Investment is a psychological game

Recently I bought a few lots of Boustead. Since then, I seldom check the price of the stock.

I was trying to practise what Warren Buffett taught. When you buy a stock, you buy thinking that the market will close for the next 5-10 years. If you can't do this, don't even think of buying and holding the stocks.

My investment goal every year is to invest a fresh 10k into stocks.

This is a goal that is attainable. Although my ultimate goal is to make a million dollar, I need to start small and 10k a year is my baby steps.

I had a lunch conversation with my colleague last week and we briefly talked about stocks. She told me her mum bought SIA when it was 15 dollars a share and is holding onto it as the price have drop to around 10 dollars.

It reminded me that when buying a stock, it is no different from buying a property. You would want to make the purchase at a reasonable price. Hence the entry price of a stock is very important.

For me, when I bought my HDB, I looked at past transaction prices. Same for stocks, I would look at the price history for the past 10 years. Coupled with the nav etc, I could determine a reasonable buying price.

Boustead SG - a chanced discovery

Boustead, a long established company in Singapore.

I came across this company today while continuing my research on SG stocks.

I must admit when I first came across this stock, I was a bit skeptical as I cannot associate anything with the name. Maybe I was not as well read as I thought I was.

Nevertheless, I decided to pry abit deeper.

Using my own criteria, the company has enough cash holdings to settle its current liabilities. It is listed in SG since 1975 and has weathered so many financial storms.

From a business point of view, it's business is spread across energy, real estate and waste water, mainly focused on energy.

As oil and gas industry is still far from recovering, the company still manages to be in the black.

And holding onto cash now is better given the uncertain times, hence I am certain the company can ride out the tough times.

It's share prices have halved and although it is still trading above its NAV (something I used to measure my margin of safety), I decided to give this company a shot.

Dividend payout is not great but still decent. @ a price of 0.865, the 2 cents divident payout is 2.3% (still better than the bank rates).

This is one company that I may consider buying soon.

Dry spell

Recently after ditching the idea to invest in reits. I have not found any stocks that I thought could invest in long term.

Guocoland came up recently in my radar, as well as wheelock properties.

These 2 counters are trading below their NAV by a large margin. But when I look at the stock price for the past few years, the stock has stagnated at the price it is trading.

Of course, price history does not really tell you how high the price could rise in future. But without a history, I find it difficult to take a leap of faith.

Gleaning some insight from Warren Buffet whom bought Apple shares recently. He bought Apple shares when the stock was dropping. He discontinued to buy after the stock starts to pick up. Of course the idea is not to buy blindly into any stock just because its stock price is falling. The lesson that I picked up is that no matter how good the company is, the price of the stock is important and if it exceeds the price that you have of this stock in mind, it is not worth while to buy as demonstrated by Warren Buffett.

Meanwhile, the hunt for sg stocks to invest my monies continues.