As Sir John Templeton aptly says, "History shows that time, not timing, is the key to investment success. Therefore, the best time to buy stocks is when you have money."

I think the purpose of DCA is to invest in a disciplined manner with emphasis on regular investment within a stipulated time frame ie every week/month with less emphasis on market condition. And also in order for DCA to work properly, liquidity is a must. So for you to say stop all dca because you foresee the market is on a downturn in the medium run defeat the purpose of DCA. Maybe you can reduce the amount for now to do your DCA but not totally stop your investment.

No correct or wrong way... some people "trade" the fund by buying in and out. Others buy and keep long term...

It all depend on which style suits you best. If u plan to buy and sell often, u must be damn sure that your timing of the market is good.

Good that you know that it is not easy to time the investments like a pro... so we do the next best thing: spread out the investments as long as possible, in as many times as possible. Chances are that 50% will be well timed, 50% not.

Say if the total amount to invest or to save is 100k... then spread the 100k into 100 months or many more months with 1k or less every month.

Then you will also see the reason to hold and not sell... since you are going to increase the investment every month and will be buying more nest month.

It will then be very fickle to sell this month, when there is a plan to buy more next month.

Unless of course, you know for sure what will happen next week or month... so you sell first then buy back again. Which bring us back to the start of this post...

Never forget that unit trust is still a basket of stocks. You never know if after 10 years when you need the money, it's a bear market like in 2008. Will you withdraw that time?

Fund works by collecting a group of people's money and buy stocks or bonds. Imagine trying to buy google yourself. It's expensive on your own but it's cheap for a fund as they have access to millions of RM/dollars. When the fund buy, what the fund buy, when they are sell are decided by a fund manager. The fund manager can be a single person or can be a group of people.

Read this for more info
http://www.moneysense.gov.sg/understanding...nit-trusts.aspx

I don't know what you are talking about "fund will take the profit and re-invest into the fund annually." You can get your profit by selling the funds you own. If you don't sell, it's profit on paper which can be wipe out in the next big bear market.

Yes, you can make losses in the future as mentioned if you see in the depths of a bear market, good luck. However, in the long term, market always goes up. The question is how far up? 
When to sell?
1) you can sell when you need the money - a rather bad thing to do if you ask me (eg selling at the depths of 2008)
2) sell after it reach certain % profit say 18% profit.
3) sell if the fund is under performing it's peers (other fund which invest in same sector)
4) sell and re balance once a year once it goes above your allocation. Say yo u put in 20% into equities but because market is red hot, your allocation becomes 30%. You can sell off your 10% so that your equities portion come back down to 20%.

For me, I choose 2). Easier to carry out.

For funds like PRS which cannot be sold off, just topup when market is down.
You have to know why the market is down. Interest rate going up, chicken headed investors want a bigger margin of safety for stocks. Eg, US 10 years treasury can give 3%, why should they invest in a stock which can give 3% dividend yield? The stock giving 3% dividend yield must be able to give 5% dividend yield for it to be attractive. To get 5% yeld, the price have no choice but to come down. Then there's also increasing rates means business need to fork out more money to pay loans, which means less money available for dividends to shareholders, hence the price comes down. If you have bought on an earlier date, most likely your portfolio will still be in the green (like mine). But if you have been buying last year (quite near the peak/peak), most likely you will be in the red.  Your only choice is
1) sit tight, don't do anything
2) average down your buying price

i think what u want to know is dividend distribution.. all dividend is reinvested back into the fund and the NAV will be adjusted accordingly. However dividend in UT doesnt work like stocks so you dont actually gain anything in real life. It just makes the NAV smaller n u get more units to reflect the same value. U can see the 1st page for more info. I also suggest you revisit FSM FAQ

Dont use buy and forget strategy. This is definitely not correct way to invest. If you wan to employ this way, its best to go for FSM managed portfolio or some other UT managers out there.

DIY UT should be monitored from time to time and the performance compared to its benchmark and peers.

"... in the end, I might even making loses?"

Unit trust funds are long term investments... you are investing for the future, the next 10 or 20 or 30 years... if you believe the future is bright and the world is growing and developing at a steady pace, and people and society will be more civilise and richer in life and financially ... it is difficult to imagine that the equities of the best run companies and corporations of the world will not expand, and the value of their stocks will not grow.

In the end, chances are very likely that there won't be any losses. The only matter of concern is how profitable is the investment. What will be the effective rate of returns?

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About effective rate of returns or IRR... most tend to forget that the IRR of any investment begins the moment you received any money and holding it in your hand.

If you are holding it in cash for donkey years, the IRR is zero for donkey years...

If you put it in FD or an savings account in the bank, the rate of interest you receive is the IRR... for donkey years.

Say, you have waited and waited for the right time or year to invest into UT... guess what is the IRR after donkey years in cash or FD, and after transferring the cash or FD to an UT investment in the first year?

Not to mention the lost of opportunity in the donkey years of minor growth, although minor but still higher than FD interest...

Another thing about IRR is that it gets more and more stable after each passing year... after many, many moons, and if the fund gets hit by a big drop of several percentages... the IRR hardly moves.
(And in each dip and crash, the long time investor will be unfazed by the dip when he looks at the overall ROI and its IRR. He might even be thinking of taking advantage of the dip and investing more... )

I'e been holding KGF since last year and it is still negative.
I've really no idea what the fund managers are doing.

I don't agree on this opinion. If u invest only in 1 fund n that fund tank. Gone case. Remember eastspring small cap? Affin hwang quantum? IDS?

Don't play2 with a one fund strategy

i think almost anything that are related to SCAP had been been affected,
the index had been flat since April 2017 till Jan 2018 then it dived from early FEB 2018....
see chart as in post 13726 page 687

I wish I knew. That's why there is no such thing as guarantee best fund.

I suggest you all stop into MY EQ.

the drop just started. and can't see the end yet. I myself already regret for not withdraw myself fully from MYEQ.

we better be step aside, watch and see. my thinking is that, now the market will drop for sure. the hole yet to be seen. and you don't know deep you will fall. and how long for you take time to recover from this fall. let say you DCA 6 months in KGF, this 6 month it drop approximately 8%. I doubt it will take longer time to rise than the time of fall. so initially, you already lost 8% and SC charges. and the time to recover? everyday counts.

I may sound foolish but. this 6 months teach me a lot.

this corrections is not minor correction where you DCA 4 to 6 time then can rebound.

thank God my gut feel to withdraw fromKGF fully save my ass.

and those who holding, hope the best, KGF is not the next IDS.
now for bond.

rating confirm drop.

debt Gdp 65% is deadly. and 1 trillion debt is hilarious. fed rate hike. even our local bond also will kena.

I don't know what to do anymore. I just feel that DCA during time like this just so wrong. and just hope I am wrong.

the market is so so so volatile now.

yesterday SGX even stop halfway.

as per your experience, should i pull out of KGF ?

My KGF is -3% at the moment.

Shall i pull out and invest in other stuff?

The better method, if not the best, is using a bit of common sense.

If don't know how to time the market, then don't time the market. Spread out the purchase over the entire investment period, purchase bit by bit, 1% at a time....

As Warren Buffett would say, buy equities. Not bonds, not reits... stocks.

Instead of dabbling directly in the stock market, buy equity fund.

The pros and cons of equity fund is well discussed in this forum.

even my PRS fund also red for some time d... close ur eyes......

What is RCA?

what is DCA and RCA  ?

DCA = dollar cost averaging. Lets take the example of purchasing UT.  The idea is that because one doesn't know whether the price of funds will go even lower, it is more prudent to spread ot your purchases so that you don't buy at a higher price.

Suppose you have rm30,000 that you want to buy UT. Instead of investing all 30,000 now when the UT funds might go down further  (eg Trump carzy policies, more bad things discovered in GLCs, US interest rates increase etc). You park say rm20,000 at money market funds earning about 3.5% interest, and invest 10,000 at equity funds. In the next month, you invest another 10,000 in UT while leaving 10k at the money market. In the following month you invest the last 10k.

The converse also applies to selling.

Where does any source tells you the exactly that you must spread out weekly to do DCA or for that matter monthly to reduce the chances of us buying at the peak. DCA just tells us to spread our investments, no? Ofc the more spread out the purcahse of UT the better but investors have to weigh practicality vs the benefits of DCA. Another thing is that if the period is too short, the price differences may not be significant enough.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dollarcostaveraging.asp

It also doesn't mean DCA must be RSP.

lots of funds, will just list major holdings:
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Affin Hwang Select Bond Fund  9.38 %
AmDynamic Bond 14.64 %
CIMB-Principal Global Titans Fund 6.47 %
Eastspring Investments Dinasti Equity Fund 5.82 %
Kenanga Growth Fund 18.71 %
RHB Asian Income Fund 7.47 %
RHB China-India Dynamic Growth Fund 6.02 %
RHB Emerging Markets Bond Fund 5.23 %
RHB KidSave Trust 3.16 %
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I think what he shown is the distribution ratio, not return...

Awaiting to pump my PRS. For regular UT I can pump anytime I want as I always have access to zero percent service charge. So no hurry. For regular UT I would like it to fall a bit more for it to hit that sweet spot.
Planning to. Not yet hit the target price for my fund yet.