Cory Diary : Portfolio Management 20180619

I have been holding this article for 3 days for the fear of my first attempt to time "my escape" when Trump suggested Tariff list. However the market crawl back quickly and I feel wolfed. Will this time be another "fake news" ? Well, Trump up the fight immediately right after China hit back. That's round 2.

With battle started, STI is possibly entering the down trend phase. My portfolio is down and to date performance -1.9% this year whereas STI Index -3%. Looks like it takes a market dive for me to catch up as bank falls have larger impact to STI index. Now that the trade war is back again on the table we could see much large volatility in the negative direction. Personally I do not like China to react equally to the US action. Being a developing nation, an equal reaction is bad to their economy if US keeps countering. So I hope is the start to earnestly resolve the dispute. Unfortunately, China hit back. Trump do a side kick immediately. How is this going to end ?




Here's my logic. The US buys world products using USD printed money. While imports goods becomes more expensive to USA, printing money is not going to get much harder. What would happen is manufacturers will move out of China over time. There could be instability to China many times ZTE impact to jobs. Sometimes is better to be at short end of the stick than no stick, if one feel mistreated. The American is hitting every trading partners and not just China so I think this level of confidence probably means they think will win outright.

Banks

I do not have much luck with direct investment in banks so far. Even relatively recent exposure in OCBC sees some correction whereas STI Index returns are relative better. Timing matters. So I always managed my size in banks to be small versus STI Index ETF. However, my recent adventure in WFC (US) do ok as I took the dip opportunity to secure some. Securing enough MOS is good.

Singapore Saving Bond (SSB)

As I have max out my investment in SSB, I did a switch switch to higher 2.43% yield. Submitted again this month to replace my low 2.04% batch for 2.63%. I won't be adding more to treasury for now. 

Reits

With recent correction, Parkwaylife, CMT and Ascendas are good options as I do not yet see risk in their dpu which is golden. They covered Medical, Malls and Industrial Parks.

FCT is good too but decided to boot to preserve my capital. CMT Reit, I have much bigger stake as their size provides more risk comfort with relative good yields. Parkwaylife is still relative expensive relative to other reits but like First Reit which I have good exposure into, they command a good premium due to income strength. I like to retain them as Core.

Industrial Reit wise I would put Ascendas higher up than Aims Reit which I sold off recently. It has large foothold and good track records. I could returns to Aims Reit if there is good correction in price. Industrial warehouse income is ranked lower. MIT reit (correction), I have some exposure but do not have enough confidence and familiarity. The price is at good premium so I only have it to provide some diversity. I won't add more. But is nice to have a maple in me so I am happy. My timing to sell FLT is not so good. I could have save some money from the rights. But no use to cry over spill milk. I do make good profits from it though so "Spread the Wealth !".

Blue Chips

Companies like Singtel, Keppel, ST, SIA, ComfortDelgro, Vicom etc. I have good enough exposure in Singtel as mentioned earlier with competitive markets around regions. I made the right choice to reduce my holding. It has since corrected at new recent lows. I also have some stake in ST. It would be nice to get another one. Probably SIA or Keppel. I am leaning more to Keppel. A good option is to expand ST stake so that I do not need to monitor too many counters. I hope the recent Trade War between US/China will help me to get them at good price. Possible return to Vicom if the price correct significantly. This one not easy.

Growth

I prefer large corporation tied to world for growth and this likely to be found only in US stocks.

One of them is Facebook. I also benefits quite an amount from HPQ which is not in tracker and probably is time to offload as they record quite significant gains. They manage to beat expectations for 16 consecutive quarters against lowing tide of World PC market share. The future world probably belongs to software that hinge on their products but I do not see the company taking advantage of it to tap on their hardware to do that like Apple do. Not that is easy.

SME

No plan to look at new or increase my SME counters.

Cory

20180619

Cory Diary : North Korea Crisis on Stock Market Volatility 2017

During April this year I wrote about non-financial crisis events have minor or short term impact to stock market. To refresh memory here's the ( link.)  Chances are this North Korea War on Words will come to past. While there maybe a small chance on Nuclear Black Swan Event, this is rather hard to predict as we are dealing with two egoistic adult humans.

What I did ? I have to stay invested as dividend investor but did some re-balance on my portfolio. Raised some more cash for opportunity. YTD my dividends have hit $30K. So getting the last $10K may not be impossible task with reduced exposure.

Another reason is after hitting 10% gains this year, I like to gain some buffer to reduce the trough in my cyclic returns across the years even though they are trending up. Hopefully this will give me better results. Here's the link on my annualized returns wrote in Jun'17 ( Link ).Time will tell.


Cory
20170812

Cory Diary : Stock Market Volatility 1997 - 2016

The following information is plucked from various sources in the internet and summarized. I am doing that in view of recent North Korea crisis and Syria conflict in Trump era. I do not think we reach market crisis level yet. What I found is that 50% dropped is a major number observed when there are major crisis. The lesser ones are mere correction around 15% range.

Stock Market Crisis


The Asian financial crisis was a period of financial crisis that gripped much of East Asia beginning in July 1997 and raised fears of a worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion. The crisis started in Thailand. Thai government was forced to float the baht due to lack of foreign currency to support its currency peg to the U.S. dollar. STI index severely impact dropping more than 50%.

The Dot-com Bubble was a historic economic bubble and period of excessive speculation that occurred from 1995 to 2001. The collapse of the bubble took place during 1999–2001. In exact, lasted about 2 years in period. STI dropped around 50% from 1999 Dec peak.

This followed quickly by SARS in early Mar 2003. STI hardly impacted even though there were huge fear initially. Can't even see a beep in the monthly chart.

The financial crisis of 2007–2008, also known as the Global Financial Crisis and the 2008 financial crisis. It began in 2007 with a crisis in the subprime mortgage market in the USA, and developed into a full-blown international banking crisis with the collapse of the investment bank Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008. STI crashed around 50% from peak in 2007.

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster initiated primarily by the tsunami following the Tōhoku earthquake on 11 March 2011. There were a small dip to STI Index when we look back on STI historical chart. People who have hold their equity has hardly any impact. People who average down has a windfall on average.

The 'August 2011 stock markets fall' was the sharp drop in stock prices in August 2011 in stock exchanges. This was due to fears of contagion of the European sovereign debt crisis, concerns over the slow economic growth of the United States and its credit rating being downgraded. For STI that's about 15% correction.

The Chinese stock market turbulence began with the popping of the stock market bubble on 12 June 2015 and ended in early February 2016. By 8–9 July 2015, the Shanghai stock market had fallen 30 percent over three weeks as 1,400 companies, or more than half listed, filed for a trading halt in an attempt to prevent further losses. STI not spared either as our economy are more integrated with growing China. STI dropped more than 20%. However is nowhere near the major crisis level we seen in percentage seen.

Brexit, World Markets tumble after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Investors lost more than the equivalent of 2 trillion United States dollars on 24 June 2016, making this day the worst single day drop in history, in absolute terms, according to data from S&P Global. The losses were extended to a combined total of the equivalent of 3 trillion dollars by additional selling on 27 June 2016 according to data from S&P Global. Hardly any practical dent to STI Index.


From above, appears major crisis are mainly has financial engineered implication that came to blow. They corrected roughly 50% whereas European Debt Crisis and Chinese Stock turbulence are more on political resolve and speculation. As for those other lesser crisis that are not result of financial,  there are no prolong impact to us locally. Thus, there aren't clear STI impact.



Cory
20170418

Cory Diary : War chest

Even though Chinese Stock Market has been my primary concern in my earlier blog  ( link ) near end of last year. Never would I expect the Chinese Stocks to come down so fast and furious. Artificial brutal control do not work well in a capitalist market structure where there aren't good fundamental to support it. Is a good thing that they removed the newly introduced circuit control as this can allow the market to quickly stabilize to the right sustainable level. Question will be what is the Right Level ? If we look at the Shang Hai Index chart, there are few support level bands ~ 29xx, 26xx and 24xx. Considering China economy has not been growing well for more than a year, shooting to 5200 is really crazy. Now with correction on-going, back to 24xx level is not impossible. Whether authority will allow them to fall to that range is another matter. This is also complicated with local stock trading market conditions, de-valuation pace and market size.

In Singapore local context, is a double blows. In addition to China related issues, low oil price impacts are another serious concern. Huge industries and services are basically in a life damaging event. However all this issues may provide a life line to the local property sector. And I anticipate some of the curbs will be softened or removed. And despite poor Chinese export, import by America is not significantly reduced. In fact US GDP and Job Market are growing well. What this may mean is that other countries probably have eaten up China share of export. So I believe the world is still doing ok. Yuan will have to continue to devalue to make themselves cheaper. This process will stop the bleeding but will take years to reverse noticeably.

Therefore further drop in Singapore Market is likely sentiment and temporary. Soon we will realise we are over sold and STI will bounce back to a more reasonable stable level.

Below my War Chest Pie Chart ~ CPF, Pension, Property and Insurance info removed. Having tapped on 10% of my reserve, I am ready for more battles as it comes !

Cory
20160111

Cory Diary : Portfolio updates 20151226

Seems nothing is safe out there. And things hanging over likely be China Stock Over Valuation and Singapore Growths. The 3 local big banks have seen dramatic price reduction in the range of -20 to -25% despite good overall earning. That's a crash isn't it ? Even the Telco is not spared ranging -20% to -30%. M1 more on the 4th Telecom impact.

Idle Ships

If we are thinking this is all about stock price or employment rate then we need to look and get a feel on the ground. Tell these to those vested in Property, Oil and Gas, Commodity, S-Chip, Shipping counters and things are much much worst than STI indicated -15%.

And then on the job front, there are folks that are't looking for jobs or just retrenched. A gathering recently of old university mates happen to have 3 couples with their mates or themselves out of jobs. And their the other half's either in not so well paid job or stressed for job change. Don't believe ? Talk to those highly qualified taxi driver and you will understand the loss of knowledge and experience to the industry. Are their jobs gone for good ?

Matter of time, i think the Gov will have to start loosening the foreign migrants intake to lessen the manufacturing blow. Non-Essential Property curbs on the developers. What else ? Likely weaker S$. They probably just need one more bad news to stir the ground before they have to act without damaging the votes.

This month i add some positions into Banks and new cash into Bonds. Sold M1. Sounds more like re-balancing before the year ended as things may have to get worst before it gets better. I Wish not.

Merry Christmas

Cory

20151226