Dividends Day!

It always make one smile when there is a dividend income coming to you out of nothing but thin air while you are doing nothing.

Dividends Received:

Cache Log: $107.30

Fraser Centerpoint Trust: $110.00

Starhill Global: $25.80

This is the first dividends I've received for year 2015.  Amounting to $243.10, this is only 8.1% of my targeted sum of $3000pa which means I'm still waiting for bigger payouts from other stocks counter.

The next set of announced dividends so far:

Aims Amp Capital (26 Mar 15): $283.00

Croesus Retail (31 Mar 15): $250.00

Keppel Corp (6 May 15): $396.00

Semb Corp (18 May 15): $110.00

I've updated my portfolio tracker to see a total dividends received to date of $1911.20 And paper gains amounting to $698.99. since I started investing in Aug 2014.  

While I am happy doing calculations about how much have I gained so far, It's also in my considerations to liquidate my stocks holdings back into cash with the speculation and fear of the arrival of Global Financial Crisis (GFC) that might be coming any time within these few years. We will see a sea of red in the figures when that arrives.

Say, you know that sharks will be coming to feed their hunger. What would you do?

1) Continue swimming in the sea.

2) Swim at the shallow water near the beach.

3) Don't go near water at all.

The Clash Of Clans Investment Strategy

Hello cool peoples! 

As inspirations/intuitions can come to a person when something is done, seen or heard. For my instance, playing Clash of Clans makes me reflect on how life currently is and how to change the fact of it. Now I will illustrate how this game can be correlated to our daily investments decision making. I will do my utmost best to make this post as interesting as I could.

Town Hall:

This is your Age/Economy. When you are young, things are cheap. You start with a with 1 or 2 barracks and few resources collectors, which you will use for battle to earn more resources for yourself to upgrade stuffs in the game. As your town hall level go higher, things become more and more expensive to upgrade. However, you can earn more resources from more of your higher resource collectors and finding richer opponent to attack.

Gold Mines:

This is your Passive Income (money you earn while doing nothing). When you are a kid, your parents provide you pocket money to spend for lunch break. Children does not realise about the importance of  passive money because they doesn't need to worry much. Sometimes people realises that passive income is important while some will put it into their bank, waiting for main income to fill them up.

Gold Storage:

This is your Savings Account. A person cannot be bringing bag filled with a million dollar to walk with them every time. They need to put it into the bank, which is safe (not totally). Because money doesn't nothing in the bank unless you are accumulating it till it's enough for you to buy something you want or need. 

Today, banks aren't safe anymore. You lose money when you put money into your savings account for over time, why? Because it doesn't fight inflation over time when interest rate rises, things gets more expensive, putting too much money in the bank is really not idea unless you are saving to buy something. You even have a chance to get robbed by others if you are not careful.

Barracks:

This is your Career/Business. In Clash of Clans, this the most common way to get resources and also to fill your bank with money so that you could use to do various things like:

Upgrading troops/spells in Laboratory for stronger troops and spells = Going from elementary schools to tertiary for a piece of regular paper, going for courses or buying reading materials to gain knowledge. 

Upgrading your Army Camp to hire more soldiers to fight for you = Expanding your business bigger.

Upgrading your Gold Mines for more passive incomes = Acquiring assets such as Property, Stocks or Bonds, Commodities or Building a Business.

Although at times, things just doesn't happen the way you wanted. While some say, it is inevitable to experience failures, failing is one of the steps to become successful. Ultimately, one has to more on after failing isn't it.

What we could is do to be like 'Ants' which kept going and never stop building their own colony. Re-strategise your base layout, build stronger defences, place strategic traps and hope for the best. Learn from the previous mistake and move on.

Continue search and defeating stronger opponents. Keep your building upgraded one by one regardless how long it takes. Continue to search and unveil hidden opportunities in the world.

 You will become an empire yourself one day. For me, I'm moving ahead. What about you?

Recent Updates

Hello and it has been a peak for me due to work.

As usual, I would make a habit to take out my book to read inside bus until I reach my destination. Although at times I would close the book and fall asleep, the reading in public transport journey has been an enriching one.

I've put the reading of 'The Power of Habit' on hold for now because it is quite technical (like what B commented before). So, I switched to another book after spending nearly 1 hour in Popular bookstore browsing every books in the Business and Finance shelves before I deciding to get this book called 'Millionaire Teacher' a few days ago.

This book is written by a private school teacher who became millionaire in his early 30s. Andrew Hallam shares his experiences through easy-to-read English using humorous descriptive words. That is really something that can keep me awake throughout my bus journeys. Once again, reading has been a pleasure to me since I started investing, I must say there's not once in my life that I have been so curious and interested in pursuing further knowledge in anything before. I'm happy and glad to see myself doing these now.

I've also started playing a game called 'Tap Titan' where you are hero who attacks big monsters from each tap on your handphone screen, earning gold to level up yourself and hire cute allies to go through stages together. When your main character reaches level 600, you can choose to use the skill 'Prestige' to restart the game fresh from the start only keeping the Artifacts you gained with you with passive boosts. Making the next run be able to go further. This gaming experience is infinite as the game will never end. Making a good time killing app especially the with the fact that it is an offline game which doesn't require any internet connections to play.

Just a silly thought, what if we can choose to 'Prestige' our life back to the beginning with artifacts that 'Increase gold gained by 200%'. Hmmm......

Next thing to update is that I've finally have a consultant (who is my friend Tommy) for my Prudential endowment policy. It really sucked that I can't reduce the monthly premium that I would have to 'save' for the the next 11 years. At least to ease things, Tommy gave a few suggestion and ultimately I think getting yearly cash back is still better than to surrender and forgo my money to Prudential for the next 11 years.

The yearly cash back cheque would be used to facilitate my monthly 'savings' to the endowment plan. which averages to $270 going out of my pocket per month rather than $500.

Valentines Day is around the week, how are you going to celebrate with your love one? I would be working :`(

Another Goal Reached

Yeah!

New goal accomplished!

Reading 5 Books - Checked :)

I've never felt so interested in learning things!

My #6 book will be The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg as seen in B's blog. the title of this book seems logical, lets see how this book can educate me in changing my daily habits that will greatly affect 'tomorrow'.

Portfolio January 2015

Month End Portfolio Update:

Actions for this month, I had sold off Capitamall Trust to get Keppel Corp to diversify my REIT holding to another hot growth prospect (read more here). Having to realise a profit of $967.74 from paper gains in Capitamall Trust, which I am very happy about.

Date                  Type Stock      Transacted Units Transacted Price (per unit)

19. January 2015 Buy      Keppel Corp         1100                 $8.10

21. January 2015 Sell      CapitaMall Trust 4000                 $2.18

Biggest Winner:

Keppel Corp - I bought this share 2 weeks ago at a price of $8.10 and then 2 days later. Keppel Corp decided to privatise Keppel REIT which had caused KC price to go up averagely $0.10 everyday due to the rebalancing of total net worth. I must say that I am very lucky to get this deal at the before the privatising announcement. (luck plays a small part)

Biggest Loser:

Ascendas Hospitality Trust - This high dividend yielding share was introduced by my friend (he vested in it as well) when I first started investing in August 2014. The share price was constantly dipping in the few recent month due to various factors. What I can do now is to wait for the dividends first and see if things would change then before deciding to cut loss from this counter and inject that capital into another counter.

Announced Dividends:

Feb 15

27 - Cache $107.30

27 - FCT $110.00

27 - Starhill $25.80

Mar 15

26 - Aimsaimp $283.00

Last year, in my Total Gain/Loss column reflected in the spreadsheet above was most in red. I'm seeing a positive gain currently from most of my stock holdings now. How I wish that I started this earlier when I already have savings sitting in the savings account where the share prices were so much better. Despite not having that kick start, I'm glad that I am on track now.

Cheers

Jeffrey

My Feel - Fraser Centrepoint Trust (FCT)

CAR STORY

Today had been a long day for accompanying my friend to service his car at Hyundai Servicing Centre at Alexandra Road (Tiong Bahru area). We reached at 10.30am and had to wait until 4pm to have his car serviced. According to him, every car must be serviced for every 10,000 km distance travelled. During the servicing, the administration rep would try to sell things saying "you need to change your battery" and stuffs like this. I don't recommend changing anything there other than doing basic servicing. Because the price is hiked due to it's award winning records and so on. Example: a shell engine oil could be bought at around $70 in public but it was sold $100+ there according to my friend (who brought to replace a better engine oil at $50+ through the internet so as not to purchase the overpriced Shell engine oil)

Since today, I couldn't help but I felt sympathy for car owners in Singapore because of the overpricing in COE, jams on the road during peak hours, having to pay ERP and still get jam, having to expend on periodical insurances, road taxes, parking fees, inspection fees, petrol, ad hoc repairs and servicing fees that may still have to wait half a day to get it serviced. I had to admit but I have plans to own a car in the future when I have a family.

MAIN TOPIC

During our wait, we walked to Anchor Point in motivation of finding Kale veggie for my juicing nutrition inside Cold Storage. Finally! I got Kale! Some more it was on a discount due to the expiry date I guess. It is very hard to find Kale over here due to it's scarcity and overloaded benefits (here). After that we walked around the shopping mall it was quite heart warming to see groups of family gathering at the atrium with an event where stage was set up for the Prom King and Prom Queen childrens were made to dress up like prince and princess to cat walk the stage, when crowd from every level are looking down cheering for them.

Fast forward ->

Finally, as my friend have gotten a Manhattan Fish Market 1-for-1 voucher when he paid his bills in the AXS machine. We went to Bedok Point to enjoy the benefit. It was nice, but I shouldn't talk too much about it because 'NPNT'. After dinner, we walked around the mall talking about which shop would continue staying in Bedok Point and which shop would close down as we noticed some of the stalls are really empty. Jon, my friend mentioned earlier that there were a few malls before Bedok Point closing down due to lack of human flow and that may be due to myth that, it is a bad location as he labelled it as "Ghost Mall". But I guess Bedok Point is now doing well since there's quite a decent human flow when it comes to food as Bedok Point has a majority of F&B tenants.

Guess what? We saw the old Sushi Tei closing down and the place is now being renovated for the opening of Saizeriya soon to come along with some Korean chicken restaurant beside it. Can't wait for Saizeriya to open as they sell some italian-western fusion food on a cheap price for a restaurant and the food are not too shabby as well.

Overall, I enjoy visiting malls managed by FCT than CMT. I didn't say that because I had sold my CMT shares. I just felt more homely and things are more organised by the managements. And somehow I feel that restaurants tenants there are generally more affordable than in other malls, not including the $10 bread shop.

What I Think

For a shopping mall, I think the most important thing is comfort. People like to go back to places that they feel comfortable with. Second is product/services, so on and so forth. I think FCT has done a great job. I have confidence that it will grow further independently, despite not being a blue chip with government backing.

What do you think?

Portfolio Update January 2015

This month, minimal activities happened as I am building up my money from monthly savings and looking for a chance to inject into the stock markets when the price is right, For POEMS users I personally think that the broker fee of $10 for 100 shares purchase is quite a waste of money. So I haven't really started using that service yet.

Recent actions: 

1) I've sold off my CapitaMall Trust to buy Keppel Corp. Why did I do that? Informations can be found on my blog post here if you are interested to find out more.

2) Cancelled off my POSB Regular Saving Plan for Nikko AM ETF after 2 months, as I wanted more control of every dollar I have in my hand.

3) Trying to reduce my Prudential Endowment Plan from $500 to $200 per month. Trying my best to work a way out to not waste any dollar in this process.

My way ahead for next month is to continue to watch the oil price, if it drops further I may continue to repeat what I did to CapitaMall Trust. Generally, my focus now would be more on the oil markets and also my health. I aim that every day I will make my own vegetable juice where I am currently exploring more in depth about health and nutritions.