Not many thoughts on the stock market

Juggling between work, life, and two modules for Master's is really very time consuming. On the work side, the pressure is just piling up because instead of being able to update my report, I have been required to provide support for other team mates. This is not helped by the fact that I tend to be less disciplined in my research. On the social life front, it has been relatively quiet but I keep getting dragged out on the weekends and this leaves me tired and little time to catch up with other stuff. Classes are also taking up time because they just mean pushing back work time to prepare for proposals.

The stock market has not been bothering me though. Although the American market looks strong, the STI's gains has been modest with a lot of penny rotation. Month-on-month, my portfolio shed 2.3% to SGD 73,913 (inclusive of investable cash and dividends) compared to the 1.3% gain on the STI. Wilmar remains the leading loser of my holdings, currently at SGD 3.51 compared to the SGD 3.90 when I bought a stake.

At the macroeconomic front, there is a lot of bad news for Singapore in terms of exports and manufacturing output. Nevertheless, I think 2013 will be an up 10% year.

Portfolio down 3.7 per cent; weighed down by Wilmar

The portfolio lost 3.7 per cent month-on-month compared to the STI's haircur of 0.4 per cent. My portfolio was weighed heavily by big losses on Wilmar which I had bought at aound SGD 3.88.

It is again testing times for me as I face the challenge of juggling work with school and maintaining a normal fitness and social regime. For school, I am thinking of doing two modules instead of one. This is because I need to clear the modules quick so that I won't extend my stay in post grad. At work, I am tasked with new reports and there is a very sharp learning curve which I hope to overcome in the next two weeks. Hopefully the portfolio does not crumble due to the neglect.