May i know which country your car and housing loan is taken from?

Do you have any credit card, housing and car loan in Malaysia? If yes, how many? (If you are not comfortable, just state more than 1 will do.)

Are you a citizen of Malaysia or falling within defintion of Resident (i.e. obtained PR or has been in Malaysia for more than 182 days etc...).

If you are resident Malaysia and you have more than one credit/loan facility from an on shore bank, you are considered to have domestic ringgit borrowing.

If non resident than no cap.

The downside being classified as such is that your investment is capped at rm 1mil per calendar yr.

HLB's foreign exchange admin notice is the latest. Its very confusing for lay persons, my suggestion is also to read the fact sheet for individual, is a summary of answer to the question i posed.

https://www.hlb.com.my/en/personal-banking/...cy-notices.html

You can check out their "portfolio factsheet" it's quite informative where their performance (and under-performance) is coming from.

Random sampling seem to suggest:

(a) emerging market bond suffer as US hike interest rate (2022-2023?), also exposure in Malaysia bonds are quite high (40+%) and foreign bonds (about 30%+), remaining in equities.

(b) equities is mainly due to China and tech. Although China holdings is hovering between 1.5- 0.5% of the portfolio, can expect is to be slightly higher cause they are also buying into Asia Pac (ex Japan) funds.

Looks like between 2022-2023, there was no place to hide at all or safe heaven, since there was Fed hike, China and tech causing everything to go bonkers. I think should see some silver lining when the fed reduces interest rates but there is talks it will remain. It's kind of crazy.

Not quite true.

Any investment in the US is at least subject to US withholding tax of 30% and when the monies are repatriated back to Malaysia, it's subject to foreign source income i.e. 24%.

Actually, we are seeing the rise of FSM and the decline of UTMCs. The reason being, FSM is a distributor, they don't take on the fund manager risk. If a fund fails, they can just shift the blame to the fund manager or the investors poor choice for not doing their due diligence.

FSM doesn't take on the risk of fund establishment but rather enjoys the ability to sell funds from different manufacturers. FSM is no different from Lazada, Shoppee or TnG. They offer a space and the vendor can put their product on their shelf/platform for a fee. FSM doesn't take on the product risk.

UT is somewhat dead because of the erratic pattern it has displayed post covid19. It has its best run in 2021 but subsequently tanked, when China's economy started to sputter, Ukraine war, rising interest rates by central bank and fed and reopening. You should have seen what happened during Covid and towards the tail end, it was crazy!

In any case, I would agree with @zebras , UTs may be good in certain stuff and ETFs just dominate in certain areas as well (unless you bought Malaysia ETF, well then good luck to you).

This post has been edited by aurora97: Apr 16 2024, 11:14 PM

Alamak accidentally press post.

Anyway, just buy a fund that you are comfortable and have track record. Do dollar cost averaging and avoid timing the market.

Don't have to chase thematic funds, even local funds can do just as good. Furthermore, most investors invest in MYR-Hedged class, which negate the foreign currency fluctuation.

AHAM Tactical - YTD is 13.5%
AHAM SOF - YTD is 15.7%

This post has been edited by aurora97: Apr 16 2024, 11:10 PM


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1.Principal Islamic Tech- A very short tenured fund - track record is uncertain. Purely from a returns perspective, yes outperforming index. But frankly you buy any Mag 7 in a basket and you will outperform from 2022 onwards. It was a greatly timed opening.

At least in my 2 cents, thematic funds are not meant to be held for long durations because they have finite lifespan that is tagged to the underlying theme. The theme may be the hottest cake on the block but you need to know when you have too much cake. Say today's flavour is vanilla but due to global over-supply or change in global flabvour for chocolate, you can expect your vanilla themed fund to perform poorly.

Principal Islamic Tech is a spin off of Principal Global Tech, it was intended to cater to the Islamic segment. It may lack the track record but the managers behind the fund are not green horns.

Mutual funds are different from ETFs, a mutual fund is actively managed meaning to say, assuming there is a downturn or adverse market condition, the fund manager would bulk up on cash or sell down risky assets, thereafter pick up undervalued assets. Also, there is an element of diversification involved, you will notice that the fund will not concentrate it's investment in a single stock, security or bond.

ETF on the other hand is passive, it's fixed to whatever stocks it has in its basket. Unless you are savvy enough to switch between ETFs, you will have to ride it out and search for alternatives or hope that the stock picked in the basket will perform or carry the weakest link (example Tesla).

Not to mention the fees you pay Principal for helping you buy the exact same thing from Franklin templeton for much much less fees. This fund is a great rent seeker.

Not true. The management fee can either be charged on fund level (feeder) or target fund level. Generally, it will be on fund level, this would mean that the management fee gained will be shared with FT, thereby reducing the profit margin of Principal. Had the fund been directly been managed by Principal, the outcome would have been the same.

The main issue with Feeder Fund is that the fund is suppose to mirror the target fund but due to the asset allocation typically 95% invested in target fund and 5% in cash/liquid asset. The Feeder Fund may not replicate or may have cash drag that does not reflect the Target Fund. 5% in cash / liquid asset may not be much but the target fund may also maintain cash/liquid asset, hence the corresponding cash may be higher than 5%.


Unless you are looking to trade your unit trust after a year which is weird since you pay what up to 5% in fees, it washes away all your small gains.

Holding it long - you pay 2% fees every year which again cumulates to a lot of fees.

If you are buying unit trust through FSM, the sales charge is 1.5% and can go as low as 1%+, also there maybe special promotions, which the sales charge may even be lower. If you transact directly via EPF platform, you get charge a admin fee of 0.5% (some utmcs waive this). If you trade using utmcs digital platform, you may get lower sales charge as well. Alternatively, some utmcs (not all), you can buy MMF fund first than switch to Equity fund, its possible to incur 0% sales charge but some utmcs may require you to pay for the difference in sales charge. You just have to look harder.

This post has been edited by aurora97: Apr 18 2024, 09:01 AM

The look harder bit refers to "Sales Charge". What I am saying that there are other platforms that offer lower sales charges. Since you mentioned fees eat into the investor's gains.

I am not in a position to recommend funds. There are plenty of materials, methods etc... to determine which fund is suitable for you and matches your risk profile.

Manulife Investment U.S. Equity Fund is a EPF MIS Approved Fund (source: https://www.kwsp.gov.my/documents/20119/446...5-59c4aaeebfe7)

Funny enough the status isn't EPF MIS Approved in FSM (source: https://www.fsmone.com.my/funds/tools/facts...ss?fund=MYML008 )