Hits and Misses Of 2016

2016 is my first full year of investing and it has taught me a lot of lessons. I believed the same applies to many others who tried to beat the market. Nevertheless, it was a decent year for me. Before I share my 2016 track record, here are my hits and misses.

Hindsight/Highlights of 2016:
• Finally graduated from university and found a better paying job with greater prospects. Degree may not be something great nowadays but it can be considered an important investment for corporate workers like us.

• With the new job, I finally start earning better interests from my OCBC 360 account. This shall add on to some growth with the risk free “investment”. As per my situation, it can earn me 1.75% interests annually. As this is our savings, we can feel safer to place more money there.

• The outlook of my initial investing days was terrible, with the Singapore market tearing down in the first trading days of 2016. It was great that I did some dollar averaging instead of selling.

• Brexit did not affect me at all in my decisions and as I see it, it does not really affect the Singapore market much (yet?). It could have turned either way though.

• Did some trading throughout the year. Despite some decent gains, one of my blue chips was sold too early due to pre-election days. If not, there will be higher paper gains and it could now be another of my dividends stocks. Again, this is hindsight but a gain is better than nothing or a loss.

• Below is my overall performance and there are more to improve on. If I add in my OCBC 360 interests since August, I did hit my target of 4-6% realized gain this year.

Investments Alone:
• Overall Realized Gain: 3.9% 
• Total Realized/Paper Gain: 6.66%

With OCBC 360:
• Overall Realized Gain: 5.13% 
• Total Realized/Paper Gain: 7.88%

I am setting new targets for 2017 and will be looking forward to see how it will work out.
May 2017 be another exciting year of IPOs and volatility
Happy New Year, fellow investors!