BCIP: Banks in a rising interest rate environment, US-China trade wars Skip to main content

BCIP: Banks in a rising interest rate environment, US-China trade wars

I started building my child's college fund when she was 6 months old. All her 红包's are channeled straight into this OCBC account, and I registered for their Blue Chip Investment Plan (BCIP). It's a monthly investment scheme into a blue chip stock of choice. Both Ms EOR and myself contribute monthly to this BCIP account, which is an excellent way to force us to invest. The rule is, do not sell anything from this account.

In a rising interest rate environment, defensive stocks and REITs are to be de-prioritized. In such an environment, the spread between interest rates and dividend yields narrows, causing selling pressure on such asset classes. Banking stocks do well in rising interest rate environments, so now is the time double down and load up.

Current sector allocation. It's time to add financials in.


DBS
The biggest and strongest bank in Singapore. They are leading the pack in digitization and building a digital bank presence. Just read their recent earnings release here.

"DBS first-quarter net profit up 26% to record SGD 1.52 billion, return on equity rises to 13%, highest in decade".

Yet their stock price still dropped about 3% over 2 days, because it missed analysts' expectations. Um ok... can't dispute the bold headline above, so it's time to load up for the remainder of 2018. With the recent ABSD announcement, I'd expect mortgage loan sales to take a hit, and also the US/China trade wars are battering the banks shares.  There should be good buying opportunities for the remainder of 2018.

The beauty of dollar cost averaging is that time is on your side. You don't have to time the market so precisely. Let time work for you.

Read the previous article on BCIP here.

I'll review this portfolio every year, unless the environment changes.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I increased my term + accident insurance policy with Aviva

I recently maxed out the SAF Aviva group term insurance on both term life plan for $1M and accident plans for $600k, which costs me $47.42 and $77.37 per month respectively. This is on top of my existing  whole life plans . I did this to ensure adequate insurance coverage in times of need. The only downside of this is that Aviva pays out a maximum of $20M per event, and it's prorated accordingly, so don't bet your house on this and have some other backup. Term covers up to age 65-70 (your income generating years), and whole life covers your whole life (including your retirement years). In general whole life plans are alot more expensive per $ of coverage, compared to term plans, so you have to utilize both to get adequate coverage at a reasonable cost. In Singapore where voluntary death isn't an option, it could really bankrupt a family. Some say to purchase a $1M term plan that covers you up to age 99. That means you can't live past 99, but such plans are...
Post a Comment
Read more

Trade wars and buying banks

The recent trade wars have caused the markets to be extremely volatile, one week down 5%, the next week back up 5% and we can see sector rotations playing out on the STI.  Currently am at 60/40 invested vs cash and am selling some of my small caps positions that don't have alot of price buffer, in order to rotate them into stronger blue chips like DBS, Capitaland (now Asia's largest property company after the merger with Ascendas). REIT prices have gone through the roof and investors seek safer havens in this turbulent times, which prices out any entry point. Best to wait for dips in the local banks, especially if the price to book ratio is close to crisis levels. Anyway my investment horizon is 20 years, so I'll be buying at every half integer level. The saying "Sell in May and go away" really doesn't apply for me. It's more like "Buy in May. Dips are you friends". It's funny, every year I notice that DBS offers 15% trading commission re...
Post a Comment
Read more

Food review: Al Forno + geylang Lor 29 hokkien Mee

It was Mrs EOR's birthday a few days ago and we went out for dinner, something that we rarely do nowadays. We decided on Italian as it was awhile since we last had this cuisine. Venue : Al Forno @ 400 East coast road We read reviews on this place and ordered their diavola pizza and lobster pasta. Boy were they terrible! The pizza was overly runny with red sauce and tasted extremely bland (I'm already quite sensitive to salty food). The pasta sauce was just so so, something I could likely whip up at home. The lobster wasn't even peeled and cracked and it felt like we're eating at jumbo seafood. The only saving grace was that the pasta was done a perfect aldente. The decor is like what you see in Italy and I get that their trying to keep to their roots, but it makes the place extremely loud. It's like going to a club minus the music - definitely quieter to sit outside. Would I return : No. I'd visit only Etna @ Duxton. No more experimenting with Italian r...
Post a Comment
Read more