Too easy

I have just logged into my e-mail and seen dividend notifications for my holdings in Sasol, FirstRand and Discovery as well as a re-investment notification for my Z-Govi holding and it reminded me how much of investing is simply method and repetition.

For sure there is little glamour in simply clocking up the dividends but you have to ask yourself - why work if you don't have to?!

I had a look at the performance of the Satrix Divi Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) product over the last year and I see that you have enjoyed a return of around 33%. Worst case scenario is an annual dividend yield of 4.5% which is not the worst return around and if you are looking for low-cost dividend investment strategies then this might be a product to consider adding to your portfolio.

Speaking of good dividend payers, has anybody been watching the rise in the Brait shareprice? It seems to have had a bit of a kick over October rising from R21 to above R24. This is one of those stocks I've kept in my portfolio primarily for its dividend yield which is sitting at about 6%.

The company did release a trading statement recently saying that earnings would be up sharply for the six months.

Basic eps and heps: 72.8 ZAR cents
Diluted eps and heps: 72.7 ZAR cents

This puts it on a PE multiple of around 14 times earnings and if you buy into the idea that Brait is the "smart money" then this looks attractive, particularly if the private equity portfolio is at the bottom of its cycle.

Another reason which might be contributing to the rise in the Brait share price is the similar rise in the Buildmax counter, in which Brait is a significant investor. Buildmax has risen from 27c to touch 40c this month and it looks like a turnaround plan is in place.

Happy trading investors.

Any ideas?

Does anybody know of any offshore Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) that you can buy through an online broker and pay for on your credit card?

As a South African our locally-listed ETF options are relatively limited. It would be nice to access other markets like Brazil and China.

At the moment locally I have the following ETF's in my portfolio:

The Deutsche Bank X-Trackers - DBX Japan (DBXJP), DBX World MSCI Index (DBXWD) and DBX MSCI US (DBXUS) as well as the New Gold ETF (GLD) and the local government bond offering from investec ZSHARES GOVI (ZGOVI).

Obviously it would be nice to expand the universe a bit and be able to find ETF's that give exposure to other regions as well.

Zecco.com
Has anyone locally had a look at this Zecco.com offering?

It looks quite interesting in terms of a low-cost investment and trading platform. Would be nice to be able to use a credit card to transfer funds into an account though.

Thoughts on which online brokers allow you to transfer funds via your credit card?

ETF's and portfolio construction

Portfolio construction for retail investors is oftened made out to be far more difficult and technical than it really needs to be.

I don't claim to be an expert on the subject by the stretch of anyones imagination - but I have got some thoughts around using ETF's that might be interesting for active South African retail investors trying to level out some of the volatility in their portfolio.

ETF's in my portfolio are (in my opinion) great for one reason - variety....
- Access to asset classes that are not normally open to retail investors (e.g. bonds)
- Access to markets that are not normally available to retail investors (Japan, US, World indices)

These are the ETF's that I've tried to blend into my portfolio:

DBXJP - Deutsche Bank Japan X-tracker
DBXWD - Deutsche Bank MSCI World Index
DBXUS - Deutsche Bank MSCI US Index
ZGOVI - Investec's government bond ETF

On top of that I'll add in the RMB / Bips Inflation-X product when it lists later this month.

My strategy at the moment is to mix in about 20% of these into my portfolio just to try and balance out the stock-picking and asset diversification.

It is a pretty cheap and easy way to balance out this risk - Anyone else using these tools for the same reason?

Catchup

Hhhhhmmm these South African public holidays have really played havoc with any day-trading activities so I've had to spend my time on the "investment" side of my portfolio.

Added a few more PSG and ZGOVI's to my portfolio and I've also added Country Bird Holdings to my watchlist.

PSG
Was pretty happy with the results out of PSG and I'm quite liking the way that their companies are actively seeking acquisitions while others are heading for the hills. Check how nicely Capitec has done in recent weeks since their results came out.

Below R16, I've been adding a few more PSG to the portfolio.

I'm also watching PSG for some action around their Paladin subsidiary which has been steadily adding to its holding in Top Fix Holdings. (Not totally sure what the strategy is here, because I'd have thought there were better quality assets - but I guess we trust Jannie Mouton's judgement on all of this)

ZGOVI
I'll blog separately on my Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) strategy for my portfolio but I've continued to add these ZGOVI's to my portfolio for a bit of diversity into another asset class.

These things have held up quite nicely and coupled with their distribution, they've been worthwhile to hold through all this turmoil.

Pick 'n Pay / Pikwik
How good were those results out of Pick 'n Pay! I have a couple of Pikwik in my portfolio and those results mean I'll probably add a few more to my portfolio. Some success in Australia with the Franklins operation at last and good cash flows. Nice defensive option in the portfolio and with decent cash flows come decent dividends.

Altech / Altron
Altech released their financial results yesterday and they also looked good. As far as IT companies go, my pick would be Altech. However while I like the Altech story, I've actually been adding the Altron shares (wider power and infrastructure story as well as access to ALT) as well as the Altron prefs to my portfolio for some dividend yield.

Strategy
In terms of strategy, I'm still short equity and long gold (underlying and AngloGold).

I see China has just announced that they've bought a stack of Gold which has driven the price back above the 900 dollar mark.

Equities are still looking a little shaky in general and it would appear that Chrysler is going into bankruptcy protection in next few days. Stress tests out of the banks also due out today... gonna be interesting.