US ETF Portfolio Update - September 2020

Hello everyone, 

 Our apologies on the lack of updates but we both are currently pretty swamped with school assignments. Life has really been about chasing deadlines. That being said, the market is currently rather erratic, with Trump confirmed with COVID and the presidential elections on the way. I did made a few additions to my ETF portfolio during September, you may find the numbers in USD here:

I take reference to the market closing price on 8 October 2020.  And I do not include any dividends received into my computation.

Stay safe,

O

US ETF Portfolio Update - August 2020

 Hello everyone,

Here's a quick update on my US ETF portfolio. As the US market turn red in the last part of last week following news that vaccine will not be released early as planned, my portfolio took quite a hit on it. However, the gains in the early part of the month have mitigated this impact. I still managed to see green month-on-month. 

Here are the numbers in USD:

ETF	Quantity	Total Cost	Market Value
VOO	2	562.00	629.64
VHT	1	195.00	201.81
XLP	4	239.16	262.28
XLK	2	196.00	236.24
ARKK	3	199.27	261.15
Total		1391.43	1591.12
		Gain	14.35%

I take reference to the market closing price on 4 September 2020.  And I do not include any dividends received into my computation. If this pullback continues, I am definitely adding more of each ETFs.

Stay Safe,

O

Goal review - tough times call for tough measures

 Hey everyone,

hope you guys have been doing well! I've been gradually easing my way into my University life, and getting used to the student life after a two-year break certainly haven't been easy. But now that I have settled down, I had the chance to take a breather, and sort out my finances, which had been a mess during this whole transition to university life....

During this review, I realised, disappointingly, that I was not going to hit my financial goal of $18,000 this year. Instead, I would have to adjust my annual goal to be at $12,000. There are several reasons for this, and I will explore some of them below:

1) Miscalculation

The biggest reason for me missing my annual goal would be my miscalculations previously. I did not take into account several of the big spending that I would have to make heading into my university life. For example, my laptop's wear-and-tear resulted in me needing to purchase another one, and I did not take into account some of the charges I would have to undertake, including my hall fees and miscellaneous purchases. 

I was also unrealistic in my budget for my monthly spending initially, as I set an overly-ambitious goal in the beginning of the year, and did not give myself any leeway/room for failure. As I realised that it was impossible for me to adhere to the initial goal, I decided to give myself a looser, and much more manageable budget, which inevitably contributed to me missing the target.

Broadly speaking, I was overly optimistic and naive in making my first financial goal, and this experience is definitely something I will take into account when crafting my future goals.

2) Unexpected market

As most of my holdings were mainly in Straits Times Index, the index's under-performance this year contributed to my portfolio's lacklustre performance. The rest of my portfolio were not performing great as well, especially since some of them were purchased right before the COVID-19 pandemic crashed the local markets. While I have no worry holding my stocks for the long-term, some of them have not recovered to their pre-COVID highs, and have taken a hit at my overall net worth.

In conclusion, while it is indeed unfortunate that I had to adjust my annual goal downwards, I am glad that I managed to discover and review it early, as I could now work towards my new target realistically. This has also been a great lesson for me, to be more realistic and pragmatic in my future annual goals moving forward. I believe that goals might be there to stretch us to achieve something we deem impossible, but it definitely has to be realistic and achievable. I am relieved that I still have exactly 4 months to work towards my revised goal. 

On that note, how have you guys been doing with your annual goals? Do share with us in the comments below!

Stay Safe,

T

Best Credit Cards Available for Students!

 What's up guys, its been a while since I've updated on this platform, and I hope all of you have been doing well! I have been caught up with matriculation/academic matters, hence my inactivity on this platform for the past two weeks. I have been drowning in lectures and readings, and it's just the first week of uni...

But enough of the life updates from me. Since I've finally enrolled into University, I have been scouring around for credit cards available to students, and I have found two that I am planning to apply for.

I think credit cards are a good way for us to spend money, assuming the payment due are repaid on time such that there is no late interest payment. This allows us to gain an extra month of interest with the money in our account. This is especially advantageous if your cash are parked in a high-yield account. Allow me to introduce them to you and why I decided to get them.

Maybank eVibes Card

Eligibility:

Full-time National Servicemen (NSF) or Tertiary students from these institutions: LASALLE, NAFA, NIE, NP, NTU, NUS, NYP, RP, SIT, SMU, SP, SUSS, SUTD & TP

Age: 18 - 30

Annual Income: Must not exceed S$30, 000

Must not be an existing Maybank Principal Credit Cardmember or CreditAble customer

Singapore Citizens or Singapore Permanent Residents

Benefits:

1% cash rebates on all spending

Up to 8% off accommodation bookings worldwide with AGODA(till 31 December 2020)

Review:

I decided to apply for this card as it had the highest cash rebate, at 1%, among all the other student credit cards out there, with seemingly the least restrictions on the type of spending. The 8% off accommodation with AGODA is a sweet bonus as well, but I personally don't see international travel making a comeback before the end of this year , so it may be less applicable. But the 1% cash rebate makes this one of the most attractive student credit card out there, and by itself is more than enough to convince me to get this card.

DBS Live Fresh Student Card

Eligibility:

An Undergraduate student from these institutions: NUS, NTU, SMU, SUTD, SUSS, SIT, Nanyang Polytechnic, Ngee Ann Polytechnic, Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore Polytechnic or Republic Polytechnic

Age: 18 - 27

Not have an existing DBS/POSB Credit Card and/or other unsecured facilities with DBS/POSB

Be a Singapore Citizen/Permanent Resident

Benefits:

5% cashback for spending at Golden Village, McDonald's, McDelivery, Netflix, Spotify and Starbucks (capped at $15)

0.3% cashback on 'All Spend' (capped at $20)

Review:

DBS's Live Fresh Student Card is also one of my two picks, due to it's attractive 5% cashback. Personally, I am subscribed to Netflix and Spotify monthly, and I frequent McDonalds as well, hence I was really attracted when I saw the rates offered by this card! I honestly think this card has been well-designed to target the youths in Singapore, with the shops well curated to target most spendngs by Singaporean youths. However, since the 0.3% cashback on other spending may seem measly, I believe this card is best used in tandem with other student credit cards!

Personally, I have not yet have the chance to use any of these cards, thus my review up till now is solely based on what I've read from their websites. I might do another review of these cards somewhere down the road, after perhaps a few months of usage. Till then, I encourage you to explore other cards and head down to their respective websites to get a clearer understanding of the benefits they present and their terms & conditions, before applying for any of these cards.

Stay Safe,

T

US ETF Portfolio Update - July 2020

Hello everyone,

Here's a quick update on my US ETF portfolio. As Nasdaq and S&P continue to see gains, my portfolio was also able to share some of it. I am happy with the overall performance of it. I am currently busy with internship while T is busy with his matriculation to University. I did however had some time to do a quick trade earlier this week which I will perhaps share over the upcoming long weekend. 

Anyway, here are the numbers in USD:

ETF	Quantity	Total Cost	Market Value
VOO	2	562.00	610.3
VHT	1	195.00	205.68
XLP	4	239.16	252.72
XLK	2	196.00	227.72
ARKK	3	199.27	256.83
Total		1391.43	1553.25
		Gain	11.63%

I take reference to the market closing price on 5 August 2020.  And I do not include any dividends received into my computation. I might increase my holdings in the portfolio during August to do some rebalancing (although I feel that the portfolio is relatively balanced already). But I am definitely looking to add more if the opportunity allows.

Happy National Day!

Stay Safe,

O

TSMC: 20% upside within a week

Hello friends,

As we ease into the long weekend, I would like to do a review on TSMC. Previously, I did a short introduction of the company (here). Since then, there were some rather significant developments to the semiconductor scene – rather positive ones for me personally.

Firstly, TSMC’s earnings release were above expectations. And overall revenue increase by 28% yoy and net income by 81% yoy. I think this came in rather expectedly due to the production capacity of TSMC being fully booked. I believed the stock price then was already priced in for the earnings hence there wasn’t much movement in the price despite the better than expected results.

 

Second, the recent issue of Intel’s failure to meet its demand due to shortage of supplies gave TSMC an even further boost – in two ways. I briefly talked about this problem of Intel in the previous post. AMD (one of TSMC’s main client) is a direct rival of Intel. Both are neck at neck in terms of the development CPUs scene where Intel used to hold an almost monopoly position in the past. Naturally, given the current circumstances, AMD is gaining more market share due to orders flowing in from Intel to AMD, and hence increasing their orders to TSMC. (I do acknowledge that there might be a level of client stickiness to Intel, but given the current pandemic, Intel would need a long time to be able to get its supply back on tracks.) Evidently, client stickiness is not as significant given the recent AMD’s earnings call which expects revenue to grow by 32% in 2020. AMD rose 12% in one day.

The next point is what I believed caused TSMC’s share price to increase by more than 20% in less than a week. There were rumours that Intel was considering to revamp its whole IDM model and to stop manufacturing its own chips following its 7nm chip delay. Consequently, there were speculations that the manufacturing will be outsourced to TSMC.

 

Will TSMC actually help Intel manufacture their chips?

 

I believe the situation is still rather unclear. But it is important to note that TSMC have no more capacity to manufacture the chips even if Intel decides to outsource to them. Furthermore, I am not too sure whether there will be a conflict of interest between AMD and Intel.

 

Ultimately, the prospects of TSMC are very forward-looking and the upcoming gaming consoles launch will be another potential catalyst to note. I am continuing to be bullish on this stock after these series of events and will be looking for more opportunities to add more of it into my portfolio.

 

Stay safe and healthy, 

O

*Disclaimer: I have positions in TSMC and AMD.

High-dividend stock on my watchlist!

Hey everyone,

hope that y'all have been doing well recently! Haven't had the chance to post in the past two weeks, but I'm coming back today to discuss a stock that I have placed on my watchlist for the past few months!

The stock in question is Micro-Mechanics (SGX: 5DD). A brief introduction about what Micro-Mechanics does. It designs, manufactures and markets high-precision parts and tools for the semiconductor and other high technology industries. It has five factories across the world, located in Singapore, Malaysia, China, Philippines and the USA, with direct sales presence in Taiwan and Europe.

Micro-Mechanics first caught my eye as I saw that it's dividend payout has never decreased over the past 10 years, while holding a healthy balance sheet. If it manages to maintain a $0.1 dividend payout this year, it would be offering a 5.32% yield at its current price, which is surprisingly good considering the stock's recent performance has it returning to pre-March crash levels. It is currently trading at 1.88, with a 52-week range of 1.32 - 2.00.

Micro-Mechanics has a distinct advantage, that is being in the semi-conductor industry. While Micro-Mechanics' current P/E ratio of 19 might be unappealing to some, I believe there is still further room for growth, considering how strong the semi-conductor industry as a whole rebounded well during the COVID-19 situation. This industry seems to be only looking upwards for the next few years to come, with the world being forced to digitalize at a much faster pace due to COVID.

An area for concern for me would be its dividend payout ratio, as it exceeded 100% during its' last fiscal year. With it's strong balance sheet, it does not seem like much of a concern for now, especially since it's 5-yr average of dividend-payout ratio is at 64.74%, but it could be something I look out for going forward.

Micro-Mechanics have been on my watchlist for quite some time, and I would definitely be looking for an entry once I manage to gather some liquidity. Till my next post, take care!

Stay Safe,

T