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?

Taking Profits: Singtel and FCT

In the post-Brexit rise of the Singapore stock market, which I feel is kind of unwarranted and likely driven by short term investors rather than any true value, I've taken profits off the table for Singtel and Frasers Centrepoint Trust.

I've written a post for my decision with regards to FCT (read here). Singtel on the other hand, was sold for other reasons. Of course, the valuation was getting a bit richer than I was comfortable with, however I'm still positive in its short term outlook, being likely to rise with fearful investors flooding the market. No, the main reason why I sold it was because I wouldn't buy in at its current price, and with the minimum trading commission from Standard Chartered kicking in soon, might as well take some profits (~$50). Also, the mid to long term outlook for Singtel is highly dependent on its overseas subsidiaries, which bears a bit more looking at.

While I've exited my position, I'll be keeping Singtel on my watchlist, and will be ready to pounce on any price weakness, likely to be below $3.80.

Much ado about Brexit

Brexit's come and passed, and it has been a disappointment. I had been sitting on my warchest for awhile now, as I was hoping for the market to drop on overreaction. Well, prices did drop on the first trading day, but I sat on my money, thinking that it would drop further. 

Cue the inevitable jump in prices the day after, and many days after that. While that allowed me to take some profits, I'm still more disappointed that I wasn't able to buy in more of the stocks on my watchlist. As the adage goes, "Time in the market, is more important than timing the market". 

I suck at timing the market. 

Purchase: Omega Healthcare Reit

With the minimum commission fee for Standard Chartered looming, I felt it would be prudent to sell off or consolidate my smaller holdings. Having done so on my SGX portfolio, it was time to take some action on my NTSE portfolio as well. I sold off all my holdings in BP and Berkshire, and topped it up with some cash which i then used to add more shares of Omega Healthcare Reit.

Omega Healthcare Reit is an US based reit which deals mainly with properties which houses Senior Nursing Facilities. Simply put it owns facilities that does after care services for senior citizens after they are discharged from hospitals.

With an ageing population the business is likely to grow. Also, the properties under this reit are mostly on triple net leases, meaning that they only provide the property; taxes, utilities, management etc are all paid by the tenant, making it a low cost operation for the reit.

Main source of income for the reit is through government reimbursement for the patients, so barring an order by the government to stop healthcare reimbursements (highly unlikely as seniors are a significant voting bloc there), income is unlikely to drop. In fact, the reit has increased their dividend payments for 16 consecutive quarters, up till the present $0.60 per share per quarter, for an annualised 6-7% annual yield, depending on your entry price in the past 1-2 years.

OHI is now my sole remaining stock outside of Singapore, and fingers crossed that it do well as I expect it to.

Portfolio update June 2016

Into the month of July we go, and another portfolio update! June was again an active month, with several transactions made with the additional funds from divesting my shares in NeraTel and ABR Bond Fund.

Tai Sin Electric was bought to replace my investments in NeraTel (see post here), while consolidations were made for OCBC, LMIRT, Accordia Golf Trust and Hock Lian Seng.

Dividends received in June were from Kingsmen, Fraser Centrepoint Trust, OCBC (DRIP), Accordia Golf Trust and AIMS AMP Industrial REIT for SGX, and BP for NYSE.

SGX:

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	400	$225.11	0.563	$11.41
LMIRT	1800	$614.07	0.341	$23.57
Hock Lian Seng	3000	$1,216.32	0.405	$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	1600	$936.23	0.585	$85.53
AIMS AMP Industrial REIT	500	$659.65	1.319	$23.30
ST Engg	200	$563.35	2.817	$20.00
Singtel	100	$378.90	3.789	$6.80

Bought:

100 shares OCBC
1100 shares LMIRT
100 shares Accordia
200 shares Hock Lian Seng

Sold:

300 shares ABF Bond Fund

Total dividends received*: $847.55 (excluding special dividend from Saizen)
Dividends received in 2016: $274.61 (excluding special dividend from Saizen)

*DRIP Shares:
8 shares OCBC

NYSE:

Stock Name	Units	Cost /USD	Cost (Per Unit) / USD	Dividends Collected
Berkshire Hathaway	2	$271.45	135.726	$0.00
BP	3	$111.75	37.250	$2.37
Omega Healthcare Reit	6	$191.93	31.988	$4.80

Total dividends received: USD$8.95
Dividends received in 2016: USD$8.95

Sell: Fraser Centrepoint Trust (FCT)

I sold off my entire holdings (500 shares) of FCT today at $2.10, for a small 5% gain. Reason was that the price had risen sharply following Brexit (most of the local REITs rose quite ridiculously), and was now beyond what I thought was reasonable.

Firstly, the Price to Book Value is now about 1.12x, which is a bit more than I'm comfortable with. In addition, the upcoming renovations and upgrading at NorthPoint, which is their 2nd highest income contributor at ~28%, will likely affect the yield in the short to mid term. Combining these 2 factors gives me a certain measure of certainty that the price will drop to a more reasonable level.

Unlike other divestments that I've made in the past, the cash I've gotten from selling FCT will be kept in reserve, until a price that will provide a better margin of safety presents itself, likely to be in the $1.9x range.