Circuit Breaker Day 23

Yes, another week passed and I survived. 

Lack of exercise, fresh air, human face to face interaction, working longer hours from home makes me feel like I am becoming one with my house. 

In this unprecedented times, thank God for everything. My company did not initiate any retrenchment exercise nor pay cut to employees. Thank God that Singapore Circuit Breaker seems to be stabilizing, with the worker dormitory new cases seemingly to be dropping for the last 4 days. Pray that this soft lock down will not be extended beyond 01-Jun.

On another note, picked up Amara and China Everbright Water last week. Postponement of AGM (Include approval of final dividend) due to SG Circuit Breaker extension presents me with opportunity to load more for the 6% dividend given the low price.

Eagle H Trust saga continues. Waiting for the outcome of debt restructuring. Last update is Restructuring and financial advisor has been appointed. With 17 out of 18 hotel on freehold, I do not believe the value of this Reit will be wiped to zero. Hopefully, they may propose selling the problematic Queen Mary Hotel ship, use the money to cut some debt and resume trading of shares.

Can't wait to travel oversea for holiday...

Stay Home, Stay Safe everyone 😀

Circuit Breaker Day 16

Yes, I managed to survive working from home.....barely. On a positive side, there is more bonding time with baby and on the flip side, I get the full audience of his orchestra singing 😋. Listening in to PM LHL 5pm speech yesterday, circuit breaker (CB) will be extended for 4 more weeks till Jun 1, 2020. At the same time, due to the CB extension, school holidays will be brought forward to May 5. Immediately after the announcement, there was a flood of updates on Facebook that parents are disclaiming they are going crazy. I sort of understand their feeling...😭

Source: Awesome Singapore Facebook

In addition, there will be a tightening measures of what will be considered essential service. Out goes our beloved Bubble Tea stalls, cakes shop and hairdressing services. As typical Singaporean, after the announcement, bubble tea lovers immediately converged on their favourite stalls to satisfy their craving before they shut the door at 2359 for 1 month. You can probably not imagine how the queue can snake around the premises while people maintain their social distancing of 1 meter apart.

On a side note, pick up another small batch of HPH Trust last week. China has started opening up. Guess the port utilization rate should get better from now onwards. 

Can't wait for this CB period to be over. Or very soon, we all need to eat grass...and be Robinson Crusoe look-a-like.

Source: Awesome Singapore Facebook

Source: SGAG Facebook

Stay Home, Stay Safe everyone 😀

Circuit Breaker Day 5

With the soft lock-down Circuit Breaker in place this week, I began my first ever 100% Work From Home experience. The feeling is great though, get to wake up slightly later, cut down commuting time by 3 hours a day, see my baby boy 24/7, tracking his growth day by day, and more efficient use of time (I can get to monitor the market at the same time I am working now).

The down side? Plenty as I found out slowly day by day

• Getting banks to do annual credit card fee waiver is just not as easy. In the past, the CS can do it on the spot, but now with this COVID-19 situation and reduction of manpower, I have to log into internet banking to send them an email for waiver request and wait for 3-5 working days to get a reply (-.-)!
• Resetting internet banking account is also just not as easy. I got lock out of the system after failing the physical token OTP 3 times. A call to the bank CS tell me that they will contact me later today as they are having a high surge volume now and my case is not an emergency situation. Fair enough. (Two hours pass).... no call back and the bank is closing soon. I called them back again and insist they help me reset on the spot. Problem solved in 5 mins.... (-.-)!
• Faced the daily challenge of preventing neighbors from activating the police due to loud volume of baby "singing". Hands down to mommy who face this every single day
• Work kept being interrupted by baby needs. This just means that I need to work longer than usual to finish the same task.

Well, managed to picked up IREIT Global at a yield of 10% when I saw the news that CDL and Tikehau has increased their stake this week.

COVID-19 situation seems to be getting worse in Singapore. Just today, saw the news that NEA requires everyone to wear mask before you can enter market. Even on public transport, wearing of mask will become mandatory.

Everyone, please do your part. Do not go out unless necessary. Stay Home, Stay Safe.

1Q 2020 Investment Strategy Update

Wow, where do I even begin, with such an exiting end to 1Q 2020 where numerous records are literally broken. COVID-19 pandemic and the OPEC Russia oil price war provided the one-two KO punch needed to jolt the market into a massive selloff, where it was widely reported investors dumping equities for liquidity. Program trading doesn't help either as triggers after triggers are hit and programs executed the algorithm they are programmed for. Huge swings became the new norm in the recent 4 weeks.

DJI ended at 21917, a drop of 6621 points (-23.20%) compared to 4Q 2019. For Singapore, STI ended at 2481, an decrease of 741 points (-23.00%) compared to last quarter. All it took was 19 trading days for DJI to fall from 29551 to 23553, turning over from a bull market to a bear market in a flash. For Singapore, STI took longer at 38 trading days. Both records are unprecedented in the time it took for the changeover.

So among this chaos, where do I stand? What have I done? Well, for starters, I don't do leverage for investment, so I do not need to sell my stocks for cash or worried about margin calls. I will say I am more a long term investors, with this market sell down, a lot of equities are attractive once again for buy ins. While I do have offloaded some positions before the sell down, they are counters not belonging to Reits or Business Trust. Lastly, USA market equities once again looks attractive. The COVID-19 situation in USA is dire, mainly because of the federal White House inaction (or President Trump's incompetency). I believe there is still 1-2 weeks more to go before we will see the virus cases peak in USA. Well enough blabbering, let's get on to sharing what I have done in 1Q:

Transaction 1: Sold all Marriott shares in January.

Well, once the COVID-19 outbreak is reported in China and I saw Trump's handling of the situation, I hesitate no longer and cash in all. Enough said.

Transaction 2: Bought back 4 batches of Marriott shares in March, from $108 down to $67.

Marriott is an asset light model company who derived their revenue from platform service fees. Being the No 1 hotel in room numbers worldwide, they have been catastrophically impacted by this COVID-19 pandemic which see their hotel occupancy dropped from 70% to 10%. $100 looks to me being an attractive price to enter into as they have dropped 28% form their peak. With dividend and share buyback program, my intention is just going to buy and wait to ride out this pandemic episode.

Transaction 3: Bought 2 batches of Man Utd shares in March, lowest being $13.79.

I am a Man Utd fan and the team looks promising for a Champion League spot should Man City be banned in the next season from participating. Prices have dropped to a level unseen before, why not buy now and sell later when EPL resume or when prices got back to $20+ level. Who knows, some Saudi consortium may come in and acquire Man Utd from the Glazers family?

Transaction 4: Bought 2 batches of Danaher shares in March.

I have known Danaher since I am part of their subsidiary company back when I first started work. This is a cash-flow generating company, using their positive cash-flow to buy companies and conduct lean manufacturing to cut out excess wastage. They have been transiting to a life science and diagnostic company since they have split off their instrumentation arm into Fortive and recently their dental arm into Envista. After a 20% drop, price look good for entering. Take a look at their past 10 years stock price chart and you will know why I am keen on this counter.

Transaction 5: Bought 1 batches of Apple shares in March.

Well, this one is everyone's favorite counter. Pipeline of new phones and gadgets looks promising. Company has been moving away from just selling phone hardware to also selling services. After a 23% drop in prices, I decide to buy a small stake to wait and ride out this pandemic situation.

Transaction 6: Bought 2 batches of Eagle H Trust shares in March.

I see the recent price drop as panic selling, with the hotel industry in USA being devastated by the COVID-19. For this counter, all the hotels are free-hold assets with the exception of Queen Mary. I find there is no reason price should crash to this low. Decided to buy in 2 small batches as the prices are just too irresistible. Well, now this counter is suspended as the hotel sponsor has defaulted on rent. Can't blame them though, no income because of this COVID-19 issue, how to pay rent? BoA, why can't you just waive the contract breaches for this period and not call in the loan. Lets see how this plays out. At current price, may decide to load more once suspension is lifted.

Transaction 7: Bought 1 batch of HPH Trust shares in March.

Well, price has dropped to an all time low and I don't see that the HK ports and China ports can get more worse than this situation. In addition, their debt reduction initiative is ending in Dec 2021. Planning to buy now and hold for situation to improve.

That is all for now. See you all in Q2 2020 update and thank you for reading thus far.