Journey To Retirement Part 18.1 -- STI ETF

In the month of April 2024, divested STI ETF at $3.25 after holding for 4 years.  This stock was first bought at March 2020 at $2.3423 during the global market weakness due to Covid-19 pandemic.  As such, this has netted a realized profit of 34.90% together with dividend return of 18.53% for these 4 years.  This gave a total realized profit of 53.43%, annualized to be 11.30% (inclusive of dividend) and 7.77% (exclusive of dividend).

Reason for divesting is not so much super bearish about stock market going forward but rather from a strategic perspective.  STI ETF has been included as the Strategic Section of the Investment Portfolio.  The main objective of the Strategic Section is to acquire stock at either $0 or very low cost and divest when deem appropriate.  Not so much on fundamental perspective.  Since purchased in 2020, for that 4 years, no further action has been taken to accumulate more mainly due to the challenge of trying to accumulate at either $0 or very low cost.  Hence, going forward, makes not much strategic sense to continue hold on to it.

Just some food of thoughts for STI to share about.  US market has already trading way above 2007 peak.  Japan market has also finally move above the 4 decades ago peak 4 and not to mention some other global markets also performing the same.  China and Hong Kong markets were underperformance among global markets mainly due to the fundamental issue in China economy which affected Hong Kong.  On the other hand, Singapore economy isn't in the bad shape as those of China and Hong Kong and yet STI still way way below 2007 peak.  Something isn't right fundamentally for STI, a potential hidden underlying issue that unfortunately nobody knows what it is, I'm afraid.