My Monthly Passive Income - Nov 2024

Sharing my passive income for the year 2024:

                                

Basically, I am collecting $3,502.22 in passive income monthly this year, compared to $3,101.26 last year.

This is cumulative sum from stocks, bonds, ETFs, SSB, TBills, fixed deposits, bank deposits, MMF.   

Here's what it looks like on a chart:

Any increase is good.

Onwards!

 

Portfolio Returns for Nov 2024 - Mixed Bag

I felt it would be good to track the returns regularly since they fluctuate occasionally depending on the stock market.

Here are the movements for this month. The anomaly is the cryptocurrency portfolio, which shot up in an almost vertical line to 76.29%. This is just a tad shy of my champion USA fund with returns of 81.7%. Cryptocurrencies shot up because Trump is re-elected as US President, and this spurred expectations that his administration will create a friendly regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies. 

                                

Same chart as above but converted to column chart.

For the Robo-Advisors, it did go up again this month. However, Syfe Reit+ crashed below positive again! This is because Trump is re-elected as US President, and his policies are thought to be inflationary. As such, Fed will likely have to maintain high interest rates for longer period of time, which is bad for Reits. 

But if we were to think about it, in Sep 2024 Fed has lowered interest rates by 50 basis points from 5.5% to 5.0%. This caused S-Reit ETF to rise to 90 cents per share. Interest rates have further been cut in Oct 2024 to 4.75%, which means S-Reit ETF should now be > 90 cents per share. Instead, it dropped to 80 cents per share due to expectations of Trump's policies which has not yet materialize. Given this direct correlation between interest rates and S-Reit prices, I believe that as long as Trump's policies does not make the Fed raise interest rates higher than 5.0%, S-Reit prices will return to 90 cents a share sooner or later. On the other hand, even if Fed raise rates back to 5.5%, we have already seen the bottom of S-Reit ETF at 78 cents a share, which is already quite near to current price. Hence, I believe now is a good time to buy S-Reit and hold it long-term for dividends (dividend yield of 5.10%). 

                                

Same chart as above but converted to column chart.

Additionally, I think it will be interesting to see the breakdown of my portfolios in percentages (below). There is a component 'X' which I do not want to disclose for now. The concentration of 'X' is now 10.0% but is still too high. 

                                

Market events over the last month: 

Trump has been re-elected as US President! His policies are thought to be inflationary, which means Fed has to maintain higher interest rates for longer period of time. This depresses Reits and Bonds. 

Meanwhile, war on the 3 fronts are not letting up:

* Ukraine - Russia - escalation on this front, as US approved use of their missiles to strike on Russian territory. In retaliation, Russia changed their nuclear doctrine and launched inter-continental missiles (capable of carrying nuclear warheads) into Ukraine for the first time

* Israel - Gaza

* Israel - Lebanon

Hope the situation can get better soon. 

Because of the 3 wars, Gold prices have been having a good run. 

Meanwhile, SP500 has already hit 6,000 as predicted by analysts. There should be a correction soon, so brace yourselves. 

Onwards!  

Is STI really the Super Terrible Index? Part 3

Since my previous posts (part 1 here and part 2 here) on calculating my returns from investing in STI over the last 10 years, the STI continued its good run. In fact, it is now at 17-year highs!

Singapore banks lead STI rally to 17-year high as US Fed cuts rates

So I decided to write another feel-good post about my returns from investing in STI, which should be higher than the 5.3% CAGR reported in my previous post. 

I have collected $20,204.50 in dividends over the last 10 years. I started DCA on 24 Apr 2014. 

So how much returns has that netted me?

Without dividends included, I achieved a CAGR of 5.7%. With dividends included, my CAGR increases to 6.4%! This CAGR is computed using the FV() formula in Google Sheets. 

Results are as of 21 Nov 2024. Time will tell whether the STI can break its ATH of 3906 achieved in 2007 before the great recession. Fingers crossed.

The outlook for STI is good:

SGX shares surge following Morgan Stanley's upgrade to 'overweight'

"Seemingly stronger political will and low market expectations mean that any new initiatives proposed in the coming nine months could be met with a broad-based uplift in valuation multiples, especially for larger cap stocks," according to a team of Morgan Stanley analysts in their Nov 17 report, where they upgrade their call from "underweight" to "overweight".

STI is now the super terrific index!!

 

Wrapping up my 17th Month of Financial Independence

I just finished my 17th month of FI (Financial Independence) in Oct 2024.

Below is what I ate and did for fun, and a record of my expenses.

Eating

My usual home-cooked avocado meal.

Can't remember where this was, but it looked fancy so I took a photo.

Good to see, too sweet to drink more than a few mouths.

My usual home-cooked avocado meal.

Trying to eat healthy.

Fun

A simple month where I spent quality time with the kids.

Spotted this chicken at Pasir Ris.

Spotted this otter family at ECP!

Went for a walk here after dinner.

Found a free time slot to cycle around Kallang River.

Cycled all the way to Kallang basin.

Expenses

In terms of expenses, all green this month!

 

Eating Out Target: $650

Eating Out Actual: $549.81

Household Target: $600

Household Actual: $152.43

Travel Target: $100

Travel Actual: $4

Entertainment Target: $50

Entertainment Actual: $65.48

Personal Target: $250

Personal Actual: $94.80

Onwards to the next month of FI! 

Dividends for Oct 2024 - Towards 5000 a month

Here are my dividends for Oct 2024:

                                    

So I collected only $584.48 in dividends for this month. Traditionally, Oct is a lousy month :(

 
In case you are wondering, some stocks are repeated because I have 2 brokerage accounts.

Here are my monthly dividends over the last 6 years:

                                 

Oct's harvest has dropped a bit from the Sep harvest.

Here are the dividends I collected every year until the current day

                                

I have already surpassed my total yearly dividends in the previous year of 2023. 

For the year 2024, my average monthly dividends per month is now $2,566.47. 

Here is the progress of my average monthly dividends over the years:

                         

I plan to first receive $2500, then finally $5000 in dividends every month on average.

Additionally, I share the interest I received from the various banks for the deposits in this month:

                                        

So I collected $846.44 in interest payments this month, the largest came from UOB. The bonus interest from UOB includes the Q3 Salary Promo and Q3 CDP Promo, where you get a one-time bonus if you credit salary and credit CDP dividends into your UOB account. More details here:

https://forms.uob.com.sg/personal/save/salary-credit.html

Onwards!   

 

  

Portfolio Snapshot - Returns and Breakeven Price Nov 202

I decided to capture a snapshot of my portfolio once a year around this time.

Here's a snapshot of my current SGP portfolio:

The column 'cagr' represents the compound annual growth rate of that stock.

The column 'cagr_inc_div_drp' shows the compound annual growth rate including dividends paid out and additional stocks obtained through distribution reinvestment plans.

The column 'cagr_benchmark' shows the compound annual growth rate of the benchmark. The benchmark is the SPDR STI ETF, stock code 'ES3'.

The column 'cagr_benchmark_status' shows yes if we beat the benchmark.

The column 'returns_one_year' shows the returns in the past year.

The columns 'cagr', 'cagr_inc_div_drp', 'cagr_benchmark', and 'returns_one_year' are shown in percentages.

Here's a comparison of the stats with previous years:

                            

For this year 2024, 12 out of my 20 stocks managed to beat the benchmark. 

Here's another snapshot of my portfolio based on the breakeven price:

The column 'price' indicates the current price of the stock.

The column 'breakeven_price' indicates the breakeven price of the stock with dividends and stocks from the distribution reinvestment plan included. As long as the price of the stock is above the breakeven price, I can sell the stock for a profit.

The column 'breakeven_price_status' indicates if the stock price is above the breakeven price.

Here's a comparison of the stats with previous years:

Out of the 20 stocks I hold, I managed to break even 15 of them. 

Here are the returns of my portfolio versus the benchmark:

Importantly, I beat the benchmark (portfolio 5.7% versus benchmark 2.49%).

2024 can be considered a better year than 2023. This year's theme is geopolitical tensions between China and US. Wars in Ukraine, Gaza, Lebanon. Donald Trump just recently got re-elected as POTUS for a 2nd term. Time will tell how things will turn out, but for now stocks saw a jump and STI reached all-time high!!!

 

My FI status after 17 months of FI [Financial Independence]

I have achieved FI status in Mar 2023:

https://financeopti.blogspot.com/2023/03/breaking-free-i-have-achieved-financial.html

Now it is timely to re-evaluate whether I am still FI.

I did my spreadsheets and arrived at the following:

                            

As long as the cell in the red box is negative, I am FI. 

I will do this analysis at the beginning of every quarter. 

So watch out for a similar post at the beginning of 2025 Q1!

From the above, it seems I am still FI. 

I have also attached a chart showing the % change in my total investable assets over the years.

                       

It is fortunate that most of the data points are positive, which means I am still able to grow my assets.