Friday, July 31, 2020

Portfolio Update - July 2020

July 2020 was a pretty interesting month, with the General Elections held on 10th July, before being wrapped up with a Hari Raya Haji holiday and giving us a longer weekend for a good breather.

See: Link to Main Portfolio page

Contents:
  1. Portfolio (31 July 2020)
  2. Transactions and Dividends
  3. Closing Thoughts




Portfolio (31 July 2020)




Performance



Some commentary on my portfolio
  • Nope, I still haven't taken any action to add or cut position, but just keeping an eye for stocks I am interested in, including positions I'm vested in.
  • Largely flat in comparison to June 2020. I'm down 0.44% from June 2020.
  • However, Lendlease REIT dropped quite a fair bit from my last Portfolio update in June 2020
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Transactions and Dividends 

(a) Transaction Summary
  • No transaction for the month of July 2020.
(b) Dividend Summary
  • Received SGD 0.100 per share (Fu Yu Corp)
  • No dividend was declared in the month of July 2020.
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Closing Thoughts

It's been a few months and yet, I still don't feel I can act on any stocks I have my eyes on at the moment, but continue to monitor my watchlist.

Perhaps it also raised questions to my idea for stock selection and action plan - namely having strategy or criteria more suitable for entering into new positions for the current investing climate.

It has been barely over a year since I changed job. Work commitment is taking up more energy (involves getting more physical and putting hours in) and I enjoy my current work for the challenges it presents and the new knowledge I am picking up. While we have adapted to working with countermeasures for Covid-19 quite well, it did throw a bit of a curveball in taking my pay raise for the year away.

Normally, my company has the pay raise and promotion done end of July. Due to Covid-19, there was a corporate-wide pay freeze (i.e. no increment) unless you were getting promoted, and management-level staff past a certain level took a pay cut. While I understand the reasoning behind the pay freeze and still grateful for my job security, I can't pretend to not find it a pity to have my target wage for the near future impeded. This also meant I need to be that little bit more prudent on spendings.

Elsewhere, people in the workforce are harder hit and if it weren't for the government intervention, the fallout would have been far worse.


I am currently putting writing on the blog on the backburner, save for my monthly portfolio updates. There were a few posts I meant to write, but ultimately leading to being discarded as the information is no longer useful for reasons (e.g. outdated and obsoleted by new info). Other times, I feel like I have writer's block or something. I do wonder if it is related to my inaction on the market.

I currently foresee the frequency of new blog post to remain muted, but I do have some articles still in the drafting stage (yes, I'm working like an old man on that Alita hindsight post, and I also have one related to recurring expenditure of owning a HDB Flat).

Slowly (but surely) will churn those posts out one day. One day. Hahaha.