Portfolio Update Q1 2025

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This month marks the end of the 1st quarter of 2025.  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.  This month is a gloomy month for US markets.  The tariffs and counter-tariffs imposed by US, European Union, Canada and China on one another is depressing the markets, and investors fear looming recession amidst the heightening global trade tensions.  The magnificent 7 stocks continue their downtrend this month, partly due to their rich valuations after the massive run up in 2023 and 2024.  On the interest rate front, the FED maintained interest rates at 4.25% to 4.50%, citing increased economic uncertainty.  Revised projections indicated lower GDP growth at 1.7% (down from 2.1%) and higher inflation at 2.7% (up from 2.5%), raising concerns about potential stagflation.  To make matters worse, the PCE numbers were also hotter than expected.  All these basically caused my US Growth Portfolio to fall by 6.2% within the month.

Despite the doom and gloom, the 10 year yield has remained relatively stable around 4.25%.  This is positive news nearer to home, and it helps to prop up the REITs sector once again.  Besides the slow recovery in REITs' prices, the bright spot this month has to come from Singapore Technologies Engineering (STE).  Just within the month, its share price has risen by a shocking 26%, mainly due to its spectacular quarterly results, analysts upgrade and its new dividend policy moving forward.  I am definitely not complaining and will just hold on to my shares to enjoy the capital appreciation and dividend increment.  

On a happier note, despite the fluctuations in portfolio value, dividends collected in the first quarter has been satisfactory, at SGD 3,367.93 (Q1 2024 dividend at SGD 4,321.23) from quarterly dividends from Mapletree Family REITs and semi-annual dividends from Capitaland Ascott Trust (CLAST), Capitaland Integrated Commercial Trust (CICT) and ParkwayLife REIT (PWLR).  This amount reflects a decline of 22% from the dividends collected one year ago.  However, this decline is due to advance distributions by CICT and PWLR, which were paid in Q4 2024.  If I include the advance distributions into the total dividends collected this quarter, the total amount will be SGD 4,667.09, which is an 8% increase year on year.  As such, I am not too concerned with the decline, as my Barista FIRE plan involves an advance accumulation of dividends into a pool before drawdown happens from the pool, instead of spending what is paid out via dividends on that particular quarter.  I believe this will serve as a buffer to soothe out the accumulation and drawdown process.  The actual details will be shared later when I am ready to FIRE!  

In addition, the banks and financial institutions have also announced their dividends, which will be paid in Q2.  Due to the increase in dividends and the special dividends announced by the 3 local banks, I believe if no black swan event happens in the coming quarter, the dividends I can collect in Q2 2025 will increase significantly.  I am definitely looking forward to the final tabulation of the final amount to be collected.

For this month, the total portfolio market value climbed steadily thanks to the support from the SG Dividend Portfolio, closing off the month at another all time high, at around SGD 677k in this quarter, which, including a capital injection of about SGD 1.0K, is an astounding increase of about 5.4%.  The performance is beyond expectations this month, because of the spike in share price of STE, which is also unexpected.  However, I will expect a huge drop in the overall portfolio value next month, due to many companies XD dates falling in April, and I believe after XD, the exuberance towards all the special dividends will die down, and market performance will normalize and move in tandem with the US markets once again.  Moving forward, I will continue to diversify my portfolio so the allocation to individual stocks will decline to comfortable levels.  Nonetheless, I am looking forward to the upcoming quarterly reporting, to continue to collect the dividends from my portfolio in the second quarter of 2025.  Barista FIRE, here I come...!

SG Dividends Portfolio

US Growth Portfolio

Total Portfolio Value: SGD 677,098.74 (USD 1 : SGD 1.343)

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