Dividends Collected: March 2021

 

First quarter 2021 dividends collected. About 10% lower than 1Q 2020

Dividends Collected: Feb 2021

 

A lot of S$ dividends collected in Feb. STI ETF, CDL HT, Ascott RT, etc

Subscribed Astrea VI, Frasers Property rights issue

 

I've subscribed to all the previous Astrea retail offerings, so Astrea VI bond was no different. I pressed for $21k and got $10k. 3% for 5 years (i.e. they will probably call it after 5 years rather than allow the step up to 4% for another 5 years), while lower than previous offerings, is still more attractive than fixed deposit. 

Also, like other Astrea offerings, I also encouraged my relatives to apply and they were happy to do so as its much better than savings/FD for them.

Fraser's Property Rights Issue is a bit trickier as the offer price is the same as the current market price of $1.18. 

But if you recall I accepted my entitlement for the Frasers Centrepoint Trust Rights Offering at $2.34 without subscribing for excess (except what was necessary to round up to the nearest thousand), price dropped to $2.25, then rebounded and is now $2.55. So maybe there's a chance for a rebound after the rights issue overhang for this. Anyway, I want to be cautious as this counter is not in my priority list of counters to accumulate, so I applied for my entitlement rounded up to the nearest 500.

https://buyaftercrash.blogspot.com/2020/10/strategy-oct-2020.html

March 2021: STI 3,100 / IBKR portfolio up.

 

Year to date STI is up 9.31% while my IBKR portfolio is up 11.81%. Looks like I am on track for 10% return this year. Since it is only March, it makes me wonder whether I need to upgrade my forecast. That would also mean that there is still more upside to go and I should buy more instead of only building up my warchest.

How do you react to a 35% drawdown?

 As I've mentioned previously, my 2020 return for my IBKR account was -1.0%. But this hides the fact that the max drawdown to my IBKR portfolio was about -35%. In other words, it lost more than 1/3 of its value. When that happened, an investor can:

• Buy more as its the sale worth waiting for.
• Hold and hope the price recovers
• Sell everything and put cash in a Milo tin.

My reaction was to buy more in order to average down as this was definitely a sale worth waiting for. On a one-year basis, my return is back to positive thanks to the recent rally. More importantly, a largely flat portfolio performance meant that my 2018 and 2019 gains were protected.

My China holdings are with FSMOne, and in 2020, China performed pretty well.

So overall, I'm happy to see that I didn't suffer huge losses and that I can continue to grow my dividends in 2021.

Dividends Jan 2021

Westpac Dividend was cancelled this month. But compared to 2020, I am collecting a little bit more dividends. My target is for dividends collected this year to fully recover to 2019 levels.

How to Average Up

 

Averaging Up- My Weakness

One of my investing 'weaknesses' was a reluctance to buy more if the price is more than my average price, so during the last GFC, I didn't continue buying as as the STI rose toward 3,000

 This time, I'm looking at making money and not just keeping my average price down. So when 3,000 looked likely, I started buying more in the 2.80-2.85 region even though it caused my average buying price to go up... because as long as less than $3, its still a profit!

 Of course, now that its more than $3, I've stopped buying. In 2020, I picked up 27.3k of ES3. Could have bought more, but decided to deploy to foreign ETFs instead.

 if you buy $100k at $2.89, its still better than the guy who only buy 3,000 shares at $2.70. since he was using CPF, he should have gone all in!

STI

STI has dropped below 3,000 again. I decided to start topping up my holdings of Sembcorp and Comfort Delgro last year and the market promptly responded by going down. In a sense, thats better for me as I still prefer to average down, even while I am learning how to average up... Now that Sembcorp is more of a utilities company without the Sembmarine overhang, I am actually more confident about adding to my holdings. As for Comfort Delgro, I still believe that 'disruption' by Grab is overstated. 

FTSE100

Last Friday, FTSE100 went below 6500. I believe that FTSE 6500 is a 'buy' but I helped a family member transfer money to SRS to buy Lionglobal AllSeasons fund instead. Today FTSE is up nearly 1% but still below 6,500 so I will be adding at this level