This is surprising question. I thought being online means just that... online, with real time transaction; just as we do over the counter in a bank.

To answer the question, PMO is the real deal from day one since it started.

Ten more business days before X'mas. How's your portfolio this year?

Who would have thought that KLSE (YTD +12.9%) would be among the top Asia-Pacific performers this year?

And beating all its neighboring countries... which have not gained much; Singapore index +0.9%, Jakarta +0.7% (the Indonesia Select Fund is the only fund underwater, after taking into account the conversion of rupiah to ringgit), Thailand +1.2% and the Philippines +4.3%

Nikkei +52.3%, S&P 500 +29.3%, Vietnam +28.8%, DOW +25.2%, S&P/ASX 200 +16.9%, NZealand +15.7%, Taiwan +12.7%, Hong Kong +8.7%, Shanghai +1.8%, KOSPI -0.09%.

The best performing funds, needless to say, are the local funds, especially those small cap funds. Among the top performers this year is Global Select Fund, with its allocations in Japan (12% of total holdings) and USA (44%).

Happy hunting and portfolio adjustment for next year.

What is the rumour and how relevant is it to your question and concern? If you purchase a unit trust fund via the EPF scheme, the money from any re-purchase before age 55 will revert back directly into your EPF account. It is highly unlikely to incur any further tax or charges or fee on exiting back to EPF. Stop listening to nonsense.

If the rumour is regarding PRS and tax relief and early withdrawal, and which you can't invest using EPF money, please refer to the Private Pension Administrator (PPA) official website for verification/confirmation. http://www.ppa.my/ppa/about-ppa/about-us/

The form can be found here: http://www.publicmutual.com.my/CustomerSer...tualOnline.aspx

Also can be done via ATM; which I believed it is like registering for PBeBank where you will get a slip with user ID and password for the initial login. Please make sure the bank has your correct mobile phone number before doing this...

Further details as below:

How do I register for Public Mutual Online Services?

You can obtain a copy of the Public Mutual Online Services application form from Public Mutual HQ or any of its branches. Alternatively, the application form could be downloaded from publicmutualonline.com.my.

For security reasons, you need to submit the application form personally at Public Mutual HQ and branches or Public Bank branches.

You may also register through Public Bank's Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) if you are a Public Bank ATM user, or via PBeBank.com if you are a PBeBank subscriber.

For Applications through Public Mutual, you will immediately receive the docket mailer with User ID and Password. For Applications through Public Bank, the docket mailer will be sent to your mailing address. This User ID and Password will enable you to access publicmutualonline.com.my.

You have to log in within 60 days from the date of issuance of docket mailer to change the User ID and Password.

You are now ready to view and transact your investments online.

Should you require further information or any assistance, please refer to our General FAQ & FAQ on Login. Alternatively you may contact us at our Hotline 03-6207 5000 or email us at customer@publicmutual.com.my.

The updated NAV prices seemed to be a bit late tonight... maybe due to the "big" jump in the bonds and sukuks.

My sukuk switched in May just showing 0.15% increase... a simple annualised figure would be 0.26%.

Makan bubur this year if depending on bond/sukuk fund to give returns. The income distributions by these funds will 'eat' into the principal amount (eg. its current value is less than its invested amount)... alright to those investors who need these annual distributions for "regular income", but to investors in the accumulation stage, it is advisable to hold more equities.

There is no guarantee in unit trusts even in bonds or sukuks. The closes thing to FD would be the money-market funds which is just below FD rate at about 2.8%.

A fixed income can also refer as any fund that has annual income distribution policy stated in its prospectus. A good example of a fixed income fund is Public Bond Fund, which is closed. Some equities, like PDSF, also has annual distribution policy.

The 'fixed income' refer by Xuzen in the Equity/Bond ratio would refer to money-market/bonds/sukuk funds... as these funds might not necessary provide a fixed stable income as it used to be (as proven in the sharp drop in bond funds recently) but will not drop much in value when compare to equity funds in an adverse market.

Try holding 100% in equities when you are already past the accumulation stage...

Try it... who knows, maybe your stomach is iron-casted.

Don't worry, we don't leave our brains behind coming into the internet for information... but looking at the past 2 pages, it does not give much confidence whether this is true.

Regarding the bond/equity ratio formula, it is a general guide. In the accumulation stage (or initial stage of investing into unit trust), it could be 100% in equities regardless of your age.

In fact, it should be 100% in equities. As posted recently, it is silly to purchase bond fund as a new investment (with service charge of 1%), unless the bond fund is a means to park the money for switching in a more regular mode into an equity fund. This is a good strategy (using DCA method) especially with EPF withdrawals, which can only be withdrawn once every 3 months.

By the way, it was announced that the new service charge of 1% was on bond funds. Is it specifically on bond funds and not including money-market funds?


Revision of Sales Charge on Bond Funds
With effect from 1 October 2013, the sales charge on Bond Funds (except PIN BOND)
will be revised from 0.25% to 1% of NAV.

The easiest way is switching into any foreign funds like Public Australia Equity Fund, Public Singapore Equity Fund or Public Global Select Fund. Which was the 3 foreign funds in my Supreme Buy-and-Hold portfolio model.

All the foreign funds would have the related country risk as well as its currency risk. The currency risk will hedge against the ringgit. Good time to buy PSGEF; the STI index is still below its 200-day moving average.

How would a new agent helps? And by the way, what is your expectations from an agent? An agent, or more correctly a Unit Trust Consultant (UTC) is a sales agent. He/she is not a personal financial adviser. And neither is a UTC a financial analyst. And definitely not a fund manager.

Any funds recommendations by UTC would be just as good (or bad) as you and me. His duty is mainly to educate the client what type of funds are available; and to introduce unit trusts to the public.

And I think it is against any fund company policy for a UTC to recommend on market timing, ie. when is the best time to buy or sell a fund. The UTC will get sooner or later get into trouble if he does that with his clients.

BTW, there is a procedure to change UTC. The former UTC has to sign a form and release the account to the new UTC.

About 2 weeks ago, I switched out of a local fund. Since then, it went up another 2%. It went up more than 1% in just one day last Friday. Am I cursing myself? Yes, for sure. Damn unlucky if it keeps going up the next several months. But the overall plan was locking in some profit for the year and 're-balance' the portfolio in the 1st quarter...

Market going up or down, no expert can predict 100% accuracy on short-term market timing. And even if they do, how can we understand what short term really means? Days, weeks or months? Or sell/buy by a certain date? And can we trust the advice?

IMHO, it would be better to look back into the initial objective of having the fund, PAUEF, to come to a decision.

Would be interesting to see the NAV price of the ASEAN funds tomorrow noon... Thai index dropped -5.23%, on the 1st trading day of the year; while KLCI -0.75%, STI +0.23% and Jakarta +1.24%.

edit: Thai index updated.

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jan 2 2014, 06:23 PM

It's called 'window dressing', for the year-end and and quarterly reports.

Is a actively managed fund good or bad?

If the fund manager takes too strong a position, he is betting too heavily on his position. This was what happened to the largest bond fund Pimco last year... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-01-03/g...imco-funds.html

Bill Gross, the money manager known as “The Bond King,” misjudged the timing and impact of the Federal Reserve’s plan to scale back its asset purchases in 2013, spurring the Pimco Total Return Fund’s biggest decline in almost two decades.

Just to share what I learned from the Fundsupermart.com thread.

FSM has a Regular Savings Plan. It is the same as DDI (Direct Debit Instruction). But it has one important thing that is NOT AVAILABLE in Public Mutual. Its initial investment of RM1000 is waived.

What does this means? You can start a new fund with as low as RM100. And then follow through with the same monthly amount.

This means:
1. With a monthly budget of several hundreds, you could begin investing in unit trust with several funds at once. This means diversification instead of choosing only one fund at a time.

2. A true DCA (Dollar Cost Averaging) strategy since the initial amount and the monthly amounts are the same.

Needless to say, if you are starting in unit trusts... better shop around first.

Cheers. Happy investing in the year of the horse.

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jan 4 2014, 10:54 PM

2013 was not too bad. My 1st portfolio ended with 4.5% up, can't really expect spectacular result with the portfolio averaging less than 50% throughout the year. Yeah, got spooked by rumours and doom & gloom news.

2nd portfolio with fresh money (from EPF) did much much better. Was regularly switching and building up into equity (from a bond fund); and since it was from a low-load bond fund, was able do it on regular basis without worrying about any extra charges in switching fee. DCA thumbs up.

New year resolution: Get the 1st portfolio into equities; using the proven DCA method, switching 1% each month (since I have 18 free switches each year), spread over 4-5 years!

Yes, park money in money market funds, not bond funds.

I'm still not sure whether the recent increase in service charge to 1% is applicable to money market funds as like the bond funds. If it is, say good bye permanently to Public Mutual.

It is for investors who had build up their savings a long time ago when there was no better option.

From the performance chart, 15/05/13 till yesterday, Focus Select Fund has dropped 2.11%. So I guess that the loss of 7% is including the service charge of 5.5%.

You need to hold any fund for at least 3 years, preferably 5 years to amortise the service charge. This high service charge will be very costly if you enter and exit into Public Mutual very often.

PFSF has a good track record, except that it performed well below other funds in 2013. And you bought it during its peak in May. It is advisable to do DCA when purchasing any fund.

You may try and switch to a less volatile fund like Public Growth, which has just dropped more than 1% this past week, while PFSF dropped about 0.3%.

Ultimately, how to play it would depend on your objective of entering into unit thrust funds and also the wider view of the entire portfolio.

Market timing and horse selection to bet on for the short term of several months, I'd given up already...

Cut Your Winners And Let The Losses Run.

That’s right, it's not a typo, and it’s the reverse of the usual “cut the losses and let the profits run”.

Unit trusts are long term investments while buying shares directly can be both long term and short. Another difference is that investments into unit trust funds are usually regular savings and savings for retirement purpose. So shouldn’t that the usual phrase within the stock market circle be reversed for long term mutual funds?

Think about it. It is more appropriate to let the losses run in a down trend, especially in the accumulation stage where you will be averaging down the unit price each time you buy.

Secondly, the losses should not be too unbearable if the portfolio has been adjusted to your appropriate risk profile, and would not be too steep if the portfolio is well diversified with each fund not more than 6% of the portfolio and distributed evenly among several different asset classes.

So, always let the losses run; and trim only the winners whenever necessary.

Cheers. And happy investing.

PS. Above is not an original thought. It is from a Paul Merriman article in MarketWatch.com. Sorry, lost the link to the article.

Finally, a good response to my boring posts!

You have to bear in mind that Paul Merriman advocates the buy-and-hold strategy. A Buy-and-Hold investor (also known as Holders) is opposite to market Timers who buy-and-sell. I share his school of thoughts because his objective of holding mutual funds is for retirement. I hope to post a bit more on this retirement objective soon.

Re-purchase as in selling is not advisable unless you want to exit Public Mutual and NEVER, NEVER to return back. Because each new purchase will incur the service charge again. What I did and meant in previous posts regarding exiting and pulling out of any fund is SWITCHING to another fund, whether it is an equity, bond or money-market fund. Yes, there is a switching fee but it is not as high as the service charge in a new purchase.

Topping up an under performing fund. This could be ambiguous and dangerous (as pointed by Xuzen, in another post below yours). The under performing fund could be a really bad fund. Before letting the losses run, you need to read carefully my entire post especially on the second part. It should be read together with the previous posts on a Buy-and-Hold portfolio model by Paul Merriman.

In the buy-and-hold portfolio strategy, re-balancing between equity and money-market funds to re-adjust back to the desire risk ratio should be done once a year. I too share the belief that if we re-adjust now and then, we are becoming market timers.

==================
Wong Sifu,
Sorry, did not quite get your point. There was a discussion in another article in MarketWatch on whether there should be any re-balancing among the equities portion of the portfolio between the various asset types. Some commented that the re-balancing should only be between equities and bonds, not between equities and equities.

Xuzen,
Yes, half knowledge is dangerous, maybe more so than no knowledge.

Letting the losses run is dangerous if one was already in trouble, already knee deep in sh*t..

How to get into trouble? Easy. Been there, done it.

1. Buy heavily into a new fund yet to be launched.
2. New fund - no track record. But got discount mar...
3. Buy into the sales pitch.... this fund is investing into this emerging country that will become the number one world economy, double digit growth, etc. etc. So top up heavily, again and again after the new fund was launched and starting to climb... must buy fast before it ran away too high.
4. You already know which fund I'm talking about. Had posted this too back in 2012 when I first joined this forum.

How not to get into trouble? Easy. (Actually, not so easy as it took me more than a year to learn. )

1. Be patient. Invest slowly using DCA.
2. Be patient. Invest slowly using DCA.
3. Be patient. Invest slowly using DCA.
4. Follow the "Ultimate" Buy-and-Hold Portfolio model and never get into trouble by putting too much into any one particular fund.

Cheers. Happy savings and investing.

PS. Can't emphasis the importance of DCA investing enough, hence it was stated thrice!

PPS. Letting something run, is not the same as adding or topping it up. It means maintaining and keep holding it.

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jan 13 2014, 12:23 AM

The End Game

My postings so far were lessons learned along the way to its destination. So far, I have posted on horse selections (picking the right funds), battlefield tactics (the technical side of things like switching fees, etc), shortcomings of a newbie investor (being too emotional with down trends and losses and trying to time the market for fast gains while it was a long term goal), and portfolio models; among other things. This post will be on the destination itself - the financial objective.

It is a simple objective. Passive income for retirement.

I have not really think about it detail until recently. I knew that UT would be part of the passive income generator but it was only a vague idea when I started the journey.

The vague idea was that mutual funds in equity will help my savings in beating inflation. A nice nest egg for retirement. It only struck me recently, after following some financial articles in MarketWatch (RetireMentors section), that I should and would be holding this portfolio of funds for another 2 or 3 decades after retirement. Till I die!

All the while, I was thinking “nest egg on retirement”, meaning a pile of cash upon retirement! Meaning exiting from UT and getting a pile of money. And then what? Put all into fixed deposit? Silly, silly me.

Once this vagueness was cleared, and the destination crystallised, the path is seen.

Regular savings, selecting funds, amortising the charges, restructuring and readjusting the portfolio are parts of the journey. The buy-and-hold portfolio is the end game.