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).