look interesting as well at its current price of $10.14. It has fallen quite substantially below my average cost of $10.34 for my existing holdings so probably this is an area that I may be seeking to increase my holdings. You may refer to my current portfolio (in my previous post) for a guidance on what stocks that I'm 'focussing' on. 

To reiterate my thoughts for the market today. What goes up, does have to come down. The Chinese market has been red-hot and the pull-back was as inevitable as ice melting on a hot bonnet of a black car in a 33 degrees day in Singapore. However, what this does is also present us opportunities to invest in the Singaporean market with bargain opportunities galore.

I hope you can find your set of bargain opportunities as well. 

Signing Off
Transitioning Stock Investor

Stock Radar: Singtel

Recently, I have been looking to add unto my portfolio. I could do this in two ways:

1. Increase holdings in existing stock positions OR
2. Add a new stock position

I have contemplated adding on these following new positions

1. Silverlake Axis (Banking IT systems)
2. Kingsmen creative (Exhibition events planner)
3. Eu Yan Sang (TCM)
4. Dairy Farm (Supermarkets, etc)

After giving the above some thought, I held back adding to those positions as I did not find compelling reasons to add them at the current moment.

Singtel

Therefore, I looked at boosting my current portfolio. And Singtel re-appeared on my thoughts. The price has come down slightly recently and even with the talks about a fourth telco abuzz, I still feel that this counter is a solid one to hold, for the long term.

Source: Bloomberg

As I was typing this, I witnessed another person glued unto their smartphone again, surfing away.The latest results presentation by Singtel, reiterated that mobile data is projected to be one of their largest sources of revenue, with around close to a quarter of users exceeding their mobile data plan. This, with the fact that it is indeed a hassle to switch telecom contracts, presents Singtel a rather large business moat.
Having stable and good levels of dividends over time does help add to the investment cause as well.

These simple yet compelling reasons made perfect sense for an adding unto my Singtel position. I should be making the decision within the month or next, depending on how the market moves.

What do you guys think? Comments and discussion points are most welcome!

Signing off
Transitioning Stock Investor