Henderson Land purchased

Henderson Land's (HK:12) share price droped below HK$40 this morning. Given the size of the discount to NAV, the Chairman's recent purchases, expectations for its development pipeline and the size of its land bank, I find the shares attractive (although the 2.5% yield is not exciting) and have added them to the portfolio. This position taken is a large one and will make Henderson one of my top ten individual equities.

I paid HK$39.80 per share.

Portfolio top ups

In what is so far prooving to be an exercise in catching falling knives, I placed a series of buy orders to add small quantities of additional shares to some of my existing positions. So far the following have been filled:

• Hang Seng Bank (HK:11): at HK$106.00. Essentially buying for yield
• VoDone (HK:82): at HK$0.94. Buying at about the recent placement price
• COSCO Pacific (HK:1199): at HK$10.36. Another yield play
• VTech (HK:303) at HK$86.10. A high yielding exposure to China's growing consumer sector

So far it's looking pretty ugly.

I have outstanding buy orders in on a few other stocks which are being sold off.

Hong Kong property prices - still strong

Having been listening to calls that Hong Kong's property market is a bubble which is about to burst for a few years now, it was both amusing and pleasing to see that the on line valuations posted by some of the banks in Hong Kong have recently been revised upwards. I have previously pointed out that, while the Hong Kong property market is expensive and it is very hard to justify buying properties for yield, it does not possess any of the characteristics of a bubble. That said, I still regard the market as being too expensive and had been expecting prices to decline.

In any event, the new valuations have pushed our household's net worth to an all time high (the previous high was set in February this year). For most of our properties, the revised valuations represent a new high water mark. While this has no bearing on either the cash flow which will fund living expenses after I retire) or my retirement plans generally, it is a nice feeling but somewhat tinged with regret that we did not add to the portfolio in 2010 or early 2011.