Performance Indicators / Dividends
- YTD Time weighted return: 20.33%
- XIRR since portfolio inception in 2013: 14.70%
- Dividends collected: SGD 6,426.71
- Cum-Dividend:
- SingTel: SGD 421.60
Santa rally on the cards?
November turned out to be a decent month for my portfolio. Overall portfolio value increased 3.4% to $176,102 mainly due to roughly $3.5k of capital gains and $2.5k of capital injections. Capital gains were largely driven by EHT, MUST, SingTel and CRCT gains, while being offset by losses in my HK stocks – Hang Lung Properties and Yuexiu Transport Infrastructure. This brings my portfolio value to a new all-time high.
There seems to be a sense of optimism in the market now, with Fed rate cuts expected to stop and a potential US-China Phase 1 trade deal on the horizon. This has driven the US market to close near to its all time highs.
We will see if this newfound optimism last through to the end of the year.
Significant transactions
Other than my Ascendas REIT transactions (which I will cover in a while), I bought my last and final tranche of EHT prior to earnings and initiated a small position in Ascendas India Trust (AIT) after news of its private placement broke. EHT is now one of my top holdings, which scares me a bit to say. However, this position is one I’ll look to at least halve into strength, especially with an eye on next year’s first DPU payout.
As for AIT, personally I’ve been looking for a way to invest in India via a trusted instrument and AIT seemed to fit the bill. I initiated the position based on a skimming of its financial results and growth story, rather than an in-depth look at its financials, among other things. This is why I only bought a little to keep me interested. I’ll need to do a much deeper dive into the trust if I want to add more in the future. Areas of particular interest for research include the Trust structure and Tax issues associated with Indian property investments.
As usual, this is not a call to buy or sell securities and its just sharing my own thought process for your information. Please do your own due diligence.
Ascendas REIT rights issue experiment
As mentioned in my last portfolio review, I’ve been eyeing Ascendas REIT’s (AREIT) price movements after the rights issue announcement to decide how I would play this corporate action. I decided to go with a strategy similar to the one suggested by ProButterfly, with the main difference being that I didn’t own any of the mother shares in the first place.
The proposed strategy fit my own views of the REIT expected price movements:
- At $3.12, valuation seem unattractive.
- At $2.63, valuation is quite attractive.
- After XR, I don’t expect drastic price movement downwards as AREIT is the granddaddy of Singapore REITs and interest in the counter is expected to still be strong post XR.
As such, I basically did the following to enable me to buy units at $2.63, rather than at $3.12:
- Bought 1000 units of AREIT at $3.12 before XR.
- Sold the units at $2.98 on the day of XR – Doing this entitled me to 160 rights and 7.98c of DPU.
- Effectively, I paid 6c + transaction costs for my rights, much lower than the price of rights during the trading period.
- I didn’t bother with the rights trading period as AREIT’s share price (and as a result, rights price) did not collapse.
- I applied excess units using these rights this week.
I’ll say the strategy has worked like a charm so far, with the main gamble being the balloting process at the end for excess units. As AREIT is very attractive at the rights exercise price of $2.63, I don’t expect many excess units to be assigned to me.
However, as I’m not very interested in initiating a very large position in AREIT, it felt like a good chance to experiment with this strategy for academic purposes. If I don’t get much excess units, so be it.
I’ll update you guys next month with the results of the experiment.
1st Semester complete
This month I completed the first semester of my Masters programme. 1 down, 5 five to go. It was a grueling month with 3 projects / assignments and associated exams to contend with. I took about 2 weeks of leave to study and attempt the exams, which I am glad to say is in the rear view mirror now.
Looking back at the modules I took this semester, I cannot help but feel excited about the things I’ve learnt in the Python programming module and the Value Creation module.
I’m not well versed in Python and its application in data analysis (as I can tell from the semi-disaster of an exam ?) yet, but I can start to see where I can use it for my work and potentially to augment my investing skills. Will have to continue to practise working with Python and Data analysis on my own time. Also, as a friend of Stocks.Cafe, I also have access to the Stocks.Cafe API. As such, I’ll start to take a look at possible applications of the API on this blog using Python.
The Value Creation module surprised me as it taught me to value of a perspective of investing that most investors don’t look at too much – Sustainability. If you do not know, SGX companies are now required to provide sustainability reports as part of listing requirements.
As a person who likes to look at the figures (like most accountants), I didn’t bother reading these wordy reports. What I didn’t know was that I can garner a lot of insights on management motives based on how a company decides to write its Sustainability / Integrated report. This can be useful in gauging management competency and how serious the company is in creating value for shareholders (outside of economic value).
Even if you think these reports are bullshit and a marketing exercise, I do still think they are worth a read. I’ll probably write an article in the future on some of the insights and examples I’ve learnt over the course of the module.
Reader Appreciation
I’m always thankful when people see value in what I write and subscribe to my blog or like my Facebook page. To the 15 and 10 people who subscribed to my blog and liked my Facebook page respectively since my last portfolio update, welcome.
Feel free to reach out via email or Facebook. I’m usually quite responsive. Hope that you have found my blog content useful so far 🙂
Past updates:
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
2018 Performance Scorecard
2017 Performance Scorecard
Happy Hunting,
KK
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