wow thats a long reply. being back in office, i will have to allocate some time to study it when nobody's bothering me.

so skipping first to option 2, does it mean putting all in BALANCED FUND i.e. no allocation?

in that case, no able to do switching. i want to ask, such fund like BALANCED is the price quite no movement? i.e. no volatility?

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Added on April 12, 2012, 9:49 amcan EPF money be invested in REIT?

Mr. Wong, your answer is much appreciated.

Its not clear to me. thru option-1, you can put your EPF money on your house fund la, not in the name of investment no?

KWSP ALLOWS U TO DO THAT?      isnt that far too riskier than their portfolio?

Sorry bro i made u blur i thot u meant u fund ur own residential house. Not used to this kind of jargon - fund house/mgt

Yeah, don't think KWSP is going to let people do what they like with their retirement funds. Defeats the purpose completely.

The problem starts when someone has only part of the information, and asks you to google the rest. Don't believe everything you read on the internet is always something to keep in mind.

No, I'm not arguing about the "trust me" or "don't call" bits.

You obviously don't have a lot of details to the extent no one knows you are were correct or not in the first place. Like you were making statements before:
When questioned, your response is to google? Do you actually know or are you speculating?

i think hes more in speculating

Philip capital definitely can withdraw and manage the porftolio yourself, but all the money must channel back to EPF after withdrawal

No, this is not about spoon-feeding. You appeared to have missed the point completely, so I will clarify what I said.

You made statements like "they throw U a web platform to buy/sell KLSE stocks". Does that mean the investors can buy any stocks they want? Even the speculative ones?

My question was whether KWSP really allows you to buy any stocks you want? Quote: "don't think KWSP is going to let people do what they like with their retirement funds. Defeats the purpose completely." This is because AFAIK, KWSP only allows you to invest in approved funds via approved fund managers.

From http://www.kwsp.gov.my/index.php?ch=p2life...e_invest&ac=126
Which contradicts any scheme from any fund manager which allows you to "buy/sell KLSE stocks". And I can't find anything from Phillips' website that says otherwise either.

Sure, things might have changed, and we can't be sure which ones have, and which ones haven't (until you get questioned) - we should just "get DETAILS from the horses mouth". There isn't much point to this thread then, is there?

Sorry, you are wrong. I never said that at all, and it's not even my point of argument. My main point, I repeat, is that "buy/sell KLSE stocks" is contradictory to KWSP rules - and that's it.

Let's keep the time-line in perspective. You started off by making statements as if they were statements of facts. Only AFTER you were questioned did you mention Google or ring the fund house.

The rest is simply just sillyness not worth responding to.

Guys, can we for a moment stop this arguments and move forward with tips/insights on the right approach to prosper in Public Mutual?

The fact is, I never ever said Googling is not OK. Amazing how people try to twist and turn the facts. Anyway, people can decide for themselves. That's all from me on this topic.

why wah you two flame war ?

Excuse me. Can someone suggest an online place to monitor unit trust fund performance/price? TQVM

Bloomberg rounded to 2 decimals only

I update my portfolio down to the 4th decimal...

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Added on April 20, 2012, 8:06 pm
Hi Kparam77,

   I see you mention wait after GE only switch to equity fund. Below is my question

   1) When the best time?
   2) Can elaborate possible scenario if BM or Oppsition win, how the KLCI market will perform?
   3) Euro Zone Debt crisis already juggling for more than 1 year - from Greece, Portugal and Ireland, now SPAIN..what next?
Juz opinion since we all dont hv Cristal BALL to tell the future.
Any sifu can share. Since this Forum we all can dicuss all the possible think can happen with no harm

WHAT I HATE ABOUT UTC AND PM.

This is just my opinion, no intention to flame any unit trust consultant (UTC) in this forum. 

PM likes to launch new funds when the market is HIGH. I think this is because it is easier to sell and introduce unit trust funds to the general public when market prospect is looking good. 

When UTCs approach you in malls, and worse still at EPF buildings, trying to corner you to buy into new funds, enticing you with market growth and that the new launching fund has discount – BE AWARE and BE WARY.

Please check the market trend first before departing with your money. Check the market trend for at least one year. You cannot judge it by the past one or two weeks. The market can be up for the past one week or so, but it can be still volatile shooting up or more likely DOWN. It can be like +1 +1 +1 +2 +1 +0 +1 +2 for the past 8 business days, and suddenly -5 and -10 the next 2 days.

Unit trust funds invest in the stocks. They pool funds (your money) to invest over a long, long list of stocks, which you can only pick several stocks at a time if you buy stocks directly yourself. (I believe KLSE stock is relatively new, and I still yet to check it out...)

The UTCs do play a good role in educating the public on an option of saving their money in unit trusts. But most tend to leave out the importance of investing bit by bit (taking full advantage of dollar cost averaging). Even if they do talk on DCA, they would tend to pull in your savings all at once.

(Auntie/Uncle/LianLui/LianChai, how much you have in saving? Why not invest in this xxx fund launching now? Now got discount...)

I think the right approach should be:
1.How much can you spare to invest at the moment? Put this X amount aside.
2.Divide this X amount over a period of time – at least 6 months.
3.Buy into the fund each month till X amount is depleted.
4.In meantime when X amount is slowly reduced, put aside monthly savings (Y pool of savings) for further investment.
5.Continue monthly investment with Y pool of savings.
6.The monthly investment could be on a fixed day of the month, if you are lazy or too busy; or it can be at your discretion if you think you can do better in spotting which day the stock market would be at its lowest point in the month. (I think the former would be better than the latter, as analysing too much could paralyse you into no motion.)

(PS. As you know I gained some with PB ASEAN fund. I did not purchased it during the launching period, but after the launched date. It went down slightly a week after its launching date. Actually I did not pre-planned my actions. Was lucky. I was feeling sad in missing the discount period; and then was glad I missed it.  )

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Added on April 23, 2012, 3:58 pm

You get to break even because the market BOUNCE back. Dollar Cost Averaging only lowers the break-even point.

About 12 months ago, some funds like Public Far East Dividend went up above 0.25 and then spiral down to about 0.21 now. Like you, I should have switch it to a bond fund then. 

Well, lesson learned. Now waiting for it to bounce up again. It's okay as I can hold and wait as I have no urgent need of the invested money at the moment.

The bad thing is that it was transferred from EPF. It would still lose the cost of opportunity (EPF interests over the past 4 years) even if the fund price goes up from negative back to breakeven zero.

Just some bragging post:

I just did a whole lot of analysis on my portfolio and the results are such:

My expected return is 12%p.a. with a Downside Standard Deviation of 2% (aka semi-deviation).

The Risk adjusted performance is 2.5 times better than KLCI's .

The Value at Risk at 95% confidence level is 8.5%

To put it in plain english, my portfolio of assets will give me a rtn of 12% p.a. with a downside risk of 2% standard deviation, and in the worst case scenario, the maximum lost I will be exposed is 8.5% and the chance of that happening is like once in every twenty years.

And yes, I out-perform KLCI in a risk-adjusted environment.

Xuzen

Mr WongMK,

Let me start by quoting a fellow forumer here (Dreamer): "Average people are not rich, and rich people are not average"

I desire not to be just an average when it comes to personal investment and I desire to have my future cash in-flow mainly from the I-quadrant as defined by Robert Kiyosaki.

Next, let me indulge in some personal backstory:

I started to be serious about investing beginning 2008 (about 4 years ago). What started the ball rolling was my enrolment into the CFP class and from there I started to acquire investment related knowledge rapidly.

I read widely on investment related topics, I bought books, I attended seminars, workshops, hell, I spend a lot of time and money to acquire these skills.

A little bit about attending seminars: I did not attend those like Mariam McWilliams et al, where all they do is to teach you trading skill. I attended seminars that are more academic, given by lecturers who work in the fund management setting as well Investment banking sector.

I also attend workshops given by Private bankers and Licensed Financial Planner where they share their knowledge on Personal Investment.

The above calculation I did are actually not too difficult once you know the mechanism of it. These informations are usually taught at CFA Lvl 1. I attended some CFA class (Lvl 1) although I have no desire to go all the way to Lvl 3. CFA is too much for personal investor like me, unless you desire to have a career in Corporate Investment, and that is a different cup of tea.

There you are Mr WongMK, a little background about my personal investment journey so far. I have to stop here, got to go back to my day to day job.

In my next posting (maybe later tonight after work) I'll share with you my calculations.

Xuzen

this is very risky..
the percentages dividend also not so high. I perfect to keep my money into KWSP.
Thank you for ur advice

Now lets get down and dirty to the mathematics section: I will not explain all the terms here as I assume you can google them.

1) Look through your assets. Look at their past return, lets take 3 years, now, annualized their return. You may take 5 years or whatever years, but my data is 3 years only. So I'll stick with three years. Remember to take the annualized return and not the absolute return.

2) Now, do a standard deviation calculation of your assets return. Formula = [(Sum of [individual rtn - mean rtn]^2)/n]^1/2. If you want to use Semi-deviation instead of standard deviation, then count only the assets which have a rtn below the mean instead of all points. But the n remains the same.

3) Now you would have a return and her corresponding standard/semi deviation.

4) To calculate risk adjusted performance (aka Modigliani^2 ratio) = [(Rtn of your portfolio - Risk free rate)/Stan-Dev of portfolio] X Stan-Dev of benchmark + Risk Free Rate. NB: I used KLCI as my bench mark and One year FD in local bank as my risk free rate.

5) Value at Risk is given by the formula = Mean Portfolio Rtn + (zeta x Stan-Dev of portfolio) where zeta is taken as -1.64. The assumption is that zeta is -1.64 for a normal distribution curve at 95% confidence level.

Don't ask me more about this zeta value, I just take it as gospel truth from my lecturer, I am a pragmatic person, therefore I am not so concern for its theory and how zeta is derived.

WongMK, wrt you belanja me makan, not necessary, as long you think what I say is useful and is not bullocks and as long as other who are interested about personal investing find my post useful for them, that is reward in it self. Beside, I am not living in Klang Valley. Very far from it.

Xuzen

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Added on April 24, 2012, 7:04 pm

If you do not do any financial analysis of your fund, how could you confidently answer this. As usual, we can never predict how it will perform in the future.

That is why there are so many ratios and theory made by the financial gurus to measure and mitigate the risk but not the return.

Please note that in most of this theories/ratio, the risk is more important than rtn.

As one famous investor puts it (can't remember who): Take care of the risk, and the profits will take care of itself.

But as a start, buy The Edge weekend newspaper, look at the Normandy Fund Table and choose the fund that has high Sharpe Ratio... that can be a good start.

Happy investing, Malformed.

Xuzen