2016 Investing Report Card

Year 2016 Closes, Results and Returns

2016 closes and with SGXcafe calculating returns on a daily basis, I knew what was coming before the year ended. Disappointingly, my portfolio underperformed STI ETF returns this year - the first time since 5 years of investment. With the negative losses last year, it was quite disappointing to have not grown my investment this year as well.

2016 Portfolio XIRR: -2.215%
STI ETF XIRR: 2.864%

Fun Facts

For now, let's lighten up the mood for some infographic about my portfolio movement this year:

Dividends Goals

With regards to $1000 the dividend goal I had set for 2016, you can see that I have narrowly missed it with $954.25. This partly due to Singpost's tightening dividend policy as well as Falcon Energy not yielding any dividend this year.

For 2017, I hope to increase my dividend received to the tune of $1100. Building up a portfolio that can gives me a steady income stream is one of my retirement goals for the long long term, and I hope that I am able to slowly accomplish this goal.

To increase the dividend, one way is to focus on purchasing stocks that are dividend-yielding and have the cash flow to support it. Monthly investment in STI ETF with my siblings will also contribute in a minor way, probably to cover the shortfalls from the dividend cut by Singpost.

Going Forward

Despite these two years of negative returns, I aim to keep the course. But it has certainly made me re-assess the way I look at gains. A problem is me not realizing profits only to watch it slip away and never coming back. One part of me always wants to be noble and be a "long-term investor". The other part is Graham's and Buffet's mantra of only buying companies where you will never give it up. Falcon Energy has been a bummer and I hope it proves itself in 2017.

For further pickings, I have a few stocks in my mind for research and considerations. Working gives me an steady income to invest but it takes time away from research and homework. But I hope to stay the course and just keep moving ---- towards financial freedom!

My Stock Holdings (January 2016)

Below is my portfolio distribution for the first month of 2016. Here's to a better investing future for the rest of the year! 

From the start of this year till end of January, the main movement was me selling Bank of Ireland in favor of Karin Tech. The sale of Bank of Ireland was triggered by the disappointing lack of positive push to the stock. Though the economy for Ireland and Europe had been improving for a while now, with stable dividend on the way, it had not translated into positive movement for the stock. The premise of me buying Bank of Ireland back in 2014 was based on the improving economy in Ireland as well as the improving of the bank's balance sheet. Both events happened without any significant price increase. Hence by referring to my buying motivation, I had realised holding the stock by this point, meaningless. This also serves as a good lesson for readers out there that when buying stocks, remember to write down your reasons for writing it. Periodically review it to see that the reasons are still valid and if the reasons are not valid anymore, consider selling it. 

Following the previous post about Karin Tech, I have decided to add the stock into my portfolio for the strength of management, resilient earning power, advantageous foreign exchange and good dividend. However, from the announcement from the company on Wednesday, I might have misjudged the strength of the business itself. Profits from Karin Tech plunged approximately 80% due to softening consumer electronics product. I had reservations about that section of business due to the low economic moat, but I did not expect it to drop so much. Nevertheless, a dividend of 0.05 HKD translate to a half year dividend yield of 3%. This is sufficient for me to consider holding it for longer periods of time. A warning to any investors though, the stock had fallen below the 3-year low of $0.285. Hence, a short term investor may have problem holding it. 

HPH Trust has also announced their results recently with a drop of dividend. A constant worry of mine is the huge debt of HPH Trust. Though HPH Trust has good dividends in the past years, the stock price drops along with the dividend and I wonder if the dividends/business is sustainable in the long year. I will be reviewing this stock with more spare time. 

SingPost announced marginal growth in profit despite higher revenue. It is really frustrating that profit does not grow proportionally with revenue. Logistics can be a lower margin business. However, having waited over 2 years for profit catch up, it does not appear to be happening. Management guided that "transformation" is finalizing and it is time to reap its fruits of labor. With the departure of Wolfgang Baier, I really wonder how the company is going to fare in the future. If not for my wonderful entry price, I may have sold this stock already. Perhaps I sound salty, but the downgrade from OCBC is infuriating. Within a quarter, the bank has conveniently slashed $0.82 off the target price of SingPost. While details has been lacking for the justification of the new TP, I find it unbelievable that the cut is so much within a quarter. Makes me wonder do the research house just see.... "heyyyy, the current trades so far from our TP. I think it's time to cut it nearer to current price to stay relevant." Also, I don't see eye to eye with people stating that dividend has increased from 1.25 cents to 1.5 cents. This is because it had been declared by SingPost since 1 year ago and should have been factored into stock price long ago. Don't mislead potential investors.

-End of whinings-

With the removal of Bank of Ireland, my portfolio has transformed into a full dividend machine and I hope I can meet my dividend target this year. The Year of Monkey should be good to people born in the Year of Goat and I hope it is true! So Happy Chinese New Year all! Have a prosperous year ahead!!

My Stock Holdings (December) & Happy New Year 2016!

2015 stock market closed without a bang, neither a plunge. But it's undoubtedly a bad fairly lousy year. Starting the year at 3370.59 and ending it at 2893.19, STI dropped 14.16% excluding dividends. Oil price had bottomed to a 11-year low and does not seem to be recovering any time soon. Relevant companies in the oil industries had taken a hit, in particular Keppel Corp and SembCorp.

In my own portfolio, SingPost dropped almost 8% partly because of its CEO's departure and corporate governance problems. In my previous posts on SingPost, I mentioned how much I admired Wolfgang Baier's leadership in transforming SingPost. Now that he is actually gone, a closer watch on SingPost's performance in e-Commerce will be warranted.

Consistently under-performing stocks in my portfolio will also be reviewed soon. (once I submit my FYP report) These stocks actually include Bank of Ireland (BKIR) and HPH Trust. Since buying them almost 2 years back, they had returned almost zero returns. In fact, accounting for inflation and further brokerage fees and foreign custody fees, they were probably negative returns. In the long term, I am pessimistic about HPH Trust since there is little impetus for the share price. Management guidance of allowing dividend payout to follow cash flow should further compress dividend yield. For Bank of Ireland, there should be a slow recovery of its business towards declaring dividend late 2016 or early 2017. However, holding BKIR incurs foreign custody fee at POEMS and it is very vexing. Given the time, I would love to assess whether switching out BKIR and HPH Trust are preferable. (using capital budgeting concepts I learnt in FIN2004X!)

Rounding the "My Stock Holdings" posts for the year, below is the distribution of my portfolio at the end of December.

I received $150 from k1 Ventures through its capital reduction exercise. Adding it all up for the year, I had received $863.19 in 2015!

Since I will be working in mid-2016, I shall aim to achieve $1000 worth of dividend in 2016! This means putting some portion of salary into the stock market, maybe through dollar-cost averaging of STI ETF! Lastly, I shall write another post regarding my investing performance for 2015 as I started my records on 13 January of last year. Included will be breakdown of my Buys and Sells etc. Since I have not sat down to look at my records, writing that post is equally exciting for me!

Once again, Happy New Year and here's wishing everyone out there a prosperous and joyous year ahead! HUAT AH!

My Stock Holdings (November)

November brought down prices of a lot of my stocks, most notably Singapore Post and ST Engineering. I would probably not average down any time soon unless capitulation takes place. At the meantime, their dividends will keep me satisfied. 

I had also bought k1 Ventures at a price of $0.20 on 10 November. This was prior to the capital reduction exercise conducted by the company, in which it gave out $0.015/share to shareholders. k1 Ventures is a investment company and has a great track record of delivering returns to shareholders. It is a bit of a pity that I had noticed this company so late. Between 30 October 2013 to 29 January of this year, the company had return $0.11 of dividends. That's 50% of the price I paid, excluding any capital gains! A risk involved in buying the stock at such a late stage is that most of the monies made from divestment gains had already been given out, hence returns may not be as great as before. Future investments made by k1 Ventures may not be as successful but given the track record, I am willing to place a small amount of money with them in hope of reaping a good returns. However, writing on hindsight with the price standing at $0.183 now, it is unnerving that the stock seem to drop with everything I might touch. The opposite of Midas Touch, perhaps the market is currently not optimal for new investments despite good fundamentals. 

The pie chart shows the current distribution in my portfolio. In the month of November, I received dividends from Keppel Reit and Singpost. Hence the dividends I had received from start of the year to date is $713.19. 

My Stock Holdings (October)

Student life is killing me. At my last year of study, who knew things would be so tough. Final Year Projects, meetings upon meetings. Presentations and presentations. Deadlines and more deadlines. Nevertheless for my own sake and maybe to some extent yours, here's my holdings in October 2015.

No change in holdings but it seems that the market is doing well for the last month.

There are no dividends issued for the month of October, therefore it stands at $616.49. 

A number of investment activities in the upcoming month:
Number one is to ballot for some IPO shares of Jumbo. A review of the IPO can be found in Mr IPO's website. I almost always ballot for IPO to sell on the first day unless its a very compelling business. Jumbo does not look to be the exception but I think Jumbo can open at least above $0.30. With only 2 million shares for public subscription, hope is not high to get the shares.

Number two is to indicate to opt for Keppel Reit's dividend in form of shares. I will explain this scheme/decision in the next post, hopefully before the next monthly report.

My Stock Holdings (September)

Have been busy with school work this month due to Final Year Project and job-finding (holy shit!) hence not much time to update. 

I did buy Keppel Reit at $0.945 on 2 September as part of my income stocks. Also, dividends received in the month of September include $50 from ST Engineering and $86.05 from HPH Trust. 

Dividends Year-to-Date: $616.49

My Stock Holdings (August)

Portfolio at the end of August:

Note that it's a JPEG because I gave up using Google Sheets. Google keep republishing my charts although I unchecked that option. That is also why I deleted all my previous charts as it was overwritten.

So this month was quite a ride and my portfolio lost a value of $1000. Nothing to sweat about as I'm going for the long-term and not short term volatility. Looking forward, I really hope to buy in ST Engineering on the cheap especially since it had formed a bottom. Straco is really good for averaging down since I have only a small stake in it.

I'm also looking at Reits, in particular K-Reits and possibly Soilbuild Reits. We will see what Singapore market can offer.


In the dividend department, I received an additional $67.50 from Singapore Post.

Dividends Year-to-Date: $480.44

My Stock Holdings (July)

Bought Straco at $0.935 as the buy and sell price ($1) was at a huge difference. I had already known the good fundamentals that Straco possessed hence I casually queued at the buy price. Take a look at the EPS growth of Straco over the years since IPO. The CAGR of its EPS is calculated to be 33.08%.

Input that CAGR into the Future Value Calculator together with present value of 4.45cents (current full year EPS), you get an EPS value of $0.1857 in 5 years.

With a low P/E of 8, the stock price can be valued at $1.485 in 5 years. At historical P/E of 21.68 ( from POEMS Stocks Analytics), the stock price can be as high as $4.025.

The exact calculation method can be found here in my blog.


Overall portfolio for July is as follows:

My Stock Holdings (April)

Starting this month, I will try to show my monthly portfolio in this blog.

Whenever I buy or sell a stock, I will try to justify the cause. My investing mantra lies between an investor and a trader. Therefore, you'll see quick transactions on some stocks while others may be there for years. So here's my portfolio for this month!

**Edit: Chart removed because I set it to update with latest information -- not accurate info

Risk of Buying Foreign Stock

It's has been a while since I've updated this blog. Being on study exchange do take up my a whole load of my time. In this post, I want to talk about the risks of buying foreign stocks listed on foreign exchanges. In my 3 years plus experience, I had only purchased several foreign stocks. These stocks were namely Apple Inc, Bank of America and Bank of Ireland. As one can see, buying an average of 1 stock per year seems awfully miniscule. This is because of the added risks of buying shares of a foreign company.

1) Foreign Currency Risk

Perhaps the most prominent reason to research doubly hard when one is buying into a foreign company and that is the foreign currency risk. The ultimate aim of buying stock is to grow the money you have and that is achieved through capital gain and dividends. When purchasing foreign stocks, the foreign currency risk adds another layer of hindrance to the desired capital gain. A prime example is my purchase of Bank of Ireland (BKIR). I bought it at 0.34 EUR back in 21 February 2014. As of today, I have an approximate gain of 6% at 0.36 EUR. BKIR Chart

Admittedly, the gain is not up to standard given the time invested. Now, take a look at the EUR-SGD rate. On 21 Feb 2014, the rate stood at 1.7346. Today, it is a whopping low of 1.4492 - a drop of almost 17%. As you can see, my capital gain was wiped out by my currency loss. Foreign currency risk needs no further explanation.

2) Lack of Information

Knowledge is king as many once said. Keeping in times with financial news is important when it comes to stocks. Many a times, news can convey a sense of general sentiment in the stock market. Also, crucial news will reach you last unless you are specifically hunting for it (eg. results release). I normally use Google Alerts to update me of any news related to the foreign companies I buy into. However, it is not enough in my opinion as I am not in the midst of the "battlefield". In the case of Bank of Ireland, I am unsure of Irish opinions on the bank. I am unsure of BKIR's reputation in Ireland. I am unsure of its scale within Ireland. These are some of the many uncertainties that one have to deal with when buying into a foreign company and thus foreign stocks are not suitable for investors without much experience.

3) Different Time Zones 

Another disadvantage of buying foreign stock is dealing with different time zones. If you own European stock, the market opens in the afternoon and closes at SG evening time. That seems fine enough. If you hold US stocks, the market only opens ~ 9pm and closes just before you wake up. In the time that you are asleep, crucial news might emerge and affect stock markets without you knowing. That is the stuff one has to deal with when buying foreign stock.

Despite all these shortcomings, one might consider buying foreign stock due to several reasons. One might be to diversify stock holdings out of one's country. Second, it might be due to the long time horizon of a stock where you have faith in. As a result, short term fluctuations that might be disadvantageous to investors would not be significant. However, as mentioned earlier, it is not advisable to invest in foreign stock unless one accumulated enough experience in the market.