STE's Stocks Investing Journey

image credit to the straitstimes.com This might be my last blog post in 2016 and at this point of time, is very common to see many articles appeared in newspaper or magazine on peoples ( or so-called experts/economist) writing about “Outlook “ for stocks market, property market, economy, industrial, sectors etc… If you key in the “ outlook 2017 “ in Google, you will get 132 mil results about this topic !! Since the ancient world or mankind history, we like to do prediction and lookout for something which may affect our life. People have always yearned to see into the future, to peek around the corner and make sense of what’s going on .

Noticed that many friends and financial bloggers have been busy updating their portfolio’s performance recently, some are happy with outstanding & flying colours result which out-performed the market and some with lagging achievement. But one needs to take note that measuring performance is only meaningful in the long run and not by just a few quarters or years of investment and also the performance is to judge our ability to pick right stocks, not to compare with others.

image credit to asymmetryobservation.com Since early December, the stock price for some of the STI counters have increased much as compared to a few months back. Just to recall what I have written in August to explain the concept of “ Linear Regression and Reverting to Mean “ in my blog about “ My Investment Strategy “ ( Click here ). Of course, there are concerns about China’s economic situation & debt stress in the O&G industry which affecting the bank stocks and also some other concern in counters like GLP / ARA / HKG Land separately. *** ARA might be a different case as price increase due to propose of privatization.

Saving: A Virtue or a Vice image credit to mentalfloss.com The habit of saving always being referred to as a form of “virtue “ in our life and also being encouraged by our parents or financial planner almost universally. Classical economists regarded saving as a virtue and the act of saving virtuous, because according to them, when an individual saves more by spending less on consumption goods, he accumulates a surplus. This surplus can be utilized in the interest of the economy as a whole in term of the investment.

Hi  All, As written before, I will try to update the STE Smart Beta Index on a quarterly basis and re-balance the portfolio on a yearly basis. Append below, please find the latest update : The index just slightly outperformed the STI Index by merely  0.8%  since 28 Aug 2016, a one-quarter result may not reflect the long term trend, we may need to see this in longer time horizon to gauge the performance if there are any " smart factors " in this kind of criteria selection.

<from my bookshelf > The behaviour of the stock market is inherently so complex that no single variable can predict how the market is going to behave next or what would be its future returns - at least not on a regular and consistent   basis.  Market swing like a pendulum from optimistic to pessimistic and occasionally overshooting which resulted in a panic situation. In the long-run, corporate earnings and dividends have provided a steady underlying stock market return.