What's up everyone? I hope that you're doing fine and well at home.
March has been an interesting month where there were buying opportunities throughout the first half of the month. I've made many buys (details below), but stopped toward the end of the month (see previous post: Why I'm staying on the sidelines... for now).
Working from home has been an interesting experience. Being in tech, I thought I'd be one of those who would enjoy working remotely. You know, working from a nice cafe, or at a beach in Thailand or whatever those cool tech kids are posting these days. But I think the lack of socializing with fellow colleagues is actually making me miss the office! What??
Finding a new normal in this season has been tough due to a lack of space at home, sharing it with the other family members. It's pretty tricky to carve out a 'private' space at home where one can just focus on work.
Financial Goals
As mentioned in a previous post I've been buying a lot when the market started to tank in the first half of the month.
The market is behaving pretty strangely with the general trend going up in the last couple weeks, especially when the nation has officially started working from home. The rally doesn't make much sense to me, and we're probably looking at a big crash in a few months' time when companies start to report massive losses and people start to realize how bad the economy will be. But we'll just take opportunities as it comes -- it's probably a good time to think of divesting some non-performing counters, perhaps?
I did not receive any dividends apart from my investment in AIMPS AMP CAP REIT, but I elected to participate in the DRP, so no hard cash from dividends this month. What was pretty fun was when I noticed the typo error in the dividend election form and sent an email to the investment manager. Their reply was top notch: it came really quick, was apologetic in tone, and set out a clear rectification plan (i.e. send a notice to every other unitholder). In addition they also got someone to call me on my mobile to make sure I knew there was an error in the form. Great!
Dividends And Portfolio Allocation
My overall portfolio is down by about 17% due to the market swing in light of the virus.
Absolute portfolio value went up by about $10,000 due to capital injection to buy the following:
AIMS AMP CAP REIT: 4500 units @ $1.2475 average
DBS BANK LTD: 600 units @ 21.5983
Just to share how I've been averaging down on DBS:
As you can see, my strategy then was to just buy 100 lots every time it drops by ~$0.50 or more. After a few buy orders, I realized that it was dropping to a new low every week, and so I decided to only buy if it drops by $1 or more. The counter subsequently fell even lower to break $16 but I didn't buy any, thinking that the macro outlook for the economy will cause the overall market sentiment to be even gloomer in the 2nd half of the year. Will it drop lower? I don't know, but let's see.
With that, I am pretty overweight on DBS Bank and AIMS AMP CAP REIT. You can check out the allocation here:
I was thinking of snapping up some units from the other 2 local banks as well, but I might want to diversify out to other industries first to help dilute my vested interest in the banking industry before considering them again.
Somehow I'm feeling like this is a calm before the actual storm hits, perhaps in 2H 2020. In the meantime I'll continue to build up my warchest and try to ignore the minor market swings.
Non-Financial Goals
On the books side, I only managed complete a miserable 1 book:
Crazy Rich Asians - Kevin Kwan
Surprised by Joy - C.S. Lewis (55% in-progress)
Exercise has sadly been non-existent except for walking to office (about 8000 steps to and fro). Gyms are closed, stadiums are closed, and I've been staying at home.
The biggest blessing for March was that I finally managed to get approval for a Critical Illness plan. For many years, due to some hereditary issues I've been long denied CI plans. But I've been working on my health and diet over the past year in a bid to improve overall health. My long-time agent also switched to an agency which allowed her to gain access to more CI plans. She asked me to try applying again and I'm really glad that I did because a couple weeks later she called me with the good news that I've been accepted! For many years I've been building up a separate fund to act as a personal CI plan in case something went awry with my health, and I guess now I can shift a portion of this to the investing pot.
I would love to hear from you! Share with me your thoughts on this post by leaving a comment below, or by leaving a message here:
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