I didn't post what I will buy with $3000 in Jul and Aug 2016 because I wouldn't have bought anything. My last purchase was $3000 worth of SPH REIT in Jun. I felt that it was worthwhile to adopt a wait-and-see attitude because traditionally, the second half of the year usually performs worse than the first half of the year.
Without spending $3000 x 2 for the 2 months, it means I have $6000 more in my opportunity fund (aka warchest). I had also been trying to digest the statistics, in particular, unemployment statistics. The reason is there had been many reports of company retrenchments worldwide in sectors that are facing lower demand and higher automation. Unemployment rates inched up a little. For the quarter ending Jun, it's 3.1% for Singaporeans. Overall, including foreigners, the rate is 2.1%.
The next number I was looking at was job vacancy rate, which means jobs that have not been filled. For example, you want to hire a waitress, you will contribute to this job vacancy number that is measured every quarter. This is no data for the quarter ending Jun, but the job vacancy to unemployed person ratio is 1.03 for Mar, which means there are more job vacancies than unemployed persons. This rate is quite similar to the rate in 2012, but circumstances are different. In 2012, the property fever had not been tamed. In fact, the cooling measures had the reverse effect of buyers rushing to buy properties for fear that there will be more cooling measures that will prohibit them from buying in future. STI in 2012 was around 3000 points, versus 2800 now, for the same timeframe of Aug-Sep.
What will I buy in Sep? More bank shares if it heads back into the low range. If not, I will just add the $3000 into my warchest and continue to hug my warchest tight. Read my earlier bank stock review which shows the low range prices.
The writer owns units in SPH REIT, DBS, OCBC and UOB.
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