What are you doing with your OCBC rights

In the past few weeks, the news about OCBC rights issue has been most discussed in social media. By now, whether or not you are existing shareholder, you would have heard about the bank giving the shareholders to own rights share at $7.65 each.

If you have been following my blog, you know that in May I have written about this bank. You can still read it from here. I was at the bank this morning as I was having problem with my ATM access. The bank was particularly crowded as it was weekend and also maybe lots of people were there for the rights issue. While waiting for the staff to help me, I overheard people enquiring about the rights shares. I dont mean to eavesdrop but you can just hear people talking in the closed environment. One nice thing about this bank is that they always have few of their staffs walking around in the waiting area offering help. Interestingly over the span of 15mins, this is what some of these people asked the staffs who were there in many to help. 

1. One lady was asking the staff, how many rights shares she can apply. This is amazing, didnt she received the letter.
2. Another lady was asking how many excess of the rights shares can she apply. And when she tried to apply, she realised she does not have enough cash in her bank account.
3. On seeing the long queue, an old lady asked when is the closing date for the application.

Although this is just observation at one of the branch, I believed this is the same phenomena across all other branches, as many shareholders are interested and will be applying the rights shares. As such, the probability of getting the excess shares will be low. 

Have you applied for yours? 

The dilemma - SingPost

One of the news which has brought some life into the stock market this week was the purchase of a minority stake in SingPost by the Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba. Everyone knows or should have heard about this highly successful company and it's founder, Jack Ma, so no need to spell further. A friend who has bought some shares prior to this announcement was in dilemma on whether should he take profit or keep it for it's dividend. I believe there are many like him, not sure what to do, and well, on a positive note, it is a good problem isnt it. I have shared with him my thoughts and here it is what i have told him.

Stock watch: Sin Heng Heavy Machinery

In the recent months, it has been tough to find value in the current stock market, especially the STI has climbed quite a fair bit and shy of the 2014 new high (as reported in the papers today). Recently, I found a pretty useful global stock screener portal (ft.com) which has the same and better feature than SGX or google screener. This website even allows you to compare with it's peer on the ratio that you are interested. Using this, I did not find anything attractive in the Singapore market, until I stumbled upon Sin Heng and Tiong Woon.

Stock Watch: Lum Chang

Lum Chang was started in the 1940s, a leading construction company listed in SGX. I am writing about them today because I read (in Sunday Times) of a good deed that they have done, helping a family to repair their HDB which was burnt badly. In view of slow down in the property market and tight labour, it says alot of a company to step out during this time and return something back to the society. Here is the news from Sunday Times.

The first time I noticed this company is when they announced that they had invested in a London property - Old Court House along Kensington High Street for 40.19 million pound. And the management said this is to prepare for a possible slowdown in construction and that this investment will provide them a constant income. I thought this management is forward looking and prepare for themselves. During this time, most of the property counters have corrected due to the cooling measures by the government, Lum Chang was affected as well.

So why did I invest in this counter then:

1. Most financial experts told us to avoid property stocks (isn't it a good time to buy when no one is looking and wait - Patience is the key)
2. Good discount to the NAV
3. About 6% dividend (better than most of Reits and definitely bank's interest)
4. Tapping on their expertise and get exposure to UK property market :) 

And I noticed that in the recent months despite all the bad news that had been floating up every now and then, this counter had not reacted negatively.

Am I right about this one? No one knows, but if I am badly wrong I will just cut loss and move on. But for now, it is comforting to know that the company which you have invested, is one with a good heart.

Disclosure - I am long.

Stock Watch: Suntec Reit

Yes, this post is about Suntec Reit again. The last 2 weeks we have seen how the Reits have corrected due to the start of the QE tapering and the possibilities of increase in interest rates(nobody knows when), although from one of the FOMC meeting it was understood that the low interest rate should last till 2015. Reits are not the only sector that is affected, across the market, all the counters have reacted negatively too.

As I was doing my lazy surfing, I came across a few interesting posts by fellow blogger about reits and suntec reits. One of the post is from mystocksinvesting.com; he has been tabulating the reits data for a while and it helps one to do analysis easily. In another post, he also included charts from most of the Reits, and if you looked at them, most of them are either in downward trend or in consolidation.

And you may ask, why Suntec Reit. Comparing to the other reits, it is one of the highest debt gearing, which is a concern. And apart from trading below it's NAV, yield about close to 5.8%, these are also not too compelling to be in one's shortlist.

However, looking at the daily and weekly chart below, do you noticed that it is different from the other reits counter. Would this trend continue ...

Daily Chart

Weekly Chart

Counter debrief: SMRT & Suntec Reit

Happy Lunar New Year to all, in this post, I will be sharing 2 of my favourite counters.

The first one is one which most of us would have and owned at some point of time. I owned this stock since IPO and along the way, I add some as well. Most of us owned the stock for these reasons previously:

1. defensive stock with good dividend yield
2. well run company previously with exposure and revenue from rental shops and advertisements
3. part of the growing story to cater for the 6 million population

In Jan 2013, I sold the stock after news of the CEO Saw had left(about a year, ok, I gave chance to new management) and problems start to surface. In fact, if you looked at the chart below, based on TA, I should have sold even before the first blue bubble and not later. I was like most of you, hesitating and convincing myself(ignoring the TA indicators), that I am in for long term and even if the stock price is down, I am still getting dividends. Fortunately, I sold eventually, and now looking back, it was a right decision because now I have the capital from the sale and the choice of buying at even at a lower price if I want.

This post again to remind myself dont gave yourself reasons against what the chart is telling you.

The next one was Suntec Reit which again, gotten from IPO and then added some along the way. Way before Lehmen crisis, it hit all time high(i think was $2), at that time, the HK boys(major shareholder) were selling the stocks too. Being a long term investor(i thought), i hold on for the dividends, but the share corrected and went to below $1. And in 2013, it managed to repeat the same cycle again, and this time, I followed what the chart told me and took profit as shown in the blue bubble. 

This tells us that there is cycle to any business and investment including shares, if I had make use of the cycle, I would have made not once but twice.

Counter debrief: CSE Global

Instead of just showing one's portfolio like some of the other bloggers, I thought it is more useful to share the thought process of investing and divesting of one's counter. So here I will start with my first debrief for CSE Global.

1. This counter came to my radar after I used SGX mygateway to screen for stocks based on a simple criteria of ROE of 13 and having a dividend of 5%. 
2. Next I check the FA, didnt spend too much time to dig stuff, just a quick glance to make sure that revenue been growing, operating cash is healthy, Capex is low.
3. I noticed that they have more than 1/3 of business in the US, and so I became more interested as I believe their business will be able to tap on the US recovery.
4. I also used a quick litmus test using DCF from moneychimp; and realised that it's about $1.12.
5. Having done the above, I then looked at the TA. The eclipse zone is where I have bought in to the counter around August. I saw that both the 10MA and 20MA has turned up, and that the 2nd test of the support level was higher than the previous one.
6. The rectangle zone basically had reversed all the signals that was positive from my buy and by right I should have sold off but why didnt I. One of the reason is that it did not break the previous support, and also my position is small enough that I dont lose sleep over it.
7. My oversight was that I did not add on when it broke out on the right hand side, maybe I was too busy to notice. <<Lesson learnt>>.

7. CSE Global management has announced that 28c of dividend will be given to shareholders as reported in Nextinsight. Looking at 1 - 6, I did not do what some investors will do to try and understand the management, some will say that I was lazy. To me this is beyond me, and I have neither the experience nor the time. Anyway, by doing that, will anyone knows that this was in the pipeline, dont think anyone will know unless you are involved in the decision making.


Related post: Stock scan

Stock watch: Global Investments Ltd

Technically, chart is trending up although 50MA is still below 200MA. It has also tested the support level twice(arrows), and today the candlestick closed strongly with good volume. Will there be a breakout soon?

Below is the analysis from the research report. I have extracted some of the key data from the report, low PE, low P/Book ratio and high dividend.

Stock watch: Keppel Corp

Technically, long term Keppel Corp is still bearish as the 50MA is trending below 200MA. However, for mid term, looking at the weekly chart below, the downtrend has slowed down and there is a possibility that it might turn up if it is able to stay above $10.7. Daily chart for 5/10/20 MA have all trend up.

Given that US economy is recovering, KepCorp has been mentioned in many articles to be able to benefit from it. Fundamentally(simplistically), KepCorp is trading at around 11 PE, has quite high ROE of around 20 and it's dividend yields around over 4%. For more detail analysis, click here for a report by Seeking Alpha.

China Minzhong shares plunge 50%

Just when I thought that today will be just another day since DOW Jones was just consolidating last Friday, the news just broke out. California based research firm, Glaucus Research, published a report alleging irregularities in the company, China Minzhong.
Here is the report which the company has published.
https://glaucusresearch.com/wp-content/uploads/downloads/2013/08/GlaucusResearch-China_Minzhong_Food_Corp_Ltd-SGX_K2N-BBerg_MINZ_SP-Strong_Sell_August_26_2013.pdf

Now we just have to wait and see what the response will be from China Minzhong.

Early this year, the same research firm, Glaucus had also reported on another chinese based company, China metal recycling (CMR). Below is the article on what happened after.

http://www.scmp.com/business/money/markets-investing/article/1296041/glaucus-eyes-hong-kong-singapore-stocks-after-china

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-08-26/china-minzhong-falls-by-most-on-record-after-short-seller-report.html

In life, I guess nothing is certain, one has to make sure that we are not overly confident and invest all our eggs into 1 basket.

Apple revived?

Since the huge correction, is it now the right time to relook at Apples shares again? It seems the 3rd quarter numbers are not bad. businessweekprofit-estimates-in-3rd-quarter

From TA perspective, it seems the 10MA weekly chart is supporting at this level. Looking at the right side of the chart, it had also breakout after testing twice it's support. Would the uptrend continue?

Apples PE ratio looks attractive as well.

Source: Bloomberg 

Technics oil&gas accumulation?

This stock came up from my weekly scan using 'mygateway' and putting in the criteria of high ROE and dividend. Upon further check, most of the Internet article shown that fundamentally it is poor. The most recent report can be gotten from here, SG-Technics_Oil__Gas_20130520.pdf

However, on looking at the chart, from TA perspective, the 10MA is trending up but there is still alot of resistance as it is still below the 200MA which is arching down. Check out the red box, it seems that since May, folks are accumulating this stock ... ...