Whoopie, I have just gotten my bonus and I should have $4k to invest.
After evaluating my choices, I decided to put this money into high yield stocks rather than speculative or growth stocks due to volality of the current market. Before I go into teh high yield stocks that I am eyeing on, I would just want to write about the 2 growth stocks which has reached my buying price. One is Contel and the other is UOL. Contel has been in my watchlist for a while and I have seen it going from 16c to the present 8c. It has also broke its 52 wks price of 8c but recovered to 8c. UOL has the backing of the Wee family and news that he bought a sustaintiate amount a couple months back at about $3.60 puts this stock into my watchlist. It has been see-sawing between the prices of $3.50 to $4. And 2 days ago, it broke my buying price of $3.50. I will monitor these 2 stocks further before i make a move.
For the high yield stocks, as you can read from my previous blog, I am holding 4 of them, of which 2 were bought using my CPF. One criteria for myself is to diversify the sectors. Currently, my four stocks are a) FSL, which is leasing ships, b) Cambridge, leasing warehouse and industrial properties, c) First Reits, which lease hospitals and homes in Indonesia, Spore and China, and lastly d) LMIR, leasing of malls in Indonesia. I am interested to get some Spore Reits but their yield is low as compared to those I am holding.
Out of the 4 stocks, I will not add to FSL as I think I have quite enough of cash tied to that. Cambridge is on the rage due to rumours of bigger Reits buying it over. I have very little First Reits and would like to up the amount and also to average down my buy price. LMIR has the lowest price of all the 4 stocks.
I feel that out of the 4 stocks, LMIR has the least potential as there isn't much activity about what they want to do. First Reits has expanded into Spore and China since IPO and I feel hospitality is a good business to be in. Cambridge has an advantage of getting bought over, so it has a short-mid term positiveness about the business. FSL has the most activities from its buying and leasing ships and furthermore, the price has appreciated and dividends is one of the highest.
After considerations, I will try to buy First Reits 1st. If I can't get at my preferred price, I will try Cambridge and lastly LMIR. Wish me luck!
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
My Buys and Sells for Last Half Year
I have not written in this blog for 9 full months and am pretty ashamed of it. The last 9 months was bad for my investments as the markets tanked. During this period of time, my main investments were:
1) Stocks.
A) Buying of warrants which I failed miserably. I started buying warrants using swing momentum and was gaining a bit, but when the markets start to get irrational, my winnings was wiped out in a blink of the eye and got into more losses. My weakness is that I often do not get out of a losing trade. Mainly trading in HSI warrants under Macquarie.
B) The other investments I have made, which I have gathered and will accumulate, are the high yield stocks. Mainly the reits or shipping trusts. Presently, I have First Reits, Lippo Maple Infrastructure Reits, Cambridge Industrial and First Shipping Lease Trust. My priority is to get the highest yielding stock. Currently, these stocks are giving at least 8%pa dividends. My aim is to accumulate enough to get some passive income from these stocks. Target is $10k/yr from dividends by 2015(7-8yrs).
2) Funds
The funds did badly over the whole period. I made the mistake of putting money into a China fund and it is now <70%.>30%. I have also supported a friend, who has just joined the insurance field by buying a couple of funds. I have not monitored the funds but I know it is losing money.
3) Lastly, over the last few months, I chanced upon an investment which is a bit controversial. It's basically a high yield deposit. As the "bank" does not have the reputation to guarantee the amount, it puts down a collateral to the depositor. I have tried with small amounts over the last few months and have received the interest and gotten back the principal.
I have a few stocks under my radar and is itching to buy but i am very tight in cash. Moreover, I heard that the market has a good possibility of going down again. Thus, I am staying put. When I have the money, I will put most of it in my yield stocks first before considering the others.
1) Stocks.
A) Buying of warrants which I failed miserably. I started buying warrants using swing momentum and was gaining a bit, but when the markets start to get irrational, my winnings was wiped out in a blink of the eye and got into more losses. My weakness is that I often do not get out of a losing trade. Mainly trading in HSI warrants under Macquarie.
B) The other investments I have made, which I have gathered and will accumulate, are the high yield stocks. Mainly the reits or shipping trusts. Presently, I have First Reits, Lippo Maple Infrastructure Reits, Cambridge Industrial and First Shipping Lease Trust. My priority is to get the highest yielding stock. Currently, these stocks are giving at least 8%pa dividends. My aim is to accumulate enough to get some passive income from these stocks. Target is $10k/yr from dividends by 2015(7-8yrs).
2) Funds
The funds did badly over the whole period. I made the mistake of putting money into a China fund and it is now <70%.>30%. I have also supported a friend, who has just joined the insurance field by buying a couple of funds. I have not monitored the funds but I know it is losing money.
3) Lastly, over the last few months, I chanced upon an investment which is a bit controversial. It's basically a high yield deposit. As the "bank" does not have the reputation to guarantee the amount, it puts down a collateral to the depositor. I have tried with small amounts over the last few months and have received the interest and gotten back the principal.
I have a few stocks under my radar and is itching to buy but i am very tight in cash. Moreover, I heard that the market has a good possibility of going down again. Thus, I am staying put. When I have the money, I will put most of it in my yield stocks first before considering the others.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Selling Centillion
It has been more than 2 months since i posted any blogs. Within this short period of 2 months, a much anticipated correction has occurred. Even before the correction, I was closely monitoring Centillion and i was very disappointed when it issue the new option shares to Equation and Oei Hong Leong. Each subscribed for 948,742,172 shares at $0.008485.
I wondered what was the management thinking. To raise funds, why would they give such a steep discount to these 2 investors? The price was at about $0.20. If any of these 2 investors were to dump their shares even at a discount of 50% of the $0.20 price, they would still have made >1000% of their investment in this deal. It seems too shady to me.
So when the price was slowly falling with weak supports and volumes, I cut my losses at $0.175 about one month after i bought the shares. I was relieve to see that the shares did indeed plunge to $0.10 within the next month(Aug 07).
I wondered what was the management thinking. To raise funds, why would they give such a steep discount to these 2 investors? The price was at about $0.20. If any of these 2 investors were to dump their shares even at a discount of 50% of the $0.20 price, they would still have made >1000% of their investment in this deal. It seems too shady to me.
So when the price was slowly falling with weak supports and volumes, I cut my losses at $0.175 about one month after i bought the shares. I was relieve to see that the shares did indeed plunge to $0.10 within the next month(Aug 07).
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Centillion the Waste Recycling Turnaround (B)
I vested in this company Citiraya for quite a while before the CIPB came knocking on their doors. It was a darling stock at that time. After the dust settle, the new management changed the name to Centillion and revamped the structure. It is now slowly coming back.
Ever since it was "re listed" in Oct06, it was mostly hovering at $0.15, once going down to $0.11. From early Jun 07, it raised to a high of $0.22. To me, the business model is a sound one and most importantly, a profitable one. Basically, Centillion clears waste from PCB and IT manufacturers. From the PCB boards, they retrieve the gold treads and sells the gold.
Anyway, I believe this is a good company with a new management. Moreover, Temasek and Oei Hong Leong also vested in this company. Thus, when Centillion slowly drops to $0.195, I see that as a resistance and bought 10 lots. Till now, it has been hovering at $0.195-0.21. I see the potential of this stock to go to $0.3 in a couple of months time. My stop loss is $0.16(~20%). So lets see how it goes. I will be back to close this when I finally sells this stock.
Ever since it was "re listed" in Oct06, it was mostly hovering at $0.15, once going down to $0.11. From early Jun 07, it raised to a high of $0.22. To me, the business model is a sound one and most importantly, a profitable one. Basically, Centillion clears waste from PCB and IT manufacturers. From the PCB boards, they retrieve the gold treads and sells the gold.
Anyway, I believe this is a good company with a new management. Moreover, Temasek and Oei Hong Leong also vested in this company. Thus, when Centillion slowly drops to $0.195, I see that as a resistance and bought 10 lots. Till now, it has been hovering at $0.195-0.21. I see the potential of this stock to go to $0.3 in a couple of months time. My stop loss is $0.16(~20%). So lets see how it goes. I will be back to close this when I finally sells this stock.
My Jasper Investment Trade
I started looking at Jasper Investment when it remained in the top volume for many days. Though it hovered around $0.025-0.035 for quite some time, the volume transacted each day was still significant.
Fundamentally, I must admit i did not do a lot of research but I do know that its earning has increased and the company's plans is blossoming.
There is not much TA to be done as the price is quite stagnant. Thus, when the price dropped to $0.025, I bought 50lots. I intend this purchase to be a short one as I hope and believe it will behave like what it has been behaving for the last 1-2weeks. My target is just $0.03 and my stop loss is $0.02.
I was rather disappointed as even thought the price is at $0.03 some of the days, the sell queue was too hugh and I never got the the start of the queue for each time. But to my relieve, my sell trade was transacted, making me a small profit of $190+. Though this is a small amount, it is a 15% return for 2 weeks of waiting. I have traded a small amount for this stock as I have not gained enough knowledge about this company and was only basing on the volume and the small trading band.
Overall, though I have made a good choice in trading this stock, I will not be doing such trades much as I believe in trading in good quality companies.
Fundamentally, I must admit i did not do a lot of research but I do know that its earning has increased and the company's plans is blossoming.
There is not much TA to be done as the price is quite stagnant. Thus, when the price dropped to $0.025, I bought 50lots. I intend this purchase to be a short one as I hope and believe it will behave like what it has been behaving for the last 1-2weeks. My target is just $0.03 and my stop loss is $0.02.
I was rather disappointed as even thought the price is at $0.03 some of the days, the sell queue was too hugh and I never got the the start of the queue for each time. But to my relieve, my sell trade was transacted, making me a small profit of $190+. Though this is a small amount, it is a 15% return for 2 weeks of waiting. I have traded a small amount for this stock as I have not gained enough knowledge about this company and was only basing on the volume and the small trading band.
Overall, though I have made a good choice in trading this stock, I will not be doing such trades much as I believe in trading in good quality companies.
Tuesday, June 5, 2007
Pay Yourself First
I am reading the book The Automatic Millionaire just 1/3 through and I am already pretty impressed with the contents. In this article, I will just summarised the most important method in getting rich: Pay yourself first.
For every dollar you earn, a percentage of it goes to your income tax, a percentage goes to your home installment, your car installment, your insurance, your utilities bills, your mobile phone bills, your daily meals and what have you. What is left, if any, you will try to save. But very often, even if there is anything left, you will spend it on impulse buys.
Pay yourself first basically says that you should save a portion of your earned money into a account first before you do any other things, like paying bills etc.
Maybe you are saying it is impossible to save. Let me do a breakdown for you, or rather let you see it in a different light. Say for example you earn $2500/mth. If you divide it out for the full 30 days, it means you earn $83.33/day. Do you think saving $5 out of the $83.33 earned is a lot? That is only 6%. See it another way, $83.33/day is equivalent to earning $9.25/hour(assuming you work 9 hours a day). $5 thus is just slightly more than half an hour of work for you.
Let's see what is the effect of saving this $5/day. In one week, you would saved $35 and in a month, $150. If this money is put in an investment which can give you 10% per annum return, you would have $1,885 after your first year, $30,727 in 10 years and $339,073 in 30 years.
From $5 to >$300k, do you see the effect of just $5?
Be sure to look for my review of this marvellous book in my reading tots blog.
http://myreadingtots.blogspot.com/2007/06/automatic-millionaire.html
For every dollar you earn, a percentage of it goes to your income tax, a percentage goes to your home installment, your car installment, your insurance, your utilities bills, your mobile phone bills, your daily meals and what have you. What is left, if any, you will try to save. But very often, even if there is anything left, you will spend it on impulse buys.
Pay yourself first basically says that you should save a portion of your earned money into a account first before you do any other things, like paying bills etc.
Maybe you are saying it is impossible to save. Let me do a breakdown for you, or rather let you see it in a different light. Say for example you earn $2500/mth. If you divide it out for the full 30 days, it means you earn $83.33/day. Do you think saving $5 out of the $83.33 earned is a lot? That is only 6%. See it another way, $83.33/day is equivalent to earning $9.25/hour(assuming you work 9 hours a day). $5 thus is just slightly more than half an hour of work for you.
Let's see what is the effect of saving this $5/day. In one week, you would saved $35 and in a month, $150. If this money is put in an investment which can give you 10% per annum return, you would have $1,885 after your first year, $30,727 in 10 years and $339,073 in 30 years.
From $5 to >$300k, do you see the effect of just $5?
Be sure to look for my review of this marvellous book in my reading tots blog.
http://myreadingtots.blogspot.com/2007/06/automatic-millionaire.html
Friday, May 18, 2007
Investment Instruments Series - Property
In property, people normally invest in it for 2 aims; either to collect rent or for capital returns.
If you are going for capital returns, just follow the rule, buy low sell high. Property prices goes in cycles. In Singapore, if you take the last property boom(1994-1997), and the current booming market, its about 12 years apart(start of both booms). So for example, if you buy a 5 room HDB flat in Bishan at the low, it would be around $350k. It can easily fetch $450-500k during the boom period. Or if you are cash rich, get a district 10 property and a tidy profit of $400k-$1m is not unusual. During my father's time(1970-80s), he bought the flat for <$100k and now, its going for $350-400k. Nowadays, you will have to buy a new flat for $200-300k and the profit, if any is only at most $50k. Buying and selling flats is no longer as profitable.
If you have read or attended any renowned real estate experts / gurus talks such as Robert Kiyosaki or his advisor, Dolf de Roos, you will know that rental returns is better than the capital gains as you will be using other people's money(OPM) to pay your property. Take for example a property worth $500k. You pay a minimum sum of maybe 10%, and takes a loan of $450k, the monthly installments would work out to be about $1500 for 30 years. If you rent it out for $1800, you will have a positive cashflow of $300/mth. This $300/mth would be your passive income no matter if you work or not. And the tenant would also be paying for your installments of $1500.
But in Singapore, it is very difficult to find a cashflow positive property as the government controls the market very tightly. Furthermore, when you rent a property, the government would impose on you a tax. So all in all, you will not be getting much from your rental income. This scenario has an exception though. From my understanding, only the commercial properties could command a positive cashflow. The only problem is that to buy a commercial property, you would have to pay cash and a good commercial property costs >$1m. Not a lot of people has that type of money in Singapore.
For me, I prefer overseas properties. Depending on which country, advantages being that it is relatively cheaper to buy a property overseas, overseas rental is higher as compared to Singapore, not needing to pay rental tax and no stamp duty. Of course the downside would be not being to see if the property is well managed. That is why due diligence has to be done before one buys an overseas property. The reputation of the property manager, type of tenants, location, possibility of long term lease, country's property law are just a few of the issues to be researched before plunging into the overseas property market.
If you read the Saturday's newspapers, there are bound to be some companies advertising on overseas properties. The cheaper properties are usually from our region, such as Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. I am not comfortable with the Malaysian and Thai government. Malaysian government has changed their property laws several times and this has brought great inconvenience to Singaporean property investors. As for Thailand, I feel that the government is too instable. Maybe I enjoyed my Aussie and NZ trips, I do prefer the people and the environment there. The more expensive properties are usually the UK ones. As a rough reference, Aussie and NA properties ranges between S$150-$500k. UK ones are normally at least $800k. The rental yield for Aussie and NZ properties is usually around 5-10%. But beware of the loan interest rate. It is around 7-9%. So this high interest rates do eat into your rental income.
If you are interested in going into any overseas property market, go to any of the "no obligation" seminars/sales talks advertised in the newspapers. Learn more about the different companies.
If you are going for capital returns, just follow the rule, buy low sell high. Property prices goes in cycles. In Singapore, if you take the last property boom(1994-1997), and the current booming market, its about 12 years apart(start of both booms). So for example, if you buy a 5 room HDB flat in Bishan at the low, it would be around $350k. It can easily fetch $450-500k during the boom period. Or if you are cash rich, get a district 10 property and a tidy profit of $400k-$1m is not unusual. During my father's time(1970-80s), he bought the flat for <$100k and now, its going for $350-400k. Nowadays, you will have to buy a new flat for $200-300k and the profit, if any is only at most $50k. Buying and selling flats is no longer as profitable.
If you have read or attended any renowned real estate experts / gurus talks such as Robert Kiyosaki or his advisor, Dolf de Roos, you will know that rental returns is better than the capital gains as you will be using other people's money(OPM) to pay your property. Take for example a property worth $500k. You pay a minimum sum of maybe 10%, and takes a loan of $450k, the monthly installments would work out to be about $1500 for 30 years. If you rent it out for $1800, you will have a positive cashflow of $300/mth. This $300/mth would be your passive income no matter if you work or not. And the tenant would also be paying for your installments of $1500.
But in Singapore, it is very difficult to find a cashflow positive property as the government controls the market very tightly. Furthermore, when you rent a property, the government would impose on you a tax. So all in all, you will not be getting much from your rental income. This scenario has an exception though. From my understanding, only the commercial properties could command a positive cashflow. The only problem is that to buy a commercial property, you would have to pay cash and a good commercial property costs >$1m. Not a lot of people has that type of money in Singapore.
For me, I prefer overseas properties. Depending on which country, advantages being that it is relatively cheaper to buy a property overseas, overseas rental is higher as compared to Singapore, not needing to pay rental tax and no stamp duty. Of course the downside would be not being to see if the property is well managed. That is why due diligence has to be done before one buys an overseas property. The reputation of the property manager, type of tenants, location, possibility of long term lease, country's property law are just a few of the issues to be researched before plunging into the overseas property market.
If you read the Saturday's newspapers, there are bound to be some companies advertising on overseas properties. The cheaper properties are usually from our region, such as Malaysia, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand. I am not comfortable with the Malaysian and Thai government. Malaysian government has changed their property laws several times and this has brought great inconvenience to Singaporean property investors. As for Thailand, I feel that the government is too instable. Maybe I enjoyed my Aussie and NZ trips, I do prefer the people and the environment there. The more expensive properties are usually the UK ones. As a rough reference, Aussie and NA properties ranges between S$150-$500k. UK ones are normally at least $800k. The rental yield for Aussie and NZ properties is usually around 5-10%. But beware of the loan interest rate. It is around 7-9%. So this high interest rates do eat into your rental income.
If you are interested in going into any overseas property market, go to any of the "no obligation" seminars/sales talks advertised in the newspapers. Learn more about the different companies.
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