Same best wishes from me too.

I think we have travelled quite a distance since our first post in this thread... learning and picking up some pointers along the way.

Learning some buys were bad, some were good... hopefully there are more wins than loses... sometimes too greedy for more, sometimes too cautious and not wanting more... getting more cautious as we aged older.

Yet not forgetting the aim of the holding mutual funds and the financial objective of starting the investment years ago... to achieve financial freedom.

Do you use the watchlist and find it useful? What improvement would be good to have?

As far as I know, the equity funds I have and held previously are quite stable and keeping track with their market indices.

Unlike a single stock that can swing up or down in high percentages in a single day independent of the market and other similar stocks in the same sector.

If the market trend is at 52 weeks low, I would roughly know the funds are at 52 weeks low too, and they would hardly change too much such that I must buy today or tomorrow instead of 2-3 days later, or else I will miss the opportunity and regret missing the train, so to speak.

I doubt the watchlists would help any. If they do, many would come forward with their great buys over the past year when the markets were shitty and how helpful were the apps.

One should always remember the initial objective and purpose of putting money into mutual funds.

Often and usually the objective is for long term investment, and a major reason of having long term investment is to have compounding growth.

"Compounding" simply means getting interest on interest or getting returns on returns. If the profit is trim and taken away, there is no compounding.

In short term investments, it is better to take everything off the table once the investment goal is reached.

And not to forget, mutual funds are not great short term investments... because of their slow growth, in comparison to buying stocks directly.

Mutual funds move in tandem to their benchmarks or stock index, they are relatively stable and moving less than 0.5% daily... in comparison, an individual stock can moves easily up to 20% in a day.

"Taking profit" as often heard in stock trading, do not necessary means just taking the profit. The profit can be many times over the initial invested amount. "Taking profit" can mean to say he is taking the initial investment plus some profit, and letting the remaining amount rides further on the stock. If the stock tank the next day, he has already taken back his investment plus some profit off the table.

If the short term objective of buying and having mutual funds is to seek fantastic returns of 2 or 3 times returns over the invested amount, meaning 200 to 300% in a matter of months as similar to investing into stocks and hence "take profits"... dream on.

I wouldn't read too much what posted by FSM as they are often copy and paste from other sources and not able to distinguish between investing in equities and investments in unit trust funds.

And the above is for fund managers, not us fund investors.

This year is a good year for U.S. equities, the DOW index is up around 20%. And Apple ytd growth is nearly 80%.

This is this year growth and info/news which is more relevant to an equity investor than to an unit trust investor.

P.s. Market news/speculations/expectations has less bearings on long term unit trust investments. AFAIK, the proven method is regular accumulation of equity funds over many years of not less than 10 years, preferably longer over 20 years.



This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Dec 21 2019, 09:17 AM

If keeping track of the purchases in excel, can easily use the xirr function to get the irr.

Only data needed is the purchase date, the purchase value in ringgit (negative number), any withdrawals (date and amount (positive number), and the current date and total current amount.

The current market selloff is due to the virus, it has disrupted the supplies from China and affected many companies like Apple and other American companies having businesses and selling products in China and/or their products are partly made in China.

Also affecting those in the tourism and travel industries... airlines, hotels, cruise companies, and even in the entertainment sector as there are much lesser ticket sells in theaters and concerts. Even the recent airshow in Singapore has lower attendance than previous years.

On CNBC a few minutes ago, "Yellen: Virus could put the U.S. into recession.".

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Locally, it seems that people here are boh kia si and not worry about this eminent and present danger that could disrupt normal lives when there could be quarantines and lockdowns to contain any outbreaks.

How ready are companies here in evacuating the company premises and buildings as like DBS Singapore?

Global companies like Nestle have already restricted their staff from travel.

How much would you gain by chasing the drop? What's your strategy? Put in everything you have in one day or spread over a few days or weeks?

If spread over days/weeks, where got kick? Only small gains.

Mind you, the drops can be in drips day by day, when the event is over or nearly over, the bounce can be huge and recover back to its previous level in one day.

Don't forget this is unit trusts we are talking about, the buying is forward buying. No such thing as last minute buying as in stocks. If hear tips/rumours in the morning or previous night that market will turn around the next day, it is too late to make purchases to make extraordinary gains.

This is somewhat related to your previous post on whether the buy has any significant impact or not on the current holding.

Keyword is "current" holding. If you are just starting a long term DCA plan, the current holding would be less than 10% of your final holding.

You'll have to take into account your long term investing... the longer the investment period, each buy becomes less significant.

DCA is a long term regular purchase strategy. It does not mean buy and hold for long term, like 10 years or more.

It means you spread the investment over a long period by regular buyings over 10 years or more.

If you are making regular purchases each month for 10 years or more, each purchase is less than 1% of the total purchases.

So if the market index jumps 5% as like the dow last night, and you manage to make a purchase last Friday, the extraordinary gain is 5% x 1% = 0.05%

Even if you allotted 10 times your normal monthly amount, it is just 0.5%.

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What you're saying in your posts was more on short term strategy and timing the entry and exit.

I would suggest "hit and run". Don't make any small regular purchases. You hit & run by going all in and pulling all out.

If the timing is good, hit & run has significantly impact, has the oomph.

Market sell-off! What say the opportunity buyers? Already bought or still waiting since 2 weeks ago? Wait another 2 weeks till April?

All in? Or just regular top up, but extra rm500?

Or sell today to cut lost... buy back in 1-2 weeks at lower price?

Btw buy big cap mutual funds or buy listed reits in the MY/SG stock market? Which is safer?

This should have been done years ago. If you have personally witness this cross border commute to work in the morning, you would really kesian these cross border commuters. It is madness.

Malaysia should insist on behalf of all of them daily cross border commuters that the employers should have worker hostels available in Singapore.

Or have special arrangement for these people to cross border to work:
- Travel without passports.
- Special identity cards issued by Singapore instead of passports or MYkad,
- Facial recognition technology instead of auto gates.
- An expanded low bridge alongside the causeway, 100% funded by Singapore.

How sure are you or anyone else that it will drop some more, another 20% or so?

Or maybe is it already too late to pull out as the bottom already reached?

You not scared that the turnaround/rebound can be sudden and you can miss the entry? There is so much talk on pent-up demand and stimulus... U.S. considering $750 billion stimulus, news of vaccine available, etc.

Also the turnaround could, unfortunately for us, happen when we have 2-3 days public holidays in Malaysia… then we will be caught standing on the sideline watching the market rally like no tomorrow.

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PS. Please don't take above too seriously... just spewing kopitiam talk.

wah... if like this, many months downtrend, maybe 1 yr, maybe 2 yrs... no need to blow breeze...

1st wait for dow 24k, then 21k, then 16k... like this better dca lor. No need analyze, no need think so much.

rookie mistake la in choosing deepest fall instead of forecasting which will have the highest potential.

local funds... stay far far away. 4.4 to USD and no sight of going below 3.8.

below 3.0 ... dream on.

This is easy kopitiam talk... everyone has his own opinion, and it is equally valid as any other opinions.

Large cap fund in Asia region and greater China region.

There are now more covid-19 related deaths outside of China. While new domestic cases in China is zero, more cases increasing in Europe and USA.

It could possibly China or Japan, Korea, Taiwan or even possible Singapore developing a vaccine first.

Asian markets will recover and rebound first.

Local market is still heavily related to oil price and foreign investments, which in turn is related to political stability.

Or rather the better word, instability. This is a fact... whenever coalition parties have to horse-trade to form the government, it is not too stable.

Today markets...

HSI 5.05%
NIFTY 5.83%
KLCI 6.85%
KOSPI 7.44%

Sometimes, I feel that buying UT fund and forward pricing is like playing poker and other players can see through the cards and know what cards you are holding.

When you wanted to buy, the price makes sudden high jumps. When you sell, the market will drop sharply in the last trading hour.

Maybe we all drones controled by a queen bee, and we don't realize we are drones.

When we sell, other drones are also selling. When we buy, all the drones act together.

That's why when we buy, the price will always shoot up; when sell, the closing price will always drop.

"For investors looking to deploy, be prepared to average down because we don’t know how long this will last. "

"We foresee a similar pattern for markets again, but we are not itching to go back into the market so quickly"

First say average down, meaning make regular small purchases and don't wait because don't know and cannot predict how long it will last. Then turn around and can see patterns and can predict the market and when to wait and time the market.

The problem with these sort of articles on interviews are that it is not certain whether the advices or suggestions are to investors of ut funds or to retail investors in the share market.

And what does it means by the coast is clear. When the event causing the market sell-of is over? When the market index us back to or nearly back to its peak level before the market sell-of?

Anyhow, Dow Jones has jumped up about 20% in 3 trading days... from Tuesday to yesterday.

It is still in play... 'Chinese' virus cases went above 80k today and surpass China's total cases.... maybe in 1-2 weeks, another market sell-off again... and DJ go below 16k... "see, I told you guys this will happen...".



This post has been edited by j.passing.by: Mar 27 2020, 03:07 PM

Some suggestions:

- If nothing to buy due to timing, buy bond funds. Not money-market funds. MM funds is costly to hold... comparing the returns in EPF.

- Switch between bond funds and equity funds. Don't switch back to EPF.

- Take profit when above 10% and switch back to bond funds. But take note that when the drop is sharp, the profit can easily goes up to 20% in matter of days/weeks. Some equity funds has rise more than 20% since mid March.

(If an index drops 25%, it has to rise up 33% to reach back its previous level.)

- When bond funds fall, the equity funds will drop too... but bond funds will fall much lesser... if you're having bond funds and monitoring them, then it is time to switch to equity funds.

- If nothing happens... nothing to buy, nothing to sell... I think bond funds can give better returns than EPF this year.

If so, you're looking at the wrong region/market for either bond or equity funds. When bond funds not giving the desired returns, switch to equity... don't wait and do nothing.

Local sukuk funds... annualised 7%+ since late 2018.

Last year was a good year for bond funds... the funds I holding are in Public Mutual, which are not selling in FSM.

2019 returns:
Public Sukuk 7.55%
PB Sukuk 7.59%
PB Aiman Sukuk 9.00%

The bond funds dipped in March - lost about 3%+, and had recovered in April and May. Dipping again this week... with negative daily increments. If holding since late 2018 or early 2019, the annualised returns is still above 7%, regardless of the dips.

They can be monitored by looking at the daily increments... about 0.02% to 0.03%. which will be about 6% to 9% in a year.

Money market funds, daily increments 0% to 0.01%... less than 3.6% a year.

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Regarding timing the market, one have to stay ahead of the market. For example, if pull out the entire portfolio of bond funds in March, would escape the lost 3%+, and then jump into equities in Mid March to early April to gain the fast recovery.

Then the portfolio would have gained 25%+ in 2 months. Take profit next week and put the port into bond funds for the rest of the year. Chill and relax... 30% gains in the pocket this year.

It sounds so easy in hindsight!