maybe should be glad not in the oil and gas line. Petronas already gave alert, and banks acted accordingly... BSN internal memo for confidential viewing at the top level leaked to public... upfront, reject loans by staff and rank in the O&G.

PS. I guess you're not in O&G... else pardon please if inevitably adding salt to wound.

What to do... free advice can be too cheap to believe. And some folks still having the wrong perception that the advisors, consultants or whatever the title - that they not only managed the client's wealth, but they should also create wealth - preferably in double digits growth of not less than 20%.

(What the fuck of having 8-12% growth with the aid and help of a "wealth consultant", when this is easily done with fixed-price funds.)

And they (the advisors/contsultants) must be able to give timely advice when to invest, and again give timely advice when to pull out, plus which region/sector to invest and again, when to pull out of the region/sector - and do all these every 6 months or so; with a time frame of 2-3 days to pull out before the market goes down, and must be able to pour back the investment right at the lowest point of the market dip.

If they can't do all these, what good is a advisor/consultant. Can listen for free from the morons talking about long term & regular investments (what the jokers were repeatedly chirping like the birds... DCA, DCA...RSP, RSP... VA,VA).

.... that does not sound like a bird... or maybe the bird was at Batu Caves.

Any time as in any day? Then maybe you are talking about shares - as in day trading; not that easy to achieve that in a mutual fund, which is a well diversified portfolio of shares, with usually the highest allocation in a single entity is only 2%. A stock market does not fall or rise above 2-3% everyday - but any stock component of the index can easily be +/- 10% every trading day.

One will have to have a lot of patience to achieve that 8% with UT.

Yes, the front end load is a necessary expense to join the club. The annual charges & fees, I don't see them as any expenses at all as they are not out of my wallet - what we should see are the reported returns, which is the NET returns. 8% is 8% Even if they creamed off 5% yet able to give 8%...then the money is already optimised by having it in the UT fund than say, FD.

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jan 25 2016, 05:03 PM

One of those rare articles that I agreed with...

Would they still be advisors/consultants instead of enjoying their lives in their island-resort homes?

50-50 is in the short term, and how the money/savings were invested. The historical track records is there for all to research... beating FD is peanuts, as track record can even overrun EPF/fixed-price funds by a wide margin.

Casino motto: In the long run, the house always win.
So stay and bet the long term with the house...

Talking about track records... I think some investors have the betting mindset too. Let's see... open big last 3 rounds, chances is higher it will be small...

Fund A has a poorer record than Fund B in the past 2 months/years, chances are higher that Fund A will out run Fund B soon... let's bet on Fund A.

Yes, maybe UT have 50-50 win/lose record, but that is UT as a whole group. If there are 100 funds, and 50 have bad losing records, why bet on these 50, and not the other 50?

Choose la those better funds...

Every investment is a gamble. If we know the future, then it is not an investment.

Argument is now going in circles... see the above post on 'casino motto'. If no luck in the first 5/10 years, stay longer... keeping on betting too with regular purchases!

R U in trolling mode now?

Love to hand over the money to you, (even though you have not shown any track record, and very fast demanding 1%) but the better half (with proven track record of at least 10% and more) have already taken the money.

Seriously, any investment without risk is not an investment. The 'gamble' is a calculated risk...

How is examining the business fundamentals, visiting the business makes the investment risk free? We can see the future that it will not fail? It is calculated-risk as you rightly said. Why that calculated-risk cannot be applied to a particular mutual fund by its track record?

Or are you talking bs by taking the UT industry as a whole and single entity, and on the other hand examning each business/stock as individuals on its merits?

hell... the new X-Files was boring... fell asleep.

Read the 1st para carefully... in the following paras, I was writing as another person with misplaced expectations. Get it?

What some folks were looking for was wealth CREATORS, not wealth managers/consultants. That was my premise in that post... that was my response after reading some of the many posts of losing money, UT consultants were cheats and don't offer much help.

Why is it not going in circles when I feel like talking to a character from that Drew Barrymore movie with short term memory?
"Hello, Bob. How are you?", "Fine. Do you like a cup of tea?", "Yes, please", "Hello, I'm Bob. Have we met before?"

Investing in any business is a calculated risk. Everyone agress on this, and I was among the first to say so... did not denied it.
So lets go back to the initial issue (in a circle) - what is UT then? Isn't it an equity fund a collection of equities listed in the stock exchange? Do we have to explained how the business got listed in the 1st place? Do we have to explained that the Fund Manager will have to screen many equities before making his selections?

While I am like most of us here are not a financial professional with every details and facts, but at least try to write with a bit of common sense and try not to bs too much la... until the bs becomes acceptable to gullible readers.

Good night! Maybe something more interesting is on on CNBC...

1. How secured is your job? Can you easily get another job (if retrenched) within 6 months? Or do you actually need more than that to see through 6 months without income, yet able to settle all monthly installments & expenses?

2. Long term - is just a concept and everybody has a different time frame for these 2 words, and often misused. To me, long term can be more than 20 years; and to some anything more than 5 years. So, take into account what is the investment objective, then put in an appropriate time frame to achieve the objective.

4. There may be several and different objectives running at the same time. So put this into consideration and don't lump everything together; separate them and view & review each savings/investments to each objective.

5. Any objective less than 5 years, consider less volatile/agressive funds - so that when you need the money, you can pull out at anytime. Murphy's law applys, which goes something like this: When things go bad, it will goes bad at the wrong time. So don't get caught by some market downturn when the funds were at their lowest value, but you need the money and cannot delay...

(Less volatile funds will also go down same as the more volatile funds, but they go down less and with lesser pain...)

6. 10 years and more, consider riskier funds. Higher risk, higher rewards. See the recent posts exchanged between me and Pink Spider.

7. RSP - that's the way to go. Even that article linked by a regular poster, What Should You Do If You Invested At The “Top”?, can be summarised in 2 short sentences: Didn't do RSP er? Too bad.

8. Of course, all of the above you already knew - since you have already stepped into UT. Actually nothing much new to tell, UT investment can be as simple as it can be - not rocket science or anything much, except when investors wrongly thought there must be some secret formulas not revealed to them and preventing them from getting their fair share of untold riches that can be had.



This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jan 26 2016, 06:34 PM

I think you are heading in the right direction. Read widely, and think what is appropriate to your own situation and objective.

What we read, either here in this forum or elsewhere, might not be applicable to us. The targeted audience of the books/articles might not be for our age group. As in this forum, the opinions can be too general and not for every age groups - readers, please be aware.

In the other thread, I had pinpointed 3 different groups by ages - young, intermediate, and elderly; but did not specifically named the ages then. I would guess the first group would be from age 20 to 45. The 2nd group from 45 to 55, and the 3rd group, 55 and above. And going by the objective of having supplementary income for retirement.

For any other shorter term financial goals for some specific purpose, like holidays or wedding or downpayment for a house in 3-5 years, I think there should be some cautious in investing into equity funds. One may try to use a VA investment strategy, and my advice would be don't be too greedy, and should take the money and run when the savings/investments had reached the targeted sum of money! (Be it from compounded growth or by sheer effort of our savings from the monthly paychecks.)

As to whether it is better to invest during a downtrend or uptrend, I would say neither! If it is a true DCA for the (really) long term, it should be as soon as possible.

I doubt anyone can tell for sure what trend we are now at - up or down. Only time can tell for sure when it had past, the rear view mirror phenomenon. As in a motto of a branded shoe - "Just Do It!" Otherwise, we will be asking this same question everytime - "Should I purchase now or wait another month?" And before you knew it, it would be the end of the year and months had been wasted.

And we will find ourselves in another difficult situation, as we will have accumulated and build up savings from the past months of non-investment. Another additional question to think about: "How much should I invest now or should I keep some for next month?"

As mentioned, if this is a true DCA for the long term - then "Just Do it!". If there are doubts that the "long term" is not really long term, and not long enough to cover any up/down trends, then change the motto to: "Just Stick to FD".

LOL

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

PS. I don't think much of a diversified portfolio or asset allocation. They are mainly for the 3rd age group. Always optimised the ROI, especially if in the 1st age group.

Diversify and asset allocation are hedging the funds because (a) we are not too sure which would give the best returns, and (b) when we want to set a minimal ROI we must have each year - either for supplementary retirement income or because we can't bear to see high losses.

Okay for the 1st reason - by having not only the top no. 1 choice, but also the top 2 and 3. The rational is that the top no. 1 might not be the top no. 1 every year. (But if the top no. 1 is a truebreed champion, why hedge and lower the ROI?)

Not so the the 2nd reason... as this means money into bonds/mm/income funds as this contravenes the "always optimised the ROI" rule. Or maybe he is a young & retired guy without regular income who do not want to be categorised into the 3rd group yet.

This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Jan 27 2016, 12:14 AM

I agreed too. UT and stocks, different. Let's say we run out of money in our regular purchase and stopped further purchases:
a) stocks - will remain 'static' and only moves with the market.
b) UT - it is not static, as it is 'actively mangaged' by the fund manager, equities withn the UT will be added and discarded...