By: musicwhiz From this portfolio update onwards, I will be changing the format of the portfolio review to make for easier reading. Instead of everything being text-based (which can be hard on the eye especially when it concerns numbers), I have resorted to using an Excel spreadsheet (see below) to document the key aspects of my portfolio. Of course, some details have been left out such as averaging dates, but these are not as important as the first date of purchasing a company. I have arranged this in order to when I bought the company. The main change to the portfolio since the mid-September 2008 update is the addition of Tat Hong Holdings Limited on September 18, 2008. The US$700 billion bailout has NOT been approved by Congress as at the time of this writing but the Democrats are purportedly working on another bailout plan to be tabled to Congress; voting can only take placed earliest next week so the market will, as usual, be on tenterhooks. The good news is that the DJIA and S&P 500 crashed about 7% and 9% respectively, which means valuations are getting increasingly attractive as the days go by. Separately, Singapore is also expected to enter a technical recession once the 3Q 2008 GDP figures are released, due to a sharp drop in manufacturing output. This was not entirely unexpected as our economy is very open and thus prone to such global “shocks”. Other vulnerable countries will include Malaysia and Hong Kong as well. There was not much news regarding the companies I own, and I will give a quick summary below. The STI stood at 2,358.91 points on September 30, 2008. Read more..