OCBC Dividend too

 Another choice to make here: OCBC is offering a cash or stock option.

Similarly to Mapletree NAC, I think cash is the way to go for this time too as I think OCBC is not that undervalued too. Offer price is $11.93 and current price is $12.40. We might see some short term weakness in price due to the lockdown so not too inclined for this. 

Mapletree NAC Dividend- Cash or Stock?

 Great to have the dividend in- but here comes the choice to choose between cash or shares or both.

Personally, I will be inclined towards cash as I think $1.04 isn't very attractive for me given the recent lockdown which will affect REITs in the short term and inflation concerns in the US. Interest rates are also concerning. Price now is $1.06 which is only a 1.5 cent premium. Will skip this time!

Accumulating Suntec Reit

 Thought this was interesting to see the counterparties for now- entered again at price 1.46, my second tranche. We shall see again..

Cheers!

Suntec Reit for Now

 Another bullet out to Suntec Reit this time! Revisited my ideas in my post here where I wrote a writeup about it and I am still hopeful for its performance. For now I am just slowly adding stuff which I feel are overvalued, in this case Suntec Reit below NAV of $2+. Fingers crossed!

Starting my Monday morning

 So I am breaking from my hiatus with a buy order here, I am thinking it is undervalued now but we will see if I am correct. I have previously written on Mapletree NAC but I just thought today was the right price. $1!

Let me know if you bought too!

CPF Top Ups Again

 Another leap of faith- you can refer my very first in this blogpost back in February.

A few reasons mainly:

1) Uncertainty is really widespread now and I believe stock market are pretty risky now

2) Interest rates are dead low and even yields are suppressed (eg. bank dividends being capped, profits dropping)

3) Medisave gives me a solid 5% for now amidst such turbulent times without me having to worry and/or bother about it

4) Reduction of income tax for this year (FY19/20)- I admit this is the sweetest point here.

I am also more inclined towards Medisave because I am minimally assured that I am (partially?!) covered for medical expenses. Still money in my pocket, albeit money with restrictions.

What do you think?

Having A Look at DBS in Tableau

 Hope everybody's doing well!

I thought it would be fun to construct a heat map of DBS- this was a short piece of work in Tableau.

Firstly, the fundamental premise here is that we are using 3 years worth of DBS stock data- for simplicity's sake, I used the adjusted close price (to account for dividends) from Yahoo Finance on a monthly basis- 1st Jan, 1st Feb, 1st Mar and so on. The y-axis here is the month that the position in DBS was entered and the x-axis is the month where the position was exited. . Furthermore, I used CAGR as a benchmark to gauge the performance of the stock between the time of buying and the time of selling. Feel free to comment how I can improve my little analysis here!

As we can see here, entering a position of a longer duration generally outperforms shorter duration positions (more green than red). But interestingly, shorter duration positions also produce higher profits (green of higher intensity)- which does make sense too. Another observation is that entering in 2018 period will generally yield negative CAGR (red data).

Happy to hear from you!

OCBC Scrip Dividend Again

 It has been a long time since I posted, and virus numbers seem to be improving. Praying that this will persist. 

It is that time again of the year where it's scrip dividend news!

I had a look at my previous post where I wrote about the scrip dividend last year. Issue price was $9.57 and market price then was about $10.49 (~8.77% discount).

The stats for now is an issue price of $7.81 and market price is about $8.56 on Sep 4 closing (~8.76%). I wasn't very enthusiastic about the last scrip because I thought the price was rather high then. I will be entering for this as $7.81 is a pretty good price to accumulate (bearing in mind the 52-week low is $7.80).

How about you?

Negative Oil Prices

What exciting times we live in... I was on the car when I saw oil prices going to -$37 and thinking to myself what on earth is going on?

In a nutshell, the market has determined that the output cuts by OPEC could not make up for the detrimental loss of demand which by the way was quite a record in its own right- cutting daily output by 9.7 million barrels. Unfortunately, this unprecedented record cuts were soon accompanied by the unprecedented price drop, plunging more than 100% yesterday.

Personally, I don't invest in oil and don't really want the roller coaster ride given that its volatility is very very extreme. But I think the lessons can be carried forward to my areas of interest in the stock market.

Recently, the oil price drops might have found its victims in the oil business- one of which was Hin Leong holdings which were reported to have suffered financial losses due huge drops in oil prices. This in turn led to a flurry of action as banks who have lent $$ to Hin Leong were at risk of losing money. I think what is worrying here is the vicious cycle that is currently happening, where oil prices drop -> lead to oil companies suffering -> banks might then suffer losses if they can't recover the debt.

Secondly, this detrimental loss of demand that the oil market is showing us can be extended to the general market, so I think stocks in general will have some pretty red going forward as less demand should mean less profits and thus lower prices.

Actually I think equity markets are still ok, but I was expecting them to crash every more. But we will see again.

STI 2560.98

(-36.87/-1.42%)

P.S. A nice picture of an oil pump to soothe my nerves haha..

Circuit Breaker Musings

Hope everybody is doing well amidst some turbulent times we are seeing now.

I was personally quite taken by this scene near my office yesterday night to see so many taxis queuing up the whole night and little customers in sight. I guess everybody is all working from home or driving (if possible) so the lack of supply of customers.

Economy is definitely taking a toll locally in a shutdown as all business are very affected and our government piling in money which is a very nice albeit small comfort in such troubling times.

Yay for this! 

I guess it is a good boost to my war chest now and nice perk to everybody now, press on!

More to the markets: as of now I have been really influenced by this take here, when will we see aggregate demand return to pre-virus levels? I think this is really the fundamental reason coupled with unemployment is why I believe we will see more red in the short term.

But most importantly, let's stay safe!

Thoughts about REITs

I read the article recently about commercial tenants and restaurants being able to hold off paying rent for 6 months if they are unable to do so. So the proposed piece of legislation means that tenants can defer their payments after 6 months. Although I am fairly confident of a good recovery then, I think it will be bad in the short term. In this outbreak, it is pretty likely that most tenants are unable to meet their rental obligations and they will use this to better manage their cashflow.

Therefore, unless the government comes in to fill this gap by supporting REITs, if REITs are forced to swallow this bitter pill, I think the hit in the short term would be pretty bad.

So far the movement of REITs is quite close to STI but it might deviate towards lower grounds. I am guessing REITs might start to raise cash through new debt or new issuance of units. Either way, not gonna be good in the interim, but nevertheless a good long term bet.