Portfolio Returns

Year	% Returns	STI (Excl Dividends)	Remarks
2004	6%
2005	35%		Returns/Declines boosted with slight leverage. 2008: Great Recession
2006	130%
2007	46%	15%
2008	-70%	-49%
2009	147%	64%
2010	78%	10%
2011	-46%	-17%	Declines in S-chips and excessive concentration into 5-6 stocks
2012	25%	21%
2013	15%	-1%	Diversified into 19 stocks
2014	8%	6%
2015	4%	-14%	Oil & Gas crisis
		STI (incl Dividends)
2016	19%	4%
2017	33.6%	21%
2018	-11.9%	-7%	Fail to hold more cash during Jan-Feb 2018 Buying low quality stocks at height of optimism in Jan
2019	8.4%	9%
2020	3.6%	-7.5%	Covid 19
2021	14.7%	12.5%
2022	-13.7%	7.6%	Higher % in US and HK stocks
2023	4.5%	4.0%	HSI (2800 etf) dropped 12%, while S&P rose 24%
2024	45.2%	22.2%	HSI (2800 etf) rose 26.6%, while S&P (SPDR etf) rose 30.5%

Bull Market, Buying Reits

It is a bull market this year, with STI (Strait Times Index) up 12.1% year-to-date.

Bull market implies, in general, more expensive valuation. I find that the current stock market are quite close to full-value and I expect lower returns down the road. 

As stocks are close to their full-value, it is getting harder to find good stock ideas.

I have sold some stocks recently i.e. FCL, Lian Beng, as mentioned in earlier posts, and thus have some capital to deploy.

The capital are used to buy two reits: SoilBuid Reit (SBR) and Far East Hospitalality Trust (FEHT). Personally, I don't like to own reits, as reits generally have high price-earnings ratio and we are in rising interest rate environment. However, due to the lack of ideas, I have to settle on reits.

SBR and FEHT are bought with the possibilty of 'turnaround' in dividends.

For SBR, its Loyang Way premise is 90% empty now, as it was vacated by an O&G company last year. If it manages to lease out the Loyang Way premise in the next 2-3 years, there will be some upside to the dividends and hopefully share price.

For FEHT, the idea was from 3Fs (A Path to Forever Financial Freedom) blog, who bought CDL Hospitality Reit (CDLHT) and FEHT, in anticipation of the turnaround in hotal room rates in 2018 or later. I have bougth FEHT, but not CDLHT, as CDLHT has run up quite a lot this year. FEHT is around $0.61, not far from its 0.58 low.

SBR and FEHT are low risk, low return ideas to me. You get paid for waiting for the turnarounds. If the turnaround don't happen, you still get your dividends. If the turnaround materialise, you get some capital gains. Of course, I may still lose money in SBR and FEHT, if their operating results are worse than expected.