Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Making The Most Of Index Investing


Objective : Achieve Index Returns

To me, there are two key ways to get the most out of index investing.

1. The Simple Act of Re-balancing

I don't invest all my spare funds into STI ETF. I keep a sizable portion (30%) of my money as cash, and invest the rest (70%) into ETF. A bond ETF would have been better than cash for low correlation with stocks but the 1,000 lot size makes it pretty inflexible.

Besides serving the purpose as a buffer during wild fluctuations in the stock market, when stock market crashes it provides you with valuable funds to BUY into STI ETF at low prices! In the reverse scenario, when stock prices surge, re-balancing forces you to sell STI ETF and take profits. It is almost like a blinking flashlight in your face when you see your portfolio percentage that is heavily skewed.

Be greedy when others are fearful. Be fearful when others are greedy.

2. Index investing is about the amount of time I have in the market, rather than timing the market

As long as the selling price (when I retire) is higher than the average price I purchase STI ETF, it will do. The assumption is that the stock market is cyclical in nature and will not remain in a depressed state for an extremely long period of time, such as in the case of Japan.

To keep the average price low, I buy into STI ETF on a monthly basis regardless of the price movements. Furthermore, STI ETF gives dividends twice yearly, further driving down the average price the longer I hold it in my portfolio.

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Double Your Money In 10 Years with STI ETF

Ser Jing Chong from The Motley Fool constructs a theoretical portfolio with fuss-free maintenance. The portfolio, starting from 2003, requires a person to invest only $500 at the start of every month into the SPDR Straits Times Index ETF (SGX: ES3)!


Now, of course you know that's not enough to purchase 1 lot (1,000 shares) of SPDR Straits Times Index ETF. See what he comes up with below - it might surprise you!

Article : How To Double Your Money In 10 Years
Source : The Motley Fool (18th March 2013)
Author : Ser Jing Chong
People invest for all kinds of different reasons; some invest to see their child through university; some invest to buy their dream car or set foot on Europe for a snowy vacation; and some invest because it is just so much fun (that’s us at the Motley Fool!). But, for whatever reason that people invest, the desired outcome’s always the same – we want our money to grow.
The stock market’s actually one of the best places to grow our money and build lasting long-term wealth as we benefit from the growth of Singapore’s economy through ownership of corporate Singapore. But not everyone has the time or the ability to study individual companies and invest accordingly. For such individuals, the next best alternative would be low-cost index funds or ETFs that track market indices, a move that Warren Buffett approves of as well.
To find out more about the kind of returns an investor could have obtained, I constructed a theoretical portfolio with fuss-free maintenance. The portfolio, starting from 2003, requires a person to invest only $500 at the start of every month into the SPDR Straits Times Index ETF (SGX: ES3). The SPDR STI ETF tracks the movement of the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI) by holding shares in a similar composition as the index and an investor in the ETF would effectively be investing in Singapore’s stock market.
The investment strategy would be familiar to some as a form of Dollar Cost Averaging, where an investor mechanically invests a fixed sum of money into an investment instrument at regular intervals. We won’t go into the relative merits of a DCA approach vs Investing-in-a-lump-sum approach here but let’s just say that the former is a lot more achievable for regular folks like you and me.
After spending a nice weekend afternoon engaging in exciting number crunching, some interesting results for the portfolio, without accounting for any dividends, emerged. They are shown below:
  • The $6,000 invested in 2003 would have turned into $13,500 by 2013 – an investor’s money would have more than doubled in 10 years, excluding dividends (which would surely have improved returns).
  • To date, every year from 2003 has seen positive returns besides 2007. The returns from the year of investment to 2013 have ranged from 2003’s 125% to 2007’s -4.3%, with the lowest positive return for a full-year being 2011’s 7.8%.
  • The compounded annualised return for the portfolio stands at 5.6%, after taking into account the time at which the investments take place. While that figure is hardly eye-catching, it has beaten Singapore’s average historical inflation rate of 1.7%, according to MAS. The dividends from the ETF also provide additional returns each year which can be used for re-investment, juicing returns further, or for income. The SPDR STI ETF’s current dividend yield stands at 2.42%.
  • The total amount of $61,500 ($500 for 123 months) that has been invested since Jan 2003 to March 2013 would be worth $83,778 now.
  • Staying invested in the stock market for long periods of time helps to improve returns. 2003 and 2004 (72.7% return) provided the best returns for the 10 year period.

STI ETF Purchase [19-Mar-2013]

I don't really have a fixed date that I execute my monthly purchase of STI ETF, though usually I'll do it at the second half of the month. Just a personal routine that's all.

Got an SMS this morning when my order was filled, which caused me to take a double-take. The day before, I had placed a limit order of 100 share(s) at S$3.32. Imagine my surprise when my order was filled at S3.15!

Today must be my lucky day!

Bought via Standard Chartered Online Trading Account

Nikko AM Singapore STI ETF Order Price : $3.32
Average Price : $3.15 !!!
Order Quantity : 100 share(s)
Order Type : Limit Order
Status : Filled

Taking a look at Yahoo! Finance for today's data, you would see the following :

Close : 3.33
Prev Close : 3.31
Open : 3.15
Bid : 3.31
Ask : 3.33

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

REIT or Business Trust?

Index Investing can be rather .. uneventful.
Buy, and re-balance periodically.

After covering Permanent Portfolio previously, we focus on REITs and Business Trusts, which are dividend plays, as possible investments alternatives.

Click below for the article for more details :
Money Sense - REIT vs Business Trust

Sunday, March 10, 2013

What is Permanent Portfolio?

Permanent Portfolio is a portfolio construction theory devised by free-market investment analyst Harry Browne in the 1980s.

Browne constructed what he called the permanent portfolio, which he believed would be a safe and profitable portfolio in any economic climate. Harry Browne argued that the portfolio mix would be profitable in all types of economic situations -

1. Growth stocks would prosper in expansionary markets
2. Precious metals in inflationary markets
3. Bonds in recessions 
4. T-bills in depressions

Browne eventually created what was called the Permanent Portfolio Fund, with an asset mix similar to his theoretical portfolio in 1982. Over a 25-year period, the fund averaged an annual return of 6.38%, only losing money three times.

Why am I talking about Permanent Portfolio on an Index Investing blog?


Investing is about making your own choices, and deciding for yourselves what's best. Index Investing, Permanent Portfolio, Dividend Investing - who's to tell you what's the best way to manage your money?

By mentioning Permanent Portfolio, hopefully you'll be able to assess and think about the various alternatives to Index Investing and decide if Index Investing is what you're really after.

Article : A Portfolio That Lets You Sleep At Night
Teh Hooi Ling - Business Times' Senior Correspondent
Source : BT Invest.Com.Sg

In 1999, American investment analyst and politician Harry Browne published a book called Fail-Safe Investing: Lifelong Financial Security In 30 Minutes.

The book outlines “17 simple rules of financial safety”. The chapter for Rule No. 11 is called “Build a Bullet-Proof Portfolio for Protection”. In that chapter, the author makes a case for a diversified investment portfolio of stocks, bonds, cash and gold to ensure financial safety.

According to the author, this type of portfolio has the goal of assuring “that you are financially safe, no matter what the future brings”, including economic prosperity, inflation, recession or deflation.

This, the book says, is because some portion of the portfolio will perform favourably during each of those economic cycles. The book calls this type of investment portfolio a “permanent portfolio” and advocates it be re-balanced once a year so that the 25 per cent allocation is precisely maintained for each asset class.

According to Mr Browne, a permanent portfolio should be safe, simple and stable.

A fund manager friend mentioned this concept to me recently. He seemed pretty convinced of the robustness of such a portfolio.

“It would reduce a lot of the volatility associated with stocks, and yet still give investors good compounded returns over the years,” he said.

That statement piqued my curiosity. How exactly would such a portfolio perform in Singapore in the past 10 years or so?

So I set out to do the research. Here’s what I did.

I downloaded the year-end numbers for the Straits Times Index (STI), the price for gold, the 10-year government bonds, and one-year interbank rates.

The gold price is converted to Singapore dollars.

The starting year was 2003 – there was not much data available before that.

I started with $1 million in December 2003. I allocated a quarter of that $1 million, or $250,000, to each of the four asset classes – Singapore blue- chip stocks, gold, Singapore 10-year government bonds, and cash.

I looked at the prices of the stocks, gold and government bonds at the end of 2004. The STI climbed 15 per cent. The government bonds did not fare too badly, rising by 12 per cent. Gold did not move much that year. Cash, meanwhile, grew as it earned interest, coupons from the government bonds, as well as dividends from the stocks.

I assumed dividend yield of 3 per cent in most years, 4 per cent in 2008, and 2 per cent in the more exuberant years. Interest from cash is calculated using the one-year interbank rates.

By the end of 2004, the overall portfolio had grown to $1.09 million. Because it appreciated the most, stocks’ proportion in the portfolio had risen to 26.5 per cent.

Government bonds made up another 25.7 per cent. Cash remained at about 25 per cent, while gold’s share in the portfolio fell to 23 per cent.

According to the strategy, one is supposed to rebalance the portfolio back to 25 per cent for each asset class every year.

So I trimmed the stock holdings by $16,500 and government bonds by $7,000, and added $20,500 to gold and $3,000 to cash.

Each asset class now has $272,500, or one-fourth of the overall portfolio of $1.09 million. This portfolio was held for one year, and at the end of 2005, I rebalanced it again.

No transaction costs are taken into account for this exercise. If this process is repeated every year until the end of last year, what kind of returns would the portfolio have generated?

From the first chart, you can see that there was only one year when the portfolio went down. That was in 2008, when stock prices plunged by half.

But because of the rebalancing requirement, I ended up selling gold and government bonds and redeployed a large portion of cash back to equities. The following year, the stock market surged by 64 per cent and the portfolio more than made up for all its losses the previous year.

Overall, between 2003 and 2012, the strategy grew that initial $1 million to $2.04 million. That is a compounded annual return of 8 per cent a year. Few mutual funds actually managed this kind of return!

To be sure, there are caveats. The years from 2003 to 2012 were not typical years. During that time, we saw the supposedly once-in-

80-years financial storm.

To get the markets back up, governments flooded the world with money. As a result, confidence in paper money was eroded and people sought refuge in gold.

Gold prices shot up from US$417 per ounce at end-2003 to US$1,665 at the end of last year. Meanwhile, in some of those years, Singapore government bonds were sought-after for their safety.

Going forward, will gold prices continue to rise? They will, if the finances of the world’s big countries remain in a shambles and their governments continue to print money as a way to cope.

Advocates argue that this strategy would allow investors to safeguard their investments during changing economic conditions.

Critics, however, question its ability to outperform stock market indices in an environment of rising interest rates, which could take place in the future.

Obviously, a portfolio with 25 per cent allocation to cash cannot outperform equities in a bull market. But it will in a downturn.

The beauty of this is that it forces the investors to buy the market when it is down, ensuring that they don’t miss out when the recovery comes around.

Overall, I think such a portfolio will be robust enough to withstand the markets’ ups and downs, and at the same time, has the capability to preserve the investor’s purchasing power.

On top of that, investors should be able to sleep rather more soundly at night with such a portfolio.

This will be the last Money Wise article from me. Readers can still find my articles in the Weekend Business Times. Here’s wishing everyone a great year ahead.

Article : How Profitable is a bullet-proof portfolio? (Follow Up Article)
Teh Hooi Ling - Business Times' Senior Correspondent  
Source : http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/premium/wealth/show-me-money/how-profitable-bullet-proof-portfolio-20130302

In my column in The Sunday Times last week, I wrote about the "bullet-proof portfolio" proposed by US investment analyst and politician Harry Browne in his book, Fail-Safe Investing: Lifelong Financial Security in 30 Minutes. The so-called bullet-proof portfolio allocates equal proportions to stocks, bonds, cash and gold every year. The author reckons this type of portfolio gives the assurance "that you are financially safe, no matter what the future brings", including economic prosperity, inflation, recession or deflation.

This, the book says, is because some portion of the portfolio will perform favourably during each of those economic cycles. The book calls this type of investment portfolio a "permanent portfolio" and advocates that it be re-balanced once a year so that the 25 per cent allocation is precisely maintained for each asset class.

According to Mr Browne, a permanent portfolio should be safe, simple and stable. Last week, I tested out the performance of this kind of portfolio using data from Singapore. I downloaded the year-end numbers for the Straits Times Index, the price for gold, the price for a 15-year Singapore government bond, and one-year interbank rates. The gold price is converted to Singapore dollars. The starting year was 2003. I started with $1 million in December 2003. I allocated a quarter of the amount - $250,000 - to each of the four asset classes - Singapore blue-chip stocks, gold, Singapore 15-year government bonds, and cash. For stocks, I assumed a dividend yield of 3 per cent, except for 2008 when a yield of 4 per cent was used. The government bonds in 2003 had a coupon of 3.75 per cent, while cash earned one-year interbank rates. By the end of the first year, I trimmed the asset class that had outperformed and redeployed the funds to those which had underperformed so that we would start the second year again with a 25 per cent allocation to each of the four asset classes.

Such a strategy, without accounting for transaction costs, returned 8.2 per cent a year. The initial $1 million grew to $2.04 million by the end of last year. I received a few queries from readers regarding the column. One asked if we could substitute gold with real estate. Another enquired whether insurance could be considered an asset class. My response to the first question was that the purpose of diversification is to hold asset classes that have low - or better still, negative - correlation with one another. If equities are down, you want the other asset classes to be unaffected, or better still, to rise in value. Gold has performed that function in 2008 and beyond. Real estate, however, tends to move in tandem with the stock market.

More discussion on this by Big Fat Purse here.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Don’t Pay For Something You Don’t Get

Came across this article on The Motley Fool. Usually I don't like many of their articles, but this one seems pretty applicable to Index Investing, in particular on STI ETF.

Article : Don’t Pay For Something You Don’t Get
Source : The Motley Fool (8th March 2013)
Author : Ser Jing Chong
Some investors choose not to put their money in actively managed mutual funds and unit trusts for various reasons, including a lack of time to monitor the market, or paying someone who is skilled or an expert in this field to manage their money for them. That’s what the management fees are for. The return of these mutual funds and unit trusts often depend upon the investment skills of the fund manager to achieve market-beating returns. But, there might be cases when the management fees are paid for not for any skill at all. 
In an out-of-print investment classic, Margin of Safety, Seth Klarman wrote that ‘since clients frequently replace the worst-performing managers (and since money managers live in fear of this), most managers try to avoid standing apart from the crowd.’ This means that money managers prefer to stick with the herd rather than risk their career by making bold investment choices. This gives rise to closet indexers – money managers who try to mimic a market index without publicly acknowledging it. It’s a case of you can’t go wrong if you follow the crowd in the money-management business, and is unfair to investors – they could be paying lower fees by choosing an index fund or ETF instead.
For those wondering what gives Seth Klarman the right to make such a statement, consider this: he is the founder and president of Baupost Group, a hedge fund company with compounded returns of close to 20% per year since 1992. Remarkably, Klarman achieved such returns while often holding up to 50% of his portfolio in cash. This is a highly idiosyncratic move that few money managers dare to make. 
Let’s take a look at one such example here in Singapore. Amundi Singapore Dividend Growth fund has achieved annualised net-of-fee returns of 4.8% (inclusive of dividends) for its investors from Dec 2009 to Dec 2012. DBS Group Holdings Ltd (SGX: D05), Singapore Telecommunications (SGX: Z74) and United Overseas Bank (SGX: U11), which are all components of the Straits Times Index (SGX: ^STI), make up the fund’s top three holdings as of 31 Dec 2012. In fact, the top 9 holdings in the fund’s portfolio, with a total weightage of 61.32%, are all components of the STI. 
The fund’s movement and the STI might be tracking each other due to the close parallels of their composition. This would make any substantial outperformance of the market for the fund’s investors hard to achieve due to management fees, which eats into the returns. This fact is borne out by the SPDR Straits Times Index Exchange Traded Fund (SGX: ES3) having higher annualised returns of 8.55% (inclusive of dividends) in roughly the same time frame. Investors in the SPDR STI ETF are essentially investing in the STI as the ETF is meant to track the movement of the index. 
The Foolish Bottom Line 
Investors often do not bother checking the portfolio of their funds. But, in cases where even a rough glance shows a very strong resemblance between a market index and a fund’s portfolio, it might be in the investor’s best interest to switch out of the actively managed, high-management-fee fund to a passively managed, low-fee index fund or ETF. After all, what use is there for a management fee if lower cost and better-return alternatives are readily available?

Saturday, March 2, 2013

STI ETF Purchase [25-Feb-2013]


Bought via Standard Chartered Online Trading Account

Nikko AM Singapore STI ETF Order Price : $3.34
Order Quantity : 100 share(s)

Trade Consideration : $334.00 [$3.34 x 100]
Client Commission : $0.67 [$334.00 x 0.2%]
SG Clearing Fee : $0.13
Client GST : $0.06

Total Transaction Amount : $334.86