Portfolio Update - 30 October 2015

After a few months of volatility and southwards movement, I was glad to find STI recovered to above 2,900 points when I came back from my China (Xinjiang) trip. In fact the market looked rather good in October, and STI moved above 3,000 points. China's interest rate cutting and Europe's QE measure supported the stock prices. Singapore companies reported a mix results of the past quarters, but REIT's do generally quite well. Just as I thought that market should be on it's way up, US Fed's hint to raise interest rate in December rocked the market again. STI moved down again on the last 3 trading days of this month.

Compared to 22 Sep 2015 (that is when I updated my portfolio in September), STI moved up 133.04, or 4.64%. My portfolio trailed behind STI and moved up 3.47%.

This month, I bought some shares of Lian Beng, Stamford Land and Tai Sin Electric. I redeemed my holdings on Macquarie International Infrastructure Fund due to closure of the fund. Net cash injection into the portfolio was S$,19,676.83.

Total dividend income this month amounts to S$14,488.21. Majority of the dividend came from Unit trust, as dividend from shares was low this month.

With many companies already published their result and declared dividends in November and December, I am able to forecast the dividend income for the year. This year turns out to be a good year for dividend income. With the help of some special dividend (e.g. Boustead, KIT) and the investment in Unit Trust, my total passive income looks to hit S$150,000 this year. Before you, my dear readers start to 'wow' in admiration or envy, let me reveal to you that, this is the total dividend income from both shares and UT portfolio. Year-to-date, my stock portfolio alone has its value decline by 7.29%, and the dividend income from it only represents a return of slightly less than 6%. So all in all, I have a negative return (paper loss) in my stock investment this year. So, there is really nothing to shout at.

I added in this information so that I am not seem to always brad about my dividend income, and the reader will see a more complete picture. As I said in another post, investment in stock market is like a game, sometimes you win, sometimes you loss; or it's like 围棋, you win here, but loss there. My focus is on long term so this temporary loss can be tolerated.

Below are my top 30 holdings as at 30 October 2015: Two new comers in the group: Stamford Land and Ascendas H Trust.

1.       ComfortDelGro
2.       SPH
3.       OCBC Bank
4.       DBS
5.       Ausnet Services
6.       Kep Inf Tr fKa CIT
7.       ST Engineering
8.       Sembcorp Ind
9.       Metro
10.   Frasers Comm Tr
11.   SGX
12.   Starhub
13.   CapitaLand
14.   AIMSAMP Cap Reit
15.   Keppel Corp
16.   OUE
17.   SATS
18.   CapitaComm Tr
19.   YZJ Shipbldg SGD
20.   Nikko AM STI ETF 100
21.   Ascendas Reit
22.   Stamford Land
23.   Nam Lee Metal
24.   SingTel
25.   United Engineers
26.   Global Inv
27.   Sing Inv & Fin
28.   SIA
29.   Mapletree Log Tr
30.   Ascendas-h Trust

Investing in Stocks is like a game...

Investing in stock market is like a game, you win some, and loss some.

Just yesterday, I blogged about an announcement from HTL caused the stock price to surge almost 100% within a day. This morning, another announcement from Lippo that they may move two REIT's, namely First REIT and Lippomall Indonesia Retail Trust to Indonesia cause the price of these two counters to tumble. To rewind back a few days, an announcement from Saizen REIT that they received an offer for their assets caused its price to surge as well.

Retail investors have no access to these informations beforehand. By the time we know it, it's already to late to act as the prices would have already moved. So it is like a game to us, sometimes we win, sometimes we loss. For the above four counters, 2 went positive, and 2 went negative. So it wasn't too bad for me.

For this kind of unexpected news, there is ready not much we can do.Perhaps the only things we can do are:

1. invest only in stocks with good fundamentals, so the surprise won't be so dramatic.
2. diversify your portfolio, so the impact of such event won't be too big to swallow.

HTL International - Share price jumped 97% in one day

HTL has been one of my "boring" counters for many years. The share price has been quite stagnant, even on a declining trend. I keep it for it still pay dividend every year (except this year), and the NAV has stayed steady so far. Few days ago the trading was halt.

Today the company made and announcement that they have signed an MOU with a company from Shenzhen on "business transaction that will unlock shareholders' value" and lifted the trading halt.

When the market closed this evening HTL share price jumped 23.5 cents, or 97.92%! This is good news to all patient supporters of this counter. Huat Ah!