I sold another 5000 shares of NYSE: SHEL Shell. I won’t be able to sell for the day’s highest price. I sold at USD 71.36/share. I bought most of the shares in FY2020 during the COVID-19 year. That year was one of the most challenging years of my life. I started my work in KL, Malaysia in March 2020. When I landed in KL, it was the immediate announcement of MCO. I did not even get my passport back from the immigration agent and suddenly all government agencies shut down. I begged the bank manager to help me with opening my bank account, if not I would not be able to get my salary. I remember how Malaysians are warm and friendly. They made my COVID-19 years easier to bear. I was stranded in KL alone and my family was in Singapore.
I like this reality show 东山再起 S2. I only managed to watch episode 3, it showed how tough lives were for our fellow brothers and sisters in Malaysia during the MCO lockdown. They hit rock bottom and think of different ways to fight back for survival. Highly recommend this reality show. I can relate to how tough MCO was; it affected many lives in Malaysia.
If you realize, I could not buy Shell at the lowest price. My bullet went dry by June 2020. I recall a huge drawdown of -S$600+k during the most volatile period. It was a very dark and lonely journey. It was my work that kept me focused and sane during that time. I sold 3,150 shares in February 2022. Today is another big trade. I will keep the last 2,000 shares until the share price hits USD 100 haha. As I type this on 13th April, the share price has gone up by another $2, I won’t be able to buy at the lowest and I won’t be able to sell at the highest. This is a fact of life.
I sold 135 shares of VT at USD 109.89/share today. I think having VRWA will suffice. Less is more. I sold 3,000 shares of MLSS and cut at a 90% loss too late but it is better than never. After recycling the funds, I am waiting to deploy the funds. With the new funds, the margin loan is fully paid off.
I sold the positions and withdrew the funds to move to the bank. It took donkey years for the funds to arrive. I want to buy a Hong Kong tracker fund which is a passive ETF that pays about 4% dividend yield while waiting. The wait for funds to arrive has a huge opportunity cost. You may ask why not use the original brokerage which I sold the above positions to buy. Just take it as I cannot do that due to trade restrictions. The share price if I can use the original brokerage to buy will be HKD 17/share. While writing this which is on the 8th of April, the share price is hovering around HKD 17.4/share. I intend to buy 180,000 shares of the ETF. This opportunity cost of waiting for the funds to arrive has cost me 180,000 x 0.4 x 0.172 = S$12,384. Every increase of HKD 0.1/share means an opportunity cost of S$3,000.
I have another alternative which is to purchase into Haw Par which is the company that I bought for my parents. This is a company that technically will not go belly up soon and I can safely park S$500k there to earn a 4% yield like a bond. I do not expect much upside to the share price. Its investment earnings reached a new high and revenue from the healthcare segment has already recovered close to pre-COVID19 days. The EPS expansion is already over, I don’t think the share price will move much. That explains the range bound of the share price.
I met my old friends for coffee and one of them left his job to start his own business. In the meeting, he preferred to seek advice from my other business owner friend. I recommended he use WordPress or Shopify, but he felt that I did not know what I was talking about. I tried to justify that I had done dropshipping via Shopify in 2017. He had a mindset that I was an employee and I did not have the know-how. This reminded me of the above video, one of the touch points is to keep quiet in gatherings. It does not help to open my mouth. Only those who seek your advice will treasure your input.
On 16th April, the funds finally arrived and I did a very lousy FX change of 1 SGD to 5.72 HKD. I went into trigger happy mood. I bought 140,000 shares of the Hong Kong Tracker Fund at HKD 16.6/share. This won’t be the lowest price but something that I should be happy to enter. I tried to utilize the remaining cash to buy Hwa Par but it is so illiquid, it will be difficult to accumulate or sell. See the below image.
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