Dollardex performance and charts feature

Even though I don’t have an account with Dollardex, I really like to use the performance and charts feature from their website. I prefer its feature to Fundsupermart fund returns or chart center features. So whenever I need to compare performance and charts among various unit trusts, I will go to Dollardex website.

The picture above shows a user friendly menu consisting of a wide selection of options that you can choose if you wish to compare unit trusts. You can view chart, price and performance of unit trusts up to the past ten years if available.

An interesting tool that I like most is the ability to display risk-adjusted returns denoted by Sharpe ratio and monthly volatility of a fund. Thus you can make use of the available data as an aid in your funds selection process. This can help investors to save time if they wish to find out the Sharpe ratio and volatility of a fund.

You can explore more on Dollardex performance and charts feature from the attached link. It is good if Dollardex can add the other technical risk ratios like alpha, beta, standard deviation and R-squared of a fund. They are useful statistical measurements used in modern portfolio theory (MPT) that can help investors find out the fund’s risk reward profile.

Understanding a balance sheet

While studying in secondary level, I was never interested to learn accounting. Even though mathematics is one of my favourite subjects, I thought balance sheet is a difficult concept to understand at first. After dwelling into stocks recently, I am slowly starting to appreciate looking at a company’s balance sheet.

Balance sheet is one of the three important financial statements that summarises a company Total Assets, Total Liabilities and Total Equity at a particular point of time. This point of time can be the last day of the financial year or quarter (ie 31 Dec 2007).

The fundamental balance sheet equation which consists of Total Assets, Total Liabilities and Total Equity can be expressed in the following equation:

Total Assets = Total Liabilities + Total Equity

For example if you have $500k worth of assets and out of which $200k is borrowed from the bank, therefore your asset is $500k and your liability is $200k. Total equity or your net worth in this example becomes $300k.

To elaborate further, the variables in the above equation can be broken down in the following expressions.

Total Assets = Current Assets + Non-Current Assets
Total Liabilities = Current Liabilities + Non-Current Liabilities

In the new expressions, current and non-current variables are added into the picture. Just note that current assets have a life span of one year or less. They include cash or anything that can be converted into cash easily. On the other hand, non-current assets are those that cannot be converted into cash within a year. They may also include intangible assets like goodwill and patents.

As for the liabilities portion, the same life span is applied to the variables. Current liabilities are those financial debts or repayments that need to be settled within a year while non-current liabilities are considered longer term debts that can be settled after one year.

Now let us relate the new equations to the earlier example. Lets assume that your loan of $200k is taken from separate banks and half of the loan need to be repaid within a year while the other half after one year. Assume that $400k of property value and $100k of cash make up your total assets. The balance sheet of this example may look like the following table:



What you see in the table above is a simplified example of a balance sheet. They may look similar if you see an actual balance sheet. I suggest that you look at Vicom’s balance sheet. It is one of the cleanest balance sheets that I can think of. For a start, if possible try to avoid balance sheets of financial companies. They may confuse you with their long list of debts and complicated structures.

After looking more into a company’s balance sheet, my confidence level and understanding improves further. There are many things that you can pick up from the balance sheet of a company but I think those concept requires a separate topic to explain.

Sony Pasori card reader

This week I just got my Sony Pasori card reader which I bought online. It is selling at a discounted price of $39 and was delivered to me by standard post free of charge. A quick check on the usual selling price outside is around $49. Therefore I even save on the transportation cost to buy it. You may purchase it from Photoatm website.

Previously my ezlink is linked to my UOB One card. I choose the maximum top-up of $50 and incur a convenience fee of $0.25 for each auto top-up. As of now, topping-up of ezlink online is free of charge. Thus I just need to make at least 156 top-up transactions to break even with the cost of the Sony Pasori card reader.

There are a few advantages of having the card reader at home. First of all is the waiver of the convenience fee. Even though the waiver may be temporary, I believe it is still worthy to have one in the house for the benefits of my family members.

With the reader, I can control the amount of top-up or balance in the ezlink card. It gives me the flexibility to charge under other credit cards should I already meet the minimum spending of $300 on my UOB One card. Now I no longer need to bring an ezlink with balance of up to $50 since the minimum amount for each top-up transaction is $10 if I do it online.

The other advantage is the ability to download the latest 20 transaction records of any ezlink card. Previously I really got no idea on how much is deducted for each tap unless I pay attention on the screen. From EZ-Oline website, I am now able to check for discrepancies in the transportation fares if there are any. You can see a sample screenshot of this feature from the picture below.

Picture courtesy of www.ezlink.com.sg website

Since multiple top-up transactions can be done and if you are hardcore Singapore Pools fanatic, this card may come in handy for you. I am not sure of the maximum balance allowed for an ezlink, now you can effectively pay Singapore Pools using your credit card.

Installation of the Sony Pasori card reader is a breeze. Run the setup file from the cd provided, reboot your pc, plug in your reader to a free usb port and you are ready to experience the life of becoming a transitlink ticket officer. Don’t forget that you need to be connected to the internet to utilise the EZ-Online features.

Average daily calculator

I am sure many of us do have an account with Standard Chartered Xtrasaver or do participate in Citibank brokerage promotions. The above mentioned account or promotion requires us to monitor our average daily balance so as to qualify for the rebates. Failure to meet the requirement means you can say goodbye to the potential rebates.

I have been monitoring these daily balances on an Excel spreadsheet. Every time I need to do a calculation for a new month, I need to rewrite the functions to calculate the average. Therefore I decided to automate and make life easier in future.

With this new spreadsheet, now I just need to enter the daily balances at end of day and the particular month I am interested to compute. So I don’t need to check how many days are there in that month and I don’t need to rewrite the average function again. The file is actually a very simple practice in excel but I thought of sharing it for the benefits of some people.

If you are interested, you may download this average daily calculator from the link.

My stocks portfolio - Jul 2008 (Corrected)

My overall portfolio was down by 21.69% at the end of July. Like in the previous months, fresh funds were injected into my stocks portfolio this month as well. As long as I see opportunities or value buys, I will continue to buy regularly in future.

There were two transactions for the month of July.
Bought Capitacomm, price at $2.008
Bought Vanguard Emerging Markets, price at USD$45.98

Latest quarterly report for Capitacomm was out on the 23 July. Distributable income for first half of 2008 rose by 22.7% to 5.19 cents as compared to first half of 2007. Despite a slowdown in global economy, so far there isn’t any significant impact to most of the Singapore REITS after they reported their latest earnings.

The main recent why I choose Capitacomm is its attractive valuation and reasonable gearing level. It is one of the top quality REITS behind Capitamall. Unfortunately Capitamall is trading at a more expensive valuation as compared to Capitacomm. The latest NAV of Capitacomm is at $3.07 which means the current price is at 33% discount from its NAV.





Capitacomm’s occupancy rate still remains strong from the chart above. There is also no doubt from what I read in Intelligent Investor book by Benjamin Graham that REITS are good inflation protected investments. The evidence is illustrated by the historical Dividend Per Unit (DPU) chart above. The aim of the REIT is to distribute higher DPU year after year. After the most recent acquisition of One George Street, it will add to a higher DPU payout for next year.

In one of my previous articles, I have mentioned that I intend to set up a supplementary portfolio consisting of global stocks. I believe now is a good time to buy into Vanguard Emerging Markets stock. The stock has corrected about 20% from the previous high and at a support level around USD$45. Its trailing twelve month PE is at 13 (source from yahoo) and is considered attractive enough for me.



Take note this stock is listed on American Exchange. Even though emerging market is very volatile, it does suit my risk profile. It also gives me exposure to oil and gas related stocks around the globe with companies like Gazprom and Petroleo. I believe in the long term economic prospect of countries like Latin Americas, China and Russia. That is the main reason why I choose this stock as part of my supplementary portfolio and I decided to go the index way.

I received total cash dividends of $56.16 for the month of July.

No	Stock	Mode	Unrealised P/L
1	ALLCOREIT	CASH	-23.15%
2	ARA	CASH	-33.13%
3	CAPITACOMM	CASH	-4.38%
4	CHINA HONGXING	CASH	-17.95%
5	CHINA MILK	CASH	-7.26%
6	COURAGE MAR	CASH	-17.91%
7	COSCOCORP	CASH	-9.33%
8	FIBRECHEM	CASH	-32.80%
9	FSL TRUST	CASH	0.92%
10	GEN INT	CASH	-13.61%
11	JAYA HLDG	CASH	-24.89%
12	KS ENERGY	CASH	1.27%
13	MACQ INT INFRA	CASH	-30.72%
14	ROTARY ENGRG LTD	CASH	-51.22%
15	TAI SIN	CASH	-33.54%
16	SWIBER	CASH	-26.28%
17	UOB-KAY HIAN	CASH	-28.18%
18	VICOM	CASH	3.66%
19	VANGUARD EMER MRKTS	CASH	-2.04%
20	BH GLOBAL	CPF	-31.20%
21	COSCOCORP	CPF	4.15%
22	SIAENGG	CPF	-34.50%

Lim & Tan rewards comparison

The moment I signed up with Lim & Tan, I did not do a proper comparison of their reward programmes. A client is given an option whether to receive rewards in terms of their in-house reward points or to receive in terms of NTUC linkpoints. Into thinking that the latter choice is more worth it, I chose to receive in NTUC Linkpoints. In fact, my choice is wrong.

Let me do a comparison on the two.

Lim & Tan reward points
The table below shows the commission rates for SGX trades in Singapore dollar. If you notice from the effective rates, there is a discount of 5% on all tiers of brokerage fees. Taking on the minimum brokerage fee of $25 for example, the discount is actually $1.25 (5% of $25).

Contract Size SGD	Online Rates	Effective Rates After Reward Points
Up to $50,000	0.28%	0.27%
> $50,000 - $100,000	0.22%	0.21%
> $100,000	0.18%	0.17%
Min. Brokerage	$25	$23.75

NTUC Linkpoints
Now assuming you choose to receive in NTUC Linkpoints. For every $1 of brokerage fee you paid, you will earn 5 NTUC Linkpoints. Taking on the minimum brokerage fee of $25 again, you will earn 125 NTUC Linkpoints for the brokerage fee that you paid. Now bear in mind that the conversion rate of 150 NTUC Linkpoints is equivalent to $1. Therefore the effective discount is actually $0.83 only.

As you can see from the comparison above, it shows that Lim & Tan reward points worth more than the NTUC Linkpoints. I have decided to do a switch into receiving Lim & Tan reward points instead.

Error with CBOX message box (Updated)

Recently I did an upgrade on the message box that you see above. Since I am paying for the message box service, rest assured there won’t be anymore pop-ups advertisement in the future.
However after I did the upgrade, some visitors have encountered error in displaying the message box. I am aware of that as I myself do encounter it once in a while. I am not sure what the problem is but I have already contacted the CBOX support centre.

In the mean time, may I suggest you do the following steps:

1) If you see the refresh button in the message box, please do click that to refresh
2) Try to clear the cache of your browser, close the browser and reload the browser
3) Try visiting this blog by the full url with www:
http://www.sti-stocksinfo.blogspot.com/

Hope that it helps temporarily while I wait for a permanent solution. By the way, please direct all related feedbacks on the message box to the comment of this post. Thanks for the feedback from some of you guys.

Redeem brokerage fees - Part 2

In my previous article, I did explain how you can redeem your brokerage fees when you make bill payment from DBS credit card and settle the credit card amount that is due with Standard Chartered Xtrasaver card.

Lately due to bad market condition, trading volume over SGX has plummeted as investors or traders shun away from stocks and shares. On the other hand, banks do come up with promotions on their cash line facilities to encourage customers to trade or buy stocks.

Basically you need to pay your stock purchases using those banks’ cash line facilities, incur interest on debit balance at the end of the month and then your brokerage fees will be returned back. If you put sufficient amount into the cash line account in advance and pay from that account for stock purchases, your interest charged can be minimal. Therefore you can have a portion of your brokerage fees being redeemed.

Currently Citibank Ready Credit, DBS Cashline and UOB Cashplus are having these brokerage promotions. The last two banks are offering $25 cash rebates each month when you pay at least $3000 to brokerage firms. Your account must be in debit balance of any amount at the end of the month in which the trade is made. For DBS Cashline, you can earn additional $5 when you pay to DBS Vickers.

Among the three banks, Citibank Ready Credit promotion gives the highest amount of cash rebate. You can earn up to $120 cash rebate when you participate in their promotion. However the requirement is slightly different. You need to maintain an average daily debit balance of $1000 in your Ready Credit account.

Take note the minimum interest for both DBS Cashline and UOB Cashplus is at $5 while the minimum interest for Citibank Ready Credit is at $15. Therefore net of those interests, you can still earn some cash rebates from those promotions if you put sufficient funds into their cash line accounts in advance.

For more information, you may refer to the respective websites to read further.
Citibank Ready Credit Brokerage Promotion
DBS Cashline Brokerage Promotion
UOB Cashplus Brokerage Promotion

Below is a matrix table of participating brokerage firms for each bank cash line facilities.

	DBS Cashline	UOB Cashplus	Citibank Ready Credit
DBS Vickers Securities Online (S) Pte Ltd	X		X
DBS Vickers Securities Pte Ltd	X		X
DMG & Partners Securities Pte Ltd	X	X	X
AmFraser Securities Pte Ltd	X	X	X
CIMB-GK Securities Pte Ltd	X	X	X
Kim Eng Securities Pte Ltd	X	X	X
Lim & Tan Securities (S) Pte Ltd	X	X	X
Philips Futures Pte Ltd	X	X	X
Philips Securities Pte Ltd	X	X	X
UOB Kay Hian Pte Ltd	X	X
OCBC Securities Pte Ltd			X
Citibank Brokerage Services			X