Cowboy Caleb the liberal arts, grown-up stuff & random mischief

Any Investment Guru’s Out There?

My greatest fear in life is dying broke. I don’t have much money, but every other cent I save goes toward dollar cost averaging investments. Yes, I know that some of you disagree with that kind of mentality, but then I don’t go about telling you not to wear panties underneath your nice macho cuffed slacks now do I?

Recently, I’ve been reading alot about REITS and I’m considering allocating about 20% of my portfolio towards REITS. This 20% will be distributed evenly over the following stocks:

1. A-Reit
2. Mapletree Logistics Trust
3. Suntec Reit
4. Fortune Reit (HK)

Anybody out there with similar experience or advice?

how bout starting in real estate instead?

Reits, in my opinion, still have potential as the singaporean mentality is such that properties = good.

I have MPTL from IPO as well. Temasek owned, people sure buy one what. As such, I forsee that the herd mentality will push the prices up, which it did. (In this case, I bought out of psychological reasons than fundamentals, not that I know much about the fundamentals of the Logistics Buildings.)

That said, I’m more heavy on the 2 superpowers, India and China. But that’s also becoz I can take more fluctuations in my portfolio and I am happy to sit it out in times of correction.

In my opinion, dollar-cost averaging is convenient if you can’t be arsed to be on a constant look-out for opportunities in corrections to go into the market.

I’ve been accumulating CapitaMall Trust for over a year now. I think that as long as Shopping and Dining are the main national past times in Singapore, retail rents will continue to rise.

I dont see the same upside potential for industrial/commercial properties that some of these REITS like Ascendas manage. The Gahmen is always trying to keep the cost of doing biz in Singapore low.

I don’t think it’s the right time to invest in Reits at the moment as interest rates are rising. Like you, I’m also looking at investment opportunities and am shopping around..Good luck!

Not sure about your total portfolio, but you seem to be overly invested in Singapore equities (ie. STI-ETF). While adding some REITS can be good in terms of asset diversification, do avoid putting all your eggs in one basket (ie. Singapore). Rememeber the 1997 Asian financial crisis when the region and Singapore stocks and property prices fell drastically.

http://stocktaleslot.blogspot.com/2005/09/1997-asian-financial-crisis.html

http://www.wright.edu/~tdung/asiancrisis-hill.htm

There is an active Singapore unit trusts commununity forum where local RETIS (and much more) have been extensively discussed.

http://forums.sgfunds.com/

Hope this helps.

It’s not a good time to invest in REIT’s, the right time was about a year ago. Stay away from investments that were hot this year and look for investments that will be hot next year. Like Linda said, China and India are great investments right now, although stay away from hype investments, like Baidu. Also, stay away from anything in the US that has to do with manufacturing automobiles, unless it’s a company that makes something like fuel cells and sells to different companies.

You should *die* broke - if you die your money is wasted.

What you mean is you fear going broke before you die, no?