Portfolio Update Q1 2026

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This month marks the end of the 1st quarter of 2026.  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, but I have since liquidated my entire US Growth Portfolio in September 2025 to pay off my Malaysia mortgage loan.  In March 2026, I started the MY Dividends Portfolio, which currently consist of only banks and REITs.  The purpose of this is to complement my SG Dividends Portfolio, and hopefully generate dividends in MYR to hedge against forex risks when I FIRE.  

Being a relatively conservative investor, I prefer to dollar cost average (DCA) into the market to slowly build up my portfolio.  The current war in the Middle East is proving to be more destructive to the equity markets world wide compared to the Russia-Ukraine war.  Due to the restriction of shipping of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, this severely impacted the delivery of oil to Europe, Asia and Asean region.  This sparks fear of inflation, as prices of oil rocketed above USD 100 within weeks.  With this spike, stock markets corrected and price of precious metals crashed.  This definitely impacted the performance of my SG Dividend Portfolio.  This is also one of the reasons why I decided to start my MY Dividend Portfolio this month.  While I know that I definitely cannot catch the bottom, I have to admit that I am a little too early and my MY Portfolio immediately fell into the red.  Nonetheless, as it is a dividend portfolio, I will just hold on to the shares, and slowly build up the portfolio in time to come with my rental income.    

For my SG Portfolio, I have done more rebalancing, as shared previously in this post.  On a happier note, despite the fluctuations in portfolio value, dividends collected in the first quarter has been satisfactory, at SGD 5,506.60 (Q1 2025 dividend at SGD 3,367.93) from quarterly dividends from Mapletree Family REITs, Aims Apac REIT (AAR) and CFA ETF, and semi-annual dividends from Kimly, Capitaland Ascott Trust (CLAST), Capitaland Integrated Commercial Trust (CICT) and ParkwayLife REIT (PWLR).  This amount reflects an increase of 64% from the dividends collected one year ago.  However, this sharp increase was due to advance distributions by CICT and PWLR back in Q4 2024.  If I include the advance distributions into the total dividends collected in Q1 2025, the total amount will be SGD 4,667.09 in Q1 2025, which reflects a more reasonable 18% increase year on year.  I am pleased with this increment, and it is definitely a gift in current turbulent times.

In addition, the banks and some other companies within my portfolio have also announced their dividends, which will be paid in Q2.  Some has announced increase in dividends, some announced special dividends, while a couple had announced dividend cuts.  Overall, I think the dividends I can collect in Q2 2026 could be comparable to one year ago.  I am definitely looking forward to the final tabulation of the final amount to be collected.

For this month, the total SG portfolio market value has declined to around SGD 731k in this quarter, which, including a capital injection of about SGD 2.2K, is a decrease of about 1.5% compared to previous month.  The performance is within expectations as STI has fallen by about 2.2% this month, and many "finfluencers" have also posted huge losses in their portfolios.  As I just started my MY portfolio this month, I do not have a month on month comparison, and currently MY portfolio market value is around MYR 22.7k.  When will the portfolio recover is beyond me, as it depends on when the war is ending, and when will oil tankers be able to pass through the Straits of Hormuz to resume the supply of oil.  In addition, many companies are going to trade XD next month, so portfolio market value should be under pressure.   Moving forward, I will continue to slowly buy into Malaysia stocks to build my MY Dividend Portfolio, and reinvest the dividends to further compound my SG Dividend Portfolio.  Nonetheless, I am looking forward to the upcoming quarterly reporting, to continue to collect the dividends from both my portfolios in the second quarter of 2026.  Barista FIRE, here I come...!

SG Dividends Portfolio

MY Dividends Portfolio

Total Portfolio Value: SGD 731,165.00 + MYR 22,673.00

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