Stock picking and discipline.

Stock picking and discipline
As my portfolio performance and cash position reached an all time high, I felt that I have achieved a significant milestone in life. Certainly, keeping a cash hoard in a bull market rush seem foolish to momentum driven investors especially in the REIT space, but Howard Marks memos are still ringing re-soundly to me. Too much money chasing too little opportunities, especially in an low interest rate and high risk environment. Warren buffet own take to this is the larger the cash position, the greater the pressure to piss it all away. 

The sorry fate of the LYFT IPO could be a sign of things to come for the upcoming IPO of money losing tech companies. Even china is coming up with a tech board to allegely support innovation based companies. Betting on a high growth industry sounds fantastic on paper, but value destructing growth seem to be the norm rather than the exception for some of the fresh IPOs, and the existing successful Tech companies are not at attractive valuations.

Through browsing the recent macroeconomic and economic data of real businesses, they appear to be not as robust as the financial markets. As we approach May, wall street traders may use {Sell in May and go away} as an convenient excuse to justify the potential correction of market sentiment that is not supported by real business data. 

From my personal perspective, I will never be completely out of stocks and fully into cash as I believe I have no special competitive advantage in timing the market, or having the fortitude to get back right in at the right moment. From a salaried worker perspective, the war-chest approach rather than the fully vested approach is more intuitive to me. Nonetheless, skimming through the investment related posts in my Facebook feeds seem to suggest that the more passionate and hardworking one is to investigating and assessing stocks, the harder it is to keep disciplined and maintain a war-chest (Peter Lynch Wall Street Approach). Nonetheless, I have kept tabs on some of the fundamentally rooted analysis and added the stocks to my watch-list in the event there are significant market correction.

Healthcare
Skimming through the Raffles Medical Annual Report and attending the AGM seem to suggest to me that RM is still a slow grower despite the exceptional demographics and potential of the China story. The ASEAN medical tourism hub turns out to be a fad not well supported by the economic fundamentals of the Singapore high cost environment. Management seem to be very conservative about scaling up in China. Liking the stable business rather than the growth story may be a mistake on my end, but at this moment I don't see any need to adjust my current position on this. I might do a subsequent post to consolidate the questions and analysis conducted by the shareholders there.

Restaurants
Scuttlebutt analysis on HaiDiLao (aka dining there) made me favorable to the service, sales and gross margins of the company, but the premium servicing costs and high manpower utilization seem to have a dent on the net profit margin. Liking the company but not the current valuation let me to reserve a spot in my watch-list.

Technology
Scuttlebutt analysis on SilverLake Axis through the MayBank Kim Eng as well as the UOB app lead me to be assured that Silver-lake Axis bio-metric (fingerprint) security authentication software is working successfully and it has large synergy across the recent hardware improvement across the smartphones. I still like the prospects and the stock, but its large proportion in my portfolio, lack of favorable disclosures in the investor relations and halt in share buyback led me to be conservative and not initiate further positions until there is more information on the outlook.

Although my Apple sale appears to be too premature, the technology prowess of Huawei and potential diwosification of Apple let me to be favorable to the cheapness (at the end of last year) and hesitant on the actual business prospects.

A whatsapp discussion with a friend on the prospects of Facebook let me to review the Facebook analysis I did in the previous year. Liking the company but still unable to correctly assess the moat and future prospects is my current take on this. I severely underestimated the revenue and MAU growth of the Instagram division. The previous Tech crash had provided me an opportunity to acquire a position, but my limited cash position made me hesitant on doing so and I eventually passed it up. This is probably the most important lesson I learnt last year, to always have ample cash to acquire quality companies at an attractive valuation, and hope the margin of safety will work its magic in the longer scheme of things.

India Exposure
Ascendas India Trust is playing out as expected. It may take some time to reassess any potential political upheaval in the India Political scene before sizing up / maintaining my position in that company. I like the growth story and the stock but the Rupee depreciation as well as political movements is exceptionally hard to forecast. 

Singtel is still burning cash in the multiple price wars it is engaging in India, Australia and Singapore. Although Templeton and Lynch has espoused on buying the strongest company in a dismal industry, the actual implementation led me to question myself on the merits of this strategy. Granted, Singtel is no Hyflux when assessing its operating cash flow, corporate governance, debt and cash position, but the high CAPEX business as well as cash burning is a rather large concern and the fixed dividend policy may not be sustainable. Liking the balance sheet and cheapness rather than the growth prospects had let me to abstain from averaging down until there is clear signs of the rivals capitulating. M1 de listing, Starhub restructuring and IPG capital constraints is a sign of things to come and I hope that this bleeding position could recover.