Portfolio update July 2016

Been a bit busy this month, so here's my belated update. Due to the start of Standard Chartered's minimum commission in August, I had to sell off some of my smaller holdings and used the proceeds to consolidate some of my more solid investments.

Sold off Singtel for some gains, reason being it was getting too expensive for me to consolidate, didn't see the point in waiting to sell it with the $10 commission. Same goes for my BP and Berkshire Hathaway shares.

Stock Name	Units	Cost	Cost (Per Unit)	Dividends Collected
First REIT	3301	$4,128.07	1.251	$225.25
Keppel DC REIT	1000	$937.00	0.937	$68.40
Saizen REIT	2000	$1,724.21	0.862	$2,201.60
iReit	700	$441.61	0.631	$23.53
LMIRT	1800	$614.07	0.341	$23.57
Hock Lian Seng	4000	$1,557.11	0.389	$142.00
OCBC	508	$4,806.69	9.462	$61.12
Tai Sin Electric	2000	$651.51	0.326	$0.00
KingsMen Creative	1200	$950.00	0.792	$29.00
Accordia Golf Trust	2200	$1,339.23	0.609	$85.53
AIMS AMP Industrial REIT	500	$659.65	1.319	$23.30
ST Engg	200	$563.35	2.817	$20.00

Bought:

300 shares iREIT
1000 shares Hock Lian Seng

Sold:

100 shares Singtel

Stock Name	Units	Cost /USD	Cost (Per Unit) / USD	Dividends Collected
Omega Healthcare Reit	33	$1,112.68	33.718	$4.80

Bought:

20 shares OHI

Sold:

2 shares Berksire Hathaway
3 shares BP

SCB Minimum Trading Fee: Change in Investment Strategy?

As many of you might know, Standard Chartered's online platform has ended their no minimum trading fees, and as of yesterday, will now be charging a minimum of $10 per trade (unless you're one of their priority banking customers).

As someone who has almost exclusively taken advantage of their low trading fees, this is a huge blow, and likely to change my investment strategies significantly.

The lack of a minimum trading fee meant that I was able to 'test drive' many of my stock choices at a very low price, as can be seen with my small pockets of holdings in ST Engineering, Singtel etc. This enabled me to take low risks, and I was able to get out of several bad trades with little losses. Conversely though, this meant that winning trades got me little profit as well, but at least it proves that I was on the right track.

Now though, given that the maximum fee I can tolerate is approximately 1%, all trades I make will have to be a minimum of $1,000, a not-so-small outlay considering the size of my current portfolio. End result would be of less activity in the market, since I would need time to save up the requisite amount, and also, investments using a Regular Savings Plan are now looking more attractive. I'm now seriously considering placing money with OCBC's blue chip investment plans, maybe $500 per month (since the minimum transaction fee is $5) into the STI ETF.

What do you guys think?