In one of the first few posts of this blog, I highlighted the superiority of "Asset Allocation" compared to "Market Timing" and "Security Selection".
The reason against Security Selection is that most of us, myself included aren't half as good as Warren Buffet, who has a flair for analysing businesses. However, during the start of this year, I began investing in specific companies again, as I believe I have found a group of people who can analyse companies with reasonable success and accuracy.
My first encounter with this group/company was around 2011 where I attended one of their preview talks with a friend. As both of us were still studying back then, we did not have much capital to enter into their programme. Fast forward to 3 years later in early 2014, we happen to meet this group in another investment talk by chance, and they were talking about the same strategies they told us back then. The advantage we have of course, is that we were able to verify if those companies they identified 3 years back did well today. The answer is a definite yes. So during this talk, we decided to invest in additional companies mentioned by them, justified both by quantitative and qualitative reasons.
In April, both my friend and I finally decided to enter into their programme to learn their methods of analysing companies. Personally, the methods used can be found generally in Value Investing books/websites. However, the more important reason is to have access to the list of companies they themselves are evaluating, from which I can make my own decisions based on their analysis. Most of us simply to not have the time to do to filter quality companies ourselves.
As of now, I have stopped my monthly contribution to unit trusts to accumulate my opportunity fund. Will "sell in May and go away" situation arise this year? Seriously... no one knows.
Wednesday, 30 April 2014
Wednesday, 9 April 2014
How long should you take to repay your CPF housing loan
I chanced upon an interesting article in one of the blogs I follow, ASSI. The argument is that you should take your time to repay your housing loan.
The example used is a $100,000 HDB loan. Say you have $100,000 in your CPF account, should you pay the full $100,000 loan in one shot or take 10 years to repay it fully?
Take 10 years to pay (amortization)
The monthly repayment will be $947.25. Assuming your monthly CPF OA contribution is this amount for the next 10 years., your CPF will not have any net loan deduction for this 10 year period. The ending CPF balance at the end of 10 years is $126,877.
The total interest paid is $13,670
Empty your CPF account and pay the full loan amount of $100,000
You decided to save on the interest payment of $13,670 and pay the full amount upfront. The blogger argument against this method is that although you save $13,760 in interest payment, you would forgo the $28,008 that you would have accumulated if you pay the loan over 10 years.
Well, I found out the last point is not entirely true. Even after you have emptied your CPF account. You CPF ending balance is $126,638, which is almost the same if you have not paid one lump sum in the beginning. Details of the calculation is shown in this spreadsheet.
The example used is a $100,000 HDB loan. Say you have $100,000 in your CPF account, should you pay the full $100,000 loan in one shot or take 10 years to repay it fully?
Take 10 years to pay (amortization)
The monthly repayment will be $947.25. Assuming your monthly CPF OA contribution is this amount for the next 10 years., your CPF will not have any net loan deduction for this 10 year period. The ending CPF balance at the end of 10 years is $126,877.
The total interest paid is $13,670
Empty your CPF account and pay the full loan amount of $100,000
You decided to save on the interest payment of $13,670 and pay the full amount upfront. The blogger argument against this method is that although you save $13,760 in interest payment, you would forgo the $28,008 that you would have accumulated if you pay the loan over 10 years.
Well, I found out the last point is not entirely true. Even after you have emptied your CPF account. You CPF ending balance is $126,638, which is almost the same if you have not paid one lump sum in the beginning. Details of the calculation is shown in this spreadsheet.
Sunday, 6 April 2014
OCBC 360 savings account
I couldn't believe it when I saw the advertisement for this savings account offered OCBC. You get 3.05% interest p.a. on up to $50k of the amount in your savings account.
For those who wonder if 3.05% is high, consider the following,
For those who wonder if 3.05% is high, consider the following,
- Matches close to the average inflation rate in Singapore. It's no longer valid to say that your savings get eroded away due to inflation by leaving it in the bank.
- Higher than all the time deposits' interest that I know of, has no lock-in period and requires a minimum balance of just $3000 (the fall below fee is even waived for the first year).
- Interest is close to the dividend yield of the STI index.
- Matches some of the high grade corporate bonds. A recent example is Capitamall Trust bond which was 2.8 times oversubscribed, has a 3.08% coupon payment, and maturity period of 7 years.
- The interest rate is risk-free, as the first $50k deposit is guaranteed by the Singapore Deposit insurance Corporation (SDIC).
- Credit at least $2000 of your salary monthly
- Spend $400 on OCBC cards monthly
- Pay any 3 bills online monthly
If you meet the above 3 requirements, it's a no brainier to open this account immediately. I wonder how long such a good deal will last.
Friday, 21 March 2014
Permanent Portfolio Mar 2014 Update
Next month, it'll be the time again to re-balance my own implementation of Permanent Portfolio. I wanted to create a chart showing the performance of my own strategy. However, using Net Asset Value (NAV) of the portfolio can't work as it will keep increasing whenever I increase my investment amount during re-balancing.
After much thought, I feel the best way is to present it in the form of percentage gain/loss over time. The drawback is that additional investment will cause the percentage gain/loss to decrease, as the same absolute gain/loss amount is divided by a larger portfolio value. However, I couldn't think of a better alternative.
Anyway below is the chart updated till 14th March 2014:
I started this strategy around June 2012 and re-balance the portfolio amount every month until Oct 2012, when I decided to just balance once every 6 months, i.e. April and and October every year.
It is close to 2 years now and as shown by the red line above, it is kind of boring. I suppose the strategy will only start to outperform when it goes through a full financial cycle, i.e. stocks drop and gold/bonds rises (hopefully) in value. I'm patiently waiting...
After much thought, I feel the best way is to present it in the form of percentage gain/loss over time. The drawback is that additional investment will cause the percentage gain/loss to decrease, as the same absolute gain/loss amount is divided by a larger portfolio value. However, I couldn't think of a better alternative.
Anyway below is the chart updated till 14th March 2014:
I started this strategy around June 2012 and re-balance the portfolio amount every month until Oct 2012, when I decided to just balance once every 6 months, i.e. April and and October every year.
It is close to 2 years now and as shown by the red line above, it is kind of boring. I suppose the strategy will only start to outperform when it goes through a full financial cycle, i.e. stocks drop and gold/bonds rises (hopefully) in value. I'm patiently waiting...
Sunday, 2 March 2014
Market Timing by Decision Moose
A few weeks back, I revisited a website which I had forgotten about. The website advocates investing in any one of the 9 asset classes through ETFs at any one time. The website tells you what and when to buy and switch among the 9 different asset classes. The ETFs are listed on the NYSE and they are:
The historical record of this strategy speaks for itself here. I decided to invest a small amount buying European equity (IEV) after the website recommended a switch on 7th February 2014.
I have to reiterate that for a hassle-free way of investing, buying low cost index funds (ETFs) on a long term basis is the way to go. However, it is very boring process. Hence, I am also trying out different strategies like Unit Trusts (keeping transaction costs to a minimum), Permanent Portfolio, and this Market Timing method by Decision Moose. And maybe five to ten years down the road, will ditch the lowest performing strategies.
- Cash or Money Market Fund
- Long-term zero coupon Treasury Bonds (EDV)
- Large cap US Stocks (SPY)
- Small cap US Stocks (IWM)
- Gold Bullion (GLD)
- Europe 350 Stocks (IEV)
- Latin America 40 Stocks (ILF)
- Japan stocks (EWJ)
- Asia Pacific ex-Japan stocks (AXJL)
The historical record of this strategy speaks for itself here. I decided to invest a small amount buying European equity (IEV) after the website recommended a switch on 7th February 2014.
I have to reiterate that for a hassle-free way of investing, buying low cost index funds (ETFs) on a long term basis is the way to go. However, it is very boring process. Hence, I am also trying out different strategies like Unit Trusts (keeping transaction costs to a minimum), Permanent Portfolio, and this Market Timing method by Decision Moose. And maybe five to ten years down the road, will ditch the lowest performing strategies.
Warren Buffet's Annual Letter 2013
In Warren's Buffet's latest Annual Letter to his shareholders, he has an advice for the non-professional investors who are not equipped with the skill to evaluate businesses, and that is to invest in low cost S&P500 index fund (a.k.a. ETF). He also mentioned that in his will, the cash entrusted to a trustee for his wife is to be 90% invested in a S&P500 index fund, and the remaining 10% in short term government bonds.
To the ordinary people who have not started investing, it could not be any simpler to just invest in an index fund, be it the local STI ETF (minimum cost of $320) listed on the Singapore stock exchange or a Vanguard S&P500 ETF (minimum cost of USD100) listed in the New York Stock Exchange. This is ultimately what Warren Buffet is doing also.
To the ordinary people who have not started investing, it could not be any simpler to just invest in an index fund, be it the local STI ETF (minimum cost of $320) listed on the Singapore stock exchange or a Vanguard S&P500 ETF (minimum cost of USD100) listed in the New York Stock Exchange. This is ultimately what Warren Buffet is doing also.
Saturday, 25 January 2014
Tracking your investment portfolio performance Pt 2
As it is important to track your own portfolio in CAGR terms, I shall explain the process of how you can do it using excel's XIRR function. Will use the example below to illustrate.
The first column is quite self-explanatory, the date of transaction. Column B represents the cashflow from your own perspective, i.e. an investment means a cash outflow (negative), and a withdrawal or cash dividend collected represents a cash inflow (positive).
The last row is to be updated with today's date, and the market value of the entire portfolio's current valuation, i.e. the money you were to get if you sell everything you have. This has to be done whenever you want to compute your CAGR. For the example, the formula would be =XIRR(B2:B6,A2:A6).
This will give you 14.2% return, from the profit of $150 made in the year.
If you are trading in other currencies say USD, you would similarly track you SGD cash outflow and inflow into a USD trading account. At the end of the day, the SGD market value would be the sum your stocks' USD value and the trading account USD balance multiply by today's exchange rate.
The process is definitely tedious. You can either continue to "act blur" with regards to your own true investment performance or get down to calculating it.
I tracked the performance of the my 3 portfolios mentioned in my previous post, wanting to see how each of them perform in a time period of 5 years. I used the STI as a rough gauge of their performance. It is to be noted that this is not an apple-to-apple comparison, as my own portfolio consists of regular investment over the period stated, whereas the STI performance is based on one lump sum investment at the beginning of the period.
I have 3 different spreadsheets tracking each of their performance. To compute the overall portfolio performance, just need to copy them into one spreadsheet and sort the first column by date. A superb spreadsheet for tracking stocks can be found here.
Stocks Portfolio
28 Apr 2008 till 20 Jan 2014
Unit Trust Portfolio
09 May 2012 till 20 Jan 2014
| A | B | C | |
| 1 | Date | Cashflow | Type |
| 2 | 1-Jan-14 |
-$1,000
|
Invest |
| 3 | 1-Jun-14 |
-$500
|
Invest |
| 4 | 1-Jul-14 |
$50
|
Dividend |
| 5 | 1-Aug-14 |
$500
|
Withdrawal |
| 6 | 31-Dec-14 |
$1,100
|
Today's Market Value |
The first column is quite self-explanatory, the date of transaction. Column B represents the cashflow from your own perspective, i.e. an investment means a cash outflow (negative), and a withdrawal or cash dividend collected represents a cash inflow (positive).
The last row is to be updated with today's date, and the market value of the entire portfolio's current valuation, i.e. the money you were to get if you sell everything you have. This has to be done whenever you want to compute your CAGR. For the example, the formula would be =XIRR(B2:B6,A2:A6).
This will give you 14.2% return, from the profit of $150 made in the year.
If you are trading in other currencies say USD, you would similarly track you SGD cash outflow and inflow into a USD trading account. At the end of the day, the SGD market value would be the sum your stocks' USD value and the trading account USD balance multiply by today's exchange rate.
The process is definitely tedious. You can either continue to "act blur" with regards to your own true investment performance or get down to calculating it.
I tracked the performance of the my 3 portfolios mentioned in my previous post, wanting to see how each of them perform in a time period of 5 years. I used the STI as a rough gauge of their performance. It is to be noted that this is not an apple-to-apple comparison, as my own portfolio consists of regular investment over the period stated, whereas the STI performance is based on one lump sum investment at the beginning of the period.
I have 3 different spreadsheets tracking each of their performance. To compute the overall portfolio performance, just need to copy them into one spreadsheet and sort the first column by date. A superb spreadsheet for tracking stocks can be found here.
Stocks Portfolio
28 Apr 2008 till 20 Jan 2014
| STI Absolute Gain/Loss | -4.2% |
| Personal Stock Portfolio CAGR | 6.3% |
Unit Trust Portfolio
09 May 2012 till 20 Jan 2014
| STI Absolute Gain/Loss | 6.1% |
| UT Portfolio CAGR | 4.0% |
Permanent Portfolio
12 June 2012 till 20 Jan 2014, based on USD/SGD exchange rate of 1.268
12 June 2012 till 20 Jan 2014, based on USD/SGD exchange rate of 1.268
| STI Absolute Gain/Loss | 10.4% |
| PP Portfolio CAGR | 3.4% |
Overall CAGR: 5.65%
It's be interesting to see how each of the 3 CAGRs compare 3 to 4 years down the road.
It's be interesting to see how each of the 3 CAGRs compare 3 to 4 years down the road.
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