It has been a red February so far. From a 3.8% gain at the end of January, STI ETF is now 1.7% down. Of course, my portfolio is not spared. It has gone from a 1.9% gain then to a loss of 2.5%. The good thing is I have closed the gap on my benchmark.
The last time I wrote a post on a down market was in August 2015. Then I was excited and worried. Then, I sold some counters to raise cash for other ideas.This time round, I was a bit irritated with myself initially because of my purchases near the end of January. If I have gone with my gut feel of not taking action in January, I would be able to make those purchases at a much lower price. On the other hand, I am grateful that I closed some positions in January which allowed me to lock in some of profits. So unlike 2015, I have more cash on hand and am on the look out to add more to my positions.
Action Taken
At the current moment, I am not terribly excited as most of my counters have not gone below the original cost by more than 10%. Counters that have gone under more than 10% included Raffles Medical, Singtel, Mapletree Industrial Trust, Mapletree Logistic Trust and Oceanus.
For Raffles Medical, it was down since last year and I am waiting for the latest results to decide on my further actions. The two Mapletree Trusts are the one that I bought too early. Not preparing to add more due to the recency in which I bought them even though they are more attractive buy now. As for Oceanus, being a penny counter, every move is 10% even before the crash.
Finally, Singtel has been dropping quite a bit since the beginning of this year. The recent results which saw a dip of its net profit which pushes the price even lower. My original purchase reason was for its dividend. Based on a cursory glance on the latest report, I feel that it should be able to maintain its dividend of 17.5 cents. Hence, I added more at $3.37 yesterday.
Yesterday, I also added more UMS at $0.99 as I continue to be confident that the company can maintain its dividend and like the CEO’s ambition of wanting to make UMS into a 2 billion dollars company. Lastly, I made an impulsive sold of my remaining stake of Food Empire at $0.64. Originally, I have wanted to wait for the release of its results before deciding on my next action. However, with the weaken market sentiment, I feel that it might come under selling pressure when it releases its Q4 results. Again, I could be completely wrong on this. Will definitely continue to monitor this counter.
Some good news
Amid the red market, I am happy to hear good results from some of my counters. Both Valuetronics and Japan Foods have announced good results for Q3. Vicom also declared a record high dividend for the full year. I will write more about this in the next post as the rest of the results stream in during the month.
What’s next
I am keeping a look out to add to my positions if market continues to correct with the cash component in my portfolio. Not utilising opportunity fund yet unless my stock portfolio goes below my 70% allocation rule and the price of my counters dropped further.
Towards Financial Independence 