2018 Portfolio Updates

It’s the 2nd year that Miss Niao can celebrate a full-year review for her portfolio again. How well did I do as an investor? Not at all fantastic, though still in line with my goals.

A Look Back on 2017

In 2017, I started my investing journey and injected my funds rather consistently, performing a buy trade with a monthly/bi-monthly frequency. I had no sell trades in 2017.

I have also experienced how a bull market is like, and the emotions I had to go through of having a loss of double digit percentage points on paper – not that it went anywhere unbearable.

Why I Bought Indofood Agriculture At Its 7 Year Low and 1.6% Dividend Yield

Just a few weeks ago, I have mentioned in my 2017 Updates that I have bought some units of Indofood Agri (5JS) and concentrated about one-fifth of our portfolio. Half of this amount of investment was from me, and BF decided to jump in together with me on the other half.

While we were discussing about our buy, BF asked me about the dividend yield. He uses dividend yield as a gauge to know how much “interest” he is earning from his investment.

The problem with reading investment books – 401(k) plan

 I have a big problem when it comes to reading investment books. More often than not, the books are written by authors from the USA and many of them include the option of using the 401(k) as a tool to improve their finances, as like what a typical Singaporean would do with her CPF system. It is such a pain because I don’t know what are the actual benefits of the 401(k) and the limitations of it. I also can’t relate to the tips that the books are trying to convey no matter how many times I read it, and because of this, the usefulness of the books isn’t 100% brought out.

Thus, the birth of this post. I’m done with this. And since Miss Niao has quite a few readers from the US, I hope that this post would benefit them as well.

Investing your CPF money, really?

There was a period of time earlier this year that I contemplated on using my CPF money to invest. I sought some advice from my financial adviser back then on how the process is like and what options were available. The idea of using money that has to be locked away for a long, long time and not having to consider much “risk” with using cash on hand was a tantalizing thought indeed.

But the idea didn’t last long with me.

19-year-old Singaporean Investor – Tips for Young Investors

Quite frequently in the recent weeks, I have been receiving emails from my readers. It is heart warming to see that Miss Niao’s readership has grown substantially and that there are people out there who find my blog posts beneficial.

One of them is a 19-year-old engineering student that goes by the alias, Sleepy Devil (SD for short). I’m just going to have to call him/her this until he/she reveals a more appropriate name. And let’s just assume that SD is male.

What’s so special about him then, to have been able to gain a feature on Miss Niao?

The story of my Investment Linked Policy (ILP)

Okay, this is it.

It’s finally time for me to tell you the story of my Investment Linked Policy. After much procrastination (ever since I started this blog, in fact), I’m ready to face my mistakes and tell you guys about it.

I’ll show you the numbers, alright. I’ll tell you why it was a mistake and why I wouldn’t get one anymore.

But I’ll also tell you the benefits of having one. It’s not all 100% bad, although I’ve surpassed the stage where having an ILP benefits me. But it may benefit you, and you can decide if it’s suitable for you or not.

But nah, no more ILPs for me.

Here’s why.

July 2017 – Portfolio Updates

This would be my first post for an update of my portfolio. Yay! The main reason is because I have collected some dividends in July and would like to note down the progress of my portfolio.

It has been almost three months since I stepped out of my comfort zone and bought my very first stock that isn’t the STI ETF. Fast forward till today, BF (yes, I pulled him along with this journey with me) and I have built a portfolio with almost $30,000 invested capital. At the time of writing, each of our stock holdings has generated paper gains. Our portfolio stats, as calculated from my online portfolio, has an overall time weighted annual return of 9.9% and a paper gain of 5.57% on invested capital with dividends collected.

Fail-safe investing – Building a Permanent Portfolio

Image source: https://seekingalpha.com/article/559931-6-etf-permanent-income-portfolio

In my previous blog entry related to investing in gold, one of my readers and fellow financial blogger, Warriortan, introduced me to the Permanent Portfolio, which is sometimes also known as a fail-safe investment strategy. He has been developing this strategy in his personal portfolio and you can read his progress by clicking here and here.

I must admit that I was initially intimidated by the words “fail-safe” because those two words just sounded too good to be true in the world of investing.

A Beginner’s guide to The Balance Sheet – A simple analogy

READ THIS: This is a continuation of A Beginner’s guide to The Income Statement – A simple analogy in part of Fundamental Analysis. Do read that article first if you haven’t done so as the same analogy is being used below.

The Balance Sheet is easily found together with the Income Statement (and of course, the Cash Flow Statement) in a typical annual report of a listed company. It has very useful information to understand the financial situation of the company at that particular moment. Many key financial ratios (e.g. Current ratio, Debt/Equity ratio)

A Beginner’s guide to The Income Statement – A simple analogy

I decided to start a beginner guide to the basics of Fundamental Analysis starting with The Income Statement. I want to record my knowledge somewhere and what better way than to blog about it? It is also in fact beneficial to me whenever I pen down my thoughts because I’m sort of materializing whatever that is going through my mind, which in turn challenges my understanding towards the topic. Plus, I get a chance to receive some constructive feedback from my readers. Win-win! 🙂

I refer to a quote from Einstein: