The term dividends is used loosely for easy reference/shorter graph title because I include payments from bonds / bond ETFs in this graph.
As I achieved Financial Independence in 2021, this additional 22.1% return increases my margin of safety and also goes towards the goal of building up capital /cash flow for the purpose of doing charity work when I finally decide to retire.
I had hoped to break even in 2022 but it didn't happen. However, I view 7.86% as a relatively modest loss that I should be able to bounce back from. Hopefully 2023 will be better. I managed to outperform Vanguard World by >10% as a consolation prize, but more importantly, my passive income continued to grow. I'll find time to do the calculations and report on that next week.
I was allocated $20k of the most recent 4.28% T-bill and $20k of the Jan 3.26% SSB. Even though next month's SSB rate appears to be going lower, investors didn't take this as the last chance to add to their SSB. As a result, anyone who bid less than $172k got allocated. It's either a case of retail liquidity drying up because retail investors have already been fully allocated in previous rounds and/or people are rushing to buy T-bills or fixed deposits.
While 6 month T-bills and for that paper 1 year promotional fixed deposits above 4% look attractive, there is no guarantee you can roll them over for at least 4%. My view is that it is good to have a mix of long and short term instruments. If anything, I'm sort of regretting not bidding more for this SSB, because SSB rates appear to be going south next year.
Comfort Delgro reported its 3Q2022 results and it appears that the market didn't like it and the price went down to $1.25. I bought some more at $1.25 as I feel that valuations are undemanding at this level and that fair value is around $1.50. There is of course a risk that it may drop further but I don't think CDG share prices are that volatile. Happy to continue to add more if it drops further.
The damage to CDG's bottom line is not the really the "business" as revenue is slowly recovering, but the increased operating costs, presumably due to inflationary pressures Nevertheless, CDG remains a company that is actually making a profit (compared to Grab for example) and the free cash flow is decent.
The new CPF policy has also caused some disgruntlement among major platform companies here, who believe the exemption of street-hail taxi drivers from the CPF scheme might give taxi companies an unfair cost advantage.
Grab, particularly, said in a statement that street-hail taxi and third-party logistics companies should also be included as they similarly engage gig workers.
US Midterms are over and US CPI for October 'only' increased by 7.7%. Dow is +2.68% while S&P500 is up +4.19% and Nasdaq is up +5.67% as I write this. I suppose S&P500 is more tech heavy versus the Dow. A one day $30k+ gain is helpful and I still hope to breakeven by the end of this year though time is running out...
Fortunately I have done my monthly DCA for November already plus the FSMOne RSP (China markets is not a pretty sight so I am grateful that I have automated my RSP for 3010.HK and 2801.HK). Therefore I am content to just watch the rally. I should be able to resist chasing the rally because I can put my money to work in fixed income. Whereas in a low interest rate environment, there seemed to be no alternative to equities.
With S&P500 under 3,800, I will continue to accumulate S&P500 and World ETFs (since US is about 50% world). For this month I have bought some VHYD and IWDA and will continue to 'top up' the rest of my World ETFs (VWRD, WQDV).
I will leave my FSMOne RSP to run this month, which means I am buying 3010.HK, which is an Asia ETF with about 30%+ China, and a smaller amount of 2801.HK. Definitely a lot of uncertainty with regards to China so regular RSP seems to be the plan.
On the Singapore front, REITs are sort of crashing, the narrative is that there is no reason to accept current REIT yields when you can get risk-free 4% in government securities. Certainly there are those who are happy with 4% so they may want to reduce their equities exposure, however, I am still interested in REITs/stocks that have good fundamentals, especially if their price drops because people are exiting the market to buy bonds.
Earlier I had posted about accumulating Comfort Delgro (went up to $1.32) and Capland Ascott Trust (dropped a bit to $0.95). Most of my money went to Comfort so I'm ok with the overall price movements. Another REIT I am interested in is Frasers Centrepoint Trust which went below $2 because I do visit their malls and business still seems ok. I bought some under $2 and will continue to accumulate.
This month I got $10.5k of SSB and a smaller amount of T-Bills.
This months' SSB and T-Bill application dates coincided. One would have expected demand to for SSB to be less as some of the money would have been diverted to T-Bill applications, but SSB demand remains high and the SSB allocation for this month was $10,500. The SSB 3.21% average rate is very attractive.
In contrast, the interest rate for the preceding month was 2.75% and the allocation was $42,000.
As for T-Bills, the interest rate /cut-off yield hit a record 4.19% which is very nice indeed. It makes me seriously consider using my CPF to bid for T-Bills despite the hassle of needing to join the bank queue as CPF applications for T-Bills must be done 'manually'.
The internet has calculated that in order for T-bills to be more attractive than CPF 2.5%, the yield must be more than 2.96% (to compensate for the loss of CPF interest in the month pay for T-Bills and the month the T-Bill is refunded to your account). Of course, if you roll-over the T-Bill by buying a fresh T-Bill in the same month, this reduces the lost interest.
Despite the market downturn and the crash in the pound, I am still getting record dividends for Sep 2022. I notice that other bloggers such as Homer123 and ASSI have reported that they are collecting more dividends as well.
Valuations are looking attractive. With the 3,600 S&P500 breached (currently its 3585), I'm buying more World ETFs and also buying VUKE and some UK stocks.
Today was the first day of trading for the new Frasers 4.49% retail bonds. Even though I was a satisfied holder of Fraser's previous 3.65% bonds, I did not subscribe to the 4.49%. I didn't subscribe because I didn't find the interest rate attractive. I think the default risk is pretty low so I would buy some if I needed somewhere to park extra cash and if the YTM was higher than Astrea VI.
This brings me to Astrea VI. I bought more at $0.95 today. At that price and YTM of 4.5%, it is far more attractive than Frasers 4.49%. For that matter, it's also more attractive than Astrea VII.
However, its possible that FSMOne is calculating YTM from the 2031 date with step-up interest rather than the first call date on 2026 (its more likely that the bond will be fully redeemed in 2026).
Astrea VI has:
I applied for $30k of T-bills for the first time using internet banking. Unlike SSB each T-bill application is free of charge. The yield is announced after the auction and was 3.32% which is a whole lot higher than fixed deposits. Yet the news reports long queues at bank branches to place 2.6-2.7% fixed deposits.
I used OCBC internet banking to apply and I have to say that their system is really good. I got notified by SMS and e-mail really quickly.
Looking at the bond portion of my portfolio, I have 2 SSBs with less than 2.5% interest. For now, it makes sense to redeem them and redeploy the funds into T-bills. I've redeemed one of them and will redeem the other next month.
Using IWDA's price as a proxy for MSCI World (i.e. IWDA tracks MSCI World), my strategy was to enter as it dropped below $75 and to average down at $72 and then at $70.
I began at $74.85 last week and now $71.99 today. I also bought VWRD today at $98.88. Given the lack of panic, I am optimistic for a 'higher low' and that IWDA will hold at $70.
In the meantime, I am in buying mode and will continue to buy this week as valuations are more reasonable at these levels.
They are currently in my Medium-sized holdings part of my Portfolio, but I have no issues accumulating more till they are upgraded to "Large."
There may be some negativity due to COVID on the transport and accommodation sectors but that might mean that this is the best time to buy if you believe that these businesses will recover to their pre-pandemic levels.
The management quality of these two companies appears decent enough for me to believe that they will be able to position their business for the post-pandemic recovery. For example, ART's divestment and acquisition strategy suggests that they are repositioning the Trust with a certain vision of the future.
While inflation is certainly a problem, I expect that ART will be able to raise prices to cover its costs. Comfort Delgro operates in perhaps a more 'sensitive' area especially where public transport is concerned but there are mechanisms in place for price increases and this issue is nothing new.
Earnings Per Share
In terms of Earnings per share, ART has actually recovered to pre-pandemic levels:
2019: 9.04
2020: (7.69)
2021: 9.36
As for Comfort Delgro, their EPS certainly looks bad, but it is a case of "No Way Back" or is a recovery in sight? Furthermore, what is the EPS baked into the current price and is the market underestimating CDG? In which case, we can expect price surprises to the upside.
In contrast, Grab is still bleeding badly, as Business Times reported in August 2022:
"Strong ride-hailing recovery narrowed the net loss for South-east Asian tech giant Grab to US$547 million for the second quarter ended June, compared to the year-ago loss of US$768 million."
I was allocated $13,500 this time round for the September 2.8% SSB. So my last 3 months' allocations are:
Both GSK and HLN are falling due to worries about litigation over the Zantec drug.
Technically, HLN has nothing to do with it after demerger but yahoo news has reported that:
Haleon said it has certain indemnification obligations to GSK and Pfizer, “which may include liabilities related to OTC Zantac,” in a prospectus ahead of listing its shares in London last month. That’s while Credit Suisse analysts flagged Haleon’s involvement in Zantac litigation was limited.
Anyway, I bought some more Haleon today. This could be possible falling knife territory or it may be that the market is over-reacting to Haleon's possible exposure to the Zantec Litigation.
Aviva shares jumped today by as much as 12% on better than expected results, an increased dividend, and a share buy-back plan.
As I have posted before, I only buy Aviva when it is below £4, so I was really lucky that my target price was reached in both July and August as that allowed me to accumulate more shares.
Aviva is now one of my top 10 holdings in my portfolio. There are only 2 individual stocks in my top 10, the other being OCBC. The remainder are 7 ETFs and 1 unit trust.
Apart from Aviva, I have also been accumulating Santander as it dropped below $2.50 again this month as I also think the price is right and this is the time to accumulate more. It will be entering my portfolio in the 'medium' category at the next update.
With the GSK/Haleon split, I am faced with having to decide which is more attractive. Another consideration is position size and since my Haleon position is smaller, I'm thinking of building it up. My entry price will be below £3 and coincidentally, Haleon is -6% today, so I added some.
After being pleasantly surprised with an $18k allocation to the July 2022 SSB, I knew the high allocations wouldn't last as Straits Time ran an article about the record SSB yields (luckily they ran it after applications for the July SSB closed) followed by more articles to hype up the August SSB.
The results for the August 2022 SSB are in and the allocation is a measly $9k.
In the meantime I have also been accumulating Astrea V and Astrea VI. I have posted earlier why they are good places to park your cash and I'm not the only one that thinks that way as V and VI prices have slowly been bid up. Astrea V is solidly above $1 now so I am happy that I managed to build up my position by buying at $1 and lower.
For Astrea VI, I actually bought some at $0.964 earlier this week but after the August SSB results came out, someone bought VI on the open market at $0.999!
I will buy more V whenever it is below $1, and VI is ok at $0.97 but there are not many sellers and so if there are frustrated SSB applicants that need to park their cash somewhere, prices may remain elevated for the time being.
As I have posted before, my target is to breakeven in 2022 (0% return) which will protect my 19.7% 2021 return.
Some tech investors have already seen their entire 2021 profit erased, though the silver lining is that if they had 'time in market', their 3 and 5 year CAGR should be positive so they did not lose money. For those that overtraded, there is of course always the risk that they timed their trades wrongly and may well be sitting on "real losses."
The current chart for VWRD shows that June-July was a good buying opportunity and I described how I have been accumulating various ETFs including VWRD when it fell below the psychological $100 level. As the circled portion shows, there were "3 bottoms" during that period but the levels held and the price bounced back.
The TA folks will say that it is too early to tell whether there will be a recovery and that is probably the problem with TA - by the time TA analysis says there is recovery, it seems like everyone else knows - and the price has already gone up quite a bit. FWIW, the price has just crossed 50MA.
As for myself, I am optimistic of a recovery because I feel that valuations now are very fair (not cheap, not expensive) and COVID related recovery will have a positive effect. Current supply chain problems are only temporary problems.
Checking my portfolio, I will only need the market to stage a 5% rally in order for my portfolio to breakeven for 2022. As we are due to have a summer rally, I can totally see 5% happening and I might even hope for 10% from current levels (which would translated to S&P500 about 4350 at the end of the year).
Of course, one might say breaking even in 2022 is equivalent to a loss because of the value destroyed by inflation. I guess that is true enough, but I want to keep spreadsheets simple so I'll just record down the nominal $ values rather than do inflation adjustments. As for whether inflation affects my Financial Independence, I think I am on track for my passive income to increase more than the inflation rate.
One outcome of buying counters that pay dividends is that you get a constant stream of passive income every month. Despite current market conditions, it seems like my passive income will continue to maintain above the $10k/month mark this year. While it is nice to have this extra income to supplement what I am getting from my job, I have no plans to spend it on luxuries this year - due to the $100k COE, I think I'm going to postpone my car replacement till next year (hopefully no major breakdown before that). However, I might treat myself to a nice holiday at the end of the year.
$10k+/month is of course an average as my graph shows. Some months you get more than other months For example, I guess many companies don't pay dividends during tax filing season as their finance department is busy with the accounts.
One reflection over the past few months where I got large dividend payments and various "refunds" (Frasers 3.65% bond maturing, Aviva return of capital, Westpac delisting of ADR etc), is that it forces me to have the discipline to reinvest my free cash flow.. otherwise too much of my cash is being eaten up by inflation.
By regularly exercising my finger to press the "Buy" button, I avoid the paralysis that can sometimes accompany bearish or highly uncertain market convictions. Hopefully this will make me better prepared to deploy more cash once the bottom is established and the market recovers.
Having a steady free cash flow also makes it easy to rebalance without selling anything. As I mentioned earlier, I have been accumulating Astrea V and VI over the past few weeks as part of my bond component, and I can do this by redeploying my free cash flow instead of having to decide what shares to sell and when to sell them.
There is a lot of uncertainty about this market. As I write, market has rallied for 3 days in a row compared to last weeks' decline. Based on this pattern, there would be an equally good chance it was decline again next week.
I have no conviction what the short term movements are going to be so I am just doing regular DCA while waiting. Bought my regular VWRD/LSPU today and also added a bit of AV.
As for 2022 as a whole, I'm still optimistic that the market will stage a rally and end the year flat/breakeven.
Got my refund from the delisting of WBK ADR which was a loss-making investment for me. Oh well.
I have also been accumulating Astrea V and Astrea VI. Astrea V looks pretty safe given the size of the reserve account. I'm just using them as a place to park some spare cash to earn higher interest. In terms of risk management, I will not hold more than $100k total of Astrea V and VI combined
Looking forward to applying at the end of the month for the 3% SSB but given the news reports about its yield, I think that it will be heavily oversubscribed. Maybe I'll get $15k if I'm lucky, though I'm not optimistic, hence the need to find alternatives for parking cash.
Like everyone else and their second aunt, I applied for this month's SSB with a 10-year average interest rate of 2.71%. I expect to be allocated about $15k. Next month's interest rate is expected to be even higher... and the allocation even lower, so if you need to accumulate SSBs, this is a good time to start.
Given the limited supply of SSBs whenever interest rates are 'good', I have decided to start accumulating a bit more Astrea V and Astrea VI.
Astrea V's first call is 2024 while Astrea's VI first call is 2026. The low "interest" payments the fund has to make 3.85%/3.00% are relatively undemanding which reduces the risk that there will not be enough cash flow to pay the class A-1 bonds. As V and VI have been on the market for some time, they have already built up their reserves account. Coupled with the short time to first call date, these look safe enough to buy more and hold to maturity (safer than say, a BBB investment grade corporate)
But like I said from the start, first priority is to buy SSB. If I don't get my target SSB amount, excess can be used to buy Astrea V and VI.
Update: Received $18,000 allocation for SSB, more than expected, which is a pleasant surprise.
While this week is likely to end slightly lower, I remain optimistic that we will end the year at a higher level. Therefore, my strategy is to continue to DCA in June.
As mentioned earlier, I had £10k+ from my Aviva return of capital and I have been using it to buy more Aviva despite the fact that it rallied almost 10% from last month.
The Aviva vs Prudential question is an interesting one. My Prudential holding is much smaller than my Aviva holding. I confess that I have been attracted to Aviva because of its higher dividend payout ratio. Prudential's dividend yield is currently much lower so maybe I made a good choice. Aviva's share price also seemed to be holding up much better (maybe investors that buy Aviva to collect dividends are 'buy and hold investors?)
Comparative charts are a bit tricky because of various corporate actions. Aviva returned capital and sometime back, Prudential issued shares from a spinoff. But here's a 1 year chart anyway. As you can see, Aviva was doing ok but suddenly fell off a cliff (either that or it has something to do with the return of capital).
May is traditionally a good month for dividends. I only included Aviva's dividends and did not include the return of capital.
I had previously subscribed to $10k+ worth of Sembmarine Rights issues at $0.08. However, when I last looked at the price in March 2022, it was still stuck at around 8 cents. While I was doing my mid-year portfolio review (update soon), I realised that Sembmarine has shot up briefly to $0.13 last month but is now hovering at $0.115 which would be a 43.5% gain from the March 2022 price, translating to a low 5-digit gain. This would presumably have something to do with a possible Keppel merger.
As I had no real intention to buy and hold this counter, I plan to unload as least half of my SMM at $0.12. The rest, maybe try my luck and wait for a Keppel buyout?
Unlike the "sell in May and go away" crowd, I am more optimistic as May draws to a close.
I received more than $70k worth of refunds from SPH, Fraser's 3.65% bond, and I only just discovered, return of capital from Aviva, which is one of my biggest holdings.
Shows that when you invest in individual stocks, you have to pay more attention. Aviva last month was below £4 and I would have bought more to 'make up' for the return of capital. Aviva has since rallied by 10% so I'm not a buyer at the moment.
Checking how much I reinvested in May, it only adds up to about $60k, so I didn't manage to reinvest all my refunds. This also means that I didn't manage to reinvest my May dividends which in the past is usually >10k (May is a good month for dividends) or my savings from salary. So warchest has gotten bigger.
Finally, and I've updated my Astrea VII post as well, all those who applied for $49k (the maximum amount before balloting occurs) got $12k class A, so that is a decent amount.
____
Update: Pressed for $49k, received $12k
I've started to accumulate more of my World ETFs during this correction. Prices have made VWRD, LSPU, VHYD and WQDV a bit more reasonable and I would even say fairly valued. However, it doesn't mean that the market won't fall further, its just that I am never able to time the bottom anyway.
Completed my purchase early in the evening (Thursday). As I don't normally trade on Fridays due to market distortions as shortists close their positions, I'll continue buying next Monday.
Portfolio News
WQDV is changing benchmark in June to the MSCI World High Dividend Yield ESG Reduced Carbon Target Select Index. As a result, the number of holdings will be cut by half to 177.
What is more significant is that the % holdings of IT stocks will rise quite significantly to 22.87% of the portfolio. It will be interesting to see how the ETF managers handle this transition given the downward trajectory of tech stocks at the moment.
While the halving of the number of holdings is not that great from the diversification perspective, 177 international mega/big cap holdings is a reasonable number. For the time being, I'm buying VHYD instead (I hold both ETFs as part of my policy to buy the iShares and Vanguard versions) but I'll return to adding WQDV after the transition is completed.
SPH
I have been holding a small amount of SPH for about 12 years with an average buying price of around $2.25. I have accepted the buyout offer to surrender my SPH shares for $2.36. So after 12 years, my CAGR is 0.4% So this shows the shortcomings of my inability to sell stocks.
Fortunately, thanks to the power of CD, the overall picture is slightly better. Between 2009-2021 (12 years of dividend) I collected total dividends of $2.475 which I used to reinvest into other stocks/ETFs.
I'll be getting about $12k back for my warchest.
Frasers 3.65% Retail Bond
I have been holding the bond since IPO and collecting 3.65% coupons every year. This has been a really worthwhile place to park my spare cash. After IPO I even bought a little more when it went below the $1 IPO price. However, its finally maturing in May and I'll be getting $42k back for my warchest.
On the last trading day in April, the Dow fell 939 points or 2.77% while Nasdaq fell 4.17%. Another "Sell in May" year?
While I did my usual DCA of VWRD/LSPU/CS51 at the start of April, I began accumulating after the markets starting falling steadily from 22 April onwards.
I also broke my resolution not to stock pick by picking up LLOY at 44.82/44.55 as well.
If markets continue to fall in May, I will continue to accumulate ETFs.
Healthy amount of dividends collected this month. Two of my big REIT holdings, CDLHT and Ascott Residence Trust paid dividend this month.
Missed the Jan 2022 update of dividends collected, but can't really display much of a graph with only 1 month I guess. While some counters are quite consistent in which month they pay dividends (eg: STI ETF), some counters seem to vary the month which makes year on year comparisons more difficult.
For example, CDL HT and Ascott trust which are my larger holdings, paid dividends in March 2022 and Feb 2021.
My New Year's resolution for 2022 was to buy more World and USA ETFs as I am underweight US. However, at high valuations, it would take me a lot of willpower to press BUY.
Fortunately, there was a downturn this past week and this allowed me to make a few purchases of LSPU and VWRD.
There is significant volatility with the US markets reversing direction intra-day with huge swings. Reminds me of the GFC.
Inflation is real and not transient. People can see it in the prices of everyday goods such as the meals they eat.
I expect further buying opportunities in February and will continue to accumulate LSPU and VWRD.
Another ETF I bought this month was 3010.HK via FSMOne RSP. I am temporarily pausing my HK and China ETF RSP (2800.HK and 2801.HK) as I consider whether 3010.HK is better from a diversification perspective (it holds 36% China, 7% HK, but adds South Korea, India, ASEAN).
As I am buying LSPU and VWRD through Interactive Brokers, I also added small amounts of VDPX and IWDA to my Standard Chartered Account. I am investing mainly through interactive brokers but also want some of my holdings with a different custodian.
I managed to tally the dividends collected this year and there was a pretty large 37.8% jump. I recovered my "losses" in 2020 and even exceeded the dividends I collected in 2019. Together with my CPF interest, I have collected enough passive income to reach my Financial Independence target.
While there are differing definitions of FI, I use the definition in investmentmoats.com, which is Income > Expenses used to sustain current standard of living.
Looking at the returns of my top holdings in 2021 (31 Dec 2020-31 Dec 2021) reveals a mixed bag. While I was hoping that there would be a sector rotation into "value", it was not to be, which is why I also started accumulating VWRD and LSPU from July onwards and this probably helped my Interactive Brokers return shown in the screenshot below.
I thought my IBKR return would cross 20% this year. In fact, on 30 Dec it was above 20%, but there was a drop on 31 Dec which meant that I ended up with 19.79%, so I marginally beat Vanguard World's 18.5%
2021 Performance of my top holdings
STI ETF gained 12.1%
FTSE 100 ETF gained 17.4%
First State China gained 5.41% (there is a price lag for unit trust, will update once 31 Dec prices are known). It was much higher than crashed.
VDPX gained 0.6% (much higher than crashed - the HK/China effect)
OCBC gained 19.6%
Euro Stoxx 50 gained 15.5% (Stoxx 600 gained 20%.. sigh)
VHYD gained 17.4%
WQDV gained 14.5%
Comfort Delgro fell 12.2%
CDL Hospitality Trust fell 0.2% (CDL woes and Covid-19 still hitting hospitality)
