A quick update on a few investment decisions that I have made recently. 1. IREIT Global Rights Issue I have decided to apply for the rights plus excess No. of units held by me: 1,400 No. of rights units provisionally allocated: 635 My rule of thumb is to apply 2.5 to 3 times excess rights. Hence, 635 x 2.5 time is 1,587.5 units. It is always a given that the units will be rounded off to the nearest hundred, hence I decided to apply for 1,565 excess rights.

Credit to https://www.reit-tirement.com/ for the excel spreadsheet

Another important consideration is how much more I am willing to invest into IREIT Global which will in turn impact my portfolio allocation. I am comfortable in investing another $1K (including all excess rights). Currently IREIT Global takes up 1% of my portfolio and doubling it will increase it to 2% which is again within my comfort zone. 2. Sold Hong Leong Finance for DBS and OCBC After holding Hong Leong Finance for over 10 years, I finally broke even with the dividends and a little bit more. With the proceeds, I re-invested them into DBS and OCBC. Banks are still unlikely to do well going forward but once the recovery is in sight, DBS and OCBC will probably outperform HLF. Another consideration is scrip. The 3 local banks will probably be offering another few rounds of scrip and it is a good opportunity to acquire more shares. 3. DBS and OCBC Scrip I applied for both DBS and OCBC Scrip. The difference between the two is that DBS gives you the option to choose full dividend in shares or partial dividend in cash and shares. Another notable difference is DBS will round down the shares while OCBC will round up. Hence it is not so straight forward with DBS. There is a possibility of making a loss if I do not choose correctly. DBS Scrip No. of Shares currently held by you: 400 Dividend Payment: $0.18 per share Your will receive: SGD72.00 New Share Issue Price: $21.04 per share You will receive (if you opt for full election): 3 new shares If I opt to receive my full dividend in shares, the value of 3 new shares based on $21.04 is only $63.12 versus $72 if I choose to receive everything in cash. After doing some math, I opt for 100 existing shares in cash and 300 existing shares to receive dividends in new shares as this will maximize my returns. OCBC Scrip No. of Shares currently held by you: 421 Dividend Payment: $0.159 per share Your will receive: SGD66.94 New Share Issue Price: $7.81 per share You will receive (if you opt for full election): 9 new shares OCBC only allows you to choose full dividends in shares or cash and I choose the former. I must applaud OCBC efforts in going digital. Rather than having to mail back via snail mail, I can do it via CDP portal. Others I have parked US$1,200 in Tiger Brokerage with the intent to buy Apple before the Stock Split. However, I was not able to do it in time because it took some time for the money to be transferred. I read that DBS is able to transfer money into Tiger Brokerage in an hour or so but this seems to apply to office hours – I perform a transfer on a weekday night but the money only appear in the morning on the following day. I am not too bothered about ‘missing out’ on Apple as I believe my dimensional funds in MoneyOwl and Endowus would have capture some Apple stock. I am still on the lookout for tech stocks be it cloud, software, infrastructure etc. but I am in no hurry. In such times of uncertainty, I am glad to still have a job. I am also devoting more time into it to show that I am still a valuable contributor to the organization.

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Featured Image credit: Markus Winkler