2nd Qtr 2017 : Dividend and Portfolio Update

image credit to Izquotes.com

The last company in my holding “ Accordia Golf Trust “ announced the result and dividend on 25^th May while I was still busy catching “Pokemon “. Is time to calculate and tabulate my dividend & interest income to be received in coming months for 2nd Qtr 2017 .

Total Dividend & Interest Income for 2^nd Qtr 2017 = $62,964.11

** Total amount receive still about $972 lower than last year (same period ) due to lower dividend from Accordia Golf Trust which reduced by - $1940.4  ( DPU 4.31 cts in 2^nd Qtr 2016 vs 3.59 cts in 2017 ).

*** Most of the REITs and Blue Chips also declaring lower dividends in view of challenging business environment, especially the Oil & Gas sectors and Telco.

**** Increasing my holding in corporate bond from the cash received, resulting in an increase of interest income from $465 in 2^nd Qtr 2016 to $5102.67 in 2^nd Qtr 2017.

The dividend & Interest income for the next 3 months will be lower as expected since most of the blue chips have declared the dividend in 2^nd Qtr. I hope to get the same amount of dividend as last year although with decreasing trend of dividend pay-out from REITs and Blue Chips but hope it could be offset by my cash re-invested into short term corporate bond.

2^nd Qtr 2017 Dividend & Interest Income in detail :

Portfolio Update as of 28 May 2017

I have been trying to diversify more of my portfolio away from holding too much of REITs and Business Trust ( You may find it in my blogs about this here and here ).

I may continue to do the re-balancing of my portfolio from time to time like using the cash from the privatization of ARA Asset Management and reducing my holding in K-Reit to buy some other counters like Comfort DelGro and Thai Bev, but my overall direction with be increasing my cash & short term bond holdings to around 25%.

5 IN 4 OUT in my portfolio since my last update in early Jan 2017.

Among the “Out “, ARA was due to privatization and Sabana Reit was my “speculative trading “ base on the special situation as I blog about it here , here .

As for Religare H Trust, I decided to let go this counter after receiving the money as part of Return of Capital from the divestment of part of their asset.

For UMS, I have to admit that I have made a wrong judgement on this and didn’t expect it to “fly “ to such a high level. But never regret what you have sold, I am really happy with XIRR of around 24% in my two years of investment.

Trading record of UMS :

As usual, I will not touch on the “IN “ stocks which I bought since early 2017 as we know that that “ There is only one reason to buy stock ( which is to make a profit ) and a myriad of reason to sell a stock “. Also, please take note that this is not a call to buy or sell stocks which I have mentioned here, as a disclaimer, please DYODD.  I am still sitting with double-digit % of loss in my previous investment in Telcos.

As quoted before :

"One of the funny things about the stock market is that every time one person buys, another sells, and both think they are astute." - William Feather.

Are We In Stock Market Bubble?

The US stock market is in the midst of an eight-year bull run and many market analyst and economist are predicting market bubble in view of high valuation base on historical data.

We know that no bull market will last forever, but how do you know if there is a dangerous bubble brewing? Even if it seems like stocks are overvalued, it’s tricky to identify when they’re so out of whack that a crash is imminent.

As renown economist and Noble Laureate in Economics, Robert Shiller frequently called for market’s overvalued base on the indicator created by him i.e CAPE ratio ( Cyclical Adjusted PE ). But recently it seems that he has changed his stance at least for Tech stock.

Yale Nobel Prize Winner Robert Shiller Thinks Tech Stocks Are Cheap ( here )

“ In another a rare expression of bullishness from Shiller, he told CNBC (Link here) this week that stocks "could go up 50% from here."

Even experts and market analyst is so divided in calling a “market top “ and identifying “market bubble “  not to mention us as “retail investors “.

Base on current vs historical PE and P/B ratio, STI seems not in a bubble yet. But what is your take on it? But bear in mind that “When the US sneezes, the world catches a cold”, world stocks market might be affected once US market is facing problem as the financial market are so complex and interconnected nowadays.

Cheers !!

Quote Of The Day

“Portfolio re-balancing sounds boring, but it's a powerful investment strategy , it is the constant portfolio monitoring that restores asset classes to their target allocations by selling assets that have appreciated and adding to those that have declined — is at its core a risk-minimizing strategy. It's not meant to increase returns “ from CNBC