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Friday, August 31, 2007

My Investment Portfolio (Aug 2007)

It had been a volatile month. Not one for the faint-hearted. But volatility equals opportunity. It had been a month which I made the most purchases so far this year in terms of cash outlay. I have added Uni-Asia, Babcock and Brown Structured Finance Fund, MMP REIT, Parkway Life REIT, CitySpring, First Ship Lease etc into my portfolio. Yes, all these stocks had been in one way or another, affected badly by the credit crisis in US due to subprime woes. As I've said before in my previous post, try to adopt a long term view despite short term market noises. Look at the big picture and try to weigh the risk/reward of investing. To me, the potential reward in buying these stocks at bargain prices is more than the risk of credit and liquidity crisis spreading through the financial system around the world.

My S'pore Stock Portfolio - Top Holdings, cash investment only (correct as at 31 Aug 2007)

Top 30 Holdings (Sing$ Denominated shares)
1. Cosco Corp
2. Raffles Education Corp
3. SGX
4. KS Energy
5. Jaya Holdings
6. A-REIT
7. Noble Group
8. SembCorp Marine
9. CapitaMall Trust
10. ComfortDelgro
11. Wheelock Properties
12. Unisteel Technology
13. Keppel Land
14. Keppel Corp
15. Hersing Corp
16. Capitaland
17. Guocoland
18. Pacific Andes
19. F&N
20. Jardine C&C
21. Inter-Roller Engineering
22. Food Empire
23. Tiong Woon Corp
24. Parkway Holdings
25. SPC
26. Sincere Watch
27. Ho Bee Investments
28. SC Global
29. SembCorp Industries
30. CapitaCommerical Trust

Top 5 Holdings (US$ Denominated shares)
1. Jardine Strategic
2. Dairy Farm
3. Hong Kong Land
4. Mandarin Oriental
5. First Ship Lease

Top Holdings (HK$ Denominated shares)
1. Tan Chong International
2. Fortune REIT

Top Holding (Aust$ Denominated shares)
1. AV Jennings

Top 5 Holdings (CPF OA investment)
1. CapitaMall Trust
2. Keppel Corp
3. STI ETF
4. A-REIT
5. SBS Transit

My Unit Trust Portfolio:
http://www.fundsupermart.com/main/community/Portfolio_View.svdo?id=P199

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Thursday, August 16, 2007

Sub-Prime Woes

I seldom like to pen thoughts on short term market movements, but I thought the recent market downturn and volatility had get some investors worried and having sleepless nights by looking at their portfolio sinking deeper and deeper into the red. So, I pick up the courage to write some of my thoughts on this recent "hot" topic in the markets.

Frankly speaking, it had been the same old story everyday for the past few days when I picked up my copy of The Straits Times. "Asia market crashes", "Asia market down", "STI down XXX points" etc. Similar story line with experts having their go with their views on the markets. I wonder if I would just skip the story because the end result is always the same after I read them - i.e. Prepare for more volatility.

Markets hates uncertainty. From my experience in the market, uncertainty rocks the market very fast. Fundamentally, nothing changes. Corporate results in S'pore had been good for the last quarter. Companies are giving dividends. Business is still going on. What changes then? Emotions. Panic. Perception. Why? Because most of these "investors" have no asset allocation plan in place. They are just buying/selling stocks based on market movements. When things are good, they sound very good. When things are bad, even good news are neutral to them. Hence, these recent concluded corporate result and special dividends have no impact on a nervous market. "Sell and get away" is the rule of the game. Furthermore, punters are running away because liquidity dries up. Some speculative stocks are down almost 50% from last peak. Suddenly, all these RTO-related counters are no longer attractive anymore.

But let's look deeper into the issue and get ourselves oriented to the right way to invest. Is investing means getting away when things are bad? Of course not! It is about staying the course and riding out volatilty in the short term to achieve your long term goals. It is a simple but yet powerful concept which works throughout decades of market cycles. But why people are not following it? Because history always repeats itself! And because of this, fundamental investors have an opportunity to invest in fundamentally good stocks at decent prices. Remember when buying a stock, you are paying the market price but what you are buying is the intrinsic value of the business. As long as the intrinsic value of the business is intact, you should not panic even when the market price goes down.

And of course, as I have always like to stress - Have a portfolio view of your investments. Don't be too focused on each individual stock in your portfolio and try to react on them. This will bring you nightmares and headaches because chances are you will always be trying to do something since individual stocks do fluctuate quite wildly especially during these volatile times.

Well, they will always say - This Time Its Different! You see, sub-prime problems will impact the whole financial system, recession blah blah blah. Let's see how different this time it is. I will be holding my stocks dearly and buy them on further weakness.

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A self-directed investor, looking to invest for retirement needs and bypass all those expensive financial planners/insurance agents. Investing is fun, profitable or most important of all, knowledge gained is useful for the rest of your life!

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