The Five Titans of InvestingNote

With the proliferation of social media online, there are many blogs, forums, and online platforms (inclusive of Facebook groups, Telegram chat groups, YouTube videos, TikTok posts, etc) for like-minded investors and traders.

Among these, one of the prominent and vibrant online platform in Singapore is InvestingNote. It is a free online platform, and on its site, it states that it is the largest and most interactive platform for investors and traders in South East Asia.

Personally, for me I find it more of a platform for sharing of trading ideas. One function within it is that it allows users to make estimates for the target prices of specific stocks within a limited period. During market corrections or crashes, I notice that there will always be a flurry of posts there.

On the other hand, if you go to other sites, they may discourage users from discussing about specific stocks (and more gear towards long term investing methodology and personal finance).

Nevertheless, from time to time I will see super long posts on long term investing ideas (general or towards specific stocks). It is also a site where users regularly post news, investing related articles, SGX announcements relating to certain stocks, etc.

Frankly, I myself do not spend a lot of time in InvestingNote (IN), so I am not really familiar with the long time / frequent users there. Moreover, as per how the platform is structured, top investors seldom share their portfolios or performances there but merely exchange opinions (often on particular stocks).

For some of these mentioned users, it was easy to find information about their portfolios, as they have blog posts or readily available portfolios in StocksCafe. For others, I could not find any records online. So I had to ask around and do some investigative works. Thus this list itself may not be the most comprehensive one. Ultimately, it depends on how much they want to reveal. Please feel free to leave your comments below if you feel that my post is incorrect or if I have missed out on anyone. In addition, the users may not really post much about their own portfolio recently, so yeah.. not very comprehensive.

Eventually, I found the below top five titans (recommended by the users in InvestingNote. Thank you, guys). These users may not technically have the best performing or biggest portfolios. However, from what I understand, they are popular and often offer good advice. A few of them have many followers. Nevertheless, they do have big sizeable portfolios from the records I found. All of them are millionaires; assuming the information gathered are correct.

1) Grandpa Lemon (click here)

In his profile, he mentioned that he has been entertaining since 1965, so I am assuming he is born in 1965, which means he should be 56 years old this year (2021).

He considers his style of investing as 100% towards fundamental investing and is a dividend-play investor.

In his 20 Jan 21 post, he mentioned the following when talking about SG REITs:

“The moral of the story is if you are an income investor, plan your moves and avoid herd mentality.  The typical buyer’s decision is usually heavily influenced by the actions of his acquaintances, neighbours or relatives. Thus, if everybody around is investing in a particular stock, the tendency for potential investors is to do the same. But this strategy is bound to backfire in the long run. Proper research should always be undertaken before investing in stocks.

COVID has set a period for low or near-zero interest rates for a long time and this could provide the tailwind for continued outperformance of REITs. I am avoiding office & hospitality & US Reits for now, things could change if my guts tell me otherwise.”

In addition, he also posted his SG REIT portfolio (see below), although he left out the market value.

Nevertheless, I did some basic calculations based on the market prices on 19 March 21 (at the time of writing), and his REITs portfolio alone is worth around SGD 3.2 million (assuming he did not buy or sell much since Jan 21). See below.

It appears that his REITs portfolio is heavy on REITs like Keppel DC REIT, Keppel Infrastructure Trust, Parkway Life REIT and Ascendas REIT. Very high conviction in Keppel DC REIT (but could be due to its share price increase).

Many of his IN posts are pretty long. I feel that his 20 Jan 21 IN post is good, however, it is perhaps too long to show the whole post here. Below is just the first portion.

2) theintelligentinvestor (click here)

In his profile, he mentioned, “Through various chances, through all vicissitudes, we make our way….Aeneid. Buy the right stock (Qualitative) at the right price (Quantitative)”.

He considers his style of investing as 100% towards technical investing but his trading strategy is that of a value investor.

In his StocksCafe portfolio, its total value (as of 19 March 21) is around SGD 2 million, and in 2020 he received a total dividend income of SGD 75,451 (which is approximately SGD 6,287 per month). His top 3 holdings are DBS, Mapletree Log Tr and Ascendas Reit.

In his 12 March 21 IN post, he mentioned the following:

In his 15 Jan 21 IN post, he mentioned the following:

3) ThumbtackInvestor (click here)

He also has a blog, and was covered in one of my previous post.

In his blog, he mentioned this about himself:

“I am a Singaporean male in my mid-30s, and this blog chronicles my investing ideas and activities. I hope to search for and find contrarian and deep value investing ideas and will chronicle all these ideas here, both the successes and the failures. (hopefully less of the latter)

As the focus is on deep value situations, I’m mentally prepared for my portfolio to show great volatility. In some years, I should outperform the indices spectacularly. In others, I should underperform spectacularly as well. Over a multi-year period, I hope to achieve above-normal returns.”

In IN, he stated that his style of investing is 95% towards fundamental investing, 5% towards technical investing and his trading strategy is that of a value investor.

In early Feb 2020, he wrote that he has set up a new, much smaller fund, ThumbTack Fund (TTF), to trial a highly concentrated approach with only 5 core holdings. Over time, he thinks this new fund and concentrated approach will be his key focus, and will likely form the bulk of the portfolio in future.

Well, Feb 2020 as we all know is near March 2020 when stock markets bottomed… you can read his subsequent blog posts about how he thought about the impact of his fund then and how he manage his portfolio and overcome the impact subsequently.

As per his 7 Feb 21 blog post,

His ThumbTack Fund (TTF) which was incepted at the beginning of Feb 2020 has a NAV of USD 408,474.88.

His top holdings for his fund are:

1. Broadcom (AVGO)

2. Ligand Pharmaceuticals (LGND)

3. Nio Inc (NIO)

4. Alibaba Group (BABA, 9988)Facebook (FB) —–> (tough toss-up between this and PSTH)

By the way, the above TTF is just one of his ‘portfolios’. I do not have the complete breakdown of his net worth. If I am not wrong he owns a number of properties, and his 13 Oct 2019 post below does give a clue of his different portfolios/assets then.

+1,680% IN 4 YEARS! (read here)

In the above 2019 blog post, he mentioned:

– Total portfolio value in SG markets is SGD 243,092;

– The bond portfolio is approximately SGD 550,000;

– The total portfolio value (in US markets) is SGD 2,196,369.

– The property fund has about SGD 600,000 worth of liquidity. 

That is in Oct 2019. The current values of his portfolios, properties and business would be worth much more now.

4) bart23 (click here)

He also has a blog.

He considers his style of investing as 50% towards fundamental investing, 50% towards technical investing and his trading strategy is that of a dividend-play investor.

In his 4 March 21 blog post, he mentioned that his liquid net worth (excl properties/CPF) continues to hit an all-time high of more than $1.8 million due to the injection of salary/bonus and vested stock option.

In his 2 Jan 21 blog post, he mentioned that his Investment Portfolio valuation on 31st Dec is $1.023 million (gain 0.8%, +6.36% inclusive of dividend). FY2020  Investment Portfolio Dividend/Interest collected in 2020: $56K.

In his 2 Jan 21 blog post, he mentioned that his portfolio consists mainly of dividend seeking Property(REIT), O&G, and Finance(Euro) counters which did not fare too well in 2020. In the last few months, he has been doing a lot of portfolio rebalancing by selling almost all his high-risk O&G MLP and low-grade REITs counters which resulted in a huge realized loss of 52k. In replacement, he has bought mostly large-cap index stock from LSE and HKSE and some ETF from SGX which helped to narrow the losses in 2020. Overall transactions have resulted in more than 1/2 million of investment sold and bought which was quite a nerve-racking experience to him. The entire 2020 pandemic crisis actually taught him a lesson to buy only quality companies and not to chase after high yield.  He hopes the new portfolio will be more resilient in 2021 even though he knows that he still has some risky counters to trim. 

See below for his annual dividend payout through the years.

His liquid net worth distribution: 

IMO, he has a rather large proportion of his net worth in cash, 41%. That was in Jan 21.

In his 4 March 21 blog post, he mentioned the following:

“Whether you are a retiree or you just want to be financially independent, you need a strategy that should meet the following goals:

1. Produce sufficiently income to meet basic needs.

2. Preserve capital in bad times. 

Therefore, when I reviewed my monthly passive income for the last 4 years and the huge emergency fund built up, I am ready to retire and leave my job. However, I am still appreciative of the regular income that is coming from my current job.   As I am planning to cross the finish line toward retirement, every income boost will build a stronger buffet.”

5) Happily (click here)

He considers his style of investing as 90% towards fundamental investing, 10% towards technical investing and his trading strategy is that of a value investor and dividend-play investor.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any record of his portfolio. Understand from a user in IN that his portfolio is REITs heavy.

However, I was informed by a user, that Happily’s peak paper loss during March 20 lows was more than $800k. So if we use some reverse calculation, we can estimate that his portfolio should exceed SGD 3 million.

In his 16 March 21 IN post, he mentioned the following:

In his 11 Nov 20 IN post, he mentioned the following:

In his 28 Oct 20 IN post, he mentioned the following:

Notable mentions (should be one of the titans):
1) Alphie (click here)

2) Corydoras (click here)

3) Dividend Warrior (click here)

4) Jun Yuan Lim (click here)

5) ThinkForwardInvestor (click here)

6) 3Fs (click here)

7) Turtle_Investor (click here)

In Summary

It appears that most of them are dividend investors with big sizable portfolios.

Nevertheless, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the above-mentioned figures and they prefer to remain anonymous. I reckon what is important is to learn about their investment strategies and thought processes. They are active users in the IN community and often drop nuggets of wisdom in their many posts there. I am sure we can all learn something from them.

Beyond InvestingNote, I have also written a post about investor bloggers with sizable portfolios and users with amazing results in StocksCafe. See below.

Singapore Investor Bloggers with min. 1 SGD Million Stock Portfolios (read here)

Top 5 Performing Shared Portfolios in StocksCafe (read here)

To me investing in many ways is more of an art than a science, and in many ways, the psychological aspect of it plays a big part. There are really many ways to achieve alpha results. There are different strategies depending on one’s current situation and inclination eg. age, character, risk tolerance, net worth, etc. We are all different in some ways or others. One can be purely a dividend or value investor, or growth investor or momentum trader, etc… or a mixture.

If one has a big portfolio, maybe looking at how someone else manages their asset allocation and a big sum portfolio is useful (among the millionaire investors through their blog posts or their posts in Investing Note).

If one is thinking about growth investing, perhaps studying what are the stocks in the better performing shared portfolios in StocksCafe is useful. In addition, reading what were the thought processes of these investors when they buy these stocks might reveal more insights.

StocksCafe

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