Time flies. Baby Ong will be 3 months old soon and we will be sending her to an infant care end of the month :'( as CZM's maternity leave will be ending in early April. Our initial plan was to send her to My First Skool which is very near our house but it seems that they are already full. In the end, we decided to send her to Josiah Montessori which is near our workplace. After going for a few infant care tours, it seems that their curriculum is one of the better ones (e.g. they teach basic sign language so that the baby can communicate with the parents even before learning how to speak) and the Teacher-Child Ratio is 1:3 as compared to ECDA guideline of 1:5. The only con is $$$.
The registration fees are crazy - $535 (non-refundable) + $990 deposit. Fortunately, they have reduced the deposit required and gave a 15% discount on the monthly fees (probably due to COVID-19). Even so, after the ECDA subsidy for working mothers, it is still going to cost us ~$1,474 per month going forward.
Compare that to My First Skool's fees - Registration is just $85.60 and the monthly fees are just ~$764 per month after subsidy. Now we can only hope that Baby Ong learns more and gets better care in Josiah Montessori while we take a step back in investing for our retirement with increasing expenses.
Our portfolio reaches another new high! It increased by
4.13% to $742,364 -
$27,278.67 of capital injection (we utilized more leverage!) and
$2,186.46 of capital gain. This includes
$96,049 of leverage/debt (gearing ~14.86%).
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"Cash Flow" is the amount of money being injected/withdrawn from the portfolio (buying stocks = +ve cash flow while selling stocks and collecting dividends = -ve cash flow)
BOUGHT
- STI ETF (1,500 units) @ $2.873
- iShares Hang Seng Tech ETF (300 and 300 units) @ HK$19.58 and HK$18.77
- Mitsubishi UFJ Financial (3,000 units) @ ¥509
We bought STI ETF and iShares Hang Seng Tech ETF because there was some weakness/minor correction in the market. We are still holding some cash hoping that the market will correct more but it didn't really happen. Out of the $26k of capital injection, only ~$6k came from our cash/pocket.
We bought MUFJ using leverage after coming across this excellent analysis from InvestQuest -
The Bank That Owns 21% of Morgan Stanley. Why We’re Buying MUFG. It was the kind of stock that we like, undervalued with a relatively high and sustainable dividend yield. Our entry price could have been much lower ¥470+ if not for my RM that screwed up the account opening =.=" Regardless, we are still sitting on a good unrealized profit which is the target price specified in the article. Very impressive analysis by Peter from InvestQuest!
Anyway, the idea of using leverage is simple, borrow the money, buy a good/excellent REIT/stock, use the dividends to pay the interests, and keep the difference while ensuring that we will never get a margin call/trigger. Once again, leverage has its risk and is definitely not for everyone. We see it as our way of buying a second property without incurring any of those taxes (ABSD, rental income tax, etc.). You can take a look at this -
Leverage Performance 2020. Unfortunately, we did not buy IWDA because it is at an all-time high. Yes, I am timing the market but I just couldn't help it. Unfortunately, it just keeps going higher @_@"
Given that it is a brand new year, I have adjusted my SRS contribution to $1,276 per month with the intention of maxing it by year-end. We made some changes to our monthly DCA such as closing Syfe Equity100 and the $500 has been moved/deployed to StashAway. We have also decided to open another StashAway portfolio for Baby Ong. Shall blog more about this separately.
Our Monthly DCA for January - $4,126
$1,500 Cash for ourselves - StashAway Risk Index 22%
$100 Cash for Baby Ong - StashAway Risk Index 36%
$638 KPO's SRS - StashAway Risk Index 36%
$250 CZM's SRS - StashAway Risk Index 14%
$638 KPO's SRS - Endowus Loss Tolerance -60%
$1,000 Cash - Syfe REIT+ (100% REIT)
DividendsThe total dividends collected this month is
$2,562.37. The breakdown is as follows:
Company PayDate Shares Total
CDL Hospitality Trusts 26-Feb-21 1,893 $65.13
Ascott Residence Trust 26-Feb-21 23,141 $459.57
ARA LOGOS Logistics Trust 26-Feb-21 144.4 $1.18
Suntec REIT 26-Feb-21 11,372 $257.12
Parkway Life REIT 26-Feb-21 5,031 $179.60
Soilbuild Business Space REIT 26-Feb-21 30,000 $358.20
SPH REIT 26-Feb-21 118.58 $1.42
Ascendas India Trust 25-Feb-21 61.718 $2.58
Thai Beverage Public Co., Ltd. 25-Feb-21 20,000 $257.57
SPDR STI ETF Units 24-Feb-21 24,500 $980.00
Total dividends collected for 2021: $2,766.37
Average dividends per month for 2021: $1,383.19
StashAway
|
KPO |
|
CZM |
Capital: $51,526.00
Current: $63,266.19
If you are interested in StashAway, do use our
referral link. You get $10,000 free management fees for 6 months and we will get $16!
If you want to extract those transactions information from StashAway, do take a look at this article -
StashAway Transactions Parser.
Endowus
Capital: $12,426.00
Current: $14,461.50
Endowus has decided to extend their attractive CNY promotion to the end of March - lowering of the minimum investment amount to just $888! Huat ah!
To kickoff the Chinese New Year and to help people invest better from the start of the year, we will be running the following initiatives:
1. For the entire February March, we are lowering our minimum investment amount from $10,000 to $888
2. From 1 - 14 February, we have a sign-up bonus for new clients from $20 to $28
To be eligible for the $20 sign-up bonus, the prospective clients have to:
1. Be a new Endowus client
2. Create an account before the end of March (leave an email and password on our website) using a referral or affiliate link
3. Fund their account with $888 before the end of March
If you are interested in Endowus, do use our
referral link for our readers! You will get S$10,000 managed free for 6 months ($20 equivalent) and we will get $20 too! This access fee has no expiry date.
Syfe
Capital: $13,700.00
Current: $15,507.93
New Syfe customers will have their first $30,000 managed free for 6 months when they use our new referral code (
KPOCZM). We will be receiving a $10 cash incentive for our portfolio if you invest $500 or more.
If you want to extract those transactions information from Syfe, do take a look at this article -
Syfe Transactions Parser.
You might be interested in these blog posts too:
-
2020 Net Worth- Portfolio - February 2021 - $742,364
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4. Instagram -
KPO_and_CZM (Did you see those delicious food photos to the right --> Unfortunately, you can't see it on mobile.)
Curious as to why you decided to close the Equity100 portfolio in Syfe?
ReplyDeleteHi,
DeleteI predicted that the US market will fall with my crystal ball so I closed it and moved the money to SG/REIT+. Hahaha. Just kidding.
I blogged about it here - https://kpo-and-czm.blogspot.com/2021/02/syfe-january-2021.html.
There are a couple of reasons:
1. By displaying shares in 2 decimal places, there are some rounding inconsistencies. For example, the transactions section shows 0.01 for share A on day x followed by 0.01 for share A on day y. When I sum them up, I am expecting 0.02 but the portfolio composition shows only 0.01. This makes tracking extremely difficult.
2. I cannot accept the <0.01 being displayed in Equity100 for the same reason as above.
3. For Equity100, the currency being displayed is in SGD while the underlying investment and fees are in USD. As a result, when I looked at the fees, it is showing different values on different days which makes tracking difficult again.
4. Based on the stats I am seeing in StocksCafe which I blogged about previously too, Equity100 is taking on more risk but providing lower return