The storm has not been over in USA. Earlier this year, there were many indicators pointed they will be heading to recession at end of this year. Now that their fed had reduced the discount rate, their next worry will be inflation.

Imagine the americans salary raise is slower than the goods price raise. They will be getting poorer and poorer in the real terms. We can expect they will have less consumption power and experience lower real growth.... this has been reflected in the oil price futures.

If you are young and aggressive, you can take the risk and gamble on the current stock market situation.

If you are near retirement age or are retired, I think it's a bad idea for you to invest too much, you can still try to take advantage of this market, but limit to max 25-50% of your portfolio.

The stock market future is uncertain.

Yea do switching, don't ever sell your UT unless you need the cash la.

Our market won't crash completely unless something happen to our firm earnings/fundamentals. But it wouldn't pick up until our investors have regain the confidence.

Seems like our economy is recovering good, if our market does not get shaken much with the next credit fear, I believe KLCI still can breach the 1400 points within this year.

Another real estate fund on market.

http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?f...67&sec=business

You see the fund objective of PRSF. It invests in bluechips and growth stocks. If our stock market is recovering, sure it does as well.

I'd go for islamic type of bond funds. The reason is many of these firms that issued bonds could get 'support' from government if anything goes wrong. Hence default risk is much lower.

There are many scams around. Even the highly educated people like lawyers, doctors have fallen to these traps. We have heard about swiss fund, blackstone fund etc... People were investing millions in those and then found out the funds are non-existant. All the savings gone for that little greed..........

This is why we should only invest in SC approved funds.

Well, the mutual fund industry will continuously evolve and become more and more competitive. Refer to our neighbor singapore, I pulled some data from one of their biggest fund company - UOB Asset Management.

Service Charge stated in prospectus = up to 5%
Normal purchase = 5%
CPF (like Msian EPF) purchase = 3%
Purchase using online portal = 2%

Purchase online means DIY portfolio, some online portals offer financial advice for a certain fee or free if the client invests over x amount.

When this trend come to Msia, many mutual fund agents will lose their source of income. Only those with CFP and recognized qualifications can stay in this industry. Financial planners will switch their income source from commission based to fee based.

By then, only the rich and big players can afford the service of financial planners. OSK has a financial planning division, charging min. RM 1k per plan. While others are charging hundreds/hour for consultation fee.

As per now, there are only 3k+ fully qualified CFPs in Msia with only about 1k working in mutual fund industry. Whereas mutual fund agents # = 30k+. It means 20k+ agents will be gone when the time arrives. And we can expect this time to come soon, could be in 1-3 years time.

Oh... theres one important thing people need to be aware of, some fund companies claim they charge zero or very low initial service charge, but they charge on exit fee (aka repurchase fee).

Nowadays the UT company advertisement are very 'poor' in sending the message to public. Lots of * and T&Cs on the advertisement everywhere. Investors are advised to go through the prospectus before making any investment.

Always read the prospectus and ask the agent if you have any doubt on any of the clause.

Edison,

I personally do not advise people getting a balanced fund (except for switching purpose to save the initial cost). I do not know about your financial status, can't recommend the best fund to you. Could your friend explain why you should invest in any of those funds but not others ? New agents can improve their knowledge by attending more in-house training and investment talk. There's a PM investment talk in tropicana tomorrow, the fund managers will share their views and interact with public directly, get your friend to attend it and share the info with you la.

PIX somehow overlap with PRSF. Refer to your quarterly report top holdings for each fund and you will get what I mean. PIX is a little more aggressive than PRSF. You have a lot of local equity funds already. Maybe it's time to diversify a bit ?

Depends on your risk appetite,

Aggressive - China Select, Smallcap (Smallcap doesn't overlap much with your PRSF)
Moderate - Asian/Far East Dividend funds (strong fundamentals)
Conservative - Bond funds

Try to avoid direct exposure to US/Europe. Expect volatility from credit issue in short term.

---

Added on August 29, 2007, 11:25 pmJapan economy has not been doing well in the recent years. You can check the single country japan UTs offered in SG. Most of them were losing money. Only recently they showed sign of recovery. Property is booming there, stock market *ahem*... still not good. Stocks are trading at very high P/E and earning growth is very low.

Here in Msian UT industry, at this point of time, I think only property funds invest in Japan.

This post has been edited by ejleemy: Aug 29 2007, 11:25 PM

You can always switch into any fund (except for the closed funds). Only req = Minimum units 1k and NAV RM 1k.

The investment area of Asia Ittikal and China select are very different. It depends on which part of the market do you expect to see higher gains.

China select is a bit high now.. Many of their stocks are trading at 20+ P/E ratio. It's only worth it if the growth can be sustained. Personally I only inject my money there when the NAV goes below 0.215, at that price, the holding average P/E is around or less than 20 P/E from my calculation.

The transparency of mutual funds are somewhere between stocks and ETFs.

There are various reasons why they don't publish everything on a too frequent basis. They actually do submit a daily activity summary report to their trustee before publishing closing prices everyday. The trustee role here is to ensure everything being run fair and at the best interest of investors. All holdings of a fund are actually under name of the fund trustee and not under the mutual fund company. So even if your mutual fund company goes bankcrupt, your money are still there.

And all these trustee services are charged for a 0.07 or 0.08% (subject to a min and max amount) of the fund NAV.

This chart will give you a good idea on where do capital protected funds stand in the risk-reward model.

Occasionally there are some star funds that could outperform the average by a huge margin, but do not expect that to be happen too often.

Full link here :-
http://biz.thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?f...23&sec=business


Attached image(s)

Yes, as long as you have >1000 units AND >RM 1000 worth of NAV in the fund.

The calculation of Mutual Gold Qualifying Point is based on your initial investment of equity fund only. Bond/MM funds do not count.

If you withdraw or switch to a bond fund, the points will be deducted. When you invest additional money, your points will increase by the amount of money you invested.

If you are wondering how do they provide you with all these Mutual Gold benefits ? It's from the fund annual management fee of ~1.5% (higher for foreign funds). Say you have 100k in equity fund and PM will take 1.5k from your fund every year to cover all the expenses - admin, fund managers salary & bonus, mutual gold etc

There's a limit with pink form with initial and monthly contribution. You can't channel 100k all at once with service charge free funds. So practically it takes months/years to invest all your $$$ using this agent priviledge. And remember there's always an opportunity cost for everything.

More accurate one should be, the fund is very similar to PB ASEAN Dividend Fund.

http://www.publicmutual.com.my/page.aspx?name=PBADF

The risk level is aggressive, higher risk than most and a bit lower than PCSF. The potential growth is high but major problem is political instability and corruption IMO.

---

Added on September 25, 2007, 8:43 amDiversify ma. Put a bit outside of Msia, a bit in bonds, a bit of cash/FD depends on your risk profile.

This post has been edited by ejleemy: Sep 25 2007, 08:43 AM

It's not really short term la, just add some timing to reap bigger profits and avoid losses with those additional investments.