Portfolio Update for May 2024

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

For the month of May, it was an interesting month.  The old adage of “Sell in May and Go Away” was definitely back to haunt the markets before the month started, especially with the looming threat of stickier than expected CPI numbers.  However, interestingly, the markets were hitting new highs in May.  The Dow Jones Industrial Index crossed the 40,000 mark for the first time this month, bringing confidence to the performance in the market.

On the other hand, CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon was cautious and said that US cannot rule out the possibly of a hard landing, and stagflation would be the worst outcome for the US.  This speech brought volatility back into the markets and pushed back any hopes of rate cuts to the 4th quarter of 2024 instead of the 3rd.  Personally, I have mentioned earlier that I am not going to be guessing when the rate cuts is going to happen and I am just going to live with zero expectations and that there will be no rate cuts in 2024, so the under-performance of my REITs' portfolio is going to be expected for the rest of this year, and any surprise on the upside is just going to be a bonus.

Consequently, inflation is probably going to remain sticky for the rest of the year.  So far, prices of WTI crude oil is hovering below, but near to USD 80, but the retreat in the USD and with 10-year yield staying below 4.5% had remain as positives for the market, until the last couple of days of the month when the 10-year yield sudden shot above 4.5%, and WTI crude oil creeping above USD 80.  This is due to the hawkish tone of the FED members and threats of further rate hikes instead of rate cuts.  Personally, I am ignoring all these noises and will just hold on to my portfolio.

All in all, the only topic holding up the market now seems to be the development of generative AI, especially after Nvidia continues to report yet another quarter of spectacular earnings.  How long can this trend continue remains to be seen but I believe it will be for a while more.  Although I am not vested in Nvidia, but I hope the positive effects can continue to overflow to the other tech giants like Microsoft and Google, and even smaller players like Palantir, so that my portfolio may benefit from the hype.

In the US market, my portfolio is doing relatively well, with the exception of Tesla and Palantir.  Tesla is going to face some critical events with the vote on Elon Musk's pay package coming up.  How the votes will turn out, and what ripple effects it may have remains to be seen.  It's all in the hands of the major shareholders, who remain very much divided on this recently.  Palantir has also retreated from the highs of USD 25 to currently hovering around USD 21 after the release of the quarterly earnings, which is good, but according to analysts, not exciting nor spectacular.  As such, its share price retreated due to the rich valuation at that point in time.  For all other companies and ETF in my portfolio, I would say they are doing well, supporting and growing my US Growth Portfolio steadily, and I am pleased with that.

In addition, I am also happy that I have finally earned back all my losses from options trading previously, from options trading itself.  Now, I have an extremely humble 2-digit profits from my options trading.  Hopefully it can continue to grow at a slow and steady pace, while constantly remind myself not to fall into greed which will almost definitely make myself lose money.

Closer to home, I am more contended with my SG Dividend Portfolio after the rebalancing done previously.  With the release of the earnings of the companies and REITs and Trusts, all the dividends for the second quarter has been announced, and I am happy that the dividends that I will be receiving for this quarter is approximately 7.7% higher than the same period last year.  Without any hiccups, I should be able to fulfill my Barista FIRE goal this year, achieving more than SGD 24K of dividends for this whole year (hopefully more than SGD 26K as per my goal set at the start of the year).  Details of the dividends received will be announced next month in my portfolio's quarterly updates.

For this month, I injected approximately SGD 11.1K capital buying the following shares:

SGX:    CapitaLand Ascott Trust

             Development Bank of Singapore

             Hong Leong Finance

             Mapletree Industrial Trust

             Mapletree Pan Asia Commercial Trust

             ParkwayLife REIT

             Singapore Technologies Engineering

             United Overseas Bank

US:       Google-C

             Microsoft

             Palantir

             VOO ETF

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

SGX:    CapitaLand Ascott Trust

             Hong Leong Finance

             Mapletree Pan Asia Commercial Trust

             ParkwayLife REIT

Total Portfolio Value has increased slightly by approximately 1.3% to around SGD 535K including capital injection.  Finally, this is the second consecutive month where the portfolio value remains above SGD 500K mark.  Hopefully, this would mean that the portfolio will stabilize above half a million mark for foreseeable future, and no black swan events will happen anytime soon to disrupt the portfolio growth.  However, of course that is beyond my control, thus I can only hope for the best, and remain nimble.  Shall continue to sit back, relax, and wait for dividends collection in June!

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