Portfolio Update Q2 2023

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This month marks the end of the 2nd quarter of 2023. Thus it's definitely a good time for me to record the performance of my portfolio to track how it has been.

To recap, I started my SG Dividends Portfolio in late 2017, and I began tracking the dividends and all reinvestment done starting 2018. To date, my SG Dividends Portfolio consist of banks, REITs and defense technology. On the other hand, I only started the US Growth Portfolio in late December 2021. Currently, my US Growth Portfolio consist of mainly big tech names, bank and exchange traded funds (ETFs).

Being a relatively conservative investor, I prefer to dollar cost average (DCA) into the market to slowly build up my portfolio. The advantages of using Interactive Brokers to buy the US shares via DCA are undoubtedly the low fees and ability to buy fractional shares of mega-cap technology shares like Alphabet and Tesla. The latest FED meeting in June showed that the FED will not pivot in 2023, and instead, there might be 2 more hikes coming up in the remainder of the year. This is because despite inflation falling from above 9% to currently 4.0%, the core CPI numbers in the past 3 months showed how sticky inflation is, and is likely to remain elevated in time to come. This basically remains as a main pressure keeping in check the general market sentiments, especially with the 10-year bond yield fluctuating around 3.75%.

As reported in the update last month, it has been a tale of 2 different trends in my two portfolios, and the trend has continued into this month. The US Growth Portfolio has ditched all troubles from the banking crisis last quarter and risen to new highs due to the greed in Artificial Intelligence (AI) theme. This helped to propel my Growth Portfolio into the green, with Apple and Microsoft inching towards new highs by the mid of the month.  However, in the second half of the month, things took a turn.  It may be a correction due to the rocketing speed of the rise in share prices of large tech companies, or a scare by the FED to continue raising rates for 2 more times this year that caused many investors to take some profits off the table in the short term.  

Closer to home, my Dividend Portfolio is still under pressure as the REITs continue to underperform. Until the certainty of the FED stop hiking rates is set in stone, REITs will continue to be under price pressure as investors continue to stay away from this sector.  However, as the peak interest rate is definitely very near, now may be the time to slowly accumulate quality REITs on continued price weakness.

Despite the fluctuations in portfolio value, dividends collected in the second quarter has been satisfactory, at SGD 8,610.71 from quarterly dividends from Mapletree Family REITs, Singapore Technologies Engineering and semi-annual dividends from Overseas-Banking Corporation, Hong Leong Finance and Frasers Logistics and Commercial Trust.  The positivity is that this amount is about 15% higher than the amount of dividends collected in the second quarter of 2022.  Accumulatively, the total dividends collected in the first half of 2023 is approximately 31% higher than that in first half of 2022.  These news signal that I am progressing in the right direction, and slowly but surely I am another step closer to my Barista FIRE goal.

For this month, the total portfolio market value rose and crashed again, closing off the month lower at approximately SGD 487k in this quarter, including a capital injection of SGD 1.5K, which is an increase of about 2.2%.  I was kind of pleased with the performance for the full month despite the high volatility.  However, it is a good time to slowly scoop some shares during the retreat in share prices.  Nonetheless, I am looking forward to the upcoming quarterly reporting, to continue to collect the dividends of the REITs that are in my portfolio.  Barista FIRE, here I come...!

SG Dividends Portfolio

US Growth Portfolio

Total Portfolio Value: SGD 486,917.08 (USD 1 : SGD 1.3536)

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