Cory Diary : Making Mistakes

Investment is a lot about mental challenge on how to control the fear and greed. This is especially so when one put quite amount of his wealth at work and he is no longer young. If one plans to retire on equity, Portfolio Management usually is a must to calm the mind and to generate enough to support expenses.

Another easy but dangerous option imo ( Kia-si thinking ) for me is to hand over this hard earn money to fund manager that is stranger to you. Consider the amount saved is your life saving and moving forward which is very hard for you to recover them when loss. Popular and star manager no count by the way. They are still consider strangers. I rather keep my money in CPF, SSB or FD.

In all my earlier articles on which I am a proponent of portfolio balance so that we can ride through the market sanely.  Even with proper portfolio allocation to mentally condition oneself in market down turn, the most we are Neutralizing Effect meaning not benefiting from market down turn. Well the whole idea is to not to get rich but enough through mitigated risk.

7.x% gap against STI (excl STI feb div)

However to be on offensive during down turn, we need warchest so as to benefit from economic recovery as market can often be very irrational. This money is best start to build when market is getting elevated and not when is about to turn since no one can get it perfect. And continue increasing the amount till the market turns. This is experience learned. The next problem is when to deploy. We can do stagger across weeks and months. As market is not smooth, is more like small bursts each time. Next we need to consider which counter to buy.

What I did is to look for counters I have high confidence to survive and rebound, and do average down when the gap is quite significant. For example STI was 3300. Today Is 2400. Gap of 900 is easy to decide to average down. Gap of 200 is clearly not enough. Some like to use TA to get to the exact. I think is up to individual and as for me when I have the mood and time. I also take this opportunity to look for counters that I took profit and waiting to return. Some for years. Similarly, I plan to collect them back in stages.

There is a wise man out there who propose to always average down on different counter. I have some agreement with that. So if I am to deviate from this advise, I know what I am going into.


Mistakes

I have been waiting the longest time to buy back 3 of my best return counters of Year 2019 and early part of Year 2020. Ascendas Reit, Vicom and MIT. They will sit nicely in the portfolio. So I manage to do all halfway for each when the price dropped enough weeks ago.

As due to great volatility, I accidentally release MIT back to market again. MIT sits well in the portfolio which often counteract other falling counters. Mistake number 1.

And also due to volatility I decide to take profit on some of the newly acquire Vicom which is a great counter balance in the portfolio. Is greed. Mistake number 2. 

Wish that the market is kind enough to give me a chance again. I won't .... .... ....


Just sharing my 2 cents inner feeling ...
Cory
2020-0403

Cory Diary : Unemployment Train

What keeps businesses going is cash flow. When one could not operate for weeks or months, the business becomes unsustainable. At current Covid-19 situation the magnitude is a lot worst. To conserve cash, is to close down or cut cost. 

The Virus only hit US hard recently. The impact 3.3 M unemployment. This is no joke. The impact is wide spread and will bring economy down to it's knee and to be exact to a halt. USD being a trading currency has unlimited bullets. In fact the currency gets stronger during this period. It will be good opportunity for China to take this time to help America to help themselves.

Not surprisingly or thankfully Singapore has reserve exactly or unfortunately for such situation that can help us. Once a business collapsed, to recover will be hard, and basically "V-Shape Recovery" is impossible.

The Singapore budget proposed $48B on top of $6.4B to support the economy.  That's about $19.4 K each for 2.8M workers in Singapore. Basically the government is feeding each worker $2160 monthly for 9 months ! which reduced their chances of being retrenched largely and keep most businesses afloat.

Recession is the last thing in our mind. What we are facing is a total collapse. With this budget support, there is good chance the Virus will be stopped way before the year ended. I have faith we will get through this even stronger while many nations without strong reserve will be lagged behind. And the only practical option for them is to print through inflation. This will be ugly.

Personally I feel that the Vaccine will be rushed through so if there is a breakthrough within 2 months the sky would change suddenly. I would stay invested and buy slowly into the market. It will be a game changer for the world after all this is ended. As I sold a few positions last week, warchest is filled back up again with some trading profits. Don't get me wrong, I have dividend goal in mind. -14.6% YTD.


Cory
2020-0329

Cory Diary : Shocking Covid-19 Impact, Dividend Investing

There is always something new to learn in every crisis. Covid-19 overlapped with Oil price war. Yes, we can also include Trade War as well. The sell-off is so hard ( steeper than GFC 2008) within 2 weeks that Cory feels a bit cheated of his Year 2019 profits. 

Maybe there are 2 general ways to handle Covid-19. Easy and hard ways. The hard way will be like Taiwan and Singapore chasing down every soul and leads. Curbing travels and blocking entrys. The easy way is to let the Virus spread through the population killing all the weaks and olds. It will be over in months. Those who survive will have immunity. Obviously if people try the later path, the damage is going to be very hard to accept. This is inhumane but that's Nature way of selections. Some leaders think they could till they find they can't. The medical facilities will be so overwhelmed that no sane leaders can afford.

When the virus first started, the market continues to beat new high. Is a China problem basically. Is only when Europe exploded and invading America shores that everyone woke up to reality. The fall is so steep that not many can react in time. This comes at a time locally when dividend Investing could probably be awarded the holy grail of investing. However on hindsight the writings were in the wall. The ever diminishing yield, all time high reits prices, relatively small or average volume, double digits portfolio growth in Year 2019, .... waiting to be challenged. Many are new investor believers. Quite a few use banking facilities to borrow on margins. They thought market won't be that insane but they do. There is also huge funds sellout that precipitate the falls though to many it does't make sense for the price such as CMT for 6.5% yield ? 

What will Cory portfolio plans be is what's the end state goal he likes to have. The first obviously or not for some gurus will be to cut down all hospitality or travel related stocks. So Cory will also avoid transportation stocks despite lower oil prices. The next is all oil related stocks which have been suffering for years. Chances are they aren't coming back near term as quick. Some may not survive. So the risk tag is much higher than others. Cory has SIA Bonds so this is cut due to high risk and cash release for yield. As previously blogged, no more acendas-h tr or Ascott Residence Tr. thanks goodness.

As for banks, Cory has some exposure but will not expand further as digital licenses could do some damage to banking margins. Bad luck on this one as if there is no banks stake Cory would have have get some at good price today. For now, is better to reserve precious warchest in current market for something more definite to rebound strongly and portfolio risk managed.

During this crashes, Reits with high yields tend to crash a lot more like 30%-40% range even though fundamentally they are alright just not as cool as the blues. Yes, Warchest is so important in current conditions. So many fruits are ripe for picking. While cheap can get cheaper, seeing strong reit stocks giving 6.5% seems no brainer to buy. What we have to do now is to grab those with good yields that can survive the downfalls yet fundamentally earning will recover. This may mean more counter expansion which means a plan to reduce counter with low % exposure and build it back later after crisis.

So the question is are we bottoming. Last check, DJIA drop another 900 points just as we thought market is stabilizing. So the earlier plan to conduct multiple purchases across weeks and months continue to make sense.  It could be a lifetime opportunity for people who want to invest for yield. But if we is to throw in all bullets, chances are it won't be last bad news. Seriously we don't really know how deep or shallow it can be. People with limited bullets probably wait for upturns.


Cory
2020-0321

Cory Diary : Re-Balance Bonds ?

With the market rout and subsequent mini-rebound, Cory is tempted to sell his bonds for stocks. This is an action of re-balancing one portfolio to take advantage of subsequent rise. Does this makes sense ?

Fact is Bond interests are in few percentage points only. If we do trading on them, we are going to waste away the marginal returns. When we put into equity,  how confident are we to beat the cost and the dynamic of the markets. Will this further accelerate our losses if the market suddenly turn negative ?

Let's go back to basic on Cory bond investments.  To provide a damping effect so that he can sleep well. In addition to provide baseline returns. In yesterday onslaught,  portfolios turns 5% negative which compared far better than STI 13% negative range.

Ofcourse Reits come to the rescue too which managed to retard the deceleration better than many other stocks. 

So if Cory is to be greedy, he needs to be in better footing which Safe Bonds can provide. Warchest and saving should be better options to expand the investment to tap on rising market. When this happen, Portfolio bonds percentage will naturally go down.

The next question is, are we in rising Market?

This is Billions dollar question. Cory do not have good answer. Probably should Jeep slowly across the period of weeks and months.  Make sense ? One thing for sure, is a good thing to happen so that he can increase his dividends with lower cost !

Cory

2020-0310

Cory Diary : Survival Badge

Cory has gone through SARs 2002 , Asian Financial Crisis 1997 and Global Financial Crisis 2008. We also have Grexit, Brexit, Tsunami and China Sneeze 2007. Looks like Covid-19 will be another if we survived and why not for a dividend investor. In fact we should thrive to drive through next higher level of dividends.


The main key is capital preservation and allocation. To achieve both, the emotional aspect of an investor is in question. Cory do this by having 25% Bonds today. As family man, state of mind is important especially 2nd daughter just born ! And time is limited to monitor the market as he wishes.


This is a figure that balance reasonable money left for dividend Investing and growth. The other is to size the core equity segment to the size where in worst case situation Cory can hold and sleep. Their business fundamentals are stable. Fill the remaining gap with STI index if picking skills not so good like Cory.


For reit investment,  everything is good at the right price. If the yield is so low that sudden market volatility can erases few years of dpu, it makes senses to reduce or cut them. Cory did that with Ascendas previously. And then buy back some in stages.


Even after all this, the next key issue is home. How do we keep our mental state healthy from loan debt. Some people do this by zeroing out the home value in their net worth even when the property is fully paid up. Cory does it by allocating cash into FD, SSB and larger emergency fund. This aren't tracked in portfolio.


So how do Cory do so far for a Reit heavy portfolio with a declining Feb ? From the chart below, seems like performing better than previous with widening gap against STI.

Next, is how to appropriately deploy the warchest raised across weeks and months. That's a good problem to have.



Cory
2020-0301

Cory Diary : Equity Allocation Feb'20 - Part 2

This is in continuation of Part 1. (link)

The world is greeted with promising cure for Novel Coronavirus(2019-nCoV) aka Wuhan Virus using the plasma of recovered patients. I thought this piece of news is quite credible and provide hopes for the dying. There are already numerous promising solutions made but the death rate keeps climbing. 

One key statistic is that the death rate outside Wuhan is like 0.1%. What this mean is that the "best cure" is simply to not overwhelm the medical facilities and therefore critical to nip the problem in the bud. However the mix of outbreak with propaganda or to be termed exactly Politics is Toxic. They ends badly. There is large similarity with Chernobyl ( There's a 2019 historical drama television miniseries produced by HBO and Sky UK) which may have speed up the downfall of Soviet Union. 

Just a month before I don't' even know Wuhan is in Hubei. Is sad that thousands of people lives are lost due to possible political reason to delay the communications. Hope WHO do not go through this spiral of joining the political game and just focus on Health. Japan maybe in the brink to fall if WHO and Japan do not get their act together. The risk is Olympic may not happen. And this will be really bad.

As a reminder the blog articles are my learning experience and is on personal perspective and there could be error. I aren't financially trained and is based a lot of commonsense and risk mitigation which may not be effective 😊.

In this part II, I would proceed with remainder of SG portfolio

MAPLETREE IND TR

One of the powerful Reit in Singapore with a boost of recent DC acquisition in US. This is not nice story but real example of having a strong sponsor. With current stock price, further acquisition that is accretive is not hard. We could be seeing further growth. What's more this growth segment in US provides geographical diversification. I have a habit to do trading around my holdings ( usually partials ). This breaks when the market is in over zealous mode and I left with nothing to sell. At one point this year I took profit and end up with zero exposure which is oddward for a dividend player. Glad to have this stock building up again after more than 40% XIRR last year. Hopefully I have chance to further my exposure. MIT does has more alpha. 

AIMS APAC REIT

Small but stable, AA Reit provides a nice niche in the SG Reit segment. The management has been able to continue to keep up with the dpu with continuous development. At near to 7% yield, one cannot have enough till capped by portfolio sizing. Being small also means the price is more volatile to news of the company. I am not supportive for one to have significant exposure even if the story is very good unless we have very high confidence. I am yet reach the level where I can sleep with it. Maybe I could if my net worth is doubled.

IREIT GLOBAL

Another counter of strong yield with exposure to Germany but Singapore dollar denominated. The minor risk for my assumption is the Euro earning. Other than that a large part of their properties are dependent on a single tenant. So this is sized appropriate into the portfolio as part of a group of diversified high yield Reits. Strongly suggest people who are interested to read their presentation report which gives good idea of their properties, tenants and financials. They have been reporting about 5% reduction in DPU past quarter. So I aren't surprise this quarter report the same too. The price continues to creep upwards and is now slightly more than 6% yield. That's more than 2 weeks of daily green to arrive at this point. The current market environment would be able to support this pricing since yield is relative with risk in context but ex-dividend soon.

ACCORDIA GOLF TR

This is a high yield trust. The income is less stable. Back on this portfolio and currently awaiting for it being acquired in which the timing now looks bad. Similar to above two, sized appropriately to the level it will not damage the portfolio badly if there are bad surprises. There is no distribution this quarter as is on half yearly basis. One of the concern I have is that Wuhan Virus containment doesn't look well manage in Japan. This may have an impact on Tokyo Olympic if they do not get their act together. In all my counter I would consider this position riskiest. If one is to look at the radar chart, at 5% point is a little too much. A better allocation will be around 3.5% range. Yes, I am greedy on this one and usually quite bad luck on this one too.

CAPITALAND MALL TR

This Reit continues to be a key workhorse to provide sustainable dividends. It has emerged top position in the portfolio. In last SARs, CMT did well 18 years ago so I think it won't fall too far bad this time. The oil price is quite tamed and this will help manage their cost structure. As long SG is thriving, their malls will play a key role in our local life and grow. Quite hard to imagine most of the locals not to have a lifestyle around malls in tiny Singapore.

On relative valuation wise, a close comparison is FCT which is valued much higher compared to CMT. So there is good opportunity for price appreciation if too large a gap is driven. Having say that I have not been touching FCT for long time .... ... ... .

CMT at almost 5% yield, with stable DPU, chances are this stock can and will provided the much needed cash flow and this kind of support my property loan ie. 2.6%. So this is still quite attractive but I wouldn't  want to solely just depend on CMT. This also support my decision not to pay down my loan proactively and why tapping the maximum amount of home loan even when one could pay if we want to. To get the maths right, we have to actively utilize the cash for relatively safe investment.

SPH REIT

Not much luck on this one. After taking pain to build this up to one of key allocated position, I have to quickly release most of it back to the market. One of the key reason not to hold is due to it is already Ex-div last Dec. ( due to acquisition ). Weakness of AUD is a concern. The Australia economy is not in good shape and probably for years to come. With the slightly higher yield than CMT and much fewer properties, is not hard to pick this one out for needed cash in warchest. The left over is more for some diversification into Australia asset and income. 



For the past few trading days the portfolio seen MIT, Vicom and iReit spiking up while Ascendas and CMT holding well. The counter balance between counters is an Art. Rotating around the holding is Fun. However the baseline is still around the core concept of dividend investing. There is still much to be learned. With that I end my take on the portfolio. 

Hope you have fun in yours !

Cheers

Cory
2020-0218

Sector Allocation

Cory Diary :

Cory Diary : Equity Allocation Feb'20 - Part 1

Has been a long time since I last post on SG Overall Equity Position. There has been quite a change since last posted. The change is huge and this won't be the last. Every time I tell myself not to do that but my survival instinct fails me. However don't get me wrong. I like the fun and so is my broker for the fees.... . So is a mutual thing. 😂

The equity allocation is pretty detail imo and I hope by sharing my experience will helps people on portfolio management and as a record for myself on where I could improve on. Is my sincere believe that one has to build up alternative sustainable income stream to be better in the future. Our future. Don't wait till we need it. Is still work in progress for that matter.

However, the blog articles are my learning experience and is on personal perspective which may not fit you or the conclusion can be wrong since is an ever learning process. So read it with a pinch of salts.

SIA 3.03% 240328

Since last record earning, I have not do enough "Parking" to my Fixed segment of my portfolio. This portion of my portfolio is like a reserve that provide buffers in time of needs so growing them is important. Manage to double my SIA Bond recently. If we are to use YTM to compute yield one may arrive roughly 2.4x%. That is a little misleading considering the coming interest in march. So I view it as a steal. Am I right ?


STI ETF

Did some roughly 25% par down recently when Wuhan first emerge. Even though Wuhan Virus is not as damaging to the market like Sars did the last time this has contribute some to the warchest. Will the situation get worst is anybody guess. But I am happy to hold the remaining 75% through if that happens as it is providing one of core dividend contribution. Yield wise is not as good as Reits so this put the portfolio in better yield shape.


OCBC

This counter is wiped down as I feel the management is not as strong as DBS. Furthermore with Digital Banking, the impact may be a surprise to existing players who are not aggressive enough. Considering I did do a scrip, the remaining will be odd lot for long time to come. I thought this could be with me for long enough time despite the overhanging digital baking concern but Wuhan thing changes my plan.


DBS

DBS allocation has been reduced a little. Contributing some funding to the warchest. Is still quite size-able in the portfolio. If there is impact from Digital Banking, the only horse I would bet is DBS. The current yield is good and could be under-valued. I would like to expand if there is opportunity.


NETLINK NBN TR

Sold off 40% recently when the price run up. At roughly 5% yield for a slow growth stock I thought this make sense. The 60% remaining gives a good enough dividends contribution for now and do provide stability support on portfolio value when the market turns. There maybe some upside but it will only be significant if we could see long term consumer segment contribution on the retail ends and not be impacted by 5G roll-out.


VICOM

This stock has been providing solid returns over the years. Last year 34% XIRR. Since  last year I have been steadily reducing my exposure 2 lots at a time with the recent one just yesterday. Is always seller remorse situation.  The remaining 50% will be difficult to sell. Hopefully market allows me to build the allocation back. Their recent result is good and will provide robust dividends for the portfolio.


KOUFU

Initiated a position on this. This stock has been hit by Wuhan. In normal situation, it may not be easy to get this price. Therefore this is a position for possible gain after this whole thing is over and be a growth stock for the portfolio.


CRCT

Initiated a position on this as well which has corrected quite significantly due to Wuhan event. Same thing, in normal situation especially for a Reit, it is quite impossible to get at current price.  There is an inertial of whether one should wait longer but for me there aren't many Reits of good standing that can provide this yield. The down side risk is the short leases and therefore possible risk of renewal which I do not have much knowledge on. The Reit dividend distribution is half yearly and it just Ex-dividend.


ASCOTT RESIDENCE TRUST

Blogged previously. No longer in the portfolio. (link)


ASCENDAS REIT

This was largest position and with increasing stock price this year, I decided to take profits to build up my warchest. Remaining 25% left as core for dividends. Depending who we ask, the learning from this episode is that I could have oversold my position. It was so significant prior to the sale due to increasing price and that kind of unnerve me that I wanted to realize it asap. The current yield is 4.9% which is quite good for this Reit. If we are to look at the Radar map, the stock is clearly not in right allocation size. A mistake imo.


Want to go on but  it will be 2am soon. I will leave the rest for part 2.


Cheers

Cory
2020-0215

Cory Diary : Performance 7th Feb'20

Is like weeks since my last posting. After registering strong return in the month of January 2020, Wuhan Virus finally get into my nerve. For the past few weeks I have sold enough shares that i have never done before that I hit my elevated selling limit set by my brokerage for a day. So moving forward I will be on buying mode since what has left behind will be the baseline that I would want to hold vested.

Today Tracker is the latest I got after the market closed today. Currently there is about 2% gap between Cory and STI Index.There is some roller-coaster ride since the Wuhan saga comes into play. How this ends will be interesting. 

From the chart, one key learning is I did not manage to catch the rebound up-swing of STI Index and Bank enough. As you know they took a step back today. This is something I like to digest on how to read them correctly and take decisive action.

Another action I took is I have kick-started my the other trading account which has lower fees. There will be some saving mitigated. The other advantage is that I will have two burners when needed.

Finally, one stock I like to mention is Ascott Reit from Ascendas-h tr shares. Last year I sold about half of Ascendas-h Tr shares. And decided to clear my remaining shares that was converted to Ascott Reit. Nothing against this Reit except that I did not choose this previously and market condition do not suit me to continue holding something that I am not in tune to it.

Little Daughter keeps me fun and busy. 😉


Cheers

Cory
2020-0207

Cory Diary : Will the Music Stops ?

Generally most people would agree that every lowering yield drives yield stocks. What happen if when the music stops ? In the year 2008 Global Financial Crisis, CMT my most often used example, price crashes from the high of $2.18 in Year 2007 to $0.875 in early part of Year 2009. That Year 2008, CMT distributed $0.13. In Year 2009, CMT yield hits 11.5% ! 

How hard is the crash ? 60% drops ! If we include $0.13 dividends, that's about 54% drops. That's why is called Global Financial Crisis.The scale could be a single lifetime event. As mentioned earlier, if one could not walk out of this scenario, they probably have waited outside the market for 10 years already. That's another GFC to oneself and it won't be a single lifetime event.

At today CMT price of $2.60 , the optimistic yield is 4.7%. This is way surpass Year 2007 before GFC prices of yield 6.6%. If we are to judge CMT as too expensive because of Year 2007 low valuation, then we could get our logic totally wrong.

The number one reason is inflation. The other is lowering yield. Look at chart below. Is CMT price today expensive based on simplified inflation consideration on Year 2020?

Still not convince the power of Stable Reits  ? CMT is capable of distributing 12 cents this year. Look at the above table again. What the price you would think it should be. Let says a stock market correction resulted CMT price drops to $2.2. That's more than 5 years ago price. That's will be about 3 years of dividends. That's timing if you try to save this dividends. The good news is we don't have to if we ignore timing. Treat it as a time deposits that gives you cash-flow of roughly 12 cents annually. 

If we believe in the quality of CMT properties holds and the long term prospect, that Singapore way of life centers around Malls for the next decade, it will be quite difficult NOT for CMT price to return comfortably and more unless we see something seriously happen to Singapore that we would want to hedge and in which case if not, most of SG Stocks could likely be affected and probably our currency in the saving too.

See Chart below of estimated CMT price trend.

Over the long term, the trend is quite obvious. Cory is just doing calculated risk decision making. As in all investment there are risk and the price could drop and we could lose everything. If we look above chart again, near term it could fall towards "Median line".

Or the price could accelerate upwards and form a new gradient line. And which case the new "Median line" could be as below.

Too many people falls for current perceptions and forget about looking into the possible futures could be. And which case the price could be on acceleration path.

And that the 'trick" of the charts. You see what you want to see. 


Cory
2020-0118

Cory Diary : Resetting Performance Tracker 2020

The year 2020 starts with robust gain though not like the burst we see in start of 2019. Cory portfolio is also not well position to benefit significantly from it. Nevertheless relatively to STI, Cory Portfolio still edge a little bit higher.

The purpose of this post today is not about the gains but the reset feature of recognizing past realised and unreleased gains in 2019 as one's Year 2020 asset. This is done by resetting the Cory portfolio tracker to zero as above along with STI.

This is important concept in Cory Portfolio Strategy management that is not to subject oneself to have a mindset of plenty and that what profited in prior years are not dispensable money.



Cory
2020-0115

Cory Diary : Investment Income

Start with saying the obvious. Main source of living expenses for most people comes from salary income . Even for those who are so called FIRE or Financially Independence, the seeds has to large enough, comes from salary income. Even then they may not completely retire. This statements are generally acceptable with the exceptions few.

As one grow older, various income source comes into play. What best to represent it is to show the Net Worth chart and the allocation within. Financially few things Cory did or don't.

1. Move most OA funds to CPF SA
2. Continue to leave some amount of CPF in Property Loan for another year
3. Continue to have SSB Max Out
4. Have at least 3 years buffers to support housing loan in FD
5. Transferred Allowances to parents. Happy New Year !
6. Annual Bonus to Nanny. Very Professional Nanny.

Cory long term goal is to have salaried income replaced by equity income that is more passive. This seems quite illusive with annual adjustment !  LOL ! Like many people who come from humble background, and has no business acumen, we just have to learn to save or we have to learn through business failures of which most of us could not afford without safety net. How long it takes to save and build up do depends on how much delay gratification we want. This amount becomes very handy once a door open. 

One main door open is Stocks Market. While Cory cannot run business, he can find good managers who can do this for him. So this is rather passive income. The trick is how to stay profitable in this business. This is especially make possible when the information gap is narrowed between institutions and retailers. And technology allows cheaper trading and more sophisticated products. Of-course experience in the market matters a lot. And then the saving slowly move in.

The next door opened when he starts to invest in property. This hurdle is harder to cross due to property curbs and needs for cash-flow to sustain. This is different from buying a property for one stay. The mindset is for investment gains and rental components. So why explore this ?
Like to mentioned Cory is not an expert and needs more buffers but the logic seems clear as below.

Cory is no longer young. Getting a loan will be harder. And it will be tough when one is without work one day. So if one want to invest in property, time is an essence too.

20% down for single property is like 5x leverage of a big sum of money. The mindset is quite different from stock investment where Cory do not leverage at all. 

Loan is relatively cheap with low rates. Even after all the misc costs, and even so rental unable to cover all the loans, as long the interests part (not the principal) of the loan is well covered into good portion of the principal payment, theoretically one is making good money.

The rates may go up but by then the loan would have been serviced for some period of time and there will be more options. Ideally we like it to be in as long as possible, and as much as possible with comfortable buffer as property loan is one of cheapest to tap on.

Capital appreciation factor for those with good location. Is more pricey logically. With land limited Singapore, unless we are seeing something like no future for Singapore, with inflation the price general trend is upwards with fluctuation in-between that can be quite volatile.

As long one is able to service, after rental, is quite hard to lose money after all the costs. The main risk is cash-flow which is why Cory put this as top priority to mitigate and not to assume Rental Income is sufficient. 


What will be the next door ?


Cory
2020-0113

Cory Diary: Short Coming of Cumulative XIRR of Lifetime Result

Has been in market for more than 15 years. Over the years strategy changed with ones experience and learning. Sometime change for the better, sometimes worst. One indication is using Cumulative XIRR across all trades through the years.

For Cory, due to strong performance in 2019, the Cumulative XIRR since 2007 is now 7.2% as above. However this is from 2007 when Cory is still young man with all sort of ideas. 

How good is it to measure progress over time. Logically the cumulative will have to go up. But is this assumption right ? Let's try another table by injecting additional 10k profit into 2 scenarios. First scenario in Year 2007 and the second scenario in Year 2019 below.

From the above table,  there are much larger improvement in the score in 2007 ( 7.54% ) which is much more than Year 2019 ( 7.36% ) can provides. This is probably due to portfolio size and compounding over the years. What this mean is that it will be harder to push up the cumulative value even with good performance in later year. It will have take few more good years to see recovery.

To overcome this issue, we may have to use rolling years to accommodate this limitation. Here's the table. So you can see at 13th, 10th and 7th Years period  ... is down trend.

Now, if we have a major strategy change 7 years ago, we could see the progress at 5 years, 3 years and 1 year ago. This way "very past" performance do not cloud the future view.

What I am still deliberating is.... if a Guru has fantastic performance in his early years of investment life, will his performance stick with him for later years using cumulative metrics ?


Cory
2020-0107

Cory Diary : Asset Allocation Review

The first day of trading for Year 2020 started with a Bang when the P/L hits more than 7 K and it seems like we will have a good start for the year till someone backside itchy and taunted Trump. Here's what I found.

"Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei taunted Donald Trump over the embassy attack."  

"Iran says Trump ‘can’t do a damn thing’ ."

As usual Trump tweeted. ‘He should have been taken out many years ago!’

Iran Generals dead in Iraqi's soil. And we celebrated the second say of trading with a reversal.Thank you everyone ! The good thing is I am still net positive for the year. And this tiny margin could vaporize as well.

Since last reported my Asset Allocation Tracking in Oct'19 I think is a good time to do this now again as there is nothing much to shout about on investment .... joking !
Not surprisingly the Saving continues to increase due to year end salary and bonuses. Some dividends came in as well from the Ascendas-h Tr cash distribution which is now merged as Ascott Trust. I also paid most of my major bills and allowance.

The volatility, and weaker USD for the past few months maybe a good opportunity to invest in USD. I could look for 2.5% Fixed Deposits or higher 3% plus structured products that is capital protected. Currently in exploration stage. But decision can be as quick as next week. 

I think the cash allocation needs to go below 3% to 4% consistently for efficient growth of capitals that do not need much work from me. I can earn quite an amount of interests. 


Net Property did not change much though I did notice an increase in property valuation from the transactions. For Year 2020, I am thinking of a plan for the account that pays for my loan to be self-sufficient. That's mean the cash-flow in > out for the entire loan duration. Not sure this can be done but it has to be safe and only need for me to check once in a blue moon. 


MMF is up due to some Equity sales before year ended 2019 which will be reserve for opportunity while collecting interests in cash management account. Equity has a target for dividend in Year 2020. Year 2019 exceeded. So I like to keep this in mind to continue the trend.



Cory
2020-0103

Cory Diary : Year 2019 Reit Year

We have come to an end in the last day of SGX Trading for Year 2019. For Income Investor this has been nothing but solid. S&P 500 has record year too. But it will be closer to home if we just look at Singapore Reits.

Cory Portfolio has large amount of Reits. And here's Performance tracked throughout 2019. There is some work but also a lot of investing fun provided is in profit ...

Cory Portfolio Table 

Year 2019 Realized and Unrealized Profit hits new record. Reits take up 70% of the profit. Just Reit alone the XIRR is 31.7% This is a Reit year. For year 2020 preparation there is some diversification shifts on segments as blogged earlier. Chances are yield compression is harder. For financial planning reason, there will be steps on going more into indexes to hold long term. Hopefully will have the opportunity to do so to allow the portfolio go through next stage of growth.

FTSE ST Real Estate Investment Trusts (INDEX: FSTAS8670) returns 18.8% for the year.  LION-PHILLIP S-REIT (SGX: CLR) an ETF has 23.3% including dividend. So anyone who are vested in Singapore Reits will hit this range of score generally unless your pick is bias to extreme. Once again time in market has proven to be really true for Year 2019. If one has sit out, this year will be sorely missed.

Happy New Year !

Cory
2019-1231

Cory Diary : Dividends 2019

With the year coming to a close, all the expected dividends have been accorded for. Year 2019 seen a number of acquisitions and mergers which has change the expected dividends. Therefore some deliberations made for it. Total dividend for Year 2019 received $52, 299 which is equivalent to $4,358 monthly cash-flow. Cumulative dividends tracked $324,750.

Scrip Dividends
Decided to take up Aims Apac Reit and OCBC scrips which are a good discount. To compute dividend returns two steps were done. First is to register the expected dividends and then replace them with the number of shares given.

Rights
Ascendas Reit issued relatively deep discount of Rights. They were sold off for about $1,700.
Strictly speaking I am not sure should count them in as dividend but since is one-time, and it supports cash-flow, this will be included for this time.

Merger
Ascendas h-tr merged with Ascott Reit. Took profit on half before merger. Remainder will get $2,715 cash. As the de-listing is on 3rd Jan 2020 it won't be counted into Year 2019.

"A-HTRUST Scheme, each A-HTRUST Stapled Unitholder as at the A-HTRUST Scheme Entitlement Date will be paid S$0.0543 in cash and will be issued 0.7942 in Ascott Reit-BT Stapled Units issued at a price of S$1.30 each, in each case, for each A-HTRUST Stapled Unit held by it."

The other merger is between Frasers Com Tr and Frasers L&I Tr. Decided to take profit and exit the counter.

Private Placement
SPH Reit has a private placement and unit holder has early dividend registered however the cash will not be seen till Year 2020. Since is already registered it will be counted towards Year 2019.


For Year 2020, theoretical dividends on current holdings will be $53, 384. This should hits higher with capital injection and DPU growth assuming no market surprises. The far fetched goal will be $60, 000.


Happy New Year 

Cory
2019-1229

Cory Diary : Real Game in Investing

Has been writing on performance for years. Some years like this year we have good result as in 20% XIRR. That doesn't mean good profits. In good year if we aren't earning good absolute profit we are just like in baby pool ... splashing. That's fine if we are still a baby. The worst outcome is to give a baby large amount of money to swim in the sea !

When Cory is just learning or in the long learning curve years of investing, he understands the needs of baby pool. We need to use XIRR to measure our performance. We then need to progress to swim in larger and larger pools as we gain in experience with saving. So how large is large ? We probably need to go back to why we invest. If is to help support our retirement then the size of investment should be enough to support that. If is partial, so be it due to individual preference.

Talking about size of investment. For a 5% yield portfolio on average 2% growth on a million dollar portfolio. The returns will be $50k dividends and $20k capital gains. For 2%, capital gain is only good to see but not for Cory to take in an inflationary world. If Cory takes it as dividend for cash flow needs, portfolio becomes smaller over time in real term. Again, that's fine if that's the plan. So to put into perspective on the obvious, for a capital of 100K that's 5K annual dividends.

One would think if Cory can have strong performance in baby pool, naturally given larger amount he would do the same performance. Assume same market condition, with much larger pool size, the waves will make the leg shivers, his breathing breathless and his nights cooler. Cory knows because he has makes mistake he doesn't when small.

At the end of the day, Real Performance = Investment Size x XIRR = Absolute Profit or Loss.
So are you an Adult splashing in Baby Pool ? Is ok if we aren't ready. Really.

Cory

2019-1227