Have not been updating this for the past few months due to work commitments, holidays, as well as general laziness. Personally it has been a great year, although the markets haven't really been so.
2015 has been an eventful year, from the passing of our founding Prime Minister, the continuing decline of commodity prices, the rise of ISIS in the Middle East, and the resulting refugee crisis as well as terror attacks in Europe. And of course, the first Federal Reserve rate hike since the Great Financial Crisis.
The STI fell around 14% this year. I did not track how much my portfolio fell by, but I'm sure its taken a pretty large hit too. Looking back at December 2014 until December 2015, the value of my local portfolio only increased by around $24k. I'm pretty sure I had put in a lot more cash than that over the year. My UK portfolio was equally dismal, due to a large part of the portfolio being in Shell as well as GlaxoSmithKline, which have not performed well this year.
On the bright side, my largest holding in my US portfolio, General Electric, is up by around 24% this year, due to the market taking a favourable view to its ongoing restructuring, acquisition of French engineering conglomerate Alstom's power generation and electricity transmission divisions, as well as its successful spinoff of its financial arm, Synchrony Financial.
Since my previous update in September, I have added another 1000 shares of ST Engineering, as well as a small position in UOB. To be honest, I'm still getting the hang of understanding the financial reports and balance sheets of a bank, so my choice of UOB over the other 2 large local banks may be mostly qualitative and questionable. Nevertheless, from my limited understanding/analysis, the reasons I bought UOB was, from a valuation standpoint, a P/B ratio of almost 1 (where it had previously been trading around 1.2 and above), a greater Singapore exposure compared to DBS and OCBC, which have larger overseas exposure, which I deem riskier, given that these exposures are mainly in the emerging economies of Southeast Asia and Greater China.
At the point of purchase, UOB also yields higher than DBS, but lower than OCBC, but I chose to buy UOB over OCBC due to UOB having less insurance exposure than OCBC. To quote a Moody's report, "while life insurance involves low-risks, profits for the sector are associated with some degree of volatility, partly because of complex accounting rules". Furthermore, Basel III rules for capital adequacy may pose a greater challenge for OCBC due to insurance assets being deducted from being included in what is known as Common Equity Tier 1, a measure of a bank's financial strength.
The local portfolio as of Dec 31 2015 stands as such:
| Stock | Shares | Market Value (S$) | % of Portfolio |
| SingTel | 6000 | 22,020.00 | 13.44% |
| SATS | 4000 | 15,360.00 | 9.37% |
| ST Engineering | 5000 | 15,050.00 | 9.18% |
| SIA Engineering | 4000 | 14,800.00 | 9.03% |
| Keppel Corp | 2000 | 13,020.00 | 7.94% |
| Sembcorp Ind | 3000 | 9,150.00 | 5.58% |
| Ascendas Reit | 4000 | 9,120.00 | 5.56% |
| CapitaCom Trust | 6000 | 8,100.00 | 4.94% |
| CapitaMall Trust | 4000 | 7,720.00 | 4.71% |
| Cache Log Trust | 7000 | 6,370.00 | 3.89% |
| ComfortDelGro | 2000 | 6,100.00 | 3.72% |
| VICOM | 1000 | 6,020.00 | 3.67% |
| Keppel DC Reit | 5000 | 5,075.00 | 3.10% |
| Boustead | 6000 | 5,010.00 | 3.06% |
| SingPost | 3000 | 4,920.00 | 3.00% |
| Suntec Reit | 3000 | 4,650.00 | 2.84% |
| UOB | 200 | 3,922.00 | 2.39% |
| Super Group | 4000 | 3,360.00 | 2.05% |
| Keppel Reit | 3000 | 2,790.00 | 1.70% |
| Boustead Proj | 1800 | 1,341.00 | 0.82% |
| Portfolio Value | $163,898 |
| Dividends (Oct-Dec) | $1197.06 |
| Average Monthly Dividends | $710 |
No changes to my UK or US portfolios since I last updated them here. But for entirety's sake, my UK portfolio summary:
| Portfolio Value | £8897.80 |
| Dividends (Oct-Dec) | £117.23 |
| Average Monthly Dividends | £40.60 |
And my US portfolio summary:
| Portfolio Value | US$4424.4 |
| Dividends (Oct-Dec) | US$30.85 |
| Average Monthly Dividends | US$10.33 |
Going forward, my financial goals for the year of 2016 (in order of priority):
To build up my cash reserves to $90k (Sum of emergency fund, savings for next car, and additional funds to tide over career related transitional periods). Currently standing at $63k.
To have a combined (local and overseas) dividend income of S$1000 per month. Currently standing at $800.
Local portfolio value of S$200k, and combined UK/US portfolio value of S$35k. Currently ~$163k and ~$25k respectively
All this without compromising my current quality of life too adversely. Collectively, it will be quite a stretch to hit them, but barring any unforeseen circumstances, should not be impossible to achieve.
Cheers to another exciting year ahead!
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