2024 Year End Reflections & Personal Updates

     Hi everyone, it's been a while since my last post which I do apologise for since my life has been rather busy with work and external commitments. I wanted to make this quick post to reflect on my investment journey in 2024, and some key points that I've learnt along the way. 

    Overall, my investment portfolio significantly underperformed the broader market, returning only approximately 10% throughout the year compared to the S&P500's 25%. I believe my biggest loser was Raffles Medical whereas my biggest winner is still United Hampshire US REIT. 

    My core portfolio holdings comprises of the following stock tickers (not in any particular order):

    - Keppel (With distributed Keppel REIT)

    - United Hampshire US REIT

    - Sheng Siong

    - DigiCore US REIT

    - Raffles Medical

    - Microsoft 

    My biggest holdings are still UHREIT and Keppel, but I haven't been buying stocks recently, instead opting to save up cash for my war chest to hopefully deploy in 2025. I know I've been saying this ad nauseam throughout the entire 2024, but I believe by most metrics the broader market has been overpriced, and if not a correction, I believe it would at least level off. At this perceived risk to reward ratio, I'm comfortable with holding more cash. 

    With that out of the way, I've learnt a lot of lessons in 2024. Firstly, after experiencing hustle and bustle of work life during this brief work intermission in my life, I've realised balancing commitments is seriously not easy, so props to everyone out there juggling their daily commitments, especially if you still take the time out of your busy schedules to review your portfolio and its holdings! Another lesson I've learnt is that stocks can seemingly be undervalued, but without a catalyst, you will never realise substantial gains. Although one can argue my portfolio is arguably more defensive, I beg to differ. The US market still sets the tone for global capital markets, so I don't believe I've experienced much less volatility compared to those heavily weighted in US growth equities. With Raffles Medical taking such a large hit in share price, I've incurred a lot of opportunity cost in holding the counter to hopefully realise my thesis, alongside the drag on my overall portfolio performance. Lastly, I regret not buying a stake in LHN Limited, which I've previously covered. It has indeed reached the realm of my assigned target price previously, but I've completely missed any upside due to not having confidence in my own abilities (or more so luck). Overall, I've opted to take a more aggressive approach to equities, albeit restrained, given my young age and long investment horizon. 

    So what's my strategy for 2025? Should the US stock market suffer a correction, I would most likely aim towards a 50/50 portfolio allocation between US stocks & SG stocks via the S&P500 index. Otherwise, I'll dip my toes more into US equities but continue to accumulate cash. If I deem DRIP prices to be inflated, I will allocate funds to growth equities. In terms of Singapore equities, I really do want to own some of the big three banks, and perhaps look into the heavily beaten-down US office REITs if the industry continues to structurally improve as we see more and more workers returning to WIO as we transition into an employer's labour market. In the work force, I've witnessed first-hand how AI is integrating itself into daily and corporate life, and as I monitor AI models' progress, I can't help but feel the possibility of reaching a singularity-like event to be higher and higher, so I'll be on the lookout for AI companies as well, albeit probably with a focus on peripheral beneficiaries for alpha. 

    As we near the end of this post, I'd like to also release this condensed stock report and 3-statement model + DCF I created for Sheng Siong which served as an educational project for myself back in August. I hope you enjoy it! To add on, as I foresee myself continue to have work and external commitments, coupled with my university matriculation next year, I will most likely not be able to continue this blog project on a level I previously operated in, although I intend to still post occasionally if I have time. Thank you to everyone for reading my blog throughout the project's active lifespan, and I genuinely enjoyed sharing my thoughts here. I hope you did too :). Since my name is included in the stock materials, feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn and feel free to have a chat, my doors are wide open!

    With that, I wish everyone a great year ahead, and may your investment portfolios experience a surge in wealth!

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I have no plans to initiate any additional positions in the stocks I have mentioned within the next 72 hours. All content published by me should not be construed as any sort of financial or investment advice and is simply for informational purposes. Although all research and figures are accurate and calculated to the best of my ability, I am not liable for any decisions made based on inaccurate information.