You meant yet to be launched. The new funds just started trading on 21st. Gained 0.01% on 22nd and 0.00% yesterday.

If not mistaken, fixed income funds have about 50% in money market. Money market funds will have poor returns with the recent reduction in the OPR rates. There could be another reduction in September. MM funds have similar returns to FD. FD board rates is now about 2.40% (annual interest).

Or about 0.20% in a month. So its daily increments would be a series of 0.00% and 0.01% every business day.

Should maybe have paid the 2.5% commission and bought into bond funds this month... could have gotten back the commission since bond funds are on a rally this month... still ongoing... Public Islamic Infrastructure bond fund up 0.21% yesterday.

If still have excess money in EPF, maybe buy funds using EPF money to lessen the commission.

You were using "lump sum" investment strategy. Lump sum strategy is all about market timing. It is either buying at the right time or the wrong time.

Hit it at the right time, like buying in March or April this year.... can gain 30% or more in just 3 months.

Thanks for sharing your experince in investing into unit trusts using the EPF app and purchasing of funds using EPF i-invest. Very much appreciated. Please continue posting and sharing your personal investments into ut funds.

When EPF launched its i-invest in August 2019, I have anticipated that it will compete with other agents and will pull business away to i-invest. Since it is within EPF and linked to its internal system, it will immediately show the available amount without needing any manual calculation on the excess money above the basic savings table in EPF Account 1.

Every eligible funds from all fund houses approved by EPF can be bought there, and at the same low sales charge of up to 0.5%.

Due to the covid-19 pandemic and to boost the economy, the sales charge is reduced to 0% effective from 1.05.2020 to 30.04.2021.

Older investors like me don't have this option when we were younger.

Further short pointers regarding EPF-MIS (Members Investment Scheme):

EPF members can withdraw from Account 1 to purchase mutual fund, only one withdrawal every 3 months, the maximum withdrawal is based on a “basic savings table”.

The basic savings table is a table showing the amount that the member must have at his age. The amount increases as he gets older. The eligible amount that can withdraw is 30% of the amount that is in excess of the basic savings.

In short, Maximum Withdrawal = 30% x (Amount in Account 1 – Basic Savings Amount)

EPF can adjust (and have adjusted) the “basic savings table” every few years to reflect the basic savings in Account 1 that each EPF member should have at his age group.

KUALA LUMPUR 28 November 2018:
The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) announces that the quantum for the Basic Savings will be revised from the current RM228,000 to RM240,000 effective 1 January 2019. The amount will be set as the minimum target EPF basic savings members should have upon reaching Age 55.

The Basic Savings refers to the amount that is considered sufficient to support members’ basic needs for 20 years upon retirement, from Age 55 to 75 aligned with the Malaysian life expectancy. The new quantum (refer to Table 1) is benchmarked against the minimum pension for public sector employees, which has been raised from RM950 to RM1,000 per month.


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PS. If the fund is sold, the money will revert back to EPF Account 1 as it is still under EPF. Only upon age 55, is the fund released to the investor.

Within Public Mutual Fund online service, PMO, the funds are separate into cash scheme and EPF scheme. At age 55, the funds under EPF scheme will switch into cash scheme, and if the fund is sold, it will go into the investor's bank account.



This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jul 25 2020, 05:40 PM

Investors should be careful in purchasing new funds that are yet to start trading:

i) buy today, money stuck there for 2-3 weeks. (The above new fund e-AI starts on 9th Sept.)
ii} new funds, no track record.
iii) PM has a knack of selling new funds when the market is hot. Easier to sell as people have FOMO (fear of missing out). (NASDAC index is at record high.)

REUTERS(Aug 18): The Nasdaq surged to a record high close on Monday, while the S&P 500 approached its own record level, with both indexes lifted by Nvidia and other technology stocks.

This fund caught my attention today... highest daily increment.

PUBLIC ISLAMIC OPPORTUNITIES FUND 5.29%



If you look into its 1-yr performance... equally amazing.
From 19-Aug-2019 to 18-Aug-2020, it is 55.8%, 68% at the peak.

If bought at the bottom on 19-Aug-2020 (5 months ago), the gains is 120%.
And the peak gain is 136%.

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Now look at the 3-yr performance...



The returns since 18-Aug-2017 is 37.50%.
(Which annualised to 11.2%... still a very good annual returns).

But look at the downward trend till 19-March-2020...

The question is, as an investor, can you hang onto to the fund during its downward trend? Especially if you made a lump sum purchase.

This reminded me of an old read years ago on chasing hot volatile funds... volatile funds would shake off some investors when the ride is wild.

Which brings us to the importance of timing - buying and selling or market entry and exit. And ultimately, the difference between the fund's performance and the investor's performance.

Cheers.

Very similar funds, except the new PB fund:
- the number of stocks is up to a max of 40, while it is not mentioned in the older fund.
- has a wider mandate in that it can have a minimal of 20% in equities in adverse markets, while it is 30% in the older fund.

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I have PVGEF in my portfolio... been slowly adding it since mid April, about 1% when it dips. It is now about 5% of my port. Planning to increase it to about 10% and hold it 3 years.

Latest addition was about 2 weeks ago... current gains ranged from 16.8% to 1%. It seems to be heavy on US markets too (daily price movement following Dow Jones and Nasdaq.)

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Sep 29 2020, 03:16 PM

At their UT prices page, click on the "Non Business Day" to see the holidays on the funds.

Taiwan, National Day on 9th Oct.
Greater China fund and China Ittikal fund have equities in Taiwan stock market.

Download and save the pdf file, you need to know the holidays in buying funds, especially if you want to time the market.

As an example, I made a switch into PB Greater China A-shares before the 4pm cut-off time on 30th Sept. If I missed the cut-off time, I might as well make the switch days later, as the fund has non-business days from 1st Oct to 9th Oct, and it will be priced accordingly to the NAV price on Monday 12th Oct.

You're welcome.

PB Greater China A shares fund, up 6%.

I am not well versed in financial terms, so not really sure what it really means by “portfolio turnover”. And to be sure, I google it…

"What does a mutual fund's Portfolio Turnover Ratio indicate?"

On the financial manager side (running the unit trust fund), I guess it will be in the yearly financial report.

On our own portfolio of funds, we have to keep track of it in an excel spreadsheet.

In my excel file, there are 3 main tabs.

In the 1st tab, it is showing the portfolio of funds I am having… similar to what PMO is showing in the Accounts page.

In the 2nd tab, it shows all the switches out.

I kept track of the money I invested separately in a 3rd tab. And any withdrawal is also tracked in this 3rd tab.

Portfolio Turnover ratio = Total amount in Tab 2 / Total amount in Tab 3.

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Since I have recorded the date of each purchases, and also the dates of each switch out, the 2nd tab has switch in and out dates, and the number of days in between the dates; I have also the following summaries for each year:
- Total Amount turnover or switch out, in each year.
- Average number of days holding the purchase before switching out, in each year.
- Average amount of the switches, in each year.

Hence, after many years, I can review back how I much 'trading' I done over the years, getting more chronic or more laissez-faire...

Fantastic week... for Asian funds too.

Made 2 switches last Friday... then another one on Monday.

Then another one on Tuesday, PB Global Tech & Health... was still not too late... still managed to gain 6.08% in 2 days.

The equity section in my port at record high, all switched in from April onwards... highest at 24%.

Good news all around... Biden leading... but I am still very cautious, maybe hold on the equties till early Feb (before CNY) before trimming them.

(The worst switch was PSEASF in June... the only one in the negative... all the other funds are in Asia Pacific and Greater China. SEA region most likely not doing as well as far-east region... economy growth and recovery strongly link to how well the countries handled the covid-19 pandemic.)

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Nov 6 2020, 08:29 PM

Are you sure you are asking what you want to know?

Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but anyway, below is copy and paste from previous posts...


"As for the annual management fee and trustee fee, I don’t really pay much attention to them.. What we should understand is that the reported return on any funds is the net return..."

"As mentioned in an earlier post, a variable priced mutual fund is re-priced at the end of every business day; and its NAV/unit price is then made known latter at night or the following working day. NAV means NET Asset Value; meaning the value is a net figure and already taken into account its management & trustee fee..."

Lastly, we don't pay any annual fee in Public Mutual funds. We only pay the one time sales charge, which is a sales commission.

Some online investment platform or online fund agents may have annual fee for using them to purchase funds indirectly from the fund companies, but their sales charge or commission is very much lower... as low as 1.5% or lower.

EPF i-invest has 0% service charge (effective from 1.05.2020 to 30.04.2021)... and no annual platform fee.

(But if you are referring to and interested in the above stated fund, it is sold only by PM and its agents... cannot buy it elsewhere. Open your wallet, and pay the commission.)

Happy New Year?

2020 is a terrible year... a pandemic year. But for ut investments, it is a positive year.

Today is the last day of the year, and my port ends at a highest point for the year... slightly above 8%.

It was a more conservative port compared to last year. Pulled almost all out of equity by the end of last year... after last year's extremely good returns. So had skipped the deep dip in March.

Then slowly added back some equity funds into the port in small measures from March onwards.

Hopefully, next year will be another positive year for my port.

If you really want to know how much is the total sum if it is left inside EPF, you need to work out the dividends it would gain each year step by step in a spreadsheet. Below are EPF dividends since 2013.

If you want a quick comparison against EPF dividends, you need to figure out the portfolio's annualised returns; and compare it against EPF annualised returns.

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1. When the purchases are done at various dates, there is no maths/financial formula to work out the annualised returns. The easy way is to put the details into a spreadsheet and let the spreadsheet work it out.

In Excel, there is a handy function, XIRR. You enter the dates of purchases and their amounts in negative. The last line is the current date and the current total amount.

Example:
20/5/2014 -RM20,000.00
3/10/2015 -RM25,000.00
15/6/2016 -RM22,000.00
10/1/2021 RM88,000.00

The XIRR function will give you the annualised returns; which is equal to 5.01%.

2. EPF dividends:
2013 6.35%
2014 6.75%
2015 6.40%
2016 5.70%
2017 6.90%
2018 6.15%
2019 5.45%

3. EPF annualised returns, as at 2019:
3-years, 6.17%
5-years, 6.12%
10-years, 6.16%

It is tough to get a consistent return every year. Equity funds are just a pool of stocks, and the yearly returns are dependent on the stock market. So whether the fund is rated moderate or high risk, its return is still based on the stock market, and when you make the purchases.

If the timing is right, as like in March/April last year, your purchase into any equity fund would easily give a high return of at least 20% by end of last December.

To get what you're looking for, look into the fund's 5-yr returns. You then narrow down the list of funds to select based solely on its returns, disregarding its risk rating.

If in total returns, 10% compounded 5 years is 61%. So narrow down the list to funds having at least 61% total returns in the past 5 years.

You can also widen your search to other fund companies having this criteria of at least 61% total returns, by using MorningStar Malaysia website.

But be careful when reading the fund's annualised returns in the past 5 years or 10 years It does not mean the fund is getting a cosistent return every year. And it does not mean that the stock market will behave the same in the next 5 years as it did in the past 5 years.

To beat EPF, you don't want it to be "more safe".

When money is taken out from EPF to purchase funds, you want it to be different from what EPF is doing... you put it into equity funds and into equity funds that are not inside Malaysia.

EPF is the taikor in Malaysia stock market. Tough to beat EPF in the field it controls.

Singapore, consumer theme funds and far-east large caps... ie top 30 or alpha 30 companies.

Is it too late to join the bandwagon?

For most Asia Pacific Funds, the rally continues last week; a good start to the new year.

Last Friday's daily increments for some funds were not seen before...

PUBLIC FAR-EAST CONSUMER THEMES FUND 3.81%
PUBLIC ISLAMIC ASIA LEADERS EQUITY FUND 2.41%
PB ASIA CONSUMER SECTOR FUND 3.95%
PB ASIA PACIFIC ENTERPRISES FUND 3.16%
PUBLIC SINGAPORE EQUITY FUND 2.49%

STI is still below its 2020 Jan/Feb level, while other indices, Taiwan and S Korea have rally past its early 2020 levels. Hang Seng is about back to 2020 Feb level.

My 2 cents: Some Asia Pacific funds, as like above funds, could possibly gain at 15% to 30% by year end.

Just to give an indication on how strong was the rally last week (and after the sharp pullback last March); while bond funds were in the negative last week, but my port having less than 30% in equities had gained slightly above 1% last week.

PUBLIC FAR-EAST CONSUMER THEMES FUND
8/1/2020-8/1/2021 (1-yr): 39.67%
31/12/2020-8/1/2021 (ytd): 8.11%

Switching is not same as "buy and sell". If you sell and buy back, you will be paying service charges again.

I got unlimited free switching...

I'm holding all the above 5 funds plus a few more. 2 of them, switched in last Friday.

All the equity funds just several % of the port; wtih bigger % in Islamic Asia Leaders and Vietnam-Global.

Had switched out of Islamic Global and Global Select; but still holding Lifestyle & Tech and PB Global Tech.

Most of the funds are similar to each other, Asia Pacific region and large caps, so when I'm in dilemma in choosing the funds, I chose them all.

Gold member.

As a beginner, better to stay with one fund house and not do to much switching... stay and accumulate and grow the port. Wait till you got gold member status.

There is a good phrase which I recently came across...

To grow wealth, concentrate.
To preserve wealth, diversify.