Stock and Unit Trusts Big Gains and some Thoughts 25 Jan 2018

Have been busy and will only post my update on unit trusts bought using CPF OA funds.

Aberdeen Thailand Eq Fund	5,200.00	5,750.26	550.26	10.58%
First State Regional China Fund	9,600.00	10,599.19	999.19	10.41%
PineBridgeIF - Singapore Bond Fund	1,400.00	1,406.57	6.57	0.47%

The equity markets are doing well globally for developed and developing economies.  Recently I bought another 5k of the First State Regional China fund. The bond market on the other hand is lacklustre as I presume investors have been dumping bonds to ride the wild bull.  

I will pump in more when the prices dip (should be soon  as they have been rising for some time). 

The XIRR for the equity fund should be 15-20% as I first started buying the funds about 6 months ago. 

I have been buying small amounts in order not to miss the bull gains and also due to caution as nobody knows when exactly the correction will happen this year. 

I have been saving up for a warchest for the correction. 

Stocks bought with Cash 

I have also sold Venture (V03) a few days ago making a nett profit of $471.  (about $4340 -> $4811).  ~11% ROI in just a several weeks.

Transaction was made on Poems as I thought I had a prepaid account with lower fees but actually I had a custodian account. Total fees were > $50, totally not worth it considering the small amount I invested.   

My other stocks such as DBS, ST Engin and STI are doing well in the bull run. Seems nothing can stop them near-term. Even Sembcorp Ind is picking up after a lacklustre 2017. 

Bank analysts as market influencers

I have been looking at bank analysts reports which tell you to buy, sell, or hold on to certain stocks. 

I presume they are somewhat accurate as some of the stocks they recommended to buy have good fundamentals.

If they can successfully motivate the market and institutions to buy then I think it would be wise to follow along.

Their underlying incentive is probably to:

1. influence market interest to align with their own interest (e.g. they lent $ to the company or they themselves bought the stock)

2. influence wealthy clients to buy and thus suck their $ as comm fee.

3. generate interest on their own broker services.

Minimising Car Expenses

As we're coming to the end of the year, I thought it would be interesting to share how much I spend on petrol and CashCard top-ups. I drive daily to work and each day in the weekend to leisure places. 

I religiously recorded each petrol and CashCard top-up for my own analysis.

• "Litres" is amount of petrol added in one pump. I usually go for N95 full tank. 
• I used DBS Esso and the vouchers they sent for the first half of the year. After which I switched to UOB OneCard (SPC) since DBS started charging the annual fee and also I wanted to concentrate all expenses into one credit card.
• DBS Esso allows you to accumulate points for redemption of vouchers later on, hence the steep "71.xx%" discount below.
• "Nett $" is after all the applicable discounts using the station discount card and credit card and the occasional vouchers. 
• "KM" is the distance travelled since last top up. 
• "KM/L" is the distance travelled per litre of petrol -- dividing "KM" by "Litres". This calculation assumes the amount of petrol added to reach full tank all went towards travelling the "KM". 

There are a couple of "breaks" in which I didn't use the car: 1 x 2-week overseas vacation, 1 x 3-week overseas trip, 1 x 3-week ICT and 3 x weekend overseas trips. That's a total of about 65 days or 2 months. This is an unusual year in which I had quite a lot of "breaks".

Average cost per month is $1349.41 / 10 months = ~ $135 / month which is slightly higher than my average ez-link card consumption per month (about $120) in the past.

Date	Litres	$/litre	Nett $	Discount	KM	KM/L
2017-01-07	31.84	$2.060	$54.43	17.00%	459.50	14.43
2017-01-22	33.04	$2.060	$56.48	17.00%	441.60	13.37
2017-02-04	33.25	$2.110	$58.23	17.00%	571.70	17.19
2017-02-18	33.71	$2.110	$59.03	17.00%	500.60	14.85
2017-03-14	31.83	$2.090	$55.22	17.00%	441.50	13.87
2017-03-31	23.94	$2.090	$36.54	26.98%
2017-04-10	32.35	$2.090	$56.13	16.99%
2017-04-20	29.42	$2.120	$51.76	17.00%	425.80	14.47
2017-05-01	33.03	$2.120	$58.12	17.00%	448.60	13.58
2017-05-11	29.93	$2.100	$52.17	16.99%	416.20	13.91
2017-05-23	31.60	$2.120	$55.61	17.00%	493.30	15.61
2017-06-17	31.25	$2.090	$54.20	17.01%	429.80	13.75
2017-06-28	33.82	$2.070	$58.10	17.00%	467.40	13.82
2017-07-08	26.33	$2.090	$15.68	71.51%	378.10	14.36
2017-07-19	34.21	$2.090	$50.77	28.99%	478.60	13.99
2017-08-02	34.64	$2.110	$52.12	28.68%	456.70	13.19
2017-08-28	33.76	$2.110	$50.54	29.04%	487.10	14.43
2017-09-08	33.97	$2.140	$51.79	28.75%	477.90	14.07
2017-09-20	33.69	$2.170	$52.13	28.70%	499.10	14.81
2017-10-03	33.03	$2.180	$58.20	19.17%	490.40	14.85
2017-10-13	31.68	$2.180	$58.71	14.99%	505.00	15.94
2017-10-24	34.78	$2.180	$55.50	26.80%	468.50	13.47
2017-11-04	34.01	$2.210	$60.87	19.00%	485.50	14.28
2017-11-14	31.22	$2.230	$56.19	19.30%	474.40	15.19
2017-11-18	12.17	$2.230	$23.33	14.01%	178.50	14.67
2017-12-30	34.25	$2.210	$57.56	23.95%	497.20	14.52

CashCard Top-up

I hope I didn't miss out any transaction. I only started to use the vCashCard towards the end of the year and only if I can remember to pull out the CashCard before passing through an ERP gantry. 

Average per month = $850 / 10 months = $85 / month

Moving on, I will avoid the city area as much as possible to save on ERP fees. 

Date	Amount added
2017-01-07	$50.00
2017-01-27	$50.00
2017-02-11	$50.00
2017-03-11	$50.00
2017-04-01	$50.00
2017-04-15	$50.00
2017-04-22	$50.00
2017-05-05	$50.00
2017-05-19	$50.00
2017-06-16	$50.00
2017-07-07	$50.00
2017-09-02	$50.00
2017-09-15	$50.00
2017-10-16	$50.00
2017-11-12	$50.00
2017-12-29	$50.00
2017-12-28	$50.00	Vcashcard