STE's Stocks Investing Journey

Wow, time flies !! we are in the last month of the third quarter of 2022 and I am sure all of us are experiencing a very different year in 2022. The market is full of F.U.D ( Fear /Uncertainty / Doubt) and so far we can see that it is very volatile, I have seen my portfolio up by almost 11% in early this year and tanked to more than -3% after the Russian-Ukraine war broke out in end Feb. Now my portfolio is up by only 3.1% YTD ( including dividends), so you may notice that most of the gain came from dividends. All major economy ( or block) seems to have their own set of problems. For China, the main issues still are the slowing down of the economy due to the crackdown in the Tech sector and the cooling down of property investment. China's government is trying to boost the economy by increasing government spending on infrastructure and encouraging investment in sectors like New Energy / EV  / Tech ( IC & Chips design and manufacturing ) etc, but as I mentioned before, with th...

image credit to todayonline.com Right after 31 st Dec 2018, I guess everyone was busy logging in to their CPF account to check what is the latest balance they have in their CPF account. Yes, CPF interest will be credited on that day and one will be able to see how much he/she got on interest income for the year of 2018. STE doesn’t have the opportunity to feel the joy of getting year- end bonus since 2014 but instead, receiving the interest income from CPF on the first week of each year make me happy same as getting the bonus. ( Not from the employer but from “Ah Gong” ). We normally work hard to get a bonus but in this case, we let our money work hard to generate the interest income. :D Total $29,348.70 been credited to our CPF accounts ( for both STE and Mrs. ).

As we leave 2018 behind and roll into 2019, first and foremost allow me to wish all A Very Happy & Prosperous 2019. I am sure 2018 was   a tough year for all investors as compared to 2017 where most of us may end up having a negative return on our investment portfolio.   This is a big contrast to 2017 where we have achieved double digits growth in our portfolio. If you are still enjoying double-digit +ve return this year, congratulation !! you must be an exceptional and extraordinary good one in picking winning stocks. STI closed at 3068 in 2018 with -9.9% return since early 2018. For me, my portfolio ended up worse than STI with -13.2% (including writing-off of $117K of Hyflux 6%CPS ) vs the return of +24% last year.  This year will be the second year where my portfolio under-performed STI by 3.3% and another year was in 2013 where REITs was badly hit.

In stocks investing, you probably heard about the “ growth stocks “, “dividend stocks “, “large-cap / mid-cap “ or “ blue chips “ etc .. and depending on your “desired and expectation” of the ROI of your investment, you may choose what kind of stocks to be included in your portfolio. For most investors, I am sure you would have included some “income stocks “ into your portfolio as part of the diversification, and also hopefully dividends can keep the value of your investment rising even when market performance sours.

How did you track your dividend income? I guess we all have ways to keep track of our stocks transaction in order to calculate our return, be it in the form of CAGR or XIRR .  But how about dividend income ? as an income investor, do you have ways to keep track on your dividend received? Concept explained: What is CAGR & IRR by Investopedia What are the main differences between compound annual growth rate (CAGR) and internal rate of return (IRR)?