Looks like it’s back to work from home in the next few weeks for me. I was supposed to be working in the office this week but requested to work from home instead due to the deteriorating Covid situation. Besides, I have been getting tired from working in the office every alternate week so it’s nice to switch back to working from home. I can get more time with my family, run errands and rest & exercise by myself. Without having to worry about transport time and dealing with the office environment. While it’s good for me to stay engaged at my job and catch up with my manager & colleagues in the office, I don’t need to be in the office every day of the week to do so.
I hope the Covid situation improves during this period of time because the step back in terms of restrictions is bad. It seems like we are going backwards in terms of moving forward, which is a sign that the Covid situation can easily escalate once we let our guard down. While it’s not a lockdown yet, there is already going to be some negative impact from the tighter Covid restrictions. Delays in our boy starting childcare, going out less as a family so he’s going to be stuck at home or my parents-in-law’s place for longer, etc. Given how active he is now, I’m sure this does not bode well for our work productivity. Let’s just hope we don’t go into lockdown.
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Anyway, there has been another recent dip in tech stocks and this sell-off seems to be more significant. Mainly due to fears that rising inflation could push the Federal Reserve to tighten monetary policy faster than expected. I don’t care much for the reason why and just saw it as an opportunity to add to my tech stocks position. I noticed that I was averaging down more this time round as some of the tech stocks fell by quite a bit. I was also transferring funds into my OCBC RoboInvest tech-based thematic portfolios. In fact, I even started adding to my Singapore stocks position after the market took a hit on Fri due to the announcement of the tighter Covid restrictions.
Together with my automated monthly dollar cost averaging drawdowns, I actually ran my investment cash balance down to a low level and had to top it up with my savings cash. This is in line with my strategy of lowering the cash proportion of my asset portfolio and it just dropped from 20% to 18% after the investments. I used to prefer to hold a large amount of cash and wait for opportunities to invest in the markets. But I have slowly come to accept that this may not work well for us going forward. As long as we can maintain our jobs, our monthly salaries should continue to top up our cash balance and keep a sufficient buffer for our spending needs and emergencies. Idle cash has too much opportunity costs attached to it now.