Due to the regulatory crackdown on China tech companies, there has been a recent sell-off in their stocks & ETFs. I have been averaging down on my Alibaba and PinDuoDuo stocks and Lion-OCBC Securities Hang Seng Tech ETF holdings. As my investment cash has been drawn down significantly for the downpayment of the property purchase, I don’t have as much funds to invest now. Hence, the averaging down of these stocks and ETF has been slow and involves smaller sums of money. Not ideal but there’s not much I can do at this point.
I can take out a margin loan with the bank to increase my investing warchest but I’m not keen on leveraged trading. I’m going to exhaust all my options on hand first. Maybe even consider surrendering my wholelife insurance policy and use the cash proceeds to either make the downpayment of the property purchase or invest when there are good opportunities. I’m also considering transferring some of the emergency cash funds I have stashed overseas back to Singapore for the same purpose.
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Anyway, I’m hoping not to keep making such trade-offs but it’s to be expected given how I was not fully prepared to buy the property this year. And did not set aside enough cash funds for the downpayment. I brought forward the property purchase decision because it took a long time for a unit in a development that met my requirements to be listed for sale. I have been viewing various properties for 2 years before deciding on this. Just could not risk passing it up in case something similar or better does not come up next year.
I’m paying the price now for not having prepared adequately by having to sell investments, surrender wholelife insurance policy and withdraw funds from overseas. All because I don’t have enough cash and CPF-OA on hand. I estimate it will take a year for me to repair this damage to avoid any more trade-offs in my cash management and investment decisions. Opportunity costs can be a real problem if good opportunities come up for me to invest and I have to give them a miss because I don’t have sufficient cash. Maybe only then will I get desperate and start using my margin facility with the bank.