I am doing again an early update because it's the school holidays and we will be traveling again for a short holiday to Penang for about 5 days after today. We are geared up and ready for another round of experience.

There's a mix of both good and bad during this month. The month started badly and news surrounding the North Korea keeps appearing. To make it worse, there are tons of news about how Grab is going on all out to capture the Singapore market to fight off Uber. This sets the tone for short sellers to make a big hit on the market. The good news is it gives me a good opportunity to accumulate. Love it. Keep it going guys.

I started off by divesting all my shares in Katrina after a disappointing short stint which didn't work out. I made a loss of about 7% but it wasn't particularly huge from the absolute amount point of view. I was disappointed to see the earnings result despite increasing the number of outlets, margins was heavily squeezed as the company tried to move from the traditional dining to online delivery model. While it appears that its a good move, it seems to me that it is cannibalizing the dining numbers more than bringing in additional revenue. Anyway, F&B is always a tough one. I keep reminding myself not to engage in this sort of environment but always digress. Naughty me.

I also divested Guocoland at a price of $2.30 after just holding it for barely a month. This was a good 22% over a large absolute profit so this brings in the most impact coming into this month. I had a target price in my head of around $2.30 when I bought in and didn't want to wait until their value is fully realized because you never know what to expect out there from a HK listed owned parent group. I always felt that HK developers are trading at such steep discount for such a long time that I am not convinced the value will be fully priced by the market. Anyway, it's money in the pocket first that matters.

I also load up about 21,000 shares of First Reit at $1.33. This was a pure move of trying to increase yield for the longer term, giving a decent yield of about 6.4%. The company is buying the Siloam hospital and the management has done well over the years to increase the DPU steadily.

I also recently initiated a small position in Vicom which I blogged here. I am still watching the deregistration number and it still looks high over next 1 to 2 years, so it is unlikely we will see improvement in the near term. The yield is fairly decent and I am playing out a thesis that they might distribute the cash they have on hand. 

I also accumulated a little bit more shares in Comfortdelgro and M1, which are currently my biggest two positions. Both have been battered really bad so I am sitting on a loss currently. To think that after all these bad news are in, I am actually only down 6% so far for Comfort and 5.5% for M1, inclusive of dividend, so they are not as bad as I thought. Still, I think no light at the end of the tunnel, and short sellers are still lurking, so maybe another round of accumulation for me next month.

In a market like what we experienced today, I am pleased to find that the portfolio has trended well in the right direction from the previous month of $612,564 to $620,386 this month (+1.3% month on month; +39.3% year on year). This portion includes capital injection, and of course the dividend just received recently too.

Cash portion has also gone to comfortable level back at 20%, so it'll be ready for any further accumulation should weaknesses persist.

Thanks for reading.