Portfolio Update Feb 2022

The second month of 2022 has come to an end. It is time for me to review my investment portfolios.

The stock markets are still undergoing turbulence with the ongoing war in addition to immense noises engulfing Fed tapering, interest rates hikes, inflation fears, Omicron variant fears, rise of US Treasury yields, looming market crash and so on.

I remain invested, slowly and steadily increase my investments in income-producing assets and growth businesses in the past few weeks, for the long-term.

My SGX Income Portfolio value recovers $4k to $268k from $264k last month.

My US Growth Portfolio value increases to US$13.8k from US$7.3k. I injected around US$6k of capital into Tiger Broker trading account for accumulation of Alphabet Inc. shares.

My SRS Ultra Long-Term Portfolio value remains fairly stagnant at $100.2k.

Portfolio Actions

1. Nibbled fractional 0.331 share of Tesla Inc. at average price of US$819 in Syfe Trade.

2. Nibbled fractional 0.133 share of Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL) at average price of US$2683.17 in Syfe Trade.

3. Bought 2 shares of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) at average price of US$2880 in Tiger Broker.

Portfolio Dividends

1. Received $114 of dividends from Suntec Reit on 28 Feb.

SGX Income Portfolio

Portfolio Value = $268k

US/HK Growth Portfolio

Moomoo

Tiger Broker

   

   

Syfe Trade

Total Portfolio Value : US$13.8K

SRS Ultra Long-Term Portfolio

As always, stay safe and remain strong.

With love & peace, 

Qiongster

War

Homes destroyed.

Innocent lives lost.

Scenes of carnage.

These are the makings of greed and fear by mankind.

Since 55 million years of human civilization, there have been many wars and conflicts.

The innate nature of humans is to win, to compete, to dethrone opponents, to gain more wealth, more power, most of the times at the expense of freedom, peace, time, health and even life.

A crisis breeds opportunities as always.

As prices of commodities, gold and oil soar, uncertainties cause the stock markets to undergo volatile times.

While I am glad that the markets presented immense opportunities due to this war in tandem with other noises of inflation and interest rate hike fears, I am sad that this comes at huge expenses of freedom, peace and lives of innocent people of Ukraine and also the poor soldiers of Russia, Ukraine and rebels being forced to fight and kill.

We should treasure the freedom and not take our peace and right of living for granted. 

Just ranting some thoughts. Thanks for reading.

As always, stay safe and remain strong.

With love & peace, 

Qiongster

Putting Money Back Where It Comes From - Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL)

 

Google pays me $181.49 for ads revenue from this Live Rich Life Free blog today.

This is the second time I cashed out from this blog.

I kickstarted this blog on 31 Dec 2019, with the aim of sharing and journaling my journey towards financial freedom through frugality, stoicism, perserverance and reframing of mindset.

26 months later, this blog has generated close to 250k page views, more than 10k monthly page views and yielded dividends.

While the main purpose of blogging is not to profit from writing, earning some incentives do help to encourage me to create more financial related articles for sharing to the community and world.

I decided to put this money into Syfe Trade to buy fractional shares of Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), putting the money back where it comes from.

S$181.49 is roughly equivalent to US$135.

There it goes for my tiny slice of owning Google by purchasing US$135 worth of Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL).

Last but not least, I would like to thank all readers of this blog for your continued support and wish everyone the best of health and wealth in such unprecedented endemic times.

As always, stay safe and remain strong.

With love & peace, 

Qiongster

Added USD150 worth of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

 

I accumulated another fractional share of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) this evening using Syfe Trade at no brokerage trading fee.

I have already owned 2 shares of Alphabet Inc. in my Tiger Broker account and plan to continue accumulating it for the next 5 months as long as it stock price is below US$3,000, before its stock split on 15 Jul 2022.

I have previously shared the 8 Reasons Why I Invest in Alphabet Inc. 

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and remain strong always!

With love & peace,

Qiongster

Net Worth Update Feb 2022 | Roar Past SGD 1.2 million

S$1.222m

Today is Day 15 of the New Tiger Year.

My net worth hits S$1.222m, an all time high!

The increase of $33k from Jan 2022 is mainly contributed by this month's salary, special bonuses, CPF contributions and slight recovery in the stock markets.

My CPF has surpassed $470k. CPF SA has crossed $190k and on the brink of attaining Full Retirement Sum. 

I completed the top up of $8k to my CPF SA under Retirement Scheme Top-Up (RSTU) at the end of Jan 2022.

I started to top up my SRS account with $1k last week and plan to complete the maximum contribution of $15.3k by Apr 2022.

Moving forward, I plan to be more aggressive in my investments - seizing opportunities to accumulate more growth stocks in the US stock market while adding to existing Reits in the SGX income portfolio.

I aim to accumulate up to SGD 300k worth in stocks and Reits, and achieve a passive income of SGD 18k.

My target net worth by the end of 2022 is SGD 1.3 million.

We should always be prepared for inflation and rising prices of good and services. Investment of our own monies in growth or income producing businesses, investing of own time to learn, self develop own technical and soft skills to get better paying jobs or innovate to create our own businesses are ways to beat inflation and strive towards financial freedom instead of relying on the government for payouts or subsidies in the coming Budget.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and remain strong always!

With love & peace,

Qiongster

Added USD100 worth of Tesla Inc.

 

The US stock market is still in the midst of shock and uncertainty over a looming of war with Russia invading Ukraine.

I have shared about having opened a Syfe Trade account recently and used it to nibble fractional shares of Alphabet Inc. and Tesla Inc. already.

As there are 5 free trades every month, I decided to gift myself a fractional bit of Tesla Inc. using the 2nd free trade of the month.

Just US$100 worth will do.

It is really cool to be able to buy fractional shares on Syfe Trade and even though the trade execution is not exactly real-time. The lack of commission fees for free trade more than make up for it.

I will continue to use this platform to nibble bits of great tech company shares.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and be strong as always.

With love & peace, 

Qiongster

Accumulated Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

 

I accumulated another share of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) this morning.

Yesterday night I placed an order at US$2780 and went to sleep. It was filled this morning at 4.52am.

I have earlier shared on the 8 reasons Why I Invested in Alphabet Inc.

Monopoly dominance, exponential growth, ever-growing share price, strong moat, stock split, resilience, below intrinsic value make this Mega Tech stock a no brainer to own for the long-term.

In the short-term, the share price of Alphabet Inc. will be volatile and subjected to weakness due to noises of lawsuits, interest rate hikes and its counterpart Meta getting bashed to pulp for having missing targets, losing active users and possibility of quitting Europe markets. 

In the long-term post split, I believe its share price will grow by at least 20% annually, surpassing US$300 per share in 5 years and US$1000 per share in 10 years. I would be happy to continue accumulating more shares of Alphabet Inc. till Jul 2022 post split and throughout the rest of this year.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and be strong as always. 

With love & peace, 

Qiongster

Free CRO from Mystery Box In Crypto.com

 

I have started my crypto journey for 3 months now.

Everyday, I would collect diamonds in Crypto.com app through daily missions such as logging in, buying USD$20 worth of crypto or watching tutorial to learn about NFTs.

By accumulating 25 diamonds, we could open a mystery box which gives a chance of winning CRO (Crypto.com) native coins, which can be used to stake for a debit card or stake ons Supercharging events to earn high returns of other crypto.

Today I opened my mystery box and here is what I got.

1.2 CRO worth 80 cents as at time of writing. Not significant but it is possible that CRO could be worth many times more few years down the road.

The government has already banned advertising of crypto by the various exchanges because crypto is a volatile digital asset not backed by any fundamentals and investing or trading in such digital asset could result in huge monetary losses. Nonetheless, as much as people queue up for S$12m or S$18m Toto lottery draw betting on money they could afford to wager, I believe crypto could form 1 to 5% of out net worth as a form of a speculative digital asset class.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and be strong as always. 

With love & peace, 

Qiongster

What is the Greatest Ang Bao in Life?

 

First and foremost, we need to have great health in order to eat, sleep and live well. Then we can work, add value to society or create businesses to gain income and wealth.

Good health is intangible, invaluable and indispensable. We need a healthy body in order to let our mind be conditioned optinally to reap the largest dividends or Ang Baos in the form of active income regardless of whether we are salaried employees or self-employed.

With active income, then we could build up capital or war chest to invest in assets that produce passive income.

However, do always remember that we come to this earth with nothing and will leave this earth with nothing. Material wealth is not everything. 

As we are indulging in the delicacies and immersing in the joyous occasion of this festival, do remember to take care of our health as always, especially in this endemic where viruses of all variants are rampantly thriving all over this island and the globe.

Treasuring and safeguarding our own health will be the greatest Ang Bao in the new Tiger year.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and be strong as always. 

With love & peace, 

Qiongster

8 Reasons Why I Invested in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL)

I procrastinated for weeks, months and years.

Yesterday night I finally pulled the trigger to initiate a position in Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) at US$2980.

The push factor was after Alphabet Inc. announced its blowout record breaking financial results for year 2021 and a 20-for-1 stock split.

10 years ago was the best time to invest in Google. The second best time is now.

Let me share 10 reasons why Alphabet Inc. is worth investing for the long haul.

1. Everyday

We use services owned by Alphabet Inc. everyday without knowing - Chrome browser, YouTube, Gmail, Android phone, Google map and Google drive. Even this blog is owned by, and all the ads surfaced comes from Google. This company intrudes into our lives so prevalently that we may not have realised. We have been consuming the services provided by Alphabet Inc. and it has become a digital drug addiction which is impossible to quit. I believe it would be ideal to own the company which "owns" us.

2. Exponential Growth

Alphabet Inc. breaks US$200 billion in annual revenue for the first time, showing no ill effects from the ongoing global pandemic or lingering issues with the global supply chain.

Its revenue and net income have been growing exponentially over the past decade.

To own a great business with predictable growth in earnings and one that operates 24 by 7 and spins money while we sleep give us an ultimate peace of mind.

Alphabet Inc.'s Revenue

Alphabet Inc.'s Net Income

3. Stock Price only goes up in long-term

In tandem with its exponential growth in revenue and net income, Alphabet Inc.'s share price has performed well in the long term and should continue to do so.

Its share price topped US$1000 prior to previous stock split in 2014 when it was halved to around US$500 and then slowly gained more than 5 times to today's price over the next 8 years.

After the impending stock split in 15 Jul 2022, I forsee that its share price will slowly and steadily climb up from $130 to $150 range back to above $1000 in the next 5 years.

4. Strong moat

Alphabet Inc. has a dominant and strong moat in its digital advertising world, complemented by an ecosystem of search engine and Android mobile operating system which is prevalent in 73% of mobile phone globally. Google provides impeccable services at almost no cost or free to the masses in the world, and monopolizes a more than 90% market share in the Internet search industry, controlling majority of the digital world and establishing a deep and wide moat. It thereby earns massive income from the advertisement streams to fund research into delivery drones, green energy, artificial intelligence projects such as DeepMind, self-driving vehicle such as Waymo and development of IoT technology such as its Pixel mobile phone and Nest smart home devices.

5. Stock Split

The impending stock split will make its stock price attractive, affordable and assessable to retail investors once again. At a range of around US$150 per share, investors no longer have to save up to US$2k to US$3k in order to invest in one share of Alphabet Inc. Investors could perform dollar cost average to accumulate Alphabet Inc. shares over the long term. As 100 shares of Alphabet Inc. shares currently cost more than US$200k, options trading for this company is almost out of reach to most traders on the streets because one option contract involves 100 shares of the underlying company stock. 

With this stock split, trading of options of Alphabet Inc. will become a possibility for investors to generate more income. For example, shareholders could sell out-of-the-money call options to collect premiums while the stock is trending sideways and potential investors on the sidelines could sell out-of-the-money put options to commit buying Alphabet Inc. shares at a lower price than market price. 

6. Resilience

Alphabet Inc.'s digital advertisement and dominant online search business is unaffected by the global pandemic as seen from the tremendous increase in its revenue and net income over the past 2 years. Instead of being impacted by the virus, the shift of trend toward hybrid working environment and emphasis on digital world has allowed Alphabet Inc. to thrive on stronger demand for online advertising based on search results and Youtube videos.

7. Fair Valuation

Alphabet Inc. is trading at around 24 times of Price/Earning ratio which seems rather high. However, if we look at its Price to Earning growth ratio, it is only around 0.75, suggesting that it is fairly or even undervalued.

A quick check on Simply Wall Street reveals that it could be more than 40% below its intrinsic value.

8. More with Less

There are 3 classes of Alphabet Inc. stock. Class A (GOOGL) stock comes with voting rights. Class B are held by its founders and insiders and not publicly traded. Class C (GOOG) stock does not come with voting rights and are created from the 2014 stock split. GOOGL used to trade at a premium compared to GOOG because it comes with voting rights. However, over the years, GOOG has become slightly more pricier than GOOGL despite having no voting rights. This was possibly due to frequent share buybacks of GOOG shares by the company itself, resulting in lower supply and higher demand. I prefer GOOGL because it offers more at a lower price.

Conclusion

There are definitely huge risks involved when it comes to investing. Alphabet Inc., being in a monopolistic mega tech business dealing with copyrights and trademarks, is always subjected to regulatory risks and brushes with the intellectual property laws and the authorities. Its cloud computing business also fare poorer relative to Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft. Nonetheless, it presents a great piece of business to hold patiently for the long-term future, considering the reward to risk ratio. I believe its share price will remain volatile in the short-term in the run up to stock split and will consider adding more shares should its share price tank due to irrationality because in the next decade, this company will continue to own our lives and certainly grow astoundingly.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and be strong as always. Happy Tiger Year! HUAT ah!

With love & peace, 

Qiongster

Conquered Peak of Singapore

 

Nothing to do on Day 2 of CNY and I went to hike Bukit Timah hill with Ms Doraemon.

Drizzling rain did not deter us from reaching the peak after 45 mins of hiking.

The weak and heavy frame of mine make things difficult on the route up to the peak as I panted heavily throughout.

Step by step. Slow and steady. I lugged myself up and conquered the peak. This is testament of the same strategy I adopted in my investment journey and pursuit of financial freedom.

Enjoyed the cool oxygen and embraced the nature after the rain stopped.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and be strong as always. Happy Tiger Year! 

With love & peace, 

Qiongster

US$100 can nibble both Tesla and Google stocks on Singapore's Neobroker

 

I opened a Syfe Trade account last week.

My purpose was to leverage on such neobroker to perform dollar cost average on high quantum mega tech stocks such as Alphabet Inc. (GOOGL), Amazon.com Inc. and perhaps Tesla Inc. 

Furthermore, I could reap the free sign up, $1k top-up and first trade bonuses amounting to $60.

I then spent past 2 days toying with this neobroker account.

Nibbled tiny fractions of Alphabet Inc. and Tesla Inc for less than US$100.

The amount of US$22 used to nibble Tesla was from the S$30 sign-up bonus, meaning I gotten 0.025 share of Tesla free from Syfe!

Things may not always go according to plan in life. 

This morning, Alphabet Inc. announces a set of amazing results together with a 20-1 stock split to make its stock price affordable.

This means that each share price of GOOGL and GOOG will theoretically be around US$150 after split in Jul 2022.

Hence, I do not need such neobroker for Alphabet Inc. anymore. However for Amazon.com Inc. and Berkshire Hathaway Inc., I will still need it to nibble fractional shares as I could not afford to invest US$3k or US$470k every month.

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and be strong as always. Happy Tiger Year! 

With love & peace, 

Qiongster

Where are our CPF monies?

 

Are our CPF monies our monies?

Where are our CPF monies?

We only see numbers on the CPF website or app. No debit card or means to withdraw before age 55.

Even upon reaching age 55, many could not withdraw much CPF monies due to not meeting the minimum sum requirement.

These are the common dilemna people face.

Let me try to address and convince ourselves on these doubts in this post.

Official source from Factually explains that CPF monies are invested by the CPF Board in Special Singapore Government Securities (SSGS). SSGS are issued specially by the Government to CPFB.

In my opinion, I interpret that CPFB "lent" or "passed" our CPF monies to the Government. An "IOU" (an informal 'I Owe You' document acknowledging debt) was signed in the form of a special bond called SSGS.

In a way, CPFB is the trustee of our CPF monies, which are used to buy special "IOU" bonds that pay us our 2.5% and 4% interests in our CPF OA and SA, MA or RA savings accounts respectively.

Our next question is: What and how does the Government deal with the CPF monies?

The proceeds from SSGS are pooled with the rest of Government funds, such as Government surplus, and proceeds from land sales.

The co-mingled funds are invested by the Government's fund manager, GIC, for long-term returns.

GIC was incorporated in 1981 to invest the government's assets for long-term returns.

CPF monies are not managed by Temasek.

I interpret that our CPF monies are indirectly pooled together with the Government monies to become the war chest that GIC use to invest for the long-term to generate returns.

Many people are unhappy about our CPF monies becoming the "Government's monies", missing out the "IOU" bond part which pays attractive bonds interests in return.

Not everyone is comfortable with own own CPF monies being lent to others to invest without our consent.

However, we have to understand that if CPFB merely keeps our CPF monies and do nothing, will be be able to earn 2.5% or 4% interests? Our monies will be eroded by inflation over time. $1 becoming 50 cents by the time we retire.

In a nutshell, our CPF monies are trusted to CPFB and indirectly managed by GIC.

Let us move a step further to investigate how and what does GIC invests in, using "our CPF monies" and/or "the Government's monies".

According to the FAQ page on GIC website, GIC is a fairly conservative investor, with a globally diversified portfolio spread across various asset classes. Most of the investments are in the public markets, with a smaller component in alternative investments such as private equity and real estate.

From the GIC Annual Report 2021, this table shows the asset mix of GIC's investment portfolio.

The geographical distribution of the GIC portfolio as at 31 Mar 2021 is shown below. Investments in US and Asia excluding Japan make up 60%.

These high level info are not enough to satisfy our curiosity.

I am interested to find out specifically which US stocks do GIC invest or wager on.

A quick check on whalewisdom.com revealed the top holdings of GIC Pte Ltd based on US Security and Exchange Commission filings.

I am surprised with these unfamiliar (at least to me) names of US listed companies invested by GIC. 

More than US$5 billion vested in an American online food ordering and delivery platform, Doorbash Inc. (DASH), more than US$2 billion vested in a midstream energy company, Tallgrass Energy (TGE1), more than US$1.5b vested in a leading global drug development, laboratory and lifecycle management company, PPD, Inc. (PPD), $1.3b vested in a leading China carrier and cloud neutral Internet data center service provider, VNet Group (VNET) and $1.1b vested a diversified environmental services company in GFL Environmental Inc. (GFL).

I am not able to get more details of which Chinese businesses do GIC invest in. But from the Evergrande turmoil, we learnt that GIC has been investing in Chinese Real Estate for the past 2 decades. They are also vested in China bonds.

Hope these have satisfied our curiosities on where our CPF monies went to.

Thanks for reading. GXGX! Happy CNY! HENG ONG HUAT AH! 

With Love & Peace,
Qiongster

Disclaimer: This post is written entirely based on my personal opinion and factual findings from credible sources in the Internet and does not constitute any form of recommendation, news nor investment advice.