Note 14: August Update

In the month of August, the portfolio suffers a slight decline, but with all the expected issues around trade taking place. I believe that this is to be expected. There seems to be more buying opportunities but I won’t be dipping my toes unless there’s a really compelling reasons and an overly negative sentiments. I believe most investors are also unsure of what’s going to happen as well. My biggest concern is the fear that US market will hit the bear market before we hit our bulls. That will also means we might be facing lacklustre performance for more than 10 years. Singapore market Singapore market has suffered a slight decline, mainly with some of the declines coming from Singtel and properties related shars. My Singapore portfolio is not a 100% value focus fund and it has unfortunately decline more than the index. As a result, I am of the idea that I will need to sell heavily before I embark on a value approach. It’s in a 15% cash situation as well, I think that is a comfortable range for me, with regards to this portfolio. At the same time, the Singapore portfolio is actually a portfolio consisting of my investments in Singapore shares plus my SRS accounts. Over my next 10 years or so, my plan is to transfer the investment into SRS, either by liquidating the shares and putting it. Kinda silly, but I feel more comfortable knowing that at this stage, I have more than enough portion of my investments in Singapore and there’s no reasons for me to keep putting more into Singapore.

Singapore Portfolio
	Start of year	YTD	% Performance
	SGD	SG SGD	STI	SG SGD YTD	MOM Port
Jan-18	227,708.6	231,150.20	3.8%	1.5%	#DIV/0!
Feb-18	227,708.6	229,668.96	3.6%	0.9%	-0.6%
Mar-18	227,708.6	227,103.15	1.0%	-0.3%	-1.1%
Apr-18	227,708.6	232,084.87	7.0%	1.9%	2.2%
May-18	227,708.6	225,337.60	3.0%	-1.0%	-2.9%
Jun-18	227,708.6	215,468.62	-2.2%	-5.4%	-4.4%
Jul-18	227,708.6	219,450.08	-0.2%	-3.6%	1.8%
Aug-18	227,708.6	216,822.59	-2.5%	-4.8%	-1.2%

Hong Kong & Greater China

The portfolio has so far outperform the market index. I would like to believe that this is due to the value approach for this fund. Among the funds, Hong Kong and Greater China is the 100% value approach fund. It took me a while to build it to a 15 stock to 20 stocks portfolio, all focus on assets valuation. I will share with readers next time on my thoughts on this.

The increase mainy comes from a few of the shares being recognised for it’s value, mainly Swire Pacific. Hopefully, the melt up will continue.

China HK (HKD)
	Start of year	YTD	% Performance
	CN HK (SGD)	CH HK SGD	Hang Seng	Dragon SGD YTD	MOM
Jan-18	49,777.4	46,179.31	10.6%	-7.2%	4.9%
Feb-18	49,777.4	46,413.42	4.3%	-6.8%	10.6%
Mar-18	49,777.4	51,034.04	2.2%	2.5%	10.0%
Apr-18	49,777.4	51,319.75	3.9%	3.1%	0.6%
May-18	49,777.4	53,544.07	3.5%	7.6%	4.3%
Jun-18	49,777.4	52,703.63	-1.5%	5.9%	-1.6%
Jul-18	49,777.4	53,371.44	-2.0%	7.2%	1.3%
Aug-18	49,777.4	53,632.78	-4.7%	7.7%	0.5%

Looking at

·         Dickson

·         Chen Hsong

·         International Art Optics

·         Wing Tai

·         Future Bright

·         Rosedale

·         SIS International

·         Keck Seng

Malaysia (Nasi Lemak)

The biggest heartbreak among my investments, the Malaysia stock market doesn’t seems to be doing well at well with all it’s internal turmoil. However, I am still very optimistic about the market there. With a stable domestic economy, companies that are asset rich and having access to a self substaining economy. Malaysia businesses are what I called “Bu4 Dao3 Ong1”, a kind of punching bag which will always bounce back. The management in Chinese managed companies are also very conservative, and to a certain extent, more upfront about the business. The challenge is to look for such companies.

This Nasi Lemak portfolio has underperformed also due to a mixture of reasons other than the political issues, there was a counter insider the portfolio which doesn’t fit the value approach and it’s more of a bet on demographics of the world. I didn’t do a proper due diligence and went in with it.  As such, it costs me badly. At the same time, there aren’t enough counter for it to be truly efficient. There are only 4 stocks at the moment and not extremely ideal for my strategy.

Nasi Lemak (Local Currency)
	Start of year	YTD	% Performance
	SGD	NL SGD	KLCI	Nasi Lemak SGD YTD	MOM
Jan-18	9,828.4	9,825.05	4.3%	0.0%	-4.3%
Feb-18	9,828.4	9,702.63	2.7%	-1.3%	-7.5%
Mar-18	9,828.4	8,864.60	4.9%	-9.8%	-9.6%
Apr-18	9,828.4	9,032.05	5.4%	-8.1%	2.5%
May-18	9,828.4	6,113.52	-0.5%	-37.8%	-28.3%
Jun-18	9,828.4	8,653.44	-3.0%	-12.0%	40.7%
Jul-18	9,828.4	8,424.41	0.3%	-14.3%	-1.8%
Aug-18	9,828.4	8,220.66	1.4%	-16.4%	-1.7%

I am looking at

·         Keck Seng

·         Cheetah

·         Golden State

·         Poh Kong

·         Gul Holdings

·         Kumpulan

·         Berjaya Asset

Vice Portfolio

The Merchants of Death(MOD) portfolio decline due to the concern whether will PMI be able to sustain it’s earnings in the longer term. My view is that PMI will definitely be having issues to maintain their price leadership and high growth, but with such a great brand and system in place, the business will still run nicely for a very long time. I did a calculation yesterday and was surprised that their margins are higher compared to Apple. It speaks a lot about how profitable is this business if you manage to do all the right things. There are companies who will never be anywhere near them even with the right things. The dividends are slowly tricking in, giving a much better warchest in 2-3 years time. At this time, this portfolio has 4 tobacco shares inside, and I am not intending to add another MOD category in. Such quality companies usually would come cheap, and we have to wait.

Vice
	Start of year	YTD	% Performance
	SGD	Vice SGD		Vice SGD YTD	MOM
Jan-18	15,591.4	$   15,455.76		-0.9%	-0.9%
Feb-18	15,591.4	$   14,874.48		-4.6%	-3.8%
Mar-18	15,591.4	$   14,795.76		-5.1%	-0.5%
Apr-18	15,591.4	$   14,157.32		-9.2%	-4.3%
May-18	15,591.4	$   13,983.42		-10.3%	-1.2%
Jun-18	15,591.4	$   14,371.44		-7.8%	2.8%
Jul-18	15,591.4	$   14,997.44		-3.8%	4.4%
Aug-18	15,591.4	$   14,217.06		-8.8%	-5.2%

Looking at

Beer

·         Heineken

·         Heineken Berhad

·         Carlsberg

·         Carlsberg Berhad

·         ABV

·         San Miguel

·         Thai Bev

Alcohol

·         Diageo

·         Pernod

·         Remy Martin

·         Suntory

·         Brown-Forman

Overall

Aug has decreased from a month on month perspective due to the reasons discussed above. I am trying to evolve my approach to a more focus method for my main portfolio. Hopefully, this will bore well into the future.

Total
	Start of year	YTD	% Performance
	SGD	Total SGD		Portfolio YTD	MOM
Jan-18	302,905.8	302,610.3		-0.1%	#REF!
Feb-18	302,905.8	300,659.5		-0.7%	-0.6%
Mar-18	302,905.8	301,797.6		-0.4%	0.4%
Apr-18	302,905.8	306,594.0		1.2%	1.6%
May-18	302,905.8	298,978.6		-1.3%	-2.5%
Jun-18	302,905.8	291,197.1		-3.9%	-2.6%
Jul-18	302,905.8	296,243.4		-2.2%	1.7%
Aug-18	302,905.8	292,893.1		-3.3%	-1.1%