Comfort Delgro and Capitaland Ascott Update

In 2022, I posted that I was still buying Capitaland Ascott Residence Trust and Comfort Delgro and was looking forward to an EPS recovery:  

BuyafterCrash: Singapore Stocks I am still buying

 

ComfortDelgro's EPS got hit bad by COVID.

Fast forward 3 years later to 2025, we can see CDG's EPS continuing to recover with the latest being an EPS of 10.43. This is still lower than pre-COVID. If you are an optimist it just means that CDG still has further room to grow its EPS to pre-COVID levels. If you are a pessimist it means that CDG's management hasn't executed its strategy as well as it should have as we should be back to pre-COVID EPS by now (especially with inflation baked-in).

Finally, it's good to see CDG stating its dividend policy, which is 80% of PATMI. A reasonable number, given that it is a cash rich company. I am happy with my current holdings of CDG and won't buy more. My plan is just to hold it for the long term and collect dividend.

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As for Capitaland Ascott, I can't find a handy table, but the earnings per stapled security (diluted) are:

2019: 8.99 cents

2020: -7.69 cents

2021: 9.32 cents

2022: 6.25 cents

2023: 6.07 cents

2024: 5.95 cents

2025: 8.07 cents

So ART is slowly recovering as well, but still not back to pre-COVID levels.

Buy After Crash Strategy

 

I started my blog in 2016 and named it Buy After Crash, because that was how I started my investing journey around the time of the GFC. 

During GFC and again in 2016 and again during COVID 2020, STI was also under 3,000 due to a 'crash', and as I documented in my blog, I was happy to buy STI as long as it was under 3,000.

Recently, in the influenza sphere, there appears to be some influenzas creating a "fake dispute" about buying after crash strategy. I don't follow these influenzas so I depend on blogs I actually read to keep me updated:

Investment Income for Life: Mr Loo Strikes Back At Kelvin Learns Investing and Boon Tee on Crash Buying Strategy!

Finance Opti: Lump Sum vs. DCA vs. Crash Buying??

Since my blog is named Buy After Crash, I think I should weigh in with my strategy. Its so simple there is no need for multiple long-form youtube videos to describe it. I guess thats why you need to create a "disagreement" so that there is material for a youtube long-form video.

The starting point for me is to have the correct Asset Allocation that matches your risk profile. As a simplification, we could divide assets into equities and cash/near-cash/investment grade fixed income. It could be 50/50, 70/30 or 100/0. I think I'm around 80/20 or higher. 

With the correct asset allocation, you sleep well at night because your portfolio has a certain amount of risk that is aligned with your risk profile. Assuming your risk profile remains constant, portfolio risk could go up or down.

When markets crash and equities become cheaper, I feel that the risk of holding more equities goes down 

(1) From a valuation perspective. There is more upside from undervalued stocks.

(2) From a historical perspective, as the long term market trend is up.

This means that even if my risk profile is the same, I should be willing to buy more equities during a crash, over and above mere 'rebalancing.' So every time the market corrects, I tap on my cash/near-cash/fixed income portfolio of my portfolio to buy more equities.

If you are 50/50 or 80/20, it's simple to tap on your spare cash to buy equities. If you are 100/0, this means you have to use leverage/margin to buy more equities, which has a cost and the market may be irrational for longer than you are solvent. So crash buying when you have a 100/0 allocation is still possible, but perhaps more difficult. 

I wonder if those influenzas who like to discuss crash buying have actually showed how they invested/traded during various crashes. My blog documents what I did during the 2016 and 2020 crashes (and also Trump's liberation day not-really-a-crash). This is for my reference so I can learn how to improve. Like I posted before, I identified one weakness in buying only during the downward phase of the crash and not buying during the early recovery phase (because of the fear of dead cat bounce). But Historically, prices during dead cat bounces were still attractive and you would have still made money buying during dead cat bounces.

UOB Krisflyer fee waiver

 

The credit card annual fee will appear in the bill for the month after the month printed on the card. Once it appears, you have to go to the UOB App to apply for waiver. After submitting the waiver, I got an automatic response that it was waived. 

The fact that it was immediately waived suggests that there is some sort of preset criteria, and the simplest criteria would be annual spend. From an IT perspective, its not cost effective (within the context of a super secure banking system) to do some sort of multi-factorial algorithm that pulls data from all sorts of places to decide whether to waive or not. 

As a data point, I think my spending on this card is about $1k a month, so good to know that is sufficient to get a waiver.

Down US$41k in NVO, but portfolio up 6 figures

 

I am currently down US$41k in NVO so I have to concede that it is one of my worst investing mistakes. 

However, diversification has saved me and my portfolio is up 6-figures in the first 2 months of the year, so that's not bad. Unlike those influenzas that only like to show their winning trades, the reality is that you win some and you lose some - just try to have more winners than losers.

In other news, ETHA has spiked up and this might be the start of a V-shaped recovery. I will ride the wave up and exit at $20+ like I did the last time.

Sold Vodafone, bought some ETHA & JD.com

 

Telecos are usually not considered growth stocks. The industry requires enormous upfront capital expenditure (eg: to set up 5G network) and shareholders get rewarded by a steady income stream from the investment. Over the last year, Vodafone has gone up faster than Singtel (though the US$ depreciation means the gap isn't as wide as the chart implies). 

Last night, I decided to start selling my Vodafone ADRs and some of my sell orders 'hit'. At the same time, I have re-initiated a position in ETHA averaging about $17.00 and started adding to JD

Obviously, the timing is bad as ETHA closed at $16.34 last night, but I am preparing to average down a bit and sell more Vodafone to fund this. 

Experience in clearing SQ redemption waitlist

 

I was thinking of a Gold Coast holiday in June. Unfortunately, that only coincides with the June school holidays so prices are higher and there are no Business Saver Awards but you can put yourself on a waitlist. I decided to try out putting myself on a waitlist for business class saver redemption ticket (72,000 miles) for a desirable red-eye flight to maximise the time I have there, and 7 hour flight is just enough to sleep on the plane. Flights to Japan a bit too short for a good sleep.

About a month later, I get an e-mail with the nondescript message "Ticketing time limit" which meant that the waitlist had cleared and I can redeem the biz class ticket I had waitlisted. I had to pay taxes/fees of about $100 over and above the 72,000 miles but it still beats buying the ticket.

For the return to Singapore, I selected an afternoon flight and redeemed an economy class ticket (no need to waitlist, all available), since a 7 hours day flight is just about manageable.

While it is pretty likely that PPS members get priority waitlist clearance, I don't even have Krisflyer Gold at the moment so it's pretty nice that I still managed to clear the waitlist for a school holidays flight. I plan to try to book my October holiday through the waitlist method as well.

3010.HK ETF First chips, now India

 

Just last month, I talked about how I have been buying 3010.HK to gain exposure to the India stock market, just in case India benefits from the China tariffs, but ended up benefiting because the ETF holds a lot of TSMC as well as Korean chip companies. With the US announcing a trade deal with India last night, we should see a decent rally in India stock prices.

In other news, I bought a bit of ETHA just to do some trading during the crypto crash. I've talked about my Gold & Silver holdings a little but I'm not interested in accumulating more. It seems that there is a disconnect between the physical market and the paper market (which might be seeing some manipulation).