2 years have passed since my last writing, and over that time, I have been working for 3 companies already, in 2 different countries, after working in Huawei Jakarta, supporting the Indosat SOC project as a data analyst. I go to Smart Axiata in Cambodia, working as a senior data analyst for this Telco company. And recently, I went back to Indonesia due to family reasons and worked in Tokopedia as a senior data analyst for the payment team. And for the last two years, I keep making investments in the stock market of Indonesia, for some time thinking about investing in the other country stock market, especially the USA, I create an account already, but then thinking I don’t know what I don’t know about how companies operate in the USA, what is their exact product, and how is their future. It’s become too risky, so instead, I stay in the Indonesian stock market and invest in the companies I understand fully, to manage the risk.
Why the topic now is managing the risk of investment and life, because I see some people getting down so low in the investment and life and I don’t think that I can afford it now, especially since I have my own family, with my wife and kid, and I need to provide them every month. Having a kid does change my perspective on life, working, and investing. Now I no longer want to have a high return on my work and investment, with a higher risk of losing everything I have gathered for so long.
Managing the Risk of Investment
For my investment style, I have changed the style three times already from the first style that I did here in my previous post: https://ahmadarib.com/data-analyst-way-of-stock-investing.html
My first style, It’s close to momentum investing and personal closeness. I only choose the company that goes down at their price chart (hence the need to scrape all stock price graphs), and also, I know the product of the company I invest in personally. For BBRI, I have a BRI account, and I have taught for their university for some time, and my old office is in the BRI building, so that’s how I believe their performance will bounce back after getting down. For ICBP, I am a fan of Indomie, I eat Indomie everywhere I go, in Bengkulu, where I grow up, I eat Indomie. In Jakarta, where I study and work, I eat Indomie. In Shanghai, where I am studying further, I eat Indomie. Even when I work in Cambodia I also try to find Indomie to eat there. I believe their price will come back up eventually because millions of other people and I keep eating Indomie. For WSKT, I can see their Becakayu toll road from my apartment window and use that toll occasionally. Their logo is nearly everywhere in the new toll road development in Jakarta. So that’s why I believe their price will be back up again.
Their price went up after a few months, BBRI up until 4500, ICBP until 10500, and WSKT until 1500. This made my fund ROI reach 61% at the end of 2020, while I just started in May 2020. That is a pretty good ROI considering the IHSG return is only around 32%. But as I mention at the end of that article, even monkeys make money in this period of the bullish market from where I enter until the end of the year. And I’m heading a turbulent market in 2021 and 2022, the price of 3 stocks that I choose to start to deteriorate, it’s hard to hold them while I’m not sure they will bounce back again or not, and I start to switch my investing style to the second style.
The second style is the dividend yield style, at some point, all three of the stock I own above is going below their average purchasing price, meaning I have a floating loss in my portfolio report. I need new tools to build my stock portfolio, and I find that dividend yield investing is a good style to do. Because it’s built up on the premises that you should only invest in the company that can bring profit every year, and give this profit back to you as an investor, that’s the true return on investment from stock ownership.
So I start to evaluate the stock at hand, BBRI and ICBP are still giving out dividends even in a hard time, so I keep these two. But I let go WSKT because this company is not giving out any dividends, why they didn’t give dividends, because their company is not profitable, and there is no money to give out to investors, even for their operation, they are still eating up loans. I let go of WSKT at prices 1000, 800, 500, and some small lot, even under their average buying price. Overall I am still making a profit from this company, feels bad because I expect the company to be profitable soon due to the SWF government fund and the development of new capital, but I need to be consistent with my chosen style, so I kill WSKT from my stock portfolio.
And I added up a few more companies that consistently give out dividends, such as BJTM (Bank Jatim, a small bank in East Java), ADMF (Adira Multifinance, a leasing company for cars & motorcycles), PBID, CLPI, INDF, MDKI, and RANC.
For some time, I’m happy with this portfolio, these all seem to be strong companies that consistently have profit from year to year and then consistently share the profit with the shareholders, which is one of them is me. And it does feel good when receiving notification from my broker that the dividend money is coming to my account. Well, it’s pretty small, the highest among them just around 5-7% a year, but still free money nonetheless.
The dividend investing style has a special place among investors in general, there are quite a number of people who have used this style for a long time, some are even able to cover their living expenses from the dividend alone, which is pretty awesome in my opinion. And this investing style is low risk because the company that gives out dividends is usually well established and has a low chance of going bankrupt in the long term.
But after using this style for quite some time, I see the investor who uses this style are mostly senior people, that no longer able to take some risks, even moderate ones. Because their livelihood will depend on the continuity of this company’s keep giving out dividends, and as a guy who is just in his early career and still has three decades at least to work and then start to retire, I will miss a lot if I keep doing dividend investing for this time period. Because the company I listed above is not moving much, they’re not growing anymore, it’s an old company for people enjoying their retirement. This is the time I change my style to the third investing style.
The third style is growth investing, since I have a long time horizon until I retire, I can still ride the up and down of the market, even some total loss of some stock perhaps I could also still stomach it (knock on the desk hope it never happen to me). So it’s better for me to find some company that still growing, like the manufacturer that still adding more capacity and expanding the market. Or the retailer keeps adding new stores and more operation revenue yearly. Or some holdings that keep acquiring new business ventures that can contribute to their bottom line. That’s the kind of company that I looking for now.
BBRI is included, and the latest move of acquiring Pegadaian & PNM by the government request will grow their business to the new venture. They also make BRI Ceria, one of the fintech lending products that are quite good. The dashboard can be viewed here below or at this link https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ahmad.arib.al.farisy/viz/DashboardBBRI/DashboardBBRIcool
ICBP & INDF is included, and the acquisition of Pinehill entity will certainly expand their business to the middle east, a new market means growing business in the future. And after living in a few countries and talking to a few foreigners, I see they all start to like Indomie, this is one of the few products from Indonesia that has the potential to grow big in the international market, and I would like to be part of their growth. Below is the dashboard for ICBP and INDF, which can also view at this link https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ahmad.arib.al.farisy/viz/DashboardICBPINDF/DashboardICBPINDF
The next one is RANC, I got to know this company when I lived in an apartment around south Jakarta. We got the mall below, and inside the mall, there is Ranch Market, they’re small but efficient, the product is great, and the price is a bit higher than other retailers. I see they keep expanding their store from year to year, and getting prices so high when acquired by Blibli, now they’re under the Djarum group, and I see this group as a long-term holder of their business. Now the price of RANC going down so far after getting acquired, even far lower than the tender offer price from Blibli. Some people are not seeing them as interesting companies anymore because, in 2022, they will no longer be giving out dividends, and their financial report shows negative money flow. I keep reading their financial report and find out that this is not a negative operational flow, they are no longer profitable because of the extra expansion they did by eating up ex-Giant stores that went out of business. And the negative is not so significant that they just eating up their cash reserve from previous time profit, and the trend is getting lower, I see they’re going back to profitable soon. And will come back stronger, backed up with Blibli and a dozen more stores that they recently opened. And funnily, people dump this stock, prices getting lower and lower, and I keep buying them with the small amount of money I have. And keep reminding myself that my timeframe is decades, at least three decades until my retirement time. And I hope to collect a big enough portfolio to support my retirement by eating up the dividend of this growing company that will eventually become a big stable company. And then keep the principle stock intact and pass them to my child, that is my dream.
Below is the dashboard of RANC, and can be viewed at this link as well https://public.tableau.com/app/profile/ahmad.arib.al.farisy/viz/DashboardRANC/DashboardRANC
Besides the stock I mentioned above, I hold a few other growth stocks from various companies around Indonesia, mostly small companies, but only a few are big. One company has a hotel in Yogyakarta, a nice profitable one, and the owner plans to open a new hotel soon. Another is mining and smelting nickel ore in Sulawesi, to be used for steel and electric battery later on, which I believe could be a big industry. Another is a construction and development company from Batam that keeps adding up new machinery and is going to the national level now. And some other more that I couldn’t explain here, because on one side their price has pretty beaten up, so I’m quite ashamed to own them. But on the other side, I believe they will keep growing up, and eventually, the market will appreciate their price. And at this low price, I would like to collect them as much as possible. Because my fund is so small, and I only add a few million IDR every month, if more people understand these stocks and collect them, I have no more chance to buy. And this is how I manage my risk of investment now, by choosing only the growth companies, following their story from quarter to quarter via their financial report, adding their owner/management on LinkedIn to see their experience, and extending my timeframe to decades and keep buying when the price is low. At the same time, I know they’re still growing and still have good management and business prospect ahead.
Managing Risk of Life
Now we come to the second topic of managing the risk of life, after now I got my own family, with one wife and one cute kid, I got to think about how to manage the risk of life. Because life can throw all sorts of problems into your face, and you are better prepared when it hits you up.
The first one I would like to address is health risks, I try to keep a healthy lifestyle for our family, eat home-cooked food most of the time, drink mostly only water everywhere I go, and have proper insurance for all of my family members. Thankfully in Indonesia, we got the BPJS Health program that covers most basic health needs. There are minimal chances of going broke due to health problems nowadays in Indonesia due to BPJS. Another insurance covers us that most of the time is not used, only used a few times for teeth problems or some little flu we got and need to go to a nearby clinic.
The second one is living place or housing risk, I rented a place to live starting when I left my hometown to study in Jakarta. 4 years renting “kostan” (small boarding room only) near my Univ in West Jakarta, another one year in south Jakarta near my working place. Then I left Indonesia and rented dormitory rooms inside a campus complex in China for 3 years. After I finish my study, I’m back in Jakarta, renting a one-year small studio apartment near my place of work in South Jakarta. I have a solid nine years of renting from 2011 until 2020, now after working professionally in Jakarta at Huawei, having a pretty nice package and career ahead. I say no more to these renting housing, because there is always a risk that you get evicted from the place for one or more reasons, and you can say nothing because you don’t own that place. Another risk is a landlord can increase the price from year to year, and I keep paying from one month to another, and not seeing anything out of the money I spent so far because I just rented the place. Yeah, you can argue that when renting you got the benefit of living in that place, but so does when you buy a place to live inside, and you got the equity for every money you spent each month on the mortgage. So in 2020, I took a small 2-bedroom apartment in East Jakarta, on the border with Bekasi, actually, pretty far from everywhere but not that far as well. This is from the Jakarta government program, which subsidized the interest rate, so I pay a flat mortgage of 5% annual rate for 15 years, a pretty nice government program. I lived there before I got married, and after marriage, I brought my wife to live there, we went to the office using the train from the nearby KRL station, and it took around 1.5 hours from door to door. Not good, but not that bad as well, we know some friends that spend more than 2 hours from house to the office. I only rent again when I work in Cambodia for 1 year. While my wife is still living inside that apartment when I leave. The apartment mortgage plus maintenance fee was not more than 30% of my income back then in 2020, as a rule of thumb from several financial planner gurus. With my income getting better as a senior data analyst and my wife working as well, we can say that we live in a place below our means, and the risk of us getting evicted is pretty small.
The third risk of life is about work and income generation, both me and my wife coming from a simple family in Bengkulu, so we didn’t have much to start with and could not expect a windfall from our parents. This means to live from month to month we need to rely on ourselves, and that means we need to have jobs that are well-paid to support our small but growing family.
I work in the IT field as a data analyst, previously in the Telecommunication industry, which was pretty well paid and quite secure, but it looks like the fast growth time seems to have passed before I joined. I recently moved into one of the startup companies in e-commerce, quite a mature startup company but still high risk. And the latest mass layoff from the GOTO group proves how high-risk this area of work is. But I know what I’m jumping into, I know there is a high risk that I could get a layoff email notification any moment the management said they need to cut costs and become profitable. No hard feelings, it is just a business. That’s why I keep my eye open to any opportunity around me even after I working already, I keep a good relationship with my former boss and colleagues. I keep learning new technologies and skills to keep myself relevant. And I keep doing my best in every working place to make a good impression on everyone I’m working with. Hopefully, with all these, I can keep the risk level to be minimum. But even if bad things happen, we’re ready with a few months of emergency funds and my wife working in the place with the lowest risk of them all, the civil servant. We discussed this even before marriage: she is a capable girl who can find work inside Huawei back when I worked there and perform well. I know she could grow her career given enough opportunities in a private company. But we need to manage our work and income risk, it’s not good to have both husband and wife with high-risk careers at a hard times like this. So we decide that she need to take a civil servant job with really low risk and I continue to take the high risk. We calculate that if some really bad event happen, and I lost my job, with just her income we can still support our family life.
So that’s all how I manage the risk of my investment fund and my life because now my time horizon is getting longer, and my main focus is longevity and sustainability. To be honest, I’m not sure if this is the right way or the right idea, it is just what I can come up with so far, you guys are welcome to leave your idea in the comment below.