STI bull continued to charge in January. STI ETF is up by about 3.8% for the month. Both my cash and CPF portfolio have fallen behind STI ETF, only up by 1.9% and 2.3% respectively. It’s still early days and sufficient runway for me to catch up.
Have wanted to not take any action this month. However, in the end I divested 3 counters, pared down 1 and bought 2 new REIT.
During the month, I have also re-activated my FSM One account and am in the process of transferring my US shares to their custody. As for SGD share, I am still considering if I should port them over.
Sold
Q&M – Thanks to ThumbTackInvestor’s post on Q&M, I took a small stake last December. Am lucky that the price went up a bit this month, so sold it at $0.65 for a gain of 6%.
Hock Lian Seng – Bought it for its dividend and strong order book, the price has crept up early in the month. I suspect (and am probably wrong about it), that people are expecting another year of bumper dividend like last year. If I turned out to be right in my thinking and no special dividend this year, the price would probably drop back to below $0.50. Hence, sold entire stake at $0.52 for a gain of 14%. Might re-enter if price falls back to $0.4+.
Food Empire – Sold half my stake after the company announced profit guidance of Q4 loss due to one-off impairment cost for Caffe Bene. You can read my thought about this selling here. Based on an average cost price of $0.46, I have made a gain of 42% on the sale.
Ulta Beauty – There is an on-going rumour that some of its stores resell used cosmetic. One of its ex-employees have twittered about it and other ex-employees said the same thing. On the other hand, there are also other employees who came out to support the company that there wasn’t such practice. My sense that there might be some errant stores that did not follow the company’s policy. Hence, decided to divest my stake at US$233.16 for a profit of 14%. Will wait for outcome of its investigation before considering re-entering the counter.
Bought
With the proceed from the above sales, I increased my REIT exposure by initiating a position in Mapletree Logistic Trust (MLT) at $1.38 and Mapletree Industrial Trust (MINT) at $2.12 after they have announced an increase of their dividend for Q1. The purchase price is definitely not cheap but I am satisfied with the current yield of ~5.5%. With this latest purchase of REITs, I am almost reaching 30% limit for REIT.
Towards Financial Independence 