Q1 1.38%, On track for 5% Dividend Yield for the Year

Feb is often a happy month of festivity and full of “feel good” feeling with Chinese New Year and Valentines Day anchoring the celebratory mood. For most of us who are working, it is also a month to commit to your target and make plans to realise them by end of the year.

Making plans is the easy part but realising them in this volatile and temperamental market is extremely challenging. But still like all self-improvement books will say, realising your dreams/targets all starts with making a plan.

I did my plan towards F.I.R.E too and it is virtually the same as last year.

I want to safeguard a portfolio that will yield me 5% passive income from dividend, make it sufficiently diversified to buffer against specific market risk/asset class risk and to move from individual companies into index (i.e. ETF) investing progressively.

Looking back at Jan and Feb, my first target is moving along quite well. Based on companies that had declared ex-div in Jan and Feb, the dividend yield for Q1 has already amounted to 1.38% and it will further increase slightly with dividend from Asian Pay TV to be announced next week. If I extrapolate it, it would exceed my 5% target. So, I am really happy with this.

With the government relaxing the SSB limit and allow the use of SRS to buy SSB, I have channeled all my SRS fund for this year into the Mar’19 SSB issue. I also experimented with buying the 5 years Treasury Bond from SG Government. Progressively, I want to see the percentage of fixed income investments in my portfolio going up.

From end of last year till today, the percentage of the bond value in my INDEX portfolio has gone up by 5%, that’s including the Mar’19 SSB issue … I am quite optimistic that I will be allocated full for March issue as I sense there is a decrease in interest among my fellow friends in SSB lately as the interest rate has come down 🙂

In January, I sold quite a fair bit but I moderated the sale in Feb and in fact, I bought more than sell. However, considering Jan and Feb combined, the outflows from my portfolio still far exceeds that of inflows.

Part of the sales in January was for portfolio rationalisation – selling those stocks that I feel were risky and buying more ETFs and Bonds. These have helped to increase the weightage of my INDEX portfolio (+2.5%) and INCOME portfolio (+0.5%) at the expenses of my GROWTH portfolio.

I have also done a lot less trade in Feb than Jan, down 80% in number of trades. This is also what I want in 2019. As my portfolio matures and becomes more aligned to what I want, I should not be trading but holding and shaping it progressively and enjoy the passive income it provides.

So up to today, the plan seems to be on track. I am really delighted with it. I am keeping my finger crossed on the US-China trade talks.

How about you? Is everything going well with your plans?

Happy if you are willing to share your plans and your experience so far.

With regards,

Warriortan