Cory Diary: Importance of staying invested 2019-1005

Importance of staying invested to beat inflation is a psychological battle after GFC 2008. People tend to wait for the next major crisis or at least a correction. This is especially so when we have many headline news or risks and worries. 

While the concept is possible in theory, the timing or execution is not easy reason being because of the opportunity costs. Reits yield over the years have climbs down from double digits to 5% range. However, the cumulative capital gains and dividends are of considerable size. (See table)

The Gratification comes in when we go beyond inflation beating to actually profiteering from our investment. And to see our portfolio continuously growing in good years while mute in down. Overall, we just need to see more ups than downs to win the game.


Recession Fear as we are on our 11 years of economic growths since Year 2008. 2020 could be mute or small increase in profitability. What I could do is to continuously apportion my portfolio to more "Fixed returns" by percentage while in absolute number can still be larger in non-fixed investment. This could protect my down side while continuously to have larger growth in portfolio size through re-balancing. That's the strategy.

Cory

2019-1005

Cory Diary : Expenses 2019

This year is quite special .... I have a lot of one-off items ...for example baby expenses. However we know that to bring a baby to adult, there is probably a string of one-off expenses over many years. Maybe "amortization" probably is a fairer way to deal with it. We need to recognize it as regular cost of business ! 

There are many other one-off items such as Renovation, Alter, Cremation Niches, Medical Surgery, Hospitalization, Medical checks, Confinement  ... this are debatable. Nevertheless they can be big ticket items or summation in total. Ignore them at your perils.

And we have the regular ones like Taxes, Nanny, Parent Allowances, Installments, Holidays, Baby Misc ...

If one plans to retire, make sure we plan them into our annual expense plan with good buffers. Don't simply jump into FIRE through hard core saving. You will be surprise like I do this year on how bad it can goes on how expenses blow up. After totaling up major items that i could find, the expenses YTD is S$117 K... ( ouch ). 

The fortunate thing is that my Liquid asset and Net worth are still trending up. The first is due to Stock Market and Regular Job, and the later with added Property Valuation Growth (Cashless by the way).

Anyone like to retire now ?

Cheers

Cory
2019-1003

Cory Diary : Portfolio Sector Allocation Report

Has been away for a week long family holiday .... ( Fretting ). Expenses are like shooting star right now. Original plan today is to write something on expenses but 10/1 comes up and probably is more exciting to update how is Cory Portfolio so far first.

Cory Top 7 Equity Investments

1. STI ETF

2. Ascendas Reit

3. Frasers Bond

4. Frasers Com Trust

5. Ascendas-h Trust

6. VICOM

7. Mapletree Ind Trust

Cory Portfolio has Bond/Pref to calm his porcelain heart. He can't take much stress. The index do their numbers too which totaled with Fixed investment hits 33.7% allocation. To calm further, Cory has SSB outside Equity Portfolio which is use to support Housing Loan (Emergency). This damped investment returns but is done deliberately.

Telco allocation is actually Netlink BNB Trust. The position is relatively small after taking profits. Telco stocks are struggling a little so is better to avoid for now. Of similar size is the Banks which provide a little upside volatility.

Particularly excited about Ascendas Reit because as previously reported scope more on higher low.  Managed to buy some MINT back as well though is net negative. VICOM has been a cool winner considering Cory is late in the game on this one. Is better to be late than never. Key is to size our position appropriately so that we can average down nicely or enjoy the ride up.

Cheers

Cory

2019-1001