September 2011 Updates

There have been a flurry of global events and as mentioned, I have been heavily involved in other commitments which resulted in less active management of the holdings. But hey, most returns come from good analysis supported by solid facts and reasoning followed by much inactivity.


Nevertheless, the large cash holding of over 50% and the resilience of the counters held the holdings overall to be down close to -5% while the overall STI YTD is at -12% and MSCI Asia Ex JP is at -13.5%. Also many of the counters in the holdings which declined substantially were fortunately not of a large position, for example AEI corp. The other positions as mentioned have declined but for no good reasons, they were neither fairly nor overvalued at the onset, nor were they large index constituents or firms with operational issues. Hence, I will continue to hold them as returns are not justified by year on year stock price movements but rather the value created on a sustained period of time. Now I truly understand what Buffett meant when he got irked by the annual rat race and comparison of relative performance in the 1960s when he contemplated winding down his partnership.


While the relative out-performance is numerically pleasing, the absolute return requirement was not met. The inability for me to execute the suggested shorts as well as other macro views especially for currencies restricted my actions as well as my performance since the Shorts did particularly well. However, I tried my best to achieve a similar outcome through many ways, one of which was to restrict my holdings to mainly SG while having no US counters, and minimal of HK and Malaysian Counters atm.


Feel free to send my any questions or queries and I will be happy to answer them.


Best