Maybe he did read that post, and get another point which I did not mentioned for an obvious reason: the effect of the one-time service charge on the returns will pale into insignificant when the investment period is in the longer term of several decades and beyond.

BTW there is a slightly lower charge in DDI - 5.0% if not mistaken.

And DDI will ease the pain... compare to a lump sum and bigger purchase, say several thousands or tens of thousands at one time. Better to begin young and slow, then begin to invest when older with a larger sum of savings. RM10 not so painful than paying RM1000.

if he has several decades and beyond timeframe...would not it better to have funds that has no SC or much reduced SC?
But anyway...it is up to each individual....no right or wrong, I guess....

This post has been edited by T231H: Jun 6 2015, 04:19 PM

The Young, the Old and the Restless

Investment Dilemma: To Buy or Not to Buy.

In every investment, there is only one decision to make: to be in or pass and skip the opportunity.

(There is a good line on missed opportunity that I can recalled – “Better to have lost opportunity than to have lost money.)

IMHO, the young investor will have an easier decision as time is on his side. And he doesn’t have the baggage of a large amount of money to decide whether to invest it all at once or to spread the investment.

The 2 common investment strategies, DCA and VA, were posted earlier, 2 or 3 pages back. Please read it to see which one is more appropriate to your financial objective.

(There are other methods too, but this investor is too lazy to learn more, and more importantly, this investor likes to keep things simple as his brain cells can’t handle matters that are too complicated.)

Anyway, as mentioned, the investment decision is simple: to buy or not to buy. And I find that DCA and VA methods are more than adequate to aid in making the decision.

The Young

So you are young and just starting your career, and have a bit of extra savings from your salary to invest into unit trust. You have decided the target of how much to have in the short term, and also the long term for retirement. You had already done the background check on which fund company to have, which fund (or funds) to begin with. And you had also decided which strategy to use.

Once the investment objective and investment strategy is decided, please stick to it. If the strategy was abandoned mid way, there was no strategy.

Maybe you were being whimsical and were following some recommendation that unit trust will give you much better returns than what you are getting in another type of savings or investment without further thoughts.

If the objective and strategy is not carefully thought thoroughly, and select the fund that is most suitable to your objective, you will hit this buying dilemma when the market goes down or stay flat. You will decide to discontinue further purchases of the fund, and will maybe pull out entirely when you have doubts in the fund that you have selected.

IMHO, it will helps to ease the anxiety and emotional stress on whether it is the right fund to be holding when the market goes south, by having a less aggressive and more conservative fund when the objective is for the short term, and a more aggressive and volatile fund for the longer term.

Give a thought about having a bond fund if the objective is for the short term. Maybe you will find it more suitable to your objective, and your level of risk. (Risk is closely associated with greediness!)

And the entry charge into a bond fund is usually much lower than the charge for an equity fund; and thus don’t have to worry too much on how much the service charge will eventually bite into the growth.

For the longer term, as time is on your side, take a more volatile fund, such as a growth fund or a small cap fund. I prefer small cap funds – google Paul Merriman academic opinion on small caps in his articles that appeared in MarketWatch.

In summary, DCA or VA will help you to get over the “to buy, or not to buy” dilemma when you comes to the next purchase that was scheduled into your investment plan. The investment plan could be a weekly purchase, or monthly, or quarterly. It will help you to filter out the negative news that the market will go down in the short term, or else you will be thinking why continue to make another purchase when you can get better value by delaying or postponing the purchase.

Another important point to remember is that nobody, not even the financial professionals, know with a high degree of certainty how the market will move in the following month. But we are very certain that the market can move in 3 directions only – up, down or flat.

So in each purchase, we either gain some or lose some. (Only in the short term lar. The optimism viewpoint on the long term is that the economy and stock market will grow.) So by making regular purchases, we average out the gains and losses.

Cheers.

=======================

So if the investment plan is monthly, we make a purchase this month.

If the market goes down after we made the purchase, never mind - don’t worry, be happy - since we will be making another purchase next month and will get more units for our money.

If the market goes up, what to do, this is the best amount of money I can spare to invest this month, and just be happy that I managed to add more units before the price goes up.

=======================
Next, the Old and the Restless...

No sc or low sc or high sc... all reduced significantly as time goes by. So the one time charge can become a minor issue in selecting the fund.

Better to look into what funds, its returns and which fund company to have; as in the longer term, how established is the fund and fund company becomes a major consideration.

So far as I know, the closed funds in PM is just closed to fresh investments. But there are funds in the market that are closed as in closed shop and money return to the investor.

When I already old and fully retired, I will not welcome the money and start the investment all over again.

It will be in the next post on what a senior investor could do. Hint: 50/50 equity/bond portfolio, buy equity in the early years, the bond in the latter years.

If I stopped at age 50 or 55, I could probably be holding the funds another 20-30 years. If I transfer it to my wife when I'm 70, it will probably be another 10-15 years...

Thanks for offering your advice. Could you suggest several funds that can perform as good as, or better than Public Mutual funds? What I have now is PDSF, PRSF and PIOF.

what is your expected ROI (xirr) of your investment?
how long have you been holding them?
has the performance of your funds up to your expectation?
has you asked your UTC about your concerns?

there are funds that can be good but may not be suitable to your likings or suits your risk appetite.
ex...Public Asia Ittikal Fund, Public Far East Dividend fund, Public Far east select fund, Public Islamic Asia Dividend fund....
these are some of the (what I think are currently good performing funds from Public Mutual)....there are more funds out there not from Public Mutual....go seek them out...
example,...here is a blog that are full of interesting info.....
http://invest-made-easy.blogspot.com/

a note of caution....don't just seek for "Best" returns, have a thought about its risk returns ratio and your risk appetite too.....

This post has been edited by T231H: Jun 6 2015, 10:39 PM

I'm holding 3 PM funds. Usually I leave it to my agent to do the monitoring but he's been quiet lately so I decided to check the health status of my funds myself today.

1. PIEF since 2008. Last return % update in Feb was at 46%. Today's price dropped by 0.02 cent.

2. PISEF since 2009. Last return % update in Feb was at 60%. Today up by 0.0026 cent.

3. PIOGF since since 2008. Last return % update in Feb was at 38%. Today's price dropped by 0.06 cent.

NAV for 2 funds dropped. My agent said it is ok as this is long term investment. My question - does the % of return for my funds look healthy given the number of years of investment (9 years) or could it have been better?

This post has been edited by audy: Jun 9 2015, 05:36 PM

U can check the health status by comparing the Fund performance against the Fund benchmark
http://www.publicmutual.com.my/application...formancenw.aspx

hmm...looks like all my funds are on the right track..phew! Thanks again for the link. I need to be more proactive instead of relying on my agent for info

This post has been edited by audy: Jun 9 2015, 06:01 PM

So.. what did you pay them 5% for.. if in the end you still have to do it yourself?

Haha, yeah true also.

can try using CAGR calculator to determine....
example online CAGR Calculator
http://www.investopedia.com/calculator/cagr.aspx

Public Mutual declares distributions for 10 funds
http://www.theedgemarkets.com/my/article/p...-2?type=Markets

Dear all, this is my first post here in this topic. I am 25 yo and get to know into public mutual from my father which is UTC agent and I started my first investment 2 months ago of RM1000 into public money market fund (PMMF) and auto debit RM100 every month which he recommend for long term saving.

Now the question is, when I review the PMMF portfolio, i found that the distribution yield is really little at 3% (2014) which FD has higher return than this. As I also understand the risk for this fund is the lowest, but I can tolerate higher risk higher return fund, should I switch to another fund? If yes, what kind of fund you guys recommend? Thanks

don't you think it is better to ask him?
after all he should know what is best for you....unless.....

Well to be frank.. I been getting not much information from him as he is doing this for his part time only. That's why i have to do some research on my own as i wanna start up some investment saving while i am young and not much of financial burden. Then i came up to this forum which i been follow a lot lately, but some of the technical term i found here is quite hard to digest Anyway back to the question, what do you guys think about this PMMF? What kind of fund is suitable for me at this stage of age?

Unknown to your investment goal, risk appetite, financial backup.....and many more....I can only suggest/recommend as I am not qualify to "advise"....
try this if you want....
from lesson 8
Why isn't one investment plan right for everyone?

Before investing, decide what you want your investments to do. Investing is simply using money to make more money. Investment monies are not meant to be used for daily living essentials.
.................
http://www.publicmutual.com.my/Resources/U...ns/Lesson8.aspx

LESSON 7
How To Select Unit Trust Funds?
http://www.publicmutual.com.my/Resources/U...ns/Lesson7.aspx

try this for more?
http://www.publicmutual.com.my/Resources/U...ustLessons.aspx

https://www.fimm.com.my/investor/abc-of-uni...ng-unit-trusts/

some portfolio set up samples....
https://www.eunittrust.com.my/pdf/fundview/...us_June2015.pdf
https://www.fundsupermart.com.my/main/inves...ntportfolio.tpl

This post has been edited by T231H: Jun 25 2015, 06:44 PM

Money market fund is too conservative, and it is not worth to put any savings into it for the long term. Even for the short term, 5 to 10 years, a bond fund would give better returns.

Money market funds, in my view, is for a very short time, and normally it is used to park the money temporary while deciding which equity or bond fund to have. It is also used when trimming profits from several equity funds, thus consolidating the units into one money market fund temporary before further switching to another equity or bond fund.

And in a matured portfolio of funds (which you don't have since you are just starting), a portion of the money or investment can be put into a money market fund to reduce the risk.

Please note that risk is the chances of losing money; and how much risk you can take means how much you can afford to lose.

On the other hand, since you are in for the long term, the chances of losing money in an equity fund is almost reduced to zero. Which left only one factor to predict: how much is the gains that can be expected to have in the long term.

Though what happened in the past, is already in the past and might not be true in the future, but past records and returns of the fund can give an indication of how it would behave in the future. And in general, the smaller capitalized companies listed in the stock exchange will have higher growth than the larger companies.

So, normally I would checked the 10-20 years track record and returns of the funds; but there are not many funds older than 10 years, and their track record might not be good.

So, here's my recommended list of equity funds - short listed based on my own "personal" preferences.

1. Public South-East Asia Select Fund.
2. Public Asia Ittikal Fund.
3. Public Islamic Asia Leaders Equity Fund.
4. Public Strategic Smallcap Fund, or Public Islamic Treasures Growth Fund. (These are the only 2 small cap funds available in PM. Of the 2, I prefer PSSCF.)

So select one of the above, and regularly invest every month in the next 30 years till retirement.


This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jun 25 2015, 10:23 PM