What I learnt after 1.5 years of investing

It is that time of the year whereby people start reflecting what they have done for the past year, and their investing journey.

Due to my usage of dual brokers (poems and maybank) and the inability to automatically track dividends and transaction costs via excel, I scoured the blogs of investment bloggers and came across sgxcafe, a nifty tool to track transaction costs and dividend yield all in one convenient package.

My capital gain in the short run is not stellar for this year as expected for a long term buy and hold strategy.This is to be expected. There is always a sinking feeling when your portfolio is in the red rather in in the black, but the dividend gain and the winners managed to cover for the short term losers and I still made a consolation prize profit. At least I kept myself from actively buying and selling and incur more transaction costs, which will effectively had eroded the meagre earnings I made. Thank god I am not a fund manager! I would have lost my job for failing to beat the market this year.

I remembered last year when I dollar cost averaged STI ETF and Ocbc with the belief that I suck at market timing I am completely clueless on how prolengthened the recession will be. Fortunately, the economy recovered within a year. Unfortunately, I did not have a chance to accumulate a sizeable position in both Sti etf and Ocbc, but still my faith in the fundamentals of the stock proved to be rewarding.

Ascendas REIT also proved to be the right call. With the siren of increasing interest rates, people dumped their REIT and chased their banks. I held my Ocbc and picked up the discounted REIT . Now, the fickle market started to bump my ascendas REIT up and the banks. The brokers call is like the call of the siren, soothing and seductive but often luring you to the depths of danger.

I divested my Ocbc with the knowledge of the bankruptcy of the oil and gas and shipping midcap companies. I am unsure of the exposure of the banks to these bankruptcy and whom is the sucker that was hit the most. Turned out that uob managed to cover, Ocbc improvement in earnings from wealth management covered the losses in the unperforming loans, and dbs was left out to hang and shrivel up. I might have divested too fast with Ocbc as it is still early in the economic recovery phase. One thing is for sure, I will need to reevaluate the fundamentals if I want to repurchase the banks.

Investing is like dieting.  It is not governed not just by the brain but mostly the gut. Buffet, graham Templeton, Peter lynch, and my university valuation assignment are the major influences in my journey so far. Through this journey, my financial knowledge, excel skills and investment background has deepened and it also contributed to improving competence in my current work. Nonetheless, I may have been too caught up in improving my investing skills, when I should work harder on improving my earnings power instead.

From here on, I am going to blog on vba and excel macro projects to improve my abilities in that segment. I might also blog about my toastmasters speeches and reflections as I conducted them. With limited capital, a buy and hold can be a deary wait indeed. Life is more than stocks and profits and I will need fortitude and hobbies to tide through the good and bad times.