Singapore Shares Information: Micro-Mechanics

InvestingNote Interview

Sporeshare is one of InvestingNote’s most reputable member in IN Member’s Ranking with more than 1000+ followers, specialising in technical analysis. He owns a blog, http://sporeshare.blogspot.com. Till date, he has created many educational post and investment ideas and spurred discussions on InvestingNote platform. This is Episode 8.https://www.investingnote.com/posts/1041004 Tell us more about yourself and how did you get started in investing or trading? I would say is basically due to the launch of Singapore Telecom or SingTel IPO share for all Singaporean at a special offer price in Nov 1993. I started to apply and open an securities account with one the brokerage house and doing basically known as “tikam” investing - usually based on tips from broker or friends or colleagues. What type of trader or investor would you say you are? Swing trader. Based on the chart patterns presented at a particular point of time. A Swing trade can be a continual process and go into a Trend/Position trade at a longer term perspective. A bullish uptrend chart patterns may continue to rise further after taking a short pause/breather. Overtime, it may drag into a period of 3 to 6 months for a nice trading position. What are your best investment and worst investment since you started investing? The best investment would be Keppel Corp & Sembcorp Ind of which has been able to make a nice profit. We can always enter and exit the same counter several times and yet we are still able to make profit again and again. The worst investment would be Noble Group. Don’t fall in love with any counter. It is important to stick to your trading or investing plan and when the time has come to cut loss, we shouldn’t be hesitated to do it. It is also important to educate ourselves with basic Financial Analysis such as knowing the financial health of the company that we are dealing with. Do you have an idol in investing or trading? If so, what’s the most memorable teaching from them? I would say some of the IN users are very helpful in parting their investing knowledge and idea. Particularly, JeremyOwtaip & Turtle_Investor. I have been able to pick up some investing ideas from them. Do you have any rules to stock picking? Yes. For trading, I would not touch ultra-penny counter that is trading below S$0.20. Ideally, would be at least S$0.40 – S$0.50. In trading , we would enter a trade only when the market confirm the setup is being activated/triggered. Do not anticipate and wait till market to confirm your opinion . It is ok to be a little bit late in a trade, it is ultra important or assurance that your opinion is correct. Patience is key in trading in order to win the trade. Can you share with us what is your current portfolio allocation? I I am having 45% in equities, 15% in Bond and 40% cash. What do you think of the current market conditions in Singapore right now? Current market is being clouded by the trade war issue. Short term uncertainties is causing the market to be swayed more towards the Bear territories. STI has corrected from the High of 3600 to the current level of about 3100 – 3200 level. It is now hovering in a CRITCAL situation. If it not able to hold up well above 3100 level then it may likely go further down to test 3000 level . Unless, it is able to stage a strong recovery and rise above 3250 level in order to reverse this down trend. Which industry and sectors are you currently looking at and why? I am looking at Oil & Gas sector that has seen oil prices rises from below $20 to a high of $70 level. It is forecasting that oil prices may rise back to $100. Bullish on O&G sector. REITs counters may also form a good dividend income portfolio even during market uncertainties as it is able to continue to give out stable Distribution per unit. Not really affected much by rising interest rate hike.. Also Bank counter may benefit for an interest rate rising environment as their revenue rise in tandem. Feel free to visit my blog at https://sporeshare.blogspot.com/... What is your day to day strategy towards investing or trading? Do you implement a top-down or bottom-up approach for stock picking? Only trade when the trading opportunity arise. It applies to both approach. It is very important to work out your trading position / target for a particular counters by working out the Entry Price, Stop Loss price, Target Price, Position Sizing to work out the maximum no of share to buy in advance while waiting for the market to confirm your opinion. Do not trade without a proper plan.. How do you manage your portfolio, passively or actively and elaborate on it? You may keep track of your total portfolio either using a excel spreadsheet or by relying on the brokerage house trading system to manage your total no. of counters at any one time. If you can go back in time to change one mistake about your investing/trading journey, what would it be? For trading, be firmed in executing your stop loss strategy. Also don’t be too eager to take profit to early. Let your profit run. For Investing it is good to read up and educate yourself to know the basic financial analysis. Learn how to identify good company to invest . Pick those company/counter that you are familiar with their business. Buy only those counter that is trading below its Fair value etc.. Also what advice would you give to new traders or investors? It is very important to equip and educate ourselves with the Trading or investing knowledge. Don’t rely on tips! Ensure we have a proper plan in place whenever we enter a trade. Don’t speculate and trade without knowing what you are trying to achieve. – Sporeshare currently has more than 1,000 followers and provide many accurate stock estimates. Follow him to get the latest updates and educational posts on the Singapore stock market. For more juicy analysis and personal stories by other financial influencers,

How to work out Free Cash Flow

Let us work out the Free cash flow for StarHub base on their financial result for 2018.

As can be seen from their Cash Flow statement for FY2018, Ops cash flow after working capital changes is $446.6m.

FCF = $446.6m less CAPEX of $ 272.8m = $ 173.7m.

Dividend of about 9 cents (2.25 cents x 4) to be paid out for Y2019 is about 1,730,698,702 shares X $90 , which is about $155.76m.

It looks like the FCF of $173.7m less dividend of 9 cents to be paid in Y2019 of $155.76m,we have a positive FCF of $17.94m.

However, if we take a look at the Bank loan to be paid up in one year is $50.1m.

Therefore, I think the balance of FCF of 17.94 is not sufficient to cover the bank loan $50.1m beside the interest to be payable for the remaining bank loans + perpetual notes etc.

The group net debts level is quite high at 1.52x.

This is just my observation base on the financial figures being extracted from the FY2018 statement.

This is just for sharing and not a call to buy or sell for this counter.

It is good to do you own analysis.

Trading and Investing Idea

I happen to see these comments appearing on one of the forum and I think is a good way to share! Quote: The ability to LOON until the stock makes its U-Turn and come back up to erase all your paper loss is closely intertwined with the size of your reserve army. The bigger your reserve army, the stronger your ability to LOON. And the size of your reserve army is in turn tied to whether you did overtrade. When you trade with a cash account, once you have used up all your capital, you stop buying. You pay for your shares and sit out the rest of the downturn and patiently wait for the stock to find its bottom, U-Turn, and come back up to your entry price. That' s if you stop buying. But if you didnt stop buying...you continued to do contra trades after you ran out of capital, that' s overtrading. If the stock does not find its bottom and U-Turn within the contra period, you will have to cut and take the loss. When you trade with a CFD account, observe your one-third rule. Use the 1st one-third of your capital to open positions. Open wisely based on best prices under best conditions, not carelessly buy thinking that you still have two-thirds of your army. Treat your troops with respect. Treat them like they are your brothers. You wont risk your brothers' lives and send them on a suicide mission, will you? Ofcoz not. So when you start buying with your 1st one-third of your army, buy under best prices and best conditions using your indicators and doing the best you can. If wrong and your 1st one-third is stuck, you can do nothing and watch first. Wait for the selling to stop. Then use your 2nd one-third of your troops to nibble slowly to average down (or average up if you are SHORTing). Bear in mind that your 2nd one-third of your troops has another function --- to pay com and daily interest plus to buffer paper loss for your stuck positions. You should never touch your last one-third to average down (or up) when the market is still falling. You need that last one-third to give you that security blanket and confidence to weather out any further downside. It is this last one-third of your reserve army which enables you to sleep well each night and get on with your life. When the U-Turn comes, you can either do nothing and let the rising tide erase your paper loss first. When enough troops are converted from paper loss to Avaliable To Deal, you can use those converted troops to add more positions. Or if you are aggressive, you can use some of your last one-third of reserve troops to add more positions to ride on the recovery. How much of the last one-third reserve troops you can use --- there is no hard and fast rule. The more aggressive and more risk-seeking you are, the more you can use. The more conservative and more risk-averse you are, the lesser you can use. Or even not use at all. It all depends on your trading experience, your trading philosophy, your appetite for risk and your hunger for adventure. With that, I leave you with these quotations.... " A pessimist sees risks in times of certainty. An optimist sees opportunities in times of uncertainty." " Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful." " The best time to buy stocks is when there is blood-letting on the streets, even if it is your own blood." " When the enemy presents you with an opening, move in and penetrate immediately." Below is my comments: It only apply to Blue chips and the company fundamental is still ok. Cannot use it to apply any other counters and esp penny and ultra penny counter . Sometimes we didn't see them recover. So pls trade within your own financial means ! Do not borrow or on high margin to play stock .I think You may get into serious trouble .. trade with extra cautious!

STE ETF

I think good investing does not require too many fanciful ideas and strategies. Just one simple no-brainer strategy that can work effectively through time and allow us to sit back and relax to enjoyr the reward of the investment that is working effortlessly to achieve our investment goal of getting 8-10% gain( passive income). This simple strategy is to invest in a low cost ETF( Exchange Traded Fund) such as the STI ETF (ES3.SI) or NIKKO AM STI ETF(G3B.SI) This method of operation is to buy into STI ETF whenever it is in an oversold condition and to sell off and take profits whenever it is in an overbought condition. For example, one may use the indicator such as the Relative Strength Index (RSI) to determine overbought ( above 70 ) or oversold condition( below 30). One may plan to buy and selling of units in several batches whenever in oversold or overbought conditions in order to get the best average price. For example you may plan to buy in at different interval or whenever the Oversold situation happen . In any one year, there will be three to four such window opportunities of overbought or oversold conditions to operate by buying or selling units of the ETF. At the same time, we can also kept some units always to receive dividend income and for their long term growth in price appreciation. With discipline and patience , one should be able to get good average returns per year in excess of certain % by this one simple strategy of investing in one single ETF .I think This simple one strategy is safe and allow one to sleep soundly at night without worry of negative news affecting individual stocks in one's portfolio which could crash the share price of the particular stock the next day. This is because even if one or two of the component stocks in STI ETF of blue chips should collapse in share prices, there will be 28 others to diversify away the risk of the entire portfolio collapsing at anytime. As for younger folks who just started out working and does not have enough cashflows and savings , one may start to spread out the different batch of buying or applying the Dollar-cost-averaging method by investing $1000 at 6-8 different batches that would be able to achieve lower average costs per unit. the example are as follows:- 1. When the index price is $2.00, your $1000 will be able to buy 500 shares. 2. When the index price is $2.50, your $1000 will be able to buy 400 shares 3. When the index price is $2.90, your $1000 will be able to buy 344 shares 4. When the index price is $1.66, your $1000 will be able to buy 625 shares 5. When the index price is $3.00, your $1000 will be able to buy 333 shares 6. When the index price is $3.20, your $1000 will be able to buy 312 shares 7. When the index price is $3.50, your $1000 will be able to buy 285 shares Total = $7000 / 2799 shares = $ 2.50 average cost per unit. By using this method, you will be able to make a profit once the stock market rises above this low average price. RSP : Just sharing. Not a call to buy or sell. Please do your own due diligence.

Opening of a Security Trading Account

Opening of a Security Trading Account

Any member of the public who wishes to trade/buy any stock counters listed on the Singapore Exchange will need to open a Brokerage trading securities account with any of the registered Securities Brokering Companies in Singapore.

Once the member has successfully registered their trading account with the registered Securities Brokering Company in Singapore they will then be issued with the approve Trading securities account number to perform trading of share /stock counter on Singapore Exchange(SGX).

This Trading securities account number will then be linked to their CDP (The Central Depository) account number for the settlement of their payment/deposit and withdrawal of securities etc.

Brokerage fees:

Generally the brokerage fees for example for trding via online are as follows :

Contract Size	Rates*	Effective Rates* (Less 3 to 5% Mileage)
Minimum $25		$23.75
Up to $50,000	0.28%	0.266%
> $50,000 - $100,000	0.22%	0.209%
> $100,000	0.18%	0.171%

For more details kindly refer to my blog post - Opening of a Security Trading Account

Corporate bonds

Corporate Bonds

The recent stock market volatility may be a good time for investor to consider a perpetual bond that provide good decent yields from a high quality issuers which currently offers yields of between 3.8% to 5.25 % per annum. Payable half yearly.

With fairly guidance from the Federal Reserve despite the first rate hike in nearly 10 years,interest rates (and bank deposit rates) have not been rising as quickly as investors may have liked. For those looking for a decent level of yield from a high quality issuer, the perpetual bonds issued by the above-mentioned issuers may be an option to lock in for defensive play/fixed income yield.

For more details kindly check this out on Bond counters

Swing Trading & Position Trading

Swing Trading

Swing Trading are for those prefer to do a contra trade lasting for a short period of 1-6 days.

It can be applicable for both Long & Short trade.

The example is as follow:

1. To Long a Swing Trade using breaking out strategy. Trader would have scanned and done his or her homework at least one day in advance for the Swing trade to be confirmed by the Market.

Let say a particular counter A is having a nice uptrend mode chart patterns. And it is going to retest its Resistance level at $1.00. Once it has managed to walk through $1.00 smoothly + good volume & other indicators are also bullish, then a trade will be entered at either $1.00 or $1.01.

The Swing Trading plan is as follow:

EP 1.00
SL 0.95
TP 1.08-1.14

Position Trading may last for several weeks or several months .

A trader may use its initial fund to buy on 50% for this counter B.
A nice breaking out is happening. He or she entered at a specific price using 50% allocation of its fund for the initial purchase.
Subsequently, when the 2nd breaking out is happening, another 30% of its fund would be used to average Up the same counter again.

Finally, the last 20% is being deployed when the 3rd breaking out moment is happening.

The trader may choose to exit when the uptrend mode has been disrupted or weaken and he or she may choose to exit this trade.

Not a call to buy or sell.

The above examples are solely for educational or illustration. And is not meant for any recommendation/advice for any trading.

Pls dyodd.

Contracts for difference (CFD)

Contracts for difference (CFDs) provide a flexible way to trade on the price movements of thousands of global financial products such as Shares, indices, commodities, Forex /foreign curriencies etc.

When you trade using CFDs, you don’t buy or sell the underlying asset (e.g. a physical share), you buy or sell a number of units, depending on whether you think a product’s price will go up or down. For every point the price moves in your favour, you gain multiples of the number of units you have bought or sold. For every point the price moves against you, you will make a loss. Please remember this loss can exceed your deposits.

Some of the benefits of CFD trading are that you can trade on margin, you can go short (sell) if you think the price will go down, and you can use CFDs to hedge an existing physical portfolio.

For more details kindly refer to my blog post - Contracts for difference(CFD)

Position Sizing or how much share to buy

Position Sizing - it plays an important role of protecting the trader for being over exposed to a particular trade by minimizing the risk .

The percentage (%) of risk can be measure in terms of 1-5 or 6-10 % that you can afford to loss for each trade.

How to work out the maximum quantity for each trade that depends of each an individual risk tolerance level.

For example, person A can only tolerate a loss of 3% for each trade.

Let's say he has $10000 as capital. 3% risk appetite.

The formula is roughly as follow:-

10000 x 3% ( risk per trade - 1-10%)
--------------------------------------------
Entry Price less Cut Loss price

= 300
--------------------------
$1.00(EP) - $0.95(SL)

300
= ------- = 6000 share.
0.05

Person A capital for his /her trade is 6000 x $1.00 = $6000

For example , person B risk appetite is 5%.

let's say he or she has $12000 as capital , 5% risk exposure.

The formula is roughly as follows:-

12000 x 5% (% risk per trade)
-------------------------------------
$1.10(EP) less $1.01(SL)

600
= ---------
0.09

= 6600 share.

Person B, he/she capital for this trade would be 6600 x $1.10 = $7260

The above example is meant for educational illustration and is not an advice or recommendation for any particular stock trading.

Pls dyodd.

STOCK METRICS SELECTION

How to work out the current Earning yields?

Current Earnings yield = Diluted EPS / share price (range)

If we take the below example ..

Diluted EPS is 0.0456. Share price is 72-82 cents ) ,we shall use 82 cents as the highest price for calculating the current Earnings yield

Current Earnings yield = 0.0456 / 0.82 = 0.055 x 100% = 5.5%

I think it is suitable to be applied on any stocks using the current earnings yield. And once you worked that out for a few stocks you are comparing which to invest, you can decide based on all their current earnings yield whether which stock is higher in current earnings yield and also whether the fundamentals will support the growth of EPS at high compounded rate of growth or not resulting in the increase in earnings yield

For example, for illustration purposes. let's say the current earnings yield of ABC company is 5% based on the price you paid to buy it's shares. It is able to double it's EPS in 5 years time. Then you will be having a future earnings yield of 10% on your initial investment in ABC company. A 10% earnings yield is quite good already. And if the company can continue to double it's EPS again for another 5 more years, then the future earnings yield after 10 years will be 20% on your initial investment

And even if the company cannot grow meaningfully anymore after 10 years and just grow their EPS at a terminal growth rate of 3% thereafter in line with inflation cost, the company may now become a mature stalwart giving out a high dividend payout. At a high dividend payout ratio of 75% while only remaining 25% of earnings to be retained for some maintenance capex, the dividend yield in future for this illustrated example will be 15%. And maybe the share price would have also grown in line with the EPS growth and perhaps also quadrupled. Thus, one will be getting a multi bagger stock plus a decent high dividend yield of 15% after 10 years

What if the EPS decline instead of growing?

That's why we want the growth prospects to be visible, the more visible the better. If any drop in eps, we have to gauge whether it is temporary or permanent. That is why we need to also constantly monitor the fundamentals of the business. If permanent deterioration in business fundamentals, we may consider to exit the investment

INVESTMENT STOCK METRICS

Don't read too much into news and affect your investment decision!

Below is the investment method./strategy that has worked well for me so far. I will only add to my position if the share price has dropped about 10% lower than my average holding price or recently added price. If the fall is less than that usually I will just sit on the shares and do nothing. This is assuming the fundamentals of the underlying business has not changed.

For others , you may also consider to have a bigger percentage of more than 10%, may be 15-20% if this works well for you.

I suppose this kind of disciplined approach also works for a non-leveraged portfolio. A 10% drop before adding on to position is reasonable especially if the shares were recently bought in and the value investor has already done his due diligence to buy in at a sensible fair price.

Usually, it is difficult for share prices of a fundamentally good business with strong growth prospects to drop by too large a magnitude.

If share price drops more than 10% from one's average holding price, then the investor must really ask the critical question whether his average holding price was bought too high due to him making a wrong assessment of the business's fair share price he has entered? Or is it suggestive that a bear market is coming and a lot of other shares have also fallen by at least 10% off their recent highest price reached and prices seem to display even more falling momentum? Or is there something inherently wrong with the fundamentals of the business that the investor did not pick up in his initial assessment before he entered the stock? Or is it a temporary issue that the business is facing which will cause a temporary deterioration in business fundamentals but it should recover in due time.

Below are the list of counters that I am monitoring:

NOT A CALL TO BUY or sell.

Please do your due diligence.

Jardine Matheson Holdings

2. Haw Par Corporation

3. DBS

4. OCBC

5. Nordic

6. Riverstone Holdings

7. Top Glove Holdings

8. Micro Mechanics

9. Ascendas REIT

10. Parkway Life REIT

11. First REIT

12. CapitaCommercial Trust

13. Mapletree Commercial Tust

14. CapitaLand Mall Trust

15. Suntec REIT

16. Raffles Medical Group

17. UOI

18. Sheng Siong

19. Wilmar

20.Food Empire

21. Sunningdale

22. ST Engineering

23. SATS

During times of volatility, seasoned investors has to practice staying calm and stick to the basics instead on being overdue panic.

Please do you own due diligence.

Saturday, May 27, 2023

Micro-Mechanics