That long running thread finally got closed.

Let's continue here... without any reference to any previous posts... a new reboot and new chapter to begin fresh, and travel to old worlds where mankind had gone before.

Back to Basics.

Hi,
Another relaxing weekend with nothing much happening, so another long post... This one is for those who are interested in investing in mutual funds and what are the benefits of having mutual funds; so it is a sort of sales pitch, except that I’m not a UTC nor am I advocating PM as the funds to have. (You may stop reading here... as it’s a rather long bs. So don’t find fault with the post if you continue reading and find it not worth your time!)

Liquidity.
As a comparison to other investment vehicles like properties and arts, mutual funds is very liquid, in that you can disposed it almost instantly and get your money immediately. I would also factored in the lost of value as part of this ‘liquidity’ benefit. When an investment is sold at the wrong time but needed to be done, the disposed value could be at a lower value ... which is reasonably expected in any forced sale.

Unlike a piece of property or art which much must be sold wholemeal, mutual funds (which are sold in ‘units’ and fractions of a unit) can be sold back to the fund company partially – bit by bit.

In comparison to other income generating financial instruments like fixed deposit and fixed-price mutual funds, I would also take into account the lost of interest/dividends, when there is early withdrawal before the maturity date as in FD or the dividend declaration as in fixed-price funds.

When we take this maturity date into account in deciding the time and date of disposing, the FD and fixed-price funds are less liquid compared to variable priced funds. (Please note that aside from higher risk equity funds, mutual funds are also consists of low risk bond funds, and money-market funds.)

So how liquid are mutual funds? Well, it depends... Usually, it is about 2-4 days, depending whether it is a direct transfer to a bank account, or a cheque is issued and whether it is self collected, mailed to you, or deposited into a bank account on your behalf.

It would also depend on whether an income distribution has been declared. This is the blind-spot period when you don’t know how much, or actually, how many units you would get in the distribution. You could get your account updated in about 2-3 days with PM, maybe within a week with other fund companies, while in investment platforms like FSM, a bit later within 1-2 weeks.

In short, mutual funds is about as liquid as you can get in any investment – be the investment period long or short, either several months, years or decades.

Entrance fees and ROI.
Well, whether you want to spend and party away your savings in a club or put the savings into a investment vehicle, there’s always a fee to pay – the entrance fee.

In mutual funds, the entrance fee is called the service charge. (And it does not include the GST.)

Much has been said and written on the service charge, and obviously depending on who is the source of the article and what products the writer was selling or promoting... so how much weight should we put on these service charges in our decision on whether to have mutual funds or not?

Well, it depends... me, I gathered as much facts and info I can get, and consider why the fund company is charging lower or higher than another fund company.

And also be aware that the service charges are not the same across the board from equity funds to bond funds to money-market funds. (And please, please note that NOT ALL investors into mutual funds MUST buy equity funds. Maybe I should do a post on how an investor can save money with bond funds...)

Aside from the service charge, there are some funds that have exit fee. So beware, and check out all the info on any funds before buying. Also take note of the lock-in period, which is usually 90 days, whereby there would be a fee charged when exiting out from the fund within the lock-in period.

This charge could be rather high –as it is not a fixed amount, but based on a percentage of the value of the investment. (In Public Mutual equity funds, it is 0.75%)

As for the annual management fee and trustee fee, I don’t really pay much attention to them. There is a bit too much hype on these fees – especially by those who are selling funds with lower fees.

What we should understand is that the reported return on any funds is the net return. When we choose one fund over another, or choose mutual funds over other types of investments, the decision is based on better returns. This same factor, net return, also influences the decision to exit any fund.

In short, be aware of the entrance fees, but don’t let it deter your entrance. Or you will miss the party.

Amount to invest.
This is the major reason in choosing mutual funds over other investments.

One can elect to begin the investment in the minimal amount as low as RM1000 (or rm100 in certain cases) and each subsequent amount as low as RM100. Or as high as you want and wish to have.

Even when compared to ‘paper gold’ (a gold savings account), the smallest amount is one gram. And one gram is based on its market value, and the market value can move beyond your affordability. But you can buy the mutual fund in fraction of a unit... spending the same amount of money in each transaction if you wish to.

Above are the 3 main factors why I chosen to have mutual funds... as to why I would stay on, is another story, for another day.

Cheers. Keep investing. And thanks for reading.

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

Add on... to clarify further the annual management and trustee fee.

Please note that aside from the one-time service charge, there is no other cost to the investor. When redeeming the fund outside of the lock-in period, there is no fee or extra charge; you will get the full amount as indicated by the NAV/unit price x the number of units you have.

(NAV = Net Asset Value)

The annual management & trustee fee is deducted from the total asset value of the fund; and is already priced into the NAV/unit price at the end of every business day. In other words, you don't pay it out of your wallet.



This post has been edited by j.passing.by: May 18 2015, 03:54 PM

AFAIK, Public Mutual Funds is only distributed by Public Mutual, while funds (those funds which begins with "PB" in their names) issued by Public Bank can only be bought in Public Bank.

PMO is Public Mutual Online. It is their online system where registered members can do various types of transactions, except for purchasing funds under EPF withdrawal scheme.

To register as a member, you must first need to be a registered investor with either Public Mutual or Public Bank. Meaning you must initiate a face-to-face contact with an agent from Public Mutual or go to a Public Bank branch and purchase your first fund.

PMO distributes both the funds from Public Mutual and Public Bank. If I'm not mistaken, you can also do transactions on those PRS funds from Public Mutual.

And it also depends on who you approached. Any salesman will say his product gives better value.

And what is better value or how is the returns calculated? Is it a simple estimate of double the investment, which is 100% returns? What's the time length? Let's say 10 years, and this can be simply calculated as 10% each year for 10 years.

But the annualized rate (which is Compound Annual Growth Rate - CAGR) is 7.2%

Secondly, how is the ROI calculated? ROI = Return on Investment.
Is "Investment" only the buying price, and "Return" the selling price minus the buying price?

Have we left out the 'service charge' as in a mutual fund investment? And not to say the legal fee, stamp duty, real estate agent's commission, and the whole gamut of annual payments such as insurance, cukai tanah, etc. etc. in an investment in property?

From experience, it is not easy to keep track of my own portfolio... while for my properties, I already given up trying to estimate the IRR long ago.

(IRR - Internal Rate of Return.)

I don't have PRS, so can't comment much on it... but you can look into this link http://www.ppa.my/prs/about-prs/prs-providers/

Back to Basics.

Annualized Rates and Service Charges.

... moving on from that recent post... "But the annualized rate (which is Compound Annual Growth Rate - CAGR) is 7.2%"

Yes, the annualized rate of 100% ROI in 10 years is 7.2%. This 7.2% would be in the annual report or product highlight sheet. But what is the actual rate after adding in the service charge?

Let's do some quick calculations on how 2 different service charges would affect the above 7.2%.

The 5.5% is what PM usually charges, and the 2.0% is commonly charged in a investment platform, and often less.

1-year annualized, 7.2%
0.0% service charge - 7.2%
2.0% service charge - 5.1%
5.5% service charge - 1.6%


2-year annualized, 7.2%
0.0% service charge - 7.2%
2.0% service charge - 6.1%
5.5% service charge - 4.3%


3-year annualized, 7.2%
0.0% service charge - 7.2%
2.0% service charge - 6.5%
5.5% service charge - 5.3%

5-year annualized, 7.2%
0.0% service charge - 7.2%
2.0% service charge - 6.8%
5.5% service charge - 6.0%

10-year annualized, 7.2%
0.0% service charge - 7.2%
2.0% service charge - 7.0%
5.5% service charge - 6.6%

As shown in the above figures:
1. It takes a longer time to slowly reduce and amortized the higher service charge and reduces its effect on the annualized rate.

2. If the investment objective is short term of 5 years or less, go for fund companies with the lowest charges.

Please note the above service charges are for equity funds.
Service charges for equity funds in EPF withdrawal schemes are normally charge at a standard rate of 3%.
Service charges for bond funds would be lower at zero cost or up to 0.25%.

Cheers. Keep investing, and keep informed.

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

And what if the returns is NEGATIVE or barely above water in the first year!!!

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: May 19 2015, 12:46 PM

What so difficult of starting a new topic?

I typed a post... found out cannot post at old thread... so open new thread lor. Took me a much shorter time to type the 1st post than this post and others.

P.S. Now I know how to open new topic... never mind if I don't know how to close... just let it open till...

Please note Post #2 had been edited, yesterday, to clarify further the annual management and trustee fee.

Cheers.

PS. Also just edited post #24... the headings in green...

First of all, thanks for the respond and support. But we need to understand this is a forum, not a blog - though I'm treating it like one!

Don't you think you guys are asking too much? Already tired writing up some long bs to entertain you guys and now want me to edit here and there for easy reading!!!

no lar, as said in post #1, this is all old grounds covered before... just rewriting some topics to shiok myself. All the posts should be read and forget and move on...

The main purpose is to have an open thread for people, especially PM agents/UTC, to update and inform us of any new developments. Like when a closed fund is re-open for new investments. Or when a fund is about to be closed.

Still very much appreciate that post and info that PIOF was about to be closed last year. Did managed to top up that fund, and still holding it.

Back to Basics

DCA (Dollar Cost Averaging) and VA (Value Averaging): the difference between them.

Much had been written before on these 2 methods of investment in a regular fashion. In this post, I’m attempting to re-write the concepts in simpler words, so I apologies first if it turn out to be more convoluting and confusing!

DCA is most often used and the most common method of investing, and most people are using a variation of it without knowing DCA. Though I mentioned “investment in a regular fashion” in the opening sentence, it can also be in an “irregular” way.

DCA is a concept; and it does not means that one must strictly adhere to a rigid regiment of buying a fixed amount of mutual funds in a fixed length of time.

If one is buying in an irregularly way, where the amount of money spend can be sometimes less, and sometimes more (due to various many reasons), sometimes at the end of a month, sometimes earlier, or none at all for several months, before continue buying again the next year; in my eyes, it is still DCA, or a loose variation of DCA.

In a nutshell, DCA is open-ended and VA is closed-ended.

Closed-ended because VA is based on a set of calculations, on how much to invest each time, and the calculation is on a predetermined and fixed financial objective or a fixed sum of money.

On the other hand, DCA is open-ended, very similar to our objective of saving towards retirement... we may have a minimal target, but it is not written in concrete, we invest more when we earn and save more, invest lesser when we have more obligations on our incomes.

How to use VA.

It is easier to understand what VA is by showing an example on how it is used.

Let’s say we have a sum of 7k at hand, and we have an objective goal to have 16k in 3 years, as this would be... well, a holiday to Paris?

We can’t save till the last day just before the holiday, so we decided the saving period to be 2.5 years or 30 months. Which means, we have to save and put aside about (16k – 7k at hand / 30 months) = RM300 each month.

We also decide not to put the savings into FD, and selected an equity fund (or maybe a bond fund).

So, using VA, we must invest (16k / 30 months) = RM533 each month.

Step 1: We list out the expected amount of money that we should have in each month:
1st month = 533, 2nd month =1066, 3rd month = 1599, 4th month = 2132... etc. etc. till the 30th month.

Step 2: We make our first purchase of the fund. If the minimal amount to open a fund is RM1000, it is okay. So we bought RM1000 worth of units in the fund.

Step3: We are about to make another purchase in the 2nd month. We checked the value of our fund, and compare it against the above list. In the above list, we should have RM1066 in the 2nd month. So, if the value of the fund is less than RM1066, we purchase the difference, topping it up to RM1066.

If the value of the fund is more than RM1066, we should sell the difference, selling some units so that the value of the fund is more or less RM1066.

Note: this is the important feature of VA - to ensure that we: “buy low, sell high”.

Step 4: Go back to step 3 and check the value of the fund, and compare it against the listed value in the next, and following month. Make purchase or sell accordingly to the difference in value.

Step 5: Exit when financial target of 16k is reached. Happy holidays!

Note: Step 5 is the closed ended feature of VA. If the market rally like open sky with no limit, and the fund rocket to 16k much earlier in, say 12 months... then bye-bye boss, and Allô Paris.

Cheers. Keep investing.

PS. More confused? Never mind... just keeping investing, and called it long term DCA.

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

Update: Having said that VA is "closed-ended", it can be made "open-ended" by adding inflation into it; and then only decide when to end and stop the purchases at a latter time - same as in the decision when to stop the DCA purchases.

For example, increase the targeted savings by about 5% every year... 1st year - RM300/month, 2nd year - RM315/mth, 3rd year - RM330/mth, ..... 10th year - RM470/mth, 15th year - RM600/mth.... etc. etc.



This post has been edited by j.passing.by: May 2 2016, 09:19 PM

The Senior Investor

Okay, this post is for the more senior investor. And also to bump up the thread as it was getting lost inside this forum.

A more elderly investor would behave differently than a younger investor, maybe because he has a much larger pool of money or savings.

If he has started late and still in the accumulating stage as a younger investor, I hope he has had started reading, and done more research into the relevant investment issues into mutual funds. And please feel free to share your thoughts or worries in this thread.

This article from MarketWatch (one of my frequent visited sites) addresses one of the concerns: Should I sell now or hold on when the market is at record-breaking levels?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/retirees-...13-01-31?page=1

(A younger investor who is still in the accumulation stage should not have this concern of buying or holding in high levels. I presumed he/she is wise enough to do DCA, and invest as he/she earns his/her living, and doing adequate and proper money management, namely putting savings separately for different specific purposes.)

As rightly said in the article, the senior investor should not have this anxiety to sell.

Why? Because, in the first place, he/she:

1: Should already have the correct amount of risk in the portfolio of funds. The level of risk or volatility of the portfolio is not only depended on the bond/equity ratio; but also on how conservative or aggressive those funds in the equity side are.

2: The senior investor who is in retirement is no longer looking for high growth but more on income distributions to finance his/her cost of living. Dividend and Income funds will have distribution even when the growth rate is negative.

No doubt the fund will be lowered and give lower distribution the next year when the investor holds onto the fund; nevertheless, there would still be some distribution next year, and statistically, the fund (if it is a “trusted” fund with a good and long record) will rebound.

3: Apart from bond and equity funds, the investor should also have some savings in FD or money-market funds to act as reserved pool of money to dip into when the income distribution is lower in that particular year.

Cheers. Keep investing... and keep holding - the right asset and risk allocation.

Please note the "sell" as in 'sell, sell, sell" or "buy low, sell high" in previous posts is NOT actually referring to selling back the fund to the fund company. It should be read as "switching from one fund to another fund".

It would be silly to exit and sell back the fund to the fund company, and later buying it again. It is silly to pay the entrance fee or service charge again.

There could be a switching fee to pay when switching from one fund to another, but the fee is usually lower than the service charge, since the switching fee is usually a flat fee of xx amount per switch, whereas the service charge is a percentage based on the switched amount.

Now, don't try to figure out what is the minimal amount that should be switched that will make the transaction more worthwhile to exit and re-enter. If you do, I would say that the switch is not necessary in the first place, and just adding unnecessary expenses into the mutual fund investment.

Try to have a plan: how much to buy each time, and what funds to have. This will avoid over-buying a fund, and the need to "sell" it.

Cheers.

PS. Selling back the fund to the fund company is also known as "repurchase".


This post has been edited by j.passing.by: May 24 2015, 06:09 PM

Back to Basics

Continuing on with the “Back to Basics” series... These posts are on the fundamentals of mutual fund (also known as unit trust), and are purposely titled for ease of search; sort of ‘tagging’ them.

Income Distribution

While FD has interest, and fixed-price fund (such as EPF and ASB) has dividends; variable priced mutual fund has ‘income distribution’.

It is important to note that it is not a play on words or giving different names to the same thing. Income distribution is NOT interest or dividend. More on this latter, as there are 2 things that are needed to know about income distribution:

1: The fund’s policy on income distribution.
Normally, the policy is either “incidental” or “annual”. The former is usually when the fund is a growth fund, and hence, will only declare a distribution when the fund made some gains.

The latter means that the fund will make an annual distribution (whether this is any real growth or not); and normally, it is an Income or Dividend fund.

Please note some funds are ‘semi-annual’, such as PDSF (Public Dividend Select Fund) and PIDF (Public Islamic Dividend Fund).

2: Your option of having the distribution as “Re-Invest” or “Payout”.
By default, the option is set to “re-invest”; meaning that the distributed amount (in ringgit) is converted to more units in the fund. The 2nd option means that cheque will be made out to you (or directly transferred into your bank account.)

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, and the market prices of the stocks the fund is holding on that particular day.

Hence, Income Distribution is not accumulated gains or interests that are being paid out. If there is any gain, it is already priced into the NAV/unit price; and which you can attain the gain anytime you wished to, by redeeming the fund at anytime you want, before or after the distribution.

Income distribution is an exercise to give out some money to investors who elected the “payout” option.

(If the distribution option selected is “Re-Invest”, the money is used to buy more units. Since there are now more units, the NAV per unit is then re-priced. After all is said and done, the NAV/unit price is lowered; but the NET value is still the same – meaning that what you have, in ringgit amount, in the fund is still the same - before or after a “re-invest” distribution.)

Master Prospectus

The above info on distribution policy can be found in the prospectus of the fund.

(Prospectus - a document describing the major features of a proposed literary work, project, business venture, etc., in enough detail so that prospective investors, participants, or buyers may evaluate it. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/prospectus )

It is advisable to read the master prospectus – which group all the available funds together into one document, to get to know more details of the fund and to compare the funds.

And try to read between the lines too; as it is, after all, a marketing document to present the fund in the best manner to present and market itself.

I would take lightly the “Suggested Minimum Investment Period” which is usually 3-5 years. Please read back the previous post on “Annualized Rates and Service Charges.”

Cheers. Keep investing.

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

One thing good about Public Mutual is that they are predictable and efficient in their procedures in handling income distributions. It would help a senior and DIY investor, who is relying on distribution income to finance his/her retirement, to determine which bond or equity funds to have in his/her portfolio.

As usual, Public Mutual had declared income distribution on the last working day of the month, which is yesterday, for those funds with financial year ending 31st May. The re-invested units could be updated in PMO latest by Tuesday.

Cheers.

1. How much were you expecting from PDSF?
One sen distribution over its NAV/unit price on 29th May, which is 0.2858, is 3.5%. And bear in mind that the distribution is semi-annual.

2. Interbank via Maybank.
Not sure on what the interbank charge would be, as I normally do purchasing using a savings account in Public Bank. I would think it would be the same as using a debit card - which is zero, I believed? I don't have any debit card either!

1. You can start by reading some of the previous posts in this thread and other related threads in this forum. There was a good post in the previous page with lots of links... answering almost the same question as yours.

2. Choose the fund company. Know the type of categories of the funds. Then choose the fund to invest in. See also Morningstar Malaysia - how they rate the funds, choose those funds with 4 or 5 stars.

3. Mutual fund or unit trust is still relatively new in Malaysia compared to the US. Public Mutual is among the oldest. So there is not much historical statistic to refer to, but a 8% pa. could be considered as the better return.

WELCOME TO THIS PUBLIC MUTUAL THREAD.

Hi,

Welcome to this thread and forum.

It is a forum to share our thoughts and opinions on unit trust, and not necessary only unit trust distributed by Public Mutual.

While fellow posters will endeavour to answer any questions enquired here, they are no means obliged to answer them or answer them in a timely manner. We are, after all, not paid to do so, or to monitor the forum 24/7.

Please be reminded that investing into unit trust is not rocket science. It is part and parcel of personal money management. Common sense and light weight money management is all that is necessary to have.

Some basic words or jargons, and financial/investment concepts, as matter of course, would be necessary to be clarified for better understanding. And more often than not, they have been answered in this thread or in the previous thread.

While you might get a faster answer by asking the same question anew, you might get a better answer in your own time by browsing back some pages or the previous thread.

Seriously, you are not doing yourself any favour by looking for a fast answer to something basic such as how to invest or what to invest.

I would take my time to do some reading and then more reading beforehand. Yeah, I a bit paranoid... how would I trust some strangers in the internet that he/she is giving the right answer, or maybe there is an hidden motive to sell me something or to mislead me on purpose. If I don’t have a bit of knowledge on the subject matter, would not it be too easy to bs me bulat-bulat?

I would also recommend that you do the readings and search for more info using a desktop PC with at least a 20 inch flat screen. It is much easier to do a proper search and research by opening multiple windows. There is a difference in using a desktop version or mobile version too. The filter tool “Show posts by this member” is not available in the mobile version. It is handy to filter out other posts and show only my posts. LOL.

Once again, to Newbies: Welcome to this forum.

To others: thank you for sharing your thoughts and experience.

To trolls: thank you for the laughs.

Cheers.

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.

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...