Review of 1H2014

The stock market has strolled past the first half of year 2014 uneventfully. Other than the 90 points drop in KLCI index in January, basically it is a sluggish yet good first half so far even though it only gains less than 1%. The index manage to stay ever closer to 1,900 points without major correction.

Readers who follow this blog may know that my personal stock market investment theme for 2014 is to add a plantation stock and an oil & gas stock, while limit the exposure to property stocks. The plan to upgrade Latitude to core portfolio is nearly done.

So far I think the intention to reduce property stocks has cost me quite dearly. Earlier I sold some Tambun shares at RM1.42 & RM1.95, and sold all Tambun-WA at RM0.96. At the moment both are trading at RM2.18 & RM1.55 respectively.

The consolation is, those money was used to buy other stocks which fortunately perform decently well so far.

Nonetheless, I missed the chance to ride on the rising wave of some property related stocks such as PJDev, OSKProp, MKH, Protasco, Fitters, Huayang to name a few.

I still failed to add a plantation and/or O&G stock to my portfolio so far, due to various reasons.

My top plantation target Bumitama has gained significantly but I still do not own a single share of it. What a pity!

I don't study O&G sector a lot. However, there are two companies that I think worth paying attention to which are Coastal & Pantech.

Pantech is not a true O&G player but it should benefit greatly from the Pengerang RAPID project by supplying pipes & fittings to those O&G big guns.

I have sold all my Pantech shares at small loss (-1.7%) earlier this year at 94sen. Now it has rebounded to RM1.08. So I still make bad decision. The only thing I can hope for is to make more correct decisions than wrong decisions.

I like Coastal since many years ago but have never invested in it. It is a growing company with good management. Its recent foray into upstream O&G market seems to be very exciting.

For stocks in my portfolio, generally all are doing well in the first half of 2014 including Tropicana which was sold at a loss in May. Tropicana still manage to gain 23% in the first half of 2014 so my loss was minimized from -36.5% to -12.5%.

I bought Asiapac in April after studying it in detail, probably due to adrenaline rush at that time even though I resist to buy more property stock. My intention is to hold it until year end but was forced to sell much earlier with a small gain of 12%.

The best performer is undoubtedly Inari which has gained 85.9% so far in CY2014.

If you think this is an extremely good gain then take a look at a non-fancy plastic tray & cup manufacturer SCGM in which its share price has rallied 155% from 90sen to RM2.30 for the last 6 months.

Of course there are still other stocks which perform much better than SCGM in this period of time.

The worst performer in my portfolio at 3.5% is Scientex, which does not move much despite strings of good financial results. Anyway, with its generous dividends, it is still much better than FD.

Portfolio's share price in 1H2014

Stocks	End Dec13	End Jun14	G/L (%)
GTRONIC	3.17	4.23	33.4
INARI	1.63	3.03	85.9
LATITUD*	2.08	2.89	38.9
MATRIX*	3.41	4.20	23.2
SCIENTEX	5.69	5.89	3.5
TAMBUN	1.51	2.18	44.4
YOCB	0.95	1.23	29.5

* Additional shares of Latitude & Matrix were purchased in 1H14

Besides, a few stocks that I have been watching closely have registered better gain. It is opportunities lost and I just can't stay too disappointed as in investment, you just can't win every time.

Management of emotion is important in stock market investment and I'm still learning to cope with it.

In average my portfolio gains 47.2% in 1H14, which is on course to achieving my target of beating the KLCI index at year end. This result is far above my expectation, helped by lucky breaks of Inari & Tambun.

Seriously I do not think that this performance will be duplicated in the second half of 2014, as all the stocks except Latitude are already fully-valued or even over-valued.

This makes me think again whether I should offload them to buy other truly undervalued stocks, especially at this moment when I'm lack of excess fund for stock market investment.. Perhaps only by doing this I can have a chance to hit higher gain for 2014.

However, I think I should not be too greedy and should follow veteran Cold Eye's advice: keep the stocks that keep on generating more revenue & profits.

So far I have no regret that I still keep Gtronic & Inari's shares.

Although I have a few stocks closely on radar, it is unlikely that I will buy again in the near future until a major stock market correction.

Buying is always easy. If I do not resist myself from buying stocks, definitely I will end up with more than 10 stocks now.

I have another chance to get personal loan at low interest rate but I decided that it's time to avoid debt and accumulate cash seriously. However, it is hard to tell whether not buying is good or bad at this time.

Furthermore, cash will be needed for property renovation in the second half of 2014 and I may need to sell some shares instead.

Sell to lock in the profits is not a bad idea actually, especially when the bull seems to be a bit tired after so many years of marathon run.

Nevertheless, I won't rule out that sometimes my hands may get really itchy.