As the stock market has been suffering due to the slowdown in global economic outlook triggered by various factors among which is China's economic issues and low commodity prices, it has not been an easy time for investors.
I have pared down my stocks to four from 13 in the heyday before the global financial crisis in 2008. I am more into defensive stocks like telcos but the foreign capital flight to the tune of about RM19b in 2015 had also affected the performance of these. At the moment I am still holding on to
MAXIS and
TM which have been with me for more than five years. After some calculations, I have decided that the time has come for me to let go of them as soon as the prices are right for me.
I have a plantation stock acquired through an IPO (
BPlant) which unfortunately has not done that well ( nevertheless it gives a regular dividend of 5 sen per unit ). And of course my disaster of the "century", the acquisition of
Icon Offshore an oil and gas stock which has come tumbling down and down and downhill from 1.90. Gees, the cheek of me.... I bought an equal number of units at 45 sen in June last year hoping to dollar average as the price was low
giler (crazy) but the critter even went down further to 25 sen! Would you believe it! At present it's 41 sen. Though my hefty loss is compensated by about 50% from my telcos stocks' gain, the regret of going for an oil and gas stock at the end of the industry's cycle is enormous. The massive reduction of the price of oil from US150 to below US50 per barrel in the space of less than two years had more or less sealed my fate.
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Current investing is like a sailing ship weathering a storm
(Net image) |
My
AMB unit trusts similarly are not performing as they are closely linked to the local equity market. From a high of 60 and 56 sen per unit in 2014 for
Ethical and
Value trust fund respectively to below 40 sen in December last year. You can just imagine the losses that are incurred by investors like me . I have targeted both funds for 4-5 years so I have another 2 years to see through their performance. In the meantime I bought another Unit Trust sold by HSBC,
Eastspring Investment Equity Income Fund simply because I wanted to ensure my deposits in the bank complies with the amount required to enjoy my current banking privileges as the bank interest rate is low at about 3% I tend to withdraw my money and put it somewhere else. I chose the Unit Trust after studying its prospectus and you should do the same if you want to invest in any of these trust funds.
So let's hope 2016 would be better than 2015 though I doubt Malaysian political scenario will change much and this situation has definitely affected my fun in investing.
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