Year 2004

My record in 2004 was -11%. It was actually up 20 % by Chinese New Year, but returned everything as I made several bad investments.

I became over-confident with my investment skill or luck and dabbled in warrents thinking that with options experience from my US trading, I had more advantage in the Singapore Market.
I bought New Toyo warrants, believing that New Toyo was one of the biggest cigarette packaging manufacturer in SEA and will benefit from consumption boom. It has acquired a stake in Shanghai Asia - a cigarette packaging in China. Later it bought a stake in Tien Wah Press Holding, whose main customer was British American Tobacco.

New Toyo after converting the warrants became my biggest holdings, as I was under water and wanted the dividend (>4%). My lesson learnt is to advoid those companies who have hugh gearing, and not to dabble in warrants. This counter sinked more that 30%.

My 2nd biggest holdings was United Food. I was attracted by the low PE and high dividend. It was highly recommended by Wallstraits, a forum which had alot of insightful recommendations. I was actually a bit apprenhensive as they are venturing into all sorts of different areas eg. their soya bean plant. There was no synergy and low barieers of entry. After 2 quarters of bad results, I decided to call it a day. This counter sank about 10% from my costs as I average up from 35 cents to 55 cents. Lesson learnt, pay more attention to the nature and strength of the business then how cheap it is.

My other investments did manage however to lessen the losses. Pfood and Unisteel had very good returns for me.