July 2008 Portfolio Spot Check

Loss: $527.55 / -3.20%

Currently in a bear market.

SPH Purchase, June 2008 Portfolio Spotcheck, Half-year Performance

Purchased SPH on 10 June for slight diversification.

SPH - $8,531.07
2,000 units at $4.25
Target sell: $4.90

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Loss: $117.55 / -0.71%

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Half-year Performance

Gain: $572.41 / 2.86%

May 2008 Portfolio Spot Check

Gain: $862.45 / 10.77%
Market pessimistic due to inflation concerns.

April 2008 Portfolio Spot Check

Gain: $1,192.45 / 14.89%

Market is generally optimistic currently.

Sale of CapitaLand

On 3 April, CapitaLand hit my target sell price of $6.70, and I sold it off at $6.80.


Realised gain: $689.96 / 11.35% after commissions.

March 2008 Portfolio Spot Check

Gain: $1,112.62 / 7.90%

Yahoo Finance is acting up, only showing price from 20 March, so I had to do up an Excel spreadsheet.

Market notes and Watchlist

Market seems to be generally pessimistic due to US-related recession fears. CapitaLand and CapitaCommercial are looking attractive. But I should diversify a little.

My next targets are SPH and SingTel, but these are going strong over the past week.

Feb 2008 Portfolio Spot Check

Gain: $822.62 / 5.84%

Market was pessimistic on Friday. CapitaLand got to $6.70+ on Thursday.

Portfolio Spot Check

Gain: $572.62 / 4.06%

CapitaMall

Just before and after Chinese New Year, the markets went down as investors were bearish due to US recession concerns. I snapped up CapitaMall on 11 Feb as it was a bargain. Actually, CapitaLand was a better bargain at around $5.60+, but I decided to go with CapitalMall.

CapitaMall - $5,829.70
2,000 units at $2.90
Target sell: $3.70

First purchase

Initial capital $20,000


On 10 Jan 2008, I felt the market was undergoing correction, so I made my first purchase:


CapitaLand - $6,079.83
1,000 units at $6.05
Target sell: $6.70

CapitaCommercial - $2,177.85
1,000 units at $2.15
Target sell: $2.70

Note: Following my purchase, the world markets when into a downward crash due to fears of U.S. recession. Unfortunately, I failed to capitalise on that and SGX had recovered by yesterday.

Introduction, Purpose, Target

Everyone who has done a course in Finance will know two concepts. First, the efficient market hypothesis states that "it is not possible to consistently outperform the market by using any information that the market already knows, except through luck." Leading from this hypothesis, the second concept is that in the long-run, the stock market always goes up. Historically, this has always been the case.

The above is highly simplified, but it is enough to explain my purpose. Against what I have learnt in my Finance courses, I am going to time the market. First, I will monitor prices of selective stocks. By EMH, this will give me a good idea of the value of the companies. I will supplement that with Research by brokerage firms. The next step is to wait. When some event occurs that causes a market correction or even panic, I will buy the selected stock at the bargain prices. Finally, I will set a target price, probably around 10 to 20%, after which I will sell the stock and pocket the gains.

Based on the second concept mentioned above, this is relatively low-risk since I will invest in solid Singapore companies, and as long as I ride out the storm, well, prices will go up.

This is in essence what I plan to do, and is a greatly simplified form of value investing. My target is to make at least 10% profit in 6 months.

Will I succeed? Time will tell.