On equity investments, I generally only by stocks with good dividend yield. For some excitement, I have some volatile stocks with good yield (e.g., small REITS), but I'm prepared to hold them for the long term. Over time, I do try to time the cycle. I got the cycle mostly right this time even though I started to buy in 4Q08 ie. too early after liquidating everything in mid-2007 when I thought the Singapore market was overvalued. I been buying steadily since early 4Q08, through the lows of 1Q09 and haven't really sold. Between mid-2007 and mid-2008, it was quite painful watching the market go up, while I earned less than 1% in the bank, but when everything started tumbling, I knew that it was time to get in. I made a decision to put about 8% of my investible cash per month for the next 12 months no matter how bad things got. By December 2008, I was facing huge losses, but I just closed my ears and bought and bought. Since 4Q08, the only stocks I sold were when I wanted to spend some money and feel good about it. If something doubled or tripled, you treat yourself otherwise investing gets so dreary when you do disciplined investing. Its like having that free day where you can eat anything when you are on a diet.

I'm continuing to buy REITS. The fact that Singapore REITS survived the incredible credit crunch has given me more confidence in them long-term. There were some rights issues, but overall return even on the freshly invested capital has been good. Like you, I have maintain too much cash in the bank as non-investible cash, but its nice to be able to handle cash calls without having to sell other things. Turns out the announcement of the REITs capital raising was generally the best time to buy them as their prices tanked during those times. Overall, the most important thing to me is risk-adjusted return. Not absolute returns. On the developers like Keppel Land, Citi Dev, Capitaland etc, I think the easy money has been made and they don't have that good yield.

Looking forward, I see global recovery. US companies are reporting solid earnings and Greece's problems is not about to bring on a global crisis. There is a little worry over China's property bubble but I think Chinese economic growth will remain close to 10% for some time. Hence I'm still bullish. Locally, I've still been buying laggard high yield Singapore and some Indonesian stocks, while nibbling at US banks (low dividends keeps me from being more agressive). Should the STI rise another 25% no matter how bullish the environment, I will likely start selling everything and moving into bonds or some structured instrument. It would need that sort of rise to make me give up the steady dividends that I'm getting.