Dear Readers,
Thank you for coming here.
It is the end of the month, which means it is time for another monthly Net-Worth update.
Net-Worth increase from last month: ~17K SGD
The increase was mainly due to capital gain from overseas stock market, and additional CPF contribution from my leave encasement last month.
For stock market, the increase was mainly from China market. For the World market, the recent fall of the market was more or less offset by the strengthened USD against SGD, as of yesterday. So the fall today (Feb 26 2020) was not considered.
I was quite surprised by the increase in our Net-Worth, since I did not have my salary this month. Due to the virus, my offer and on-boarding was delayed at least to next month. The work I delivered this month will be considered as free-lance. Hopefully, I will get paid later. No big deal if I wont.
Investment: 7.83% annualized return, incl. dividend
Compared
to the annualized return of 6.04% last month, it is an increase.
I have no idea why China Market is increasing despite the virus.
As mentioned in my previous entry "Basics 03: My investment journey and outcome", we have stopped putting money into the market in the 2nd half of 2019. We are not sure what to do now and I really do not have much time to think about it. So I guess we will just wait and see.
Till the next time.
Wednesday, February 26, 2020
Friday, February 21, 2020
The real meaning of "Commitment"
Dear Readers,
Thank you for coming here.
From my failed attempt to publish a big blog entry, which I described in my previous entry, I did manage to extract one view point. I want to share it with you in this entry.
The takeaway is that "Commitment" means doing all you can to achieve your goal. While everyone knows that, few can grasp the real meaning of it in different context and even fewer can exercise it all the time in all circumstances.
While it would be quite impossible to list out all actions we need to take in different situations to "do all we can", below are the ones that I can remember I have failed to take. And I have definitely suffered the consequences, some of which I am afraid I still have not realized. Of the ones I do realize, the latest is the loss of a 300KSGD+ job offer.
So here comes the "not exhaustive" list. "Doing all we can" means:
Thank you for coming here.
From my failed attempt to publish a big blog entry, which I described in my previous entry, I did manage to extract one view point. I want to share it with you in this entry.
The takeaway is that "Commitment" means doing all you can to achieve your goal. While everyone knows that, few can grasp the real meaning of it in different context and even fewer can exercise it all the time in all circumstances.
While it would be quite impossible to list out all actions we need to take in different situations to "do all we can", below are the ones that I can remember I have failed to take. And I have definitely suffered the consequences, some of which I am afraid I still have not realized. Of the ones I do realize, the latest is the loss of a 300KSGD+ job offer.
So here comes the "not exhaustive" list. "Doing all we can" means:
- Accessing all the potential risks beforehand
- Having a clear mind on the options you have and others have going forward and make a action plan that considers both
- Never assume
- Never allow yourself to be complacent
- Conducting self-assessment and reflection all the time
- Staying humble and attentive
- Asking for necessary advice, even from people you do not like or even respect
- Never listening to any advice without assessing the interest of the people who gave them
- Making your own decisions and be fully responsible for them
- Figuring out the next 3 or 5 steps
- Taking the risk and liability all on yourself if that is the best way to achieve your goal
- Not allowing "small matters" to pull your off the right track
- ... ...
Thursday, February 20, 2020
Thinking vs Writing
Dear Readers,
Thank you for coming here.
"Writing is not the outcome of thinking; it is the medium in which thinking takes place"
-Quote of the day
I had been thinking about a big blog entry on a somewhat controversial topic since last Sunday. For some time, I was really into the logic and conclusion of it. I even thought quite a bit about the structure of the entry.
However, when I started putting it down on paper (well, on screen) yesterday, the more I wrote, the less the whole thing appealed to me. The logic did not sound as exciting; The conclusion seemed boring; The whole issue felt like a specific case of another widely discussed topic.
Right before I stopped writing, I was literally asking myself how come it interested me that much and how come I did not see its "uninteresting" side until then.
Maybe I was tunnel-visioned by my emotional state initially; Maybe there was some perspective that I later forgot about; Maybe I did not manage to pick up the conflicts in my logic or the similarity of the issue with other topics in my initial thinking.
Whatever the reason, I believe writing it down as soon as possible will solve the problem to the extend possible.
So this is my strong suggestion to you, my dear Readers!
- If you have some ideas, write them down as soon as possible. It could be just the key points. This will help you:
Thank you for coming here.
"Writing is not the outcome of thinking; it is the medium in which thinking takes place"
-Quote of the day
I had been thinking about a big blog entry on a somewhat controversial topic since last Sunday. For some time, I was really into the logic and conclusion of it. I even thought quite a bit about the structure of the entry.
However, when I started putting it down on paper (well, on screen) yesterday, the more I wrote, the less the whole thing appealed to me. The logic did not sound as exciting; The conclusion seemed boring; The whole issue felt like a specific case of another widely discussed topic.
Right before I stopped writing, I was literally asking myself how come it interested me that much and how come I did not see its "uninteresting" side until then.
Maybe I was tunnel-visioned by my emotional state initially; Maybe there was some perspective that I later forgot about; Maybe I did not manage to pick up the conflicts in my logic or the similarity of the issue with other topics in my initial thinking.
Whatever the reason, I believe writing it down as soon as possible will solve the problem to the extend possible.
So this is my strong suggestion to you, my dear Readers!
- If you have some ideas, write them down as soon as possible. It could be just the key points. This will help you:
- Record down all your perspectives and logics at that time
- More importantly, test your thinking through writing
Sunday, February 9, 2020
Basics 03: My investment journey and outcome
Dear Readers,
Thank you for coming here.
This is going to be the third post in the "Basics" series. And I am going to briefly describe my investment journey and the path we intend to take going forward.
A bit of history
My investment journey really started from beginning of 2018.
Before that, I was buying stock based on what I heard without knowing anything else.
Thank you for coming here.
This is going to be the third post in the "Basics" series. And I am going to briefly describe my investment journey and the path we intend to take going forward.
A bit of history
My investment journey really started from beginning of 2018.
Before that, I was buying stock based on what I heard without knowing anything else.
Not surprisingly, the stocks I bought did not perform well. One of them remains the counter with biggest loss both in percentage and absolute value after almost 3 years, even though the amount I invested was very very small compared to my portfolio now. Just an idea, the stock price has dropped 62% by end of Jan 2020.
Coming to 2017, I switched to a stable job from management consulting. After the initial few months, I started to have spare time. And the pay was enough for us to have savings every month. Combined with the fact that stock market was doing super well in 2017, we decided that it was high time for us to take investment seriously.
We started by reading quite a bit. Special thanks to "Hardware Zone" "Money Mind" forum, especially the two active "Teachers" in that forum, "BBCWatcher" and "Shiny Things". We find the theories of the two teachers agreeable given our circumstances and the time we wanted to put into investing.
So we were quick to decide on our investment strategy:
Take a long term approach and avoid timing the market.
The way we do it:
Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) into World ETFs on a monthly basis
Specifically, we decided to divide our investment into two parts based on the currency our cash was in:
- SGD: DCA into DevWorld ETF (80%) [IWDA] and SGD ETF (20%) [ES3]
- RMB (on-shore): DCA into A-share ETF
I thought the strategy was good and I still think so now. However, the execution was, well, pretty bad.
First, we first bought ES3 at the beginning of 2018 and soon afterwards, the stock market went into correction mode.
Initially, every time we saw a drop in ES3 prices, we treated it as an opportunity to buy. And the more it dropped, the bigger amount we invested, trying to bring our average price down.
Before we realized it, our war chest run dry around May 2018 and we had not started buying IWDA. By the way, May 2018 was way before the ES3 reached the bottom at the end of 2018 or the very beginning of 2019.
Then we decided that it was more important to widen our portfolio. So we stopped investing in ES3 and started in IWDA, trying to come back to 80/20 split.
So that was pretty much what happened in 2018. Our portfolio performance in 2018 was btw -13% and -1%, with no month with positive performance.
Coming to 2019, we pretty much stick to the "DCA into IWDA" plan, well for the first few months. And as the stock market started to recover, our portfolio performance finally entered into the positive area.
However, as the market continued to go up, we started to feel IWDA was getting too expensive and we again violated our strategy and stopped buying in the 2nd half of 2019. Well, the market continued to go higher.
So now we have some cash. And our portfolio time-weighted performance was ~6% for 2019.
Going forward
From a long-term perspective, we would like to stick to our strategy and benefit from the development of the world.
Coming to 2017, I switched to a stable job from management consulting. After the initial few months, I started to have spare time. And the pay was enough for us to have savings every month. Combined with the fact that stock market was doing super well in 2017, we decided that it was high time for us to take investment seriously.
We started by reading quite a bit. Special thanks to "Hardware Zone" "Money Mind" forum, especially the two active "Teachers" in that forum, "BBCWatcher" and "Shiny Things". We find the theories of the two teachers agreeable given our circumstances and the time we wanted to put into investing.
So we were quick to decide on our investment strategy:
Take a long term approach and avoid timing the market.
The way we do it:
Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) into World ETFs on a monthly basis
Specifically, we decided to divide our investment into two parts based on the currency our cash was in:
- SGD: DCA into DevWorld ETF (80%) [IWDA] and SGD ETF (20%) [ES3]
- RMB (on-shore): DCA into A-share ETF
I thought the strategy was good and I still think so now. However, the execution was, well, pretty bad.
First, we first bought ES3 at the beginning of 2018 and soon afterwards, the stock market went into correction mode.
Initially, every time we saw a drop in ES3 prices, we treated it as an opportunity to buy. And the more it dropped, the bigger amount we invested, trying to bring our average price down.
Before we realized it, our war chest run dry around May 2018 and we had not started buying IWDA. By the way, May 2018 was way before the ES3 reached the bottom at the end of 2018 or the very beginning of 2019.
Then we decided that it was more important to widen our portfolio. So we stopped investing in ES3 and started in IWDA, trying to come back to 80/20 split.
So that was pretty much what happened in 2018. Our portfolio performance in 2018 was btw -13% and -1%, with no month with positive performance.
Coming to 2019, we pretty much stick to the "DCA into IWDA" plan, well for the first few months. And as the stock market started to recover, our portfolio performance finally entered into the positive area.
However, as the market continued to go up, we started to feel IWDA was getting too expensive and we again violated our strategy and stopped buying in the 2nd half of 2019. Well, the market continued to go higher.
So now we have some cash. And our portfolio time-weighted performance was ~6% for 2019.
Going forward
From a long-term perspective, we would like to stick to our strategy and benefit from the development of the world.
Short term, I really do not know.
For a start, with all the changes and uncertainties with my career, we intend to keep some cash.
Secondly, my wife is abssessed now with some A-share active investment course. She has paid quite a bit tuition and is really eager to try. I don't know how to stop her. Guess I will just let her try it out.
However, whatever we do, you will read it in this blog.
Till next time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)