Portfolio Update Q3 2024

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This month marks the end of the 3rd quarter of 2024.  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 most important event that happened this month is definitely the FED meeting and the speech by Jerome Powell on 18th September 2024.  As expected, the FED finally announced an interest rate cut by 50 basis point.  This long awaited event has finally materialize and I believe this bring cheers to many REITs investors like myself.  Moving forward, based on the dot plot, there should be 2 more rate cuts this year, and 4 rate cuts in 2025.  However, how the sequence of events will eventually play out remains to be seen, as the FED has stressed that future actions will remain data driven.  This means that as long as inflation remains under control and continue to progress towards the 2% mark, the planned schedule of rate cuts will happen.  However, do note that uncertainty remains.  One is due to the US President's election in November, and one is the on-going wars in Europe and in the Middle-East.  Any further escalation may result in unforeseen black swan event.  As such, it may be better to remain cautiously optimistic at this juncture.

US Growth Portfolio is performing relatively well this month.  Some volatility persists but generally range-bound, with the exception of Google and Tesla.  Google's share price is under pressure recently as the company has lost a law suit in the US on antitrust law due to its search monopoly services.  This outcome threatened the possible breakup of Google's search business, and this uncertainty on its outcome is placing pressure on its share price, hence the downtrend in prices over the past month.  On the flipside, Tesla's share price amazingly is on the mend.  It may possibly be due to the upcoming release of the Robotaxi on 10th October 2024.  Nonetheless, the share price recovery is always welcomed!  One thing to note is I have not traded any options in the past 3 months, so I am quite relaxed for this quarter.

Closer to home, REITs are staging the best recovery in the past 2 years in my SG Dividend Portfolio.  As my portfolio is 50% concentrated in REITs, this recovery helped to propel my portfolio value to a new all time high.  However, there is no immediate tangible benefit for me as I am a self-proclaimed dividend investor.  As such, I have no immediate intention to sell any shares.  Nonetheless, the uptrend is definitely instilling a feel-good factor in me.  In the REITs space, the big news this month will be the acquisition of 50% of ION Ochard by Capitaland Integrated Commercial Trust (CICT).  As a small shareholder of CICT, we can partake in the equity raising via preferential offering.  Shareholders are eligible to buy 56 shares per 1000 existing shares owned at a slight discounted price of SGD 2.007.  I decided to apply for 1,300 shares (including excess above the number of shares I was allocated).  With this equity fund raising, CICT has announced an advance distribution of SGD 0.0216 per existing shares, payable on 17th October 2024.  This means that I will enjoy an early dividend in the final quarter this year, and a smaller amount of dividends from CICT in the first quarter in 2025.  Regardless, any cash income is definitely welcomed!

On a happier note, on top of the recovery in portfolio value, dividends collected in the third quarter has been above satisfactory, at SGD 8,844.50 from quarterly dividends from Mapletree Family REITs, Development Bank of Singapore (DBS) and Singapore Technologies Engineering (STE), and semi-annual dividends from Oversea-Chinese Banking Corporation (OCBC), Hong Leong Finance (HLF), United Overseas Bank (UOB), Capitaland Integrated Commercial Trust (CICT), ParkwayLife REIT (PWLR) and Capitaland Ascott Trust (CLAST).  This amount is about 25.4% higher than the amount of dividends collected in the third quarter of 2023.  The overall increase in quarterly dividends is due to the dividend support from DBS and UOB after I added them into my portfolio, and the increase in dividends from HLF.  Hopefully the current portfolio and allocation will help to make my future dividends more stable and predictable, especially as I slowly move towards my Barista FIRE path in time to come.

For this month, the total portfolio market value rocketed up to all time highs on 19th September, then kind of move sideways, before declining in the last week of the month, closing off the month up at a new high of approximately SGD 607k, including a partial sale of Tesla and Palantir shares which returns a net capital of about SGD 1.9K.  This means that the portfolio value nets an increase of about 4.4%.  The performance is within expectations because the approximately 50% composition of the REITs in the portfolio definitely helped to propel the overall portfolio value with their recovering prices, coupled with the share prices of banks hitting all time high this month as well, while the US Growth Portfolio fluctuates and remain volatile.  Starting from this quarter, I will start saving up a bulk of my dividend income in a high yield savings account and only reinvest a smaller portion of it, to try out my strategy mentioned in this earlier post as I plan to slowly transit towards Barista FIRE.  Nonetheless, I am still looking forward to the upcoming quarterly reporting, to continue to collect the dividends from my portfolio in the final quarter of 2024.  Barista FIRE, here I come...!

SG Dividends Portfolio

US Growth Portfolio

Total Portfolio Value: SGD 606,480.01 (USD 1 : SGD 1.2812)

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