If you know what you are doing and is prepared to put effort into any avenue of investment/trading, whether it be stocks, options, commodities, forex or anything you are knowledgeable in, there is a very good chance you will beat mutual funds.

Properties need time, effort, knowledge, timing, access to locality, good luck, and lots of patience. Especially patience. Plus dealing with difficult tenants. There aren't any above average investment that don't require effort, and is readily available to the general public, AFAIK.

If properties are more attractive, why put money in Public Mutual?. Not to mention PM returns are quite mediocre compared to other Fund managers.

Yes, no shortcuts. To make money in properties, work is required.

Properties is one of those vehicles that make people rich, but it is hardly exclusive. There are plenty of others whose wealth don't involve properties, exceptions like Buffet and Gates.

Same question for you - you said "There is no exception." How do you know?

On the other hand, I'm pretty sure Gates made his money from a software company called Microsoft. Buffet invests in a wide range of companies, eg like Coca-Cola, Goldman Sachs. I'm sure they own some properties, but is that what they make their fortunes from?

Keep their wealth in real estate? Or keep MOST/MAJORITY of their wealth in real estate?

As I mentioned, Gates started with software and has now diversified across a range of companies, many of them IT/technology related. Buffet's holdings include a range of companies, many of them are banking/financial related. Most of these holdings are not real-estate related.

But if you mean it in a general sense (without the word MOST/MAJORITY), then of course, rich people tend to have lot of properties.

-deleted-

This post has been edited by howszat: Aug 11 2013, 12:37 AM

Cut loss, or more specifically stop loss in trading terminology is quite specific in meaning.

Cut loss/stop loss means that when you sell (or buy, depending on the instrument), you set your losses in concrete. If you had not sold/bought, your losses are only on paper, and you recoup your paper losses when the instrument recovers. If you had sold before the instrument recovers, your losses remain as losses no matter what.

This post has been edited by howszat: Aug 13 2013, 09:21 PM

That's just a political ding-dong between the Republicans and the Democrats.

The markets didn't really pay much attention to them last time, as neither side would want to be responsible for causing any upheavals.

What uncle Ben does or say is more earth-shattering (financial-wise).

Open, transparent, free-market economies like the US are not dependent on government spending, alone. The US is not a centrally planned economy - it has a large private sector. They have people like Jobs and Zuckerberg who generate market demand regardless of what the government is doing.

Spending cuts are bad when they are wholesale across the board. Spending is bad when it gets out of control. Somewhere in between the Republicans and Democrats have to agree on something. But I don't believe they (both sides) will come up with something that will make the US economy "tank".

The Yuan is pegged to the USD. Until they are prepared to let it float freely according to market forces, bi-lateral agreements are irrelevant - the USD is still king.

This post has been edited by howszat: Aug 27 2013, 09:08 PM

The oil market is currently priced and traded in USD. Sellers expect USD. The only way currently to not pay USD is to have individual seller/buyer agreements to not transact in USD.

I was referring to your Yuan example as not being representative of a not-USD transaction because the Yuan is still pegged to the USD, so in effect the transaction would still be conducted using the equivalent of USD.

Sure, I understand the point of not using USD for pay for oil. It's a nice concept. At the present time, since there's no open markets for oil, they only way non-USD transactions can happen is via bi-lateral agreements.

You can use UTs to collect dividends, but not in the way you think.

First, read Pink's #1 and understand UT "distributions" (note how they never actually call it dividends) are different from stock dividends. In short, UT "distributions" are meaningless - please ignore them.
Second, you can still use UTs to collect dividends by buying UT funds that focuses on dividend stocks.
Third, and most important, avoid PM. Their charges are the highest while their fund performance is one of the lowest. Avoid.

Any further questions, please refer to Pink.

Looking at the charts for these 3 funds, for AGEF, RH-US, OSK-US, there's not much to tell them apart, except AGEF which has been lagging in recent months. Ratios, if you have them, may be another thing to look at, but they can't tell you things like economic conditions, or the funds managers, etc which have since changed. Like QE will be tapered, or they replaced the fund manager with another inferior one, and so on...

One more thing, never worry about annual expenses. Look for nett returns, ie after expenses. The only thing you are interested in is what you get in hand, isn't it?

This could be due to a distribution.

Past history says there is one in Mar/Apr and one in Sept. I think a forumer did post about a news-site link about an Ambond distribution last month - the actual drop is normally reflected up to several weeks later. No info on the FSM distributions page yet - but delays have been known to happen.

Don't you just love distributions?

This post has been edited by howszat: Sep 5 2013, 11:13 PM

If this is what you are after, you are a bit late. Tax credits are being phased out, completely by 1 Jan, 2014. It says so in the article. In other words, there is nothing you can, or need to do about it when the credits have been used up.

AmDynamic Bond no sales charge, no platform fees, according to their Funds Info Table currently.

This post has been edited by howszat: Sep 21 2013, 08:53 PM

Just noticed IFAST has been added to RHB's bill payee list.

But the FSM website hasn't been updated yet.

No, there are no platform fees for those 2.

Not surprising since Amdynamic still charging Redemption fee of 1%, and Hwang Select Bond still charging sales charge of 1.5%.

yes, dat's wat i mean lah.

Amdynamic charges redemption fees, so it's different.

But technically, Hwang Select Bond makes their advertisement "ALL BOND FUNDS" inaccurate. In Western countries which are quite strict about mis-leading claims, they could get into trouble. But here, well, we are in the East.

Yes, I know.

But it hasn't stopped me buying Hwang funds just because of fees or discounts. I look for nett returns after fees. Looking at fees alone is missing the big picture. Don't mean to give anyone that impression at all, in case that was the case.

However, there were occasions where discounts do apply across the board - the last one I think was HAQ at 1%. In addition, there is the minor point of no switching fees for Hwang funds.

If you go into FUNDS INFO, Fund Sales Charge, Buy/Sell, Hwang..., it says 1.5%. So, technically, that's mis-leading.