Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Reflecting on 2010

I reached a personal milestone in terms of investing this year by having invested a total $20,000 straight from my pocked into the stock market. This figure of excludes the amount of monies received as dividends as well as the sale of stock, which I have deliberately excluded as it confuses me and lowers my imagined portfolio performance.

For the portfolio, there was only buying and no selling.I started the year with the purchase of China Animal Healthcare and ended it with C&O Pharmaceutical.

In terms of personal achievement, the most significant highlight for the year would be my changing of jobs towards the second half of the year. My current job is much more specialized compared to the past and the knowledge gained has complemented my previous position. I also made some progress in my quest for the CFA Charter.

Goals and Outlook For 2011

Financially, I aim to save as much as I can to provide for my future wedding as well as housing purchase. To those ends, I am thinking of saving maybe $1,000 a month. I am not sure if I will put them aside as pure savings or have them invested. The time horizon for using this money is horribly short compared to my initial investment portfolio which is for retirement. This makes volatility and issue.

In terms of personal developments, I hope to be fitter (IPPT Gold?) and perhaps travel a bit more. I will leave the thoughts of pursuing a Masters education till after I take the CFA Level II examination. All these will have an effect on my financial planning for married life.

Just a short one, I am expecting 2011 to be a year where the stock market will go up a little. Look for yield stocks is my usual advice. I do not foresee any shock to the systems (if I can see it, it can’t be a shock can it?) as most of the bad news from America and Europe have been discounted in. America’s approach has been to print more money (QE2) and forcing its major trading partners to revalue their currency. Across the Atlantic, governments there have preferred the cutting of expenditure in the government sector. The series of austerity measures will bring hardship as the years of plenty are apparently over.

Taken together, the shock that will cause panic in the global financial market should be a mixture of the two very different responses to an economic recession. However, how this shock will manifest itself, is an unknown. A portfolio review will soon follow along with a more comprehensive outlook for 2011

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