Temasek Holdings achieved a 1.49% return for the preceding year for its shareholders as was reported yesterday. Among reasons cited for the less-than-stellar performance as compared to Temasek’s previous one-year performances were the challenging investing environment and how Temasek has effected a number of divestments over the same period.
As an active investor, I am not surprised at the performance of Temasek since the macro investing environment has indeed become more challenging with its fair share of trade war concerns and emerging geo-political factors.
For myself, year-to-date, through identifying selective international picks, I was able to achieve very decent return on my capital for Jan to May 2019. But these positions were via more of trades rather than longer-term investments now due to the flux in the stocks markets.
And like Temasek, I also divested a number of non-performing holdings. Regrettably, these non-performing holdings were Singapore counters. I have been really adjusting my portfolio toward real high potential US counters while remaining cautious on any Singapore counter in general as the local stocks markets seem to reach a peak.
My advice for investors is to invest in just the STI ETF against the current stocks markets backdrop if they are really interested in Singapore stocks now. STI ETF gives decent upside and steady dividends though investors’ general sentiment is that an index-based approach will not make much monies. Even if the ETF were to lose investors’ monies, investors could hold the STI ETF safely and enjoys dividends while holding their capital.
But investors will be worse off losing monies. And it is indeed very likely investors could lose monies now investing against this current stock markets.