Hi all. 2 questions for Public Dividend Select Fund (PDSF) :

1. When dividend declared, does the NAV drop (just like share price drop on dividend ex-date) and extra units credited to your account?

2. Performance from May 05 to today is about 138%. Does this mean if I put in RM 1,000 on May 05, I would have ~$2380 worth today? Is this the correct way to read it? (not counting fees/service charges)

Hope sifus can educate. Thanks in advance!

kparam, thanks. Looking at most newer PM funds launched within the past 5 years, most are underperforming versus their benchmarks or providing somewhat poor returns especially considering the service charges.

I asked about PDSF because it is one of the few funds that shows a decent track record. I have mutual gold status but the PM fund performance is not making me impressed or confident to keep investing.

I wonder if you or anyone else has comments about this. Please do share!

kparam and kaka, thank you for your response. Firstly a disclaimer, I judge fund performance a lot by PM website Fund Performance tool. So if it tells me in 3 years the returns is 30%, I assume an investment of $1000 became $1300. I do not know if PM takes into account service and maintenance charges when they build these charts.

I have invested since 2007 with PFEDF, PFEBF, PSEASF. I switched majority some years ago to PCSF (ouch ). Then about 1 year+ ago to PNREF and PFA30F.
Age 30+ today. (At the time) I intended for high risk tolerance. Plan was capital gains in medium term (5-10 years) better than FD,EPF and outperform benchmarked markets so theoretically better than playing share market myself.
I invest a combination of DCA and lump sum.

So lets go a little deeper. PCSF is probably an infamous case study by now. Market down is acceptable because that is how markets are. What is really the disappointment was how badly PCSF underperformed vs benchmark. Same for PNREF and PFA30F. After I while, I wonder if I should just have invested in the benchmark profile, rather than the fund itself. It would take more effort but I'd probably do better and save on service/maintenance fees.

Later after few years doing PM, I try more stock market, its easier to react faster when buying and selling. Overhead cost of trading is lower. But I still do monthly investment DCA for PM as an alternative basket.

Now, I am rethinking my fund investment and whether I would be better off shifting out of PM. It seems that many funds are low % average annual returns, due to high overhead and (again most disappointingly) underperforming vs benchmark. After looking at past 5 years EPF payout, the returns are actually better than many equity aggressive funds.

I do acknowledge some funds are performing well. But I start to feel the inherent risk and costs of PM seems high. For example, I am looking at PFETIF fund and its performance is good, outperform benchmark and 26.81% from start to-date. Some may consider this a good fund. But, EPF return over same period is virtually the same. Your thoughts?

Interesting, yes I had posted my comments about underperforming funds a couple weeks ago. Anyway I've moved most my investments to PDSF...will see how it goes.

I still have to say, underperforming short term is one thing, everyone makes mistakes and nobody has a crystal ball....but doing so consistently for years is just....see if the FM just go and straight up follow the benchmark profile, can achieve almost break-even performance.... but to continue underperforming for years... a bit too much right !

50% agree with this, my agent also show hand, he also invested in China fund when it was hot a few years ago. End up today, both of us feeling the burn hahaha. So I 50% agree because mutual suffering doesn't make me feel that much better !!!