What a month of difference it has been.

From what looks like a very despair month in Mar and beginning of April, the market rallied back in the latter part of Apr and throughout the entire month of May as stocks begin to reverse out the losses that are due to Covid-19.

Most of investors who have some stakes in the market will have profited from it one way or another from the rebound and it is a good testament of what the market is capable of if you are one who keeps waiting until the coast is clear. 

Still, we can never be sure of anything.

The economies are only starting to reopen and there are still riots everywhere around HK and US so the markets may be ignoring these noises of what could potentially be a game changer.

My strategy is to keep buying when there's fear in the market and start to slowly selling (keyword is slowly) when there's some form of greed in the market. At the moment, I think we're somewhere in between two halves so there's no panic to take on extreme positions at both ends.

From the last portfolio updates, I further added Jardine C&C into my position at the price of $19.9 on the 22nd May. I believe they were still cheap back then as they were trading at a normalized yield of 6% and earnings yield of 12%. It has subsided now that the share price has rebounded some close to 15% but I think there's still some room so I'm keeping them slightly longer. I'm also interested in the dividend payout that the company will go xd by next Monday so I'll have to see what happens beyond that.

On divestment, I sold off my small position in Valuetronics at 66 cents on the 13th May after they managed to run up in May. This yields me a small 10% gain.

During the month, I've also managed to do some quick trading activities.

I bought DBS on the 13th May for 600 shares (think 2 days after xd) at a price of $19.30 and managed to sell it off on the 3rd Jun at $20.77. This has yielded me a small gain of 8%.

I also traded CNOOC from the HK exchange after buying 6000 shares at HKD8.58 on the 25th May on the back of the national security law from Beijing which rattles the HK market and managed to sell them at HKD9.42 on the 3rd Jun. This has yielded me a small gain of 9.7%.

These small gains are not moving the big needle in the portfolio but a small contribution to the increase each month.

Apart from that, I'm still keeping my core portfolio intact for this month.

I've started the year with an equity equivalent of $106k (Link Here) when the STI indices was at 3,252. My goal back then was to achieve an equity equivalent of $200k at the end of the year and it was incredibly difficult given that I was out of job in January and only started my new work towards the end of February so there's very little capital injection I can work on. The market wasn't also cheap to begin accumulating in large amounts.

The unprecedented crisis in Covid gave plenty of opportunities to investors to begin accumulating assets at distressed levels and I am glad that I stick to the plan which have paid off. Based on all the other updates I see in the finance community blogosphere, it seems like many are doing reasonably well too now that the stock market has rebounded off from its low.

I've taken a step off the pedal a little bit by taking some profits off the table by divesting some companies so I could keep some warchest in hand as part of the overall rebalancing. My portfolio is still 98% invested so it is likely that this portion will go down further as the market continues to go up.

The portfolio is now worth at $216,155 with the STI being at around 2,650. I believe it is still fair level so I'm keeping most of my positions as it is.

Current warchest is at 2% equivalent.

Some personal updates on the back of preparing for what is going to be a very difficult second half of the year.

My company has announced a company-wide 30% paycut for all employees from Jun onwards until things get better from a financial standpoint so what this means is that it will hit me very badly as my financial conditions will also deteriorate as a result of that.

Already, with schools restarting (school fees) and most expenses maintaining its course, the day to day spending isn't easy to cope. With the paycut, it is going to be extremely difficult. 

To make matters worse, the company isn't giving an option either to take unpaid leave or pay cut, so work will remain at 100% of my capacity.

What this means is I am likely to work harder beyond my 100% capacity in the next few months as I begin to look for avenues of other side income, such as writing more or looking for more sponsored deals so please bear with me on that.

If there's any silver lining to that, it is that I am likely to continue working from home even after the phase opens so that would save me a lot of transportation hassle. I really hate commuting back and forth to work with crowds that begin forming.

It also helps that the government is giving another $300 to $600 in Jun and there's also utility rebates of $100 and things like that. All these small items will add up to be a massive cost savings at my end.

On the other cost savings, I was also delighted that the banks are reducing my mortgage interest rates from 1.7% to 0.7% comes Jun onwards. That is a huge massive savings for me when it comes to the absolute amount. I do think that interests will continue to remain low for the foreseeable future so it makes more sense to take floating rather than fixed right now.

If you're interested to refinance your loan to a lower interest rate, you may refer to my referral links at here and a representative will call you in the next 30 minutes or so. I've so far referred more than 50 clients out of which 1/4 turns into conversion and they have all provided me with excellent feedback. It's a free analysis anyway, so why not check it out.

That's all the update I have for now, please stay safe and rocking on to financial healthiness.

Thanks for reading.