Some general observations:

Islamic bonds and sukuks seems to be picking up steam again... total growth in the past 10 days... Public Sukuk 0.23%, PB Islamic Bond 0.22%... compare to Islamic MM 0.09% and MM fund 0.08%. On Wednesday alone, they jumped 0.06% to 0.08% instead of the usual 0.01% daily increases. But all these gains can mean nothing if they can be wiped out in an instance... let's see whether today's 25bps increase in the OPR has any effect.

Indonesia Select fund... too late for the party? YTD already around 20%... 3.34% on Monday, 1.20% on Tuesday, market not open on Wednesday for election, and would be another big jump today. Market already moved while both presidential candidates claimed victory... official results out on 22 July.

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Indon fund up another 2.86%...

Indonesia market also pulling up the ASEAN funds which I've to maintain and wait for them to rebound... lucky to top-up a bit when it went down. Lesson learned: Have faith in the funds you bought, otherwise don't buy them.



This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jul 11 2014, 12:08 PM

It's a bit complicated as they used "Policy of Lesser Cost" as was explained by one of their customer service officers ages ago. (Gold members have a special line to call and don't have to wait too long...)

Copy and paste from previous post... the low-load units were presumed to have been paid a charge of 0.25%.

To keep things simple, maybe use 2 different MM funds to separate the loaded units from the low-load units. I don't think you can combine all the units together and consider the transaction as a single switch.

I had once made a mistake of doing a full switch out of an equity fund which has both units lesser than 90 days and more than 90 days, and it was counted as 2 switches, with the less than 90 days units incurring RM50. This cost me more than I had expected... if the system considered all the units as less than 90 days; and do a single transaction with 0.75% imposed on them, it would cost less. But no, the system had to do 2 separate transactions...

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jul 11 2014, 08:35 PM

Okay, another Paul Merriman article for the weekend... "How 1% can add $1 million to retirement"
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/how-1-can...09?pagenumber=1

I don't quite agrees with all his points in this article, since he was writing for an American audience. Some points have been mentioned in his previous articles and were just repeats. I think it is worth a reminder on starting young and letting compounding magic do its work.

Also another concurrence worth reminding is the 100% in equity funds if you are still in your twenties and just starting to accumulate savings. "In fact, you may want to consider eliminating bonds altogether for the first 20 years that you're accumulating assets." as quoted from Point 1.

Choose and start with a local conservative fund, buy as you save and do constant DCA. Don't get too caught up with the market and moving in and out... as in point (7).

Cheers. Stay invested.

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For a Malaysian audience, I would add the importance of EPF. Don't look down on EPF. It can add much more than 1% to your retirement fund.

When buying my 1st (and only) house, I was fortunate to have a bit of savings and don't have to take out the maximum of what I have in EPF. Most people would take out the allowable maximum amount, without further thought whether they will have excess money in their savings or FD account. The excess amount in savings or FD will earn lesser interest than what EPF would offer. This is the extra "1%" that will make the different, as in the article.

(yeah, I know this post could be more suitable for another thread, like 'Personal Finance Management', but I think the audience in this thread would more appreciate it more than readers in other threads who were mostly looking for fast rewards and quick loans.)

just when I was thinking on this subject on stocks and mutual funds, Paul Merriman has written it in his latest article... "10 Can’t-Fail Lessons of Diversification".
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-cant-f...14?pagenumber=1

I like his articles because he is not Wall Street or Main Street, though he was both Wall Street and Main Street in his former profession, but he based his articles on Academy Street research and statistics.

This is among his better articles on investing in mutual funds - diversification and the reasons behind it.


"Think for a moment about owning individual stocks. According to academics who have studied the matter, the expected rate of return of a single large-cap growth stock is the same as the expected rate of return from owning all large-cap growth stocks. In other words, there's no statistical benefit from having zero diversification.
However, the risk of owning a single stock is vastly higher than the risk of owning thousands of stocks. One company could fail, but the risk of all companies failing is virtually nonexistent. "

It is a powerful statement on owning stocks versus mutual funds.

Cheers. Stay invested.

PS. "Nine: If you own a properly diversified portfolio, you'll always be represented in the current market-leading asset classes. No matter which major asset class is making the headlines, you'll own some of it. You won't be left out. The obverse of this is also true. Whichever asset class is currently lagging will also be in your portfolio. This may test your faith." And I wrote about having faith in the funds you bought in my previous post. Great minds think alike. LOL.

I wonder how you're going to react if the answer is no. Scold agent, sell or suck it up and do nothing? What will you do?

(If the investment is from EPF, that's the only equity fund you can buy in PB series... no other choice.)

Look into the Public series... more choices on the local equities.. I would suggest POGF or PISEF or even Public Ittikal as a 1st fund. All of them are also EPF-approved funds. The suggestion was made on basis of their performance YTD, for more performance analysis, please refer to the MorningStar website.

The Public series has more funds, and it will be easier to diversify and add on other types of funds.

Edit: correction on the fund's initials.

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jul 16 2014, 07:19 PM

KLCI up 0.10% but Small Cap up 1.19%... TQ Xuzen.

no lar... I'm still keeping my PB real estate... but had totally dropped Public property & resort last year. so far, still okay, YTD nearly 5%.

Another long weekend... Selamat Hari Raya!... and another timely Paul Merriman article... "Top fund’s shareholders missed the party." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/top-funds...7-23?link=MW_RM

As a reader commented "Interesting and well-written. I now understand the difference between fund returns and investor returns much more clearly and that makes a world of difference in making choices."

And another comment "Whether you try to time the market by picking stocks or by picking mutual funds, you probably lose out in the long run. This fund is just another example of market chasing. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't."

Cheers. Stay invested.

P.S. I was guilty of chasing hot funds myself... lose some, win some. My advice: Chase if you want to, but don't set any time frame to hold... pull out when you're ahead. In other words, don't confuse 'trading' with any short-term/long-term buy-sell strategy. Either 'trade' or 'buy-and-hold-forever'.

(How far ahead is ahead? That's the million dollar question! )

Here's another article on the benefit of starting young... "Why young investors should embrace bear markets." http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-young...7-25?link=MW_RM

It is also another angle on the Lump-sum vs. DCA debate.

I am currently doing both lump-sum as well as DCA.

DCA - because: market is high; portfolio is too much on MM/bonds. So have force myself to relocate more into equities with a regular investing plan. (This is mostly local equity bought with EPF money. See the always-pot-black post posted some time ago.)

Lump-sum: There are certain portions of the portfolio which are country specify, Singapore and Australia funds. The Sing fund, done. Still waiting for a good time to get into the Oz fund.

Cheers. Stay invested.

P.S. No fancy financial tools used by this UT beginner to time the lump-sums... only looking at the 200-day moving average of the main index... managed to get into the Sing fund when the STI index was below its 200-day mv.

If we were looking internally, and disregard all the 'noise' about the market... to decide when to switch:

1. Re-balancing a matured portfolio, to regain back the desired bond/equity ratio.

2. During the accumulation stage (beginning stage of savings and investing into UT), and if using the Value Averaging method. When the value of the fund is more than the amount that you required or had planned, and you need to 'sell'.

(For more info into value averaging - http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Value_averaging

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edited: correction on link...

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Aug 6 2014, 01:21 PM

link corrected...

Get also try this link: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=value+averaging

Annualized return or CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate)

I've finally changed the formula in the excel file; to use the proper CAGR formula instead of simply dividing the returns by the number of days or years holding the fund.

For those interested, here's the formula:

=(POWER(K3/H3,1/(F3/365))-1)*100

K3 is the current value of the fund.
H3 is the initial value of the fund. Some would called it the purchased value or invested value.
F3 is the different between the Purchased date and the Current date.

The whole formula is multiply by 100. You can delete this *100 if you displayed the cell in %.

Please note that my file looks similar to the what is seen in the Account Enquiry page in PMO, except that I have some extra fields like Purchased Date.

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I don't summarized and grouped all the purchases of the same fund as like in PMO... meaning each purchase/switch/transaction of the same fund is a line on its own. This way I can see what's the return on each purchase... if a series of purchases were made at various dates, I can tell instantly which purchase is giving negative or positive returns, or is the returns (annualized) moving up or down...

Another thing to make the figures work correctly using my method is how to handle the distribution (if any). The distribution units are added proportionately to each of the purchases.

Using XIRR or IRR (internal rate of return), is more towards cash flow... which don't really serves my purpose of monitoring each purchase on its own since I do some 'market timing'... and will have to re-structure the file and the fields every differently; and will have to change the purchases and distributions to negative figures for the formula to work.

The beauty of my file is that is looks very similar to what you would see in the account enquiry page in PMO, and the purchases of the same fund is not grouped into one line... format and highlight each category of funds in different colours, plus sub-totals for each category... and voila... all the highlighted info in one page!

What you talking about?

Funds returns or Investors returns? (Maybe, read my previous and recent post on what's the difference between them.)

Funds returns - get them from their annual reports, morningstar website, the performance chart within public mutual website, etc.

Investors returns - you need to track it yourself using excel or other means. Public Mutual Online (PMO) will only show the actual value of your fund, which you can calculate the ROI (return on investment). Without the date of purchase or how long you had been holding the fund, you can't calculate the annualized returns.

What you guys talking about? Isn't investor returns same as portfolio returns?

As in answered in 1st post: Investors returns - you need to track it yourself using excel or other means. Public Mutual Online (PMO) will only show the actual value of your fund, which you can calculate the ROI (return on investment). Without the date of purchase or how long you had been holding the fund, you can't calculate the annualized returns.

Then convert it to % if you want to...

Please take note of upgrade in PMO: PAC number is now needed when you do switching.

Cheers. Stay Invested.

My latest switch is today... add some into POGF as the KLCI index is at its 200-day ma.

News: 2 new money market funds only available to "Public Mutual Online (PMO) subscribers only."

Nil service charge... and nil redemption charge.

This could be as good as having a fixed deposit online, with minimal initial investment of RM100, and minimal additional investment of RM10.

Switching into these new funds from other funds is NOT allowed. They are essentially funds to act as FD or to park your money before buying other funds.

Since there is no redemption charge and no service charge, it would be better to redeem (as in sell) and then purchase other funds instead of using the 'switching' facility which will incur RM25 each switching transaction.

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On another note, will a new country fund as like the Singapore and Australia funds will be launched soon for Thailand?

http://www.bangkokpost.com/business/financ...und-flow-begins

"Investors in Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia can now buy and sell mutual funds issued in any of the three countries. "