Portfolio Update for April 2024

This will be a relatively short post, just to update on the transactions for the month.

For the month of April, it is a gloomy month.  The CPI for March is hotter than expected, and that is the third consecutive month where CPI was buck the desirable trend and went upwards.  On the other hand, PPI was a tad more subdued, and PMI released recently showed signs of weakness in demand.  One main worry was the intensification of the war in the Middle East, which was bad for inflation numbers due to the war's impact on the price of oil.  In the wee hours of 13th April 2024, Iran began their retaliatory attacks on Israel through drones and missiles.  Thankfully all drones and missiles were intercepted and no casualties are reported.  Less than a week later, Israel also fired back in a limited retaliatory strike. Thankfully, it seems like both sides are halting further moves for now, and the tension seems to be defusing in the near term.  I sincerely hope that peace will return soon.  With the threats, oil price rose to one-year high levels before retreating slightly.  That probably means that inflation numbers are not going to return to the declining trend any time soon, and I believe that I can ignore any possibility of rate cuts happening this year in 2024.  Without a doubt, this means that REITs and Trusts will continue to experience stress, especially with the 10-year yields rising back up above 4.5%.  Just hope that the cuts in distribution per unit by the REITs and Trust in my portfolio will not be too devastating.

In the US market, the big tech companies excluding Tesla and Apple are having a great run up in share price, and in the middle of the month, a small retracement occurred.  I took the opportunity to nibble some shares to grow my portfolio.  Hopefully in time to come, it can prove that I made the right move.  The top performer this month will be Google, which has announced that it is planning to start paying dividends and that propelled the share price by about 10% in a day.  That helped to support my US Growth Portfolio value, when Tesla is facing its downward trend amidst volatility.

Nearer to home, I made some changes and rebalancing to my portfolio.  I added shares of new entrants into my portfolio, namely United Overseas Bank (UOB) and Development Bank of Singapore (DBS).  Due to the "fear of missing out" (FOMO) sentiments of the investing community, the share prices of the Singapore banks are rising non stop after momentary dips.  As such, I only managed to add a couple of hundred shares, which is lesser than what I would like to own in this rebalancing exercise (as shared in this post).  However, it is better than none.  Shall keep the remaining cash and wait for other opportunities.

For more positive news, it is a new quarter, and the earnings of the companies are REITs and Trusts will gradually be released this month and next, and this means, dividends are streaming in soon in the coming months.  First to release its earnings result is Mapletree Pan Asia Commercial Trust (MPACT).  MPACT's results, though not fantastic, is starting to show some green shoots of turnaround.  Besides the strong performance of the Singapore properties, the worrisome China and Hong Kong properties are also showing smaller negative rental reversions compared to a year ago.  It is also good news that its quarterly distribution per unit (DPU) has shown a reversal to increase year-on-year, though the full year distribution per unit is still declining year-on-year.  However, interest coverage ratio has dipped below 3x, and this needs to be monitored.  Mapletree Industrial Trust (MIT) has also announced a slight increase in DPU year-on-year.  Though the increase is minimal, it is nonetheless good news in current high interest rates environment.  Mapletree Logistics Trust (MLT) on the other hand, announced a slight decrease in DPU year-on-year.  This is a little disappointing as in the past few quarters, MLT had been able to deliver growth in DPU, however this quarter, due to the enlarged unit base, increased borrowing cost and forex losses due to the strong Singapore Dollar, coupled with the lack of divestment gains resulted in the decline.  Nonetheless, I believe these 3 REITs are still strong fundamentally, and when the weakest of them (MPACT in my opinion) has showed a turnaround, they will all continue to do decent in current challenging environment.

Next month, Frasers Logistics and Commercial Trust will be announcing its results.  I will not be too optimistic with its results, because other REITs with Australian properties have not been showing great performances.  Therefore, I believe FLCT's performance will be largely subdued, or even disappointing.  I shall just look forward to its distributions, and ignore the near term volatility in share price.

For this month, I injected approximately SGD 23K capital buying the following shares:

SGX:    Development Bank of Singapore

             Frasers Logistics and Commercial Trust

             Mapletree Logistics Trust

             United Overseas Bank

US:       Apple

             JP Morgan

             Microsoft

             Palantir

             Tesla   

             VOO ETF

In addition, I have also reinvested dividends on the following shares:

SGX:    Mapletree Industrial Trust

             Mapletree Logistics Trust

Total Portfolio Value has decreased slightly by approximately 0.2% to around SGD 517K including capital injection.  Finally, after a long time since July 2023, when my portfolio first breeched the SGD 500K portfolio value mark, and progressed to sink below again, is finally back up above this milestone mark once again.  This is probably not due to improvement in market performance, instead it is due to the massive capital injection I made for portfolio rebalancing for this month.  Hoping that my portfolio will now stabilize above this half a million mark.  Looking forward to the results of FLCT, and looking forward to more dividends to be collected!