$$$ KPO and CZM $$$: March 2019

Saturday, March 30, 2019

StocksCafe API for Stock Data

Note: StocksCafe API is now deprecated and no longer available anymore - updated on 5th July 2020.

Ever since Yahoo abandoned us, we were left stranded without a data source to fetch stock prices. I previously blogged about an alternative - Bye Yahoo Finance! Hi Alpha Vantage! but it has its limitations too. For unknown reasons, sometimes it just doesn't work/return the price of a particular stock code/counter. I suspected that it could be due to the high number of API calls and added additional control such as retrieving the stock price only if we are still owning them but it still wasn't very successful.


As a result, I even modified my google spreadsheet by having a second and third column to re-call the API if it fails. I even have a "Manual" column to fill in the price on my own if all else fails... Yes, it do happen ~.~"

Regular readers will know that we have been using StocksCafe to track the performance of our portfolio and it has released its own API to access stocks data a few months back. I started testing it and found it to be extremely reliable. I no longer need to update the stock price manually! Unfortunately, it is only limited to Friends of StocksCafe (paid users).

Evan's (founder and sole developer of StocksCafe) story is pretty interesting and you can read about it here - The True Cost of Being Free. We are called friends because it started out as a donation to keep StocksCafe alive due to the huge licensing cost.

If there is no chance of you becoming a friend, Alpha Vantage is still the way to go. Otherwise, Friends of StocksCafe or potential Friends, the below steps will be very helpful if you are tracking your portfolio using google spreadsheet too (like us):

1. Go to your profile and take note of your API key. There is a limit on your usage so I do not recommend sharing your key - 100 per day, reset at 12 am SGT. You can see how much we have contributed too :)


2. Go to Script Editor in Google Spreadsheet


Open up the relevant Google spreadsheet, go to "Tools" and click on "Script editor".

3. The API documentation can be found here. If you are in IT, this should be familiar to you and you can do a lot more than what I am going to share. Otherwise, it will probably look very foreign/alien to you, so you can just copy and paste the below code snippet into the newly opened up window/tab.

4. Modify the code slightly by replacing your username, API key, the sheet name and the relevant columns for the function - dailyUpdateStocksCafeColumn() or dailyUpdateStocksCafeColumn2(). Do not modify the rest of the code or do it at your own risk!

5. Go to Current Project's Trigger from Edit.


6. Click on Add Trigger. The project trigger should be empty. Note that the trigger has a 0% error rate.


7. Specify the function you want to run, it should either be dailyUpdateStocksCafeColumn or dailyUpdateStocksCafeColumn2. Next, change the event source to be Time-driven, day timer, the time you will like it to be updated and proceed to save it. You can reference mine below.


What this does is on a daily basis, at the specified time, the function will be called/ran automatically and the specified price column will be updated with the end of date stock price from StocksCafe. Updating the stocks prices once a day will ensure that we are keeping within the limits of the API usage.

As of this moment, StocksCafe has data for SGX, HKEX, KLSE and USX so it is not just limited to SGX stocks data. Evan was kind enough to provide a special discount for KPO and CZM readers! You can sign up using our referral link and see if it suits you first before deciding if you want to contribute.

Current Price:
- Monthly Plan: SGD 4.9 a month
- Annual Plan: SGD 39 a year (SGD 3.25 a month or >30% OFF)
- 7 Years Plan: SGD 215 for 7 years (SGD 2.56 a month or >45% OFF)

KPO Referral Price:
- Monthly Plan: SGD 3.9 a month (~20% OFF)
- Annual Plan: SGD 35 a year (~SGD 2.90 a month or ~40% OFF)
- 7 Years Plan: SGD 195 for 7 years (~SGD 2.32 a month or ~52% OFF)

Benefit: You get an excellent portfolio tracker and I get a follower? lol. If you ever become a "Friend of StocksCafe", I get a 20% commission! At this price point (~$2+ per month - about 2 cups of kopi/teh or $3/4+ per month - 1 cai peng/meal), I think it is a bargain for an intelligent portfolio tracker, access to quality data and many other features.

Anyway, hope this has helped you too :)

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

Saturday, March 23, 2019

StashAway - February 2019

CZM has successfully sold my DJI Phantom 3 Advanced Drone for one-third of its original price this week and it felt like a piece of me went missing :'(


The drone was like her greatest enemy because I spent a huge amount of money on it (~$1.6k) and the utilization is really low. The number of flights can be counted with 2 hands since 2016? In addition, whenever we travelled overseas, it would always take up half of the luggage, only for me to fly 1/2 times.

Anyway, we have 3 portfolios now due to our new strategy - New Strategy: StashAway + Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS):
KPO and CZM Cash - StashAway Risk Index 20%
KPO SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%
CZM SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%

1. PORTFOLIO SUMMARY (as of the last day of the month)

KPO
CZM
Based on the statement (28 February 2019), KPO made $50.94 and CZM made $0.16.

KPO
CZM

As of 20 March 2019, the market has recovered quite significantly!
KPO: $533.12 (+6.8% - Capital: $17,000)
CZM: $8.69 (+2.5% - Capital: $500)

2. PORTFOLIO DETAILS 
Note that these are reported in USD.

KPO and CZM Cash - StashAway Risk Index 20%
KPO SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%
CZM SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%
Our StashAway SRS accounts are showing a slight difference now due to fees being deducted from my account.

3. TRANSACTIONS


I mentioned this last month and it has been fixed looking at my March transactions.

KPO and CZM Cash - StashAway Risk Index 20%:
SGD $495.00 converted to USD $363.82
Exchange Rate: 1.3605 (1.3552 last month)

USD $10.25 converted to SGD $13.91
Exchange Rate: 1.3571 (1.3519 last month)

This "inefficiency" caused $0.03577 (10.25 * (495.00 / 363.82) - 13.91 = $0.03577) to disappear into thin air just like that. It may be a small amount but as the portfolio gets larger, it will all add up.

KPO SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%:
SGD $247.30 converted to USD $183.20
Exchange Rate: 1.3499 (1.3523 last month)

CZM SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%:
SGD $247.46 converted to USD $183.32
Exchange Rate: 1.3499 (1.3523 last month)

Interestingly, this looks more "correct" now. I was always under the impression that 99% will be converted to USD while 1% will remain in SGD until the above issue happened.

4. FEE CALCULATIONS

KPO
The fee stated is based on the monthly-average assets SGD $16,360.48 x 0.8% / 365 days * 28 days = $10.04 which is definitely incorrect. It should have been ($16,360.48 - $10,000) x 0.8% / 365 days * 28 days = $3.90. I guessed the referral promotion did not kick in so I sent an email to support and was given a $10 credit.


No fee for CZM for the first 6 months.

StashAway VS STI ETF
Since there is no way to compare the performances among the robo-advisors, I came out with a spreadsheet to track our StashAway portfolio performance (General Investing - Risk Level 28) against that of STI ETF which I will be updating on a monthly basis. For simplicity, I shall assume that one can either invest in Nikko STI ETF using POSB Invest-Saver or invest in Nikko STI ETF/SPDR STI ETF using SCB Priority Online Trading (no minimum commission). These would be the opportunity costs while we continue to invest in StashAway.

Apart from the absolute P&L, we should also look at the Reward-to-Risk Ratio where risk/volatility is taken into account. For more information, do read StashAway Clarifications - Reward-to-Risk Ratio. StashAway has the highest ratio of 1.25 which is significantly higher than the other 2 STI ETFs (< 0.4). Let me quote Freddy Lim (Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer of StashAway), "for every dollar of risk taken, StashAway P28 is producing 1.25 times the return".


This is updated till 21st March 2019 and is based on only 1 of our portfolio - KPO and CZM Cash - StashAway Risk Index 20%.

This month commentary: 
Interestingly, StashAway continues to be the only investment that is green. Going forward it will be even more interesting when the commissions/fees incurred by StashAway exceed that of POSB Invest-Saver. This will be a battle between cheaper/lesser fees and asset allocation/diversification...

StocksCafe


Looking at the time-weighted return, we can see that StashAway is "outperforming" the STI ETF (both excluding fees). In addition, it has lower volatility and max drawdown.

Which is the best? Only time will tell :)

This is the link to our spreadsheet - KPO & CZM StashAway Portfolio VS STI ETF which I have also added to Our Portfolio page.

StashAway Referral Link for Our Readers
Here you go: KPO and CZM Referral Link

You might be interested in previous months update too:
StashAway - December 2018
StashAway - January 2019 - $16,051.10
StashAway - February 2019 - $17,397.81

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Expenses - January 2019

We received an email from HDB that our house will be ready soon and the email states that we can collect the keys around May!

Taken from Qanvast - https://qanvast.com/sg/interior-designers/voila-45
CZM spent a lot of time designing the house (something like the above)/floor plan using ppt and we sent out to a bunch of IDs for quotation. Some of the quotations we got were around 50-70k. Faints!

As mentioned previously, I will be tracking our total expenses as a married couple starting this year. I can foresee that our expenses for this year will be the highest ever due to the above (house renovation, new furniture, etc.) + our US/Canada trip. Thinking back, wedding expenses were not that huge because we were able to recoup some/most of it at the banquet.

Current Profile: 29 years couple who got married recently but staying separately with our own parents while waiting for the BTO project to be completed this year.


Our total expenses were $11,712.06!!! The breakdown would be as follows:


KPO Expense Fund (our common fund): $7,772.40


KPO: $2,229.22


CZM: $1,710.44

Vacation


$4,121.25 - The total cost in SGD for 2 pax return First Class flight to Washington DC due to Cathay Pacific blunder - Thank You Cathay Pacific! Another First Class Flight on American Airlines

$1,000 - I will be going on a tour by Hong Thai Travel to Eastern Europe with my parents.

Gift
$2,980 - That is the total amount of red packet we prepared for CNY. The bulk of it goes to our parents ($888 x 2) and grandparents ($188 x 4). The rest are $20 for siblings, and either $8 or $6 (random strangers).

$380 - Attended a wedding at Andaz Singapore (with CZM)

Parents
$1,260 - That is the total amount we are giving to our parents as allowance.

Food
$629.74 - Our combined food expenses are still on the low side because we are still staying with our parents.

Transportation
$293.58 can be further broken down to $171.13 (EZ Link) and the rest on cab ($122.45).

Insurance
$177 - This is a fixed monthly cost for the basic coverage - term life and hospitalization.

Others
$100.04 - Online Shopping: CZM bought some new/CNY clothes.

$65.85 - Health: I fell sick and went to Raffles Medical (supporting my own stocks). lol. Not an actual expense because I can claim all of them back from my company.

$32.00 - Watsons: It seems that CZM will always buy something from Watson almost every month for it to become a category by itself. No idea what she bought. Hahaha.

$26.25 - Credit Card: Converted DBS points to KrisFlyer miles ($25 + GST).

$12.00 - Gambling: Toto, the fastest way to fulfil our millionaire dream.

$5.50 - Hobby: We collect overseas and old notes. It is an expensive hobby...

Summary
January 2019 - $11,712.06

Total expenses for 2019: $11,712.06
Average expenses per month for 2019: $11,712.06

This is the first time I am compiling our expenses together. To be honest, it is such a mess! The plan going forward is to remove the "Darling"/CZM category, nest it under the existing categories and hopefully they will be clearer and neater next month.

On the bright side, if we were to remove the one-time expenses such as Vacation and Gifts. Our combined expenses are only ~$3,600+. Till next time!

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

Sunday, March 17, 2019

REITs Ladder

I previously blogged about how one can achieve higher interest for the DBS Multiplier account and introduced the concept of a bond ladder - DBS Multiplier + SSBs + Joint Account = Higher Interest! Do take a look if you are looking for a relatively high savings account with a low hurdle (no minimum credit card spending required!).

A quick recap on a bond ladder - It is an investment strategy to generate passive income at regular intervals. Passive income - who doesn't love them? Using Singapore Savings Bonds (SSB) as an example, each SSB pays out interests every 6 months. So if one were to purchase 6 consecutive months of SSB, they will be getting interests every month for the next 10 years until the bond matures. Theoretically, the bond will then mature at a different time and one just got to repurchase the new bond again to repeat it infinitely...

One day, I was thinking if I can replicate the idea and make a REITs ladder (my favorite). lol. Unfortunately, the answer is impossible :'(


I went to SGX StockFacts, removed all the default filter and change the Industry Criteria to "Real Estate Investment Trust (REITs)" and arrived at these 43 REITs (no business trusts). In case you are wondering what is the difference - What’s the difference between a business trust and a REIT? Quite a lot. In short, REITs are required to pay out at least 90% of their taxable income in the form of dividends each year but not for business trusts.


Next, I had to manually extract all the dividends paid out in 2018 (we are not interested in when it XD but when the money enters our bank account). Fortunately, StocksCafe provides an easy way for me to do so.


As you can see, even if you buy all 43 REITs, you will not be receiving any dividends for the month of January, April, July, and October. REITs either pay out dividends quarterly or biannually, hence the best months for a REIT investor will be February and August.

Hope you find this useful or entertaining. You can get a copy of the spreadsheet here - REITs Ladder.

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Portfolio - February 2019

Everyone has their "poison" and mine happened to be electronic gadgets >.<" Went to the IT fair over the weekend and bought a NAS (Network Attached Storage). If you have no idea what is that, it is very normal. CZM does not understand why am I spending so much money on it too. lol.

Synology DS918+ with 8GB RAM
4 x 3 TB Seagate IronWolf NAS Hard Drives
Guess the total price? Shall reveal it at the end of the post. Haha. This is probably going to be one of the longest portfolio updates because there were lots of transactions so let's not get distracted.

Our portfolio increase by 0.91% to $379,814 - $848.52 of capital withdrawal and $4,281.49 of capital gain. The one in blue is the StashAway portfolio, green is SGX and the total is in black.


If you prefer to look at numbers, this is the raw data used to generate the above bar graph. These numbers are as of the last day of the month.


"Cash Flow" is the amount of money being injected/withdrawn from the portfolio (buying stocks = +ve cash flow while selling stocks and collecting dividends = -ve cash flow)

SOLD
- SingPost (7,000 units) @ $0.950
- TSH (1,000 units) @ $0.350
- Lion-Philip S-REIT ETF (9,000 units) @ $1.034
- Lion-Philip S-REIT ETF (3,000 units) @ $1.041

I have blogged about our reasons for selling the above except for TSH, you can read about them here:
- Unethical SingPost
Lion-Phillip S-REIT ETF - High Cost and Low Yield


TSH was a legacy position which I had bought in April 2016 after reading this - TSH Corporation Ltd- Classic net-net micro-cap trading at steep discount to net cash, announces big dividends. Since then it has diversified its assets, did a capital distribution/huge dividends and became a shell company.


I was hoping it will just get delisted so I can save some commission but it never did until last month when it got reverse takeover, went through a share consolidation (1:20) and became a pub and bar business. Took a quick look at the new business and decided to sell it to get whatever remaining that is left and I am stuck with 50 units -.- Overall, it was still a pretty good investment with an annualized return of ~19%.

BOUGHT
- DBS (400 units) @ $24.92
- City Development Limited (400 units) @ $9.47
- APAC Realty (8,000 units) @ $0.57

These are all not new purchases so really nothing much to blog about. The reason for buying them remains the same:
- DBS has changed its dividend policy and has pledged $1.20 per annual going forward. This translate to ~4.8% dividend yield on cost with potential for capital growth.
- CDL properties are stated at cost and should be trading > PB 1. To be honest, we are not very fated with CDL. Whenever we buy, the price will always fall significantly.
- We did a quick comparison between APAC Realty and its peer, Propnex and concluded that it was more undervalued and attractive dividend yield for now. Having said that, I think APAC Realty has its risks. In its IPO prospectus, it was stated that dividend will be paid for the first 2 years and remains unclear if the company will continue to distribute dividends.


In addition, ThumbTack Investor (TTI) has written a pretty scary/negative piece of article on APAC Realty that is definitely worth a read - Acquisition of ERA Centre is Cashflow Negative. The way he does his due diligence is very respectable. Regardless, all investment is a good investment at the right price.

Dividends
The total dividends collected this month is $1,531.24. The breakdown is as follows:

Company Symbol ExDate Shares Total
Far East Hospitality Trust Q5T 20-Feb-19 10,156 $101.56
Ascott Residence Trust A68U 7-Feb-19 7,600 $301.42
Starhill Global Real Estate Investment Trust P40U 7-Feb-19 12,000 $135.60
Parkway Life Real Estate Investment Trust C2PU 4-Feb-19 2,000 $65.60
Thai Beverage Public Co Ltd Y92 4-Feb-19 11,000 $102.71
SPDR STI ETF Units ES3 4-Feb-19 13,000 $728.00
Mapletree North Asia Commercial Trust RW0U 1-Feb-19 5,000 $96.35

Total dividends collected for 2019: $2,467.84
Average dividends per month for 2019: $1,233.92

StashAway

KPO
CZM
Capital: $17,000.00
Current: $17,340.29

The NAS costs $1,282 in total @_@"

On a side note, one can invest in StashAway using SRS and I have already blogged about our plan - New Strategy: StashAway + Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS)

You might be interested in previous months update too:
Portfolio Performance in 2018 - $354,145
Portfolio - January 2019 - $376,381
- Portfolio - February 2019 - $379,814

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)

Friday, March 8, 2019

StashAway - January 2019

This is a long overdue post! February passed by so quickly (our first CNY as husband and wife + fell damn sick) and we just came back from our Mini-Moon in Bali (3 days 2 nights) last weekend. After this, there is still our expenses report and it is taking me a much longer time because I am trying to track CZM's expenses too. Hahahaha.

Our monthly update will be different because of our new strategy - New Strategy: StashAway + Supplementary Retirement Scheme (SRS) and we have 3 portfolios now:
KPO and CZM Cash - StashAway Risk Index 20%
KPO SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%
CZM SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%

1. PORTFOLIO SUMMARY (as of the last day of the month)


KPO
CZM

Based on the statement (31 January 2019), KPO made $50.94 and CZM made $0.16.

KPO
CZM

As of 5 March 2019, the market has recovered quite significantly!
KPO: $362.30 (+4.7% - Capital: $16,500)
CZM: $3.81 (+1.3% - Capital: $250)

2. PORTFOLIO DETAILS 
Note that these are reported in USD.

KPO and CZM Cash - StashAway Risk Index 20%
KPO SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%
CZM SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%

Notice how my SRS account (Can See No Touch) and CZM's SRS account (General Investing) is exactly the same? That is because we invested the money on the same date, got the same amount of USD as it was converted on the same day and bought the same number of stocks because the risk index of our portfolio is the same.

3. TRANSACTIONS
Will not be showing the transactions section going forward because there are too many to screenshot!


Notice how the StashAway first converted SGD to USD and then USD back to SGD on the same day? I thought this was pretty ridiculous, emailed their support and was given a template response.


However, one month later (in February statement), I saw the same thing happening! Anyway, long story short, I contacted the CEO, Michele and after a few email exchanges, I was told that this "inefficiency in the FX conversion logic" has been fixed. I will be monitoring it in March!

KPO and CZM Cash - StashAway Risk Index 20%:
SGD $495.00 converted to USD $365.25
Exchange Rate: 1.3552 (1.3813 last month)

USD $3.95 converted to SGD $5.34
Exchange Rate: 1.3519

This "inefficiency" caused $0.01318 (3.95 * (495.00 / 365.25) - 5.34 = $0.01318) to disappear into thin air just like that. It may be a small amount but as the portfolio gets larger, it will all add up.

KPO SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%:
SGD $247.50 converted to USD $183.02
Exchange Rate: 1.3523

CZM SRS - StashAway Risk Index 13%:
SGD $247.50 converted to USD $183.02
Exchange Rate: 1.3523

4. FEE CALCULATIONS

KPO
The fee stated is based on the monthly-average assets SGD $15,113.30 x 0.8% / 365 days * 31 days = $10.27. Our fee should drop next month because I referred CZM!

CZM
No fee for CZM for the first 6 months.

StashAway VS STI ETF
Since there is no way to compare the performances among the robo-advisors, I came out with a spreadsheet to track our StashAway portfolio performance (General Investing - Risk Level 28) against that of STI ETF which I will be updating on a monthly basis. For simplicity, I shall assume that one can either invest in Nikko STI ETF using POSB Invest-Saver or invest in Nikko STI ETF/SPDR STI ETF using SCB Priority Online Trading (no minimum commission). These would be the opportunity costs while we continue to invest in StashAway.

Apart from the absolute P&L, we should also look at the Reward-to-Risk Ratio where risk/volatility is taken into account. For more information, do read StashAway Clarifications - Reward-to-Risk Ratio. StashAway has the highest ratio of 1.25 which is significantly higher than the other 2 STI ETFs (< 0.4). Let me quote Freddy Lim (Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer of StashAway), "for every dollar of risk taken, StashAway P28 is producing 1.25 times the return".


This is updated till 8th March 2019 and is based on only 1 of our portfolio - KPO and CZM Cash - StashAway Risk Index 20%.

This month commentary: 
Interestingly, StashAway is the only one in green but we can also see the total fee increasing significantly (it was 0.49% last month). Going forward it will be even more interesting when the commissions/fees incurred by StashAway exceed that of POSB Invest-Saver. This will be a battle between cheaper/lesser fees and asset allocation/diversification...

StocksCafe


Looking at the time-weighted return, we can see that StashAway is "outperforming" the STI ETF (both excluding fees). In addition, it has lower volatility and max drawdown.

Which is the best? Only time will tell :)

This is the link to our spreadsheet - KPO & CZM StashAway Portfolio VS STI ETF which I have also added to Our Portfolio page.

StashAway Referral Link for Our Readers
Here you go: KPO and CZM Referral Link

You might be interested in previous months update too:
StashAway - December 2018

Do like any of the following for the latest update/post!
1. FB Page - KPO and CZM
2. Twitter - KPO and CZM
3. Click here to subscribe using email :)
4. Instagram - KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)