Shares that I have bought since 2011

Was just doing a count of the counters that I bought over the last 2+ years, and came out with this long list of 47 counters. Some good some bad. More importantly, with each counter I buy, I come away with a lesson learnt.

Currently I have 10, which I think is a manageable number.

1. F & N

2. M1

3. Sp Land

4. GLOBAL LOGISTIC P

5. MAPLETREE COMMERC

6. ManOri US$

7. UOB-KayH

8. Cerebos Pacific

9. NOL

10. Keppel Land

11. Sri Trang

12. 2ndChance

13. Boustead Sp

14. First REIT

15. SGX

16. ECS

17. Ezra

18. SP Corp

19. IndoAgri

20. SunVic

21. Sakari

22. CDL HTrust

23. SembMar

24. Cambridge

25. Frasers Comm

26. SinoGrandnes

27. AusGroup

28. Noble Grp

29. MEWAH

30. StarHub

31. Biosensors

32. CHINA MINZHONG FOOD

33. STX OSV HLDGS LTD

34. Sabana REIT

35. LippoMalls

36. GP HOTELS

37. SingTel

38. Swiber

39. FoodEmpire

40. Marco Polo

41. KSH Hldg

42. VizBranz

43. SaizenREIT

44. Lum Chang

45. Tat Hong
46. SPH Reit
47. MGCCT

Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this blog should not be construed as an enticement to buy or sell the securities, commodities or assets mentioned. The accuracy or completeness of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. Readers should carry out independent verification of information provided. No warranty whatsoever is given and no liability whatsoever is accepted for any loss howsoever arising whether directly or indirectly as a result of actions taken based on ideas and information found in this blog.

Tat Hong Holdings

Established History
Tat Hong has history from the 70s, set up in Singapore as a supplier of cranes and heavy equipment.

Market Dominance
Today, it has become the largest crawler crane company in the world, with operations in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, Dubai and Australia.

Growth and Future Plans
Recently, it has set up two Joint Venture companies:

1. Tat Hong has on 28 August 2013 entered into a joint venture agreement with Intraco and Mr Aung Moe Kyaw, and that the parties have incorporated a joint venture company, Tat Hong Intraco Pte Ltd, in Singapore. The company will carry out the business of distribution of cranes and excavators in Myanmar.

2. Announced on 26 October 2013, Tat Hong Holdings, Boustead Singapore and CSC Holdings (three local firms) have set up a joint venture with AME Group (Johor based) to develop land in Iskandar Malaysia. The joint venture will jointly undertake mixed property development in Iskandar Malaysia.

Financial Ratios

Some financial ratios:

P/E ratio: 8.5

P/B ratio: 0.9

Dividend payout since 2006. Past year yield: 4.2%

Valuations seem reasonable now since price drop from 1Q performance disappointment. Factoring in potential growth from Myanmar and Iskandar, I have taken up a position with this company.

Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this blog should not be construed as an enticement to buy or sell the securities, commodities or assets mentioned. The accuracy or completeness of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. Readers should carry out independent verification of information provided. No warranty whatsoever is given and no liability whatsoever is accepted for any loss howsoever arising whether directly or indirectly as a result of actions taken based on ideas and information found in this blog.

Book Review - Margin of Safety: Risk-Averse Value Investing Strategies for the Thoughtful Investor by Seth Klarman (Initial Thoughts)

Just started this book, which I found to have favorable reviews on the goodreads.com website.

One paragraph which resonated with me:

Investors must try to understand the institutional investment mentality for two reasons. First, institutions dominate financial market trading; investors who are ignorant of institutional behavior are likely to be periodically trampled. Second, ample investment opportunities may exist in the securities that are excluded from consideration by most institutional investors. Picking through the crumbs left by the investment elephants can be rewarding.



This is in line with what I understand from Peter Lynch's One Up on Wall Street, which says 

Look for opportunities that haven’t yet been discovered and certified by Wall Street—companies that are “off the radar scope."

Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this blog should not be construed as an enticement to buy or sell the securities, commodities or assets mentioned. The accuracy or completeness of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. Readers should carry out independent verification of information provided. No warranty whatsoever is given and no liability whatsoever is accepted for any loss howsoever arising whether directly or indirectly as a result of actions taken based on ideas and information found in this blog.

Book review: One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch

Finished reading the book in two weeks. Here are some key lessons I haved gathered from the book:

1. An amateur investor can pick tomorrow’s big winners by paying attention to new developments at the workplace, the mall, the auto showrooms, the restaurants, or anywhere a promising new enterprise makes its debut.

2. When you sell in desperation, you always sell cheap.

3. Under the current system, a stock isn’t truly attractive until a number of large institutions have recognized its suitability and an equal number of respected Wall Street analysts (the researchers who track the various industries and companies) have put it on the recommended list.

4. If a stock is down but the fundamentals are positive, it’s best to hold on and even better to buy more.)

5. The true contrarian waits for things to cool down and buys stocks that nobody cares about, and especially those that make Wall Street yawn.

6. Pick the right stocks and the market will take care of itself. That’s not to say there isn’t such a thing as an overvalued market, but there’s no point worrying about it. The way you’ll know when the market is overvalued is when you can’t find a single company that’s reasonably priced or that meets your other criteria for investment.

7. Don’t overestimate the skill and wisdom of professionals. 

8. Take advantage of what you already know. Look for opportunities that haven’t yet been discovered and certified by Wall Street—companies that are “off the radar scope.” 

9. Invest in companies, not in the stock market. 

10. If a company must acquire something, I’d prefer it to be a related business, but acquisitions in general make me nervous. There’s a strong tendency for companies that are flush with cash and feeling powerful to overpay for acquisitions, expect too much from them, and then mismanage them. I’d rather see a vigorous buyback of shares, which is the purest synergy of all.

11. Some people automatically sell the “winners”—stocks that go up—and hold on to their “losers”—stocks that go down—which is about as sensible as pulling out the flowers and watering the weeds. Others automatically sell their losers and hold on to their winners, which doesn’t work out much better. Both strategies fail because they’re tied to the current movement of the stock price as an indicator of the company’s fundamental value.

12. None of us is immune to the panic that we feel when a normal stock drops in price, but that panic is restrained somewhat by our understanding that the normal stock cannot go lower than zero. If you’ve shorted something that’s going up, you begin to realize that there’s nothing to stop it from going to infinity, because there’s no ceiling on a stock price. Infinity is where a shorted stock always appears to be heading.

13. Asset value, by itself, has no power to produce rising stock prices. What does cause stocks to rise in value are two things that are rather closely interrelated. One is an increase in a stock’s earning power. The other, and usually the more important, is the consensus of investment opinion as to the future course of that earning power. The reason these are so closely related is the strong tendency of the financial community to conclude that because a particular company has been increasing per-share earnings at a brilliant rate year after year, this trend will continue for a long time in the future. Plus or minus the temporary influence of the business cycle, this line of reasoning is often quite correct, although occasionally it can be quite wrong.

Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this blog should not be construed as an enticement to buy or sell the securities, commodities or assets mentioned. The accuracy or completeness of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. Readers should carry out independent verification of information provided. No warranty whatsoever is given and no liability whatsoever is accepted for any loss howsoever arising whether directly or indirectly as a result of actions taken based on ideas and information found in this blog.

Book review: One Up on Wall Street by Peter Lynch (P/E ratio)

I have been reading Peter Lynch's One Up on Wall Street. It is a very interesting and down to earth book on investment.

Today I read that price to earning ratio (p/e) can be thought of as the number of years it will take the company to earn back the amount of your initial investment, assuming that the company's earnings stay constant. Eg, if P/E is 10, this means the original investment will be earned back in ten years.

Since different industries and companies with different growth rates have different p/e ratio ranges, it is not meaningful to compare across the board, let alone to buy any and all stocks on the basis of low p/e ratios alone. Instead, it is more meaningful to compare the P/E ratio of the company with its peers to see if it is high, low or average compared to the industry. Also, it is more meaningful to compare the P/E ratio of the company with its historical values to get a sense of its normal values, to see if it is in line with what others have paid for the earnings in the past.


Disclaimer: The ideas expressed in this blog should not be construed as an enticement to buy or sell the securities, commodities or assets mentioned. The accuracy or completeness of the information provided cannot be guaranteed. Readers should carry out independent verification of information provided. No warranty whatsoever is given and no liability whatsoever is accepted for any loss howsoever arising whether directly or indirectly as a result of actions taken based on ideas and information found in this blog.