4th Qtr 2019 : Dividend and Portfolio Update

image credit to Izquotes.com

 

It has been almost haft month since my last blog post on 2^nd November, I am really lazy to write anything recently while spending more time with family since early Oct after my daughter finished her PSLE.

We have a short trip to Penang / Melaka / JB and also spending a few days back to my hometown and we really look forward to our next trip to Hokkaido in early December. I hope to take some nice photos to share here. :D

 Portfolio wise, I am really happy with my YTD returns of 17.6% (inclusive of dividend) vs STI 5.51% ( exclude dividend). If we add 3.5% of dividend for STI, my portfolio still outperformed STI by +8.6%. I am delighted with my performance as not many times one could be able to beat STI Index with such high margin.

One of the reason for a much better return than STI was mainly due to REITs, as we all know that REITs are having a quite good run this year with FTSE ST REITs index up by approx. 17% exclude dividend. If anyone with “REIT Only” portfolio, he/she must be sitting with double digits returns this year.

Although we have seen some pulled back of price on some of the so-called “blue-chips” REITs recently but the index still moving above mean level.

As I blogged before, I personally think that REITs may continue to out-perform in current “ low rate” environment, which may go on with quite some time as world central bankers expect to stimulus their respective economy with “cheap money”. My overall REITs holding increased to 48.1% as of the latest update.

Dividend Up-date :

Dividend ( announced and to be collected in 4^th Qtr 2019) = $39,194 vs 4^th Qtr 2018 ( $37,229)

Overall Dividend : 2019 = $182.665 vs 2018 ( $182,141)

There is not much changes in total dividend for 2019 vs 2018 as some stocks paid more and some decreased in their pay-out. I hope to collect more dividend next year as I have deployed some cash to HKG/CHN stocks and giving more weightage to REITs.

My cash/bond portion decreased to around 16% as I have increased my investment in HKG/CHN market to 12.8% as of now, also by reducing some of my holding in Singapore’s market.

Portfolio Up-date :

Overall stocks / holding reduced by -4 to 36 as compared to the previous update.

As the HKG situation seems to get serious and with no sign of abating, I am getting nervous on how the government handle the issue and have decided to let go HKG Land with some profit and also Mapletree NAC which I like it very much and have the intention to hold it in the long term. Since the situation is getting out of control now and the impact may be just be felt a few quarters later , I decided to take profit and stay sidelines for a while till situation improve.

As mentioned before, I have reduced my holding in Sembcorp Ind and SingTel to deploy my cash to HKG/CHN stocks and also decided to totally exit Thai Beverage to divert more fund to CHN market.

My top 5 holding almost the same as the last update but Eagle HT appeared as number 6 in my holding with 4.9% over total portfolio value. ( I have added ARA HT and Eagle HT since last quarter ).

As I blogged about the Eagle HT before :

Eagle Hospitality Trust: A Case of Narrative Economics

The story of Eagle continues to unfold with much imagination. Obviously, there are two camps with respective opinions and valid reasons.

One with doubt about the asset value and why the major shareholders keep selling, questions of “ conspiracy theory” and “ asymmetric information” rise from all aspect and angles, trying to justify the price falls and action is taken by certain major shareholders e.g “ They (major shareholders) may know something that we don’t …., will the “weak sponsor” go bankrupt?

On the other hand, the other camp sees this as opportunities to buy from yield and NAV’s perspective. Sometimes, major shareholders may have thousand and one reasons to sell, although there might be some problems in asset valuation with regards to MV Queen Mary and the other 6 Hotels sold by ASAP to sponsor prior listing. Since this is a REIT ( with a physical asset, unless you are talking about scam and fraud ), there might be value and good bargain after the price has been falling by more than -46% after IPO. The belief that the best time to buy stocks have been when things seemed the worst.

Nobody knows how the story may end, it depends on which camp you believe and how you would like to play and act in this narrative of the story.

But as a whole, I still deem this as a “speculative “ stock since many questions left unanswered until the end of the story. For those who would like to invest in it, I would suggest you enter with your “eyes wide open” and DYODD … maybe is good to do it with “position sizing “ and know your “risk tolerance “.

Kyith has a very good write-up on this :

A Strategy to Avoid The Pain of Losses? Don’t Be Naive <InvestmentMoats.com>

The Story of Eagle HT …..to be continued!

I just received my book “ Narrative Economics “ last week  and I am reading it while continuing to watch the story of Eagle unfolds.

Cheers !!

Quote Of The Day:

“Here is part of the tradeoff with diversification. You must be diversified enough to survive bad times or bad luck so that skill and the good process can have the chance to pay off over the long term.” Joel Greenblatt