It was a pretty volatile January to kick start into 2020 with the widespread of CORONAVIRUS (AKA Wuhan Virus) and now renamed by WHO to COVID-19.
Whatever is the name of this stupid and irritating Virus, it is pretty disruptive to our daily life as well. My company activated BCP (Business Continuous Plan) and started to have rotational shift to work from home and office just in case to avoid cross spreading of Virus within the company.
Ironically, unlike many others, Old Turtle don't really like to WFH (Work From Home) as I have two young children at home and it is pretty difficult to ask them to keep quiet while "Papa Turtle" is working in one of the common room. But worst case scenario, I have to do it if it's a company directive.
What did I do for my portfolio and what's the next plan?
As my warchest is running pretty low as I am heavily vested usually in the market, around 90-95% vested at most of the time. I took the opportunity to take profit from my HK/China positions while there were still some profits as of early Feb.
Obviously, I don't have a crystal ball to forecast future price movements so I am not sure if the stocks I sold would move up or down. Would I regret? Probably not so much.
My main purpose was to raise sufficient/meaningful level of cash to prepare for any downturn due to this epidemic.
On 4 Feb, I sold my HK listed China stocks, Haidilao, Meituan, Tencent and Alibaba with a small profit and raised around $50,000+ which is around 8-10% of my total portfolio.
The cash will go into my Warchest as dry bullets to prepare for any further escalation of the Virus globally (ex China).
My cash will be sitting in my CIMB FastSaver online cash account to earn 1+% pa of interest (without any further conditions) while I wait for the next opportunity in coming months. *Not an advert, just sharing*
https://www.cimbbank.com.sg/en/personal/products/accounts/savings-accounts/cimb-fastsaver-account.html
While I continued to stay vested in the market in SGX to collect dividends as part of my dividend income strategy.
Projected Dividends for 2020: $15,940.90 (Around 3.5% yield)
Stay Calm, Hide in My Turtle Shell and Stay Healthy - My Friends !!!
Haha guess your company didn't go thru so much hassle during SARS time even though SARS is much more deadly than COVID-19 (maybe just masks, hand sanitisers, 2X daily temp taking, & frequent cleaning by office cleaners?). A lot of the current procedures were trialed & errored in 2003, some from reading & hearing overseas best practices, but mostly just hantam at that time.
ReplyDeleteThings like separate work teams each with people cross-trained in each others' functions, segregated work areas (maybe separate work sites for some organisations), separate entrance & exits for different teams (even cleaners had separate groups), increased use of teleconferencing for meetings (video conferencing still quite expensive in 2003), testing of work from home (kinda ok by 2003 but many jobs still require physical presence).
After SARS died down, govt interviewed many organisations (a lot were stat boards & ministries) that implemented such measures, as well as consulting with overseas experts, which resulted in the DORSCON framework & SOPs in 2005/2006. This Dorscon is regularly revised & updated along the years.
Now most big companies in S'pore follow Dorscon or follow govt advice which is based on Dorscon. Hence will be new to many private sector employees.
I cannot answer you because I am still studying when SARS hit Singapore and to be honest, I dont even remb how bad was SARS.
ReplyDeleteI am just a young punk spending my parents money back then.
Thanks for your generous sharing of how SARS impacted our economy.
I hope COVID 19 will be gone soon .... although I know it will stay with us for at least another 6 to 12 mths at least.