Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Portfolio increased by 6.8% since 1 Dec.

On Monday 14 Jan 2013, I sold all my property stocks, most of them at the opening price.  The reason for exiting these was due to the government new rules on property.  These exits were not part of my original trading plan.  However, the risks in trading property stocks are known in advance.  I knew the industry risks involved when I bought the stocks in beginning Dec.  It was a matter of time that our government stepped in to further cool the property market.  I knew I had to be fast in exiting in exceptional circumstances.  The stocks sold were
  • Ho Bee
  • Far East Orchard
  • Bukit Sembawang
  • KepLand
  • Wing Tai
  • Guocoland
Below is a chart of FTSE Real Estate.  The green arrow was my entry beginning Dec.  I did not buy at the low, nor did I sell at the high.  But I did get quite a bit of the chunk in the middle.

Yesterday, SuperGroup hit my cut loss level of 10%.  Today, I got out at $2.95.  SuperGroup is a strong company based on its fundamentals.  However, I always trade according to my written trading plan.  As the saying goes "If you fail to plan, you plan to fail".
My portfolio strategy calls for buying the strongest stocks in Singapore.  A stock that drops 10% relative to other stocks is no longer a strong stock.  Thus, it should be sold.  My measurement of trading success is the portfolio gain or loss.  Not any single individual stock performance.

I am pleased to report that since the 1st Dec, my portfolio  is now up 6.8%.
What is my current plan?  For sure, in the next couple of months, I think the direction is still up.  For the next few blog updates, I shall share my reasons, beginning with the VIX.

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1 comment:

  1. COJanuary 16, 2013 at 11:53 PM

    Hi Ian

    My portfolio return fr mid Dec 12 to mid Jan 13 is about half of yours, up around 3.2%. I don't have as many high beta stocks as you, mostly REITS and dividend stocks, with a handful of high beta like Noble and CMA. I don't have luxury of time to monitor as actively as you, so i just sit and collect dividends instead, haha

    I consider the S&P 500 to be in consolidation phase since 3 Jan 13, trading within 1450 - 1470. What is going to happen next i'm not sure, if S&P 500 can break the 1 year high of 1,474 convincingly, which is a point of resistance, we should be in for more upward bias. At the same time, I am also planning to pick up some dividend stocks on weakness.

    And yes, news is just fundamental garbage. I read for fun, but i trade mainly based on technicals. And i only go for blue chips like TLCs or GLCs, their fundamentals are reasonably strong, so i don't really bother much about things like FCF, PE ratio, etc... And i also don't practice stop loss.

    I guess our strategies are really quite different. :P

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