A Roller Coaster Ride With Hyflux Water Trust

My virgin foray into the stock market is best described in the following analogy.

Once upon a time in a remote village, a young boy grew up listening to the legendary war stories of his ancestors. How those legendary heroes won battles, pillaged other villages, and took home the women as their own. Barely able to shoot anything – set aside to avoid getting shot – this young boy could not hide his excitement when one day, he got to join rank with the rest of the comrades for the battles somewhere far away (does it sound like a number of movies that you have watched?).

The battlefield was nothing like what this young boy has imagined. Suddenly, all the stories of how people got blown up into pieces, the casualties of the war, and the fact that not everyone who joined the campaign came back in one piece made sense to him. Feeling lost, this young boy took cover, observed, and uncertain of the next cause of action.

When I opened the trading account last month, I had no idea what to do with it. One day, I noticed the promotional counter right underneath my office for the IPO of Hyflux Water Trust (HWT). I personally like the branding of Hyflux (as well as Olivia Lum) and I believe that human beings are over-populating the planet. We are not going to have enough clean water for our next generation. Hence, I am a believer of treating water is the way to go. Besides, HWT’s current projects are in China and China is a high growth region. Through the ATM, I subscribed to 11 lots of HWT share that was priced at S$0.78.

I got 3 lots of HWT share that worthed S$2,340 before the trade started. A few friends congratulated me and wished me the best. On day one, the share price dipped and I lost S$210 on paper (-10%). On day three, the share price rose and I made S$375 on paper (+16%). As the US market went down, many counters went down too. So was HWT. Last week, I gathered enough courage to put a buy order of 9 lots at S$0.76. It was not easy to stare at the potential S$7k investment and submit the order. The feeling is hard to describe. It was like my heart beat faster, my mind was preoccupied with tons of “what-if”. Looking back, it is fortunate that the market closed at S$0.765 and my order did not materialized. Today, HWT share closed at S$0.74 (a paper lost of S$120 with 3 lots).

I do not intend to speculate. All I want to do is to stock up a bit more on HWT because I truly believe in its potential. It is hard to decide when to buy and when to sell. At times I wonder, there is no announcement on the progress of HWT as of today but yet, the share price swings up and down. History tells us that if one was to invest S$10k in Cosco or Raffles Education five years ago, one would have been a millionaire today. History also tells us that many get burned in the stock market and some of them now invest in managed funds instead. One thing for sure is that these are the battles I wish to participate. But meanwhile I have to learn how to shoot … and to avoid being shot.