Moving ASx fixed price funds to Esther bond might not be a good idea. ASx correlation to equities is near zero, while Esther bond to say, kgf, is 0.24 (post 5196 page 260). You might want to ask Xuzen to run algozen with ASx and see..

Some thoughts on the bonds recommended by algozen - they seemed somewhat risky. In the literature of standard 60/40 or 70/30 stock/bond portfolios, backtesting is usually done with S&P500 / 10 year treasuries. US treasuries and other high grade government debt are much safer and have negative correlation with stocks. In comparison, Esther bond is mostly emerging market corporate bonds. From the fund factsheet, 20+% of Esther bond are junk bonds (below BBB), assuming that 'Others' are grades lower than B.

RHB EMB seems a bit dodgy to me; I can't find any mention of the credit ratings of its holdings anywhere, and in %country allocation, 'others' has an allocation of 60%! What gives?! Better hope its not full of junk.
Anyway, its correlation to local stocks is surprisingly negative. Just a wild guess - when foreign funds pulled out of bursa en masse a few years ago, myr was severely devalued. This decreases the NAV of local stocks, while increasing the NAV of foreign bonds (RHB EMB) in ringgit terms. The RHB EMB might not be hedged to myr (can't find any mention) while Esther bond is. Hence Esther bond behaves more like EM/corporate bond - low positive correlation to stocks.
I doubt both bonds would fare well when the next economic crisis comes.

In 2015 and 2016, myr depreciated nearly 30% against USD, which affects the relative performance of local vs international stocks/bonds. This is probably a one off event (hopefully!), so it might not be prudent to base portfolios primarily off this time period. Algozen is based on past 3 years data, right?

The correlation is very low because the price/NAV is fixed. You can never get negative returns. Stocks and bond prices can drop but ASx price never drops. Its dividend is correlated with bursa, that's why correlation is not zero.

Correlation between Esther bond and KGF is 0.24. Or did I read the chart wrongly?

Yes, I saw that. My issue was that there's no credit quality information on their holdings, and it is unknown where 60%, a significant portion, of their holdings are from. Argentina government bonds? I hope not. Its quite clear that they hold mainly emerging market government bonds, but more transparency would give more assurance. Maybe I was being over-dramatic earlier.

Agree that ASx should not be considered for stock portion of portfolio. But I think ASx compares favorably to bonds - zero volatility and probably higher risk-adjusted returns. Yeah, not being able to deposit into ASx easily is a point against it, and ASx being not on FSM makes rebalancing tricky.

If you mean that you rather not invest in funds just because they are denominated in RM, the idea is incorrect.

For a company, it does not matter what currency the stock is denominated in; what matters is where the revenue of the company is generated. If facebook is listed in KLSE, do you think its long term prospects are poor because of long term depreciation of RM? What about a malaysian company that lists in Singapore's stock exchange?

Same thing with funds. If a fund has units in both SGD and MYR, returns of both are the same, since the underlying investments are the same. It would be different if the MYR fund is a feeder fund, in which case there might be extra management fees, and if the MYR fund is hedged to the ringgit.

Again, the currency of your investment does not matter, what matters is the value of holdings of the fund. If RM suddenly depreciates 50%, your portion of the fund will double in RM terms.

Unless you meant that your prefer holding SGD cash instead of RM in your portfolio, then its another matter entirely.

If you avoid RM funds because you think that Malaysia's companies are not going to perform well, fair enough.

For the past two years or so, yes. Over the long term, no.

LOL.. Good one.

That's the point of DCA/VCA into mutual funds. You are paying the pros management fees to take care of your investments so that you can save your time and energy to focus on other things in your life.
The requirement is that you trust the fund manager through thick and thin, else you would be expending the time and energy that you paid the fund manager to expend on your behalf.

What if you can't trust any fund to perform over the long term? Answer - DCA/VCA in a mix of index ETFs. But you probably need an international broker for that.

If you want to be more hands-on or trade your investments, mutual funds are not efficient tools for that.