Not sure if anyone is interested in listening to my fears about an impending financial crisis, but I think that this week's news that Trump is willing to affirm the One China policy significantly reduces those risks. It suggests that when push comes to shove and the stakes are high enough, Trump is willing to listen to his more experienced advisers after all.

A simple answer would be a company should care about its stock price because its investors care and if the investors are unhappy, they will kick the management out and hire a new team.

Not sure how many people are interested but I attended the luncheon organized by FSM and Affin Hwang today. The speaker was David Ng, Affin Hwang's Chief Investment Officer, talking about their Absolute Return Fund 2.

One thing I didn't properly take note of before is that it does have a performance fee, making it almost exactly like a hedge fund's fees. 1% annual management fee and 20% of gains after a hurdle performance target of 8% per annum.

Ng is apparently bullish, especially on China. The audience asked questions about the effect of Trump's policies and the possibility of a trade war. Ng admitted that he doesn't know what Trump would do and a trade war would hurt but he thinks it is unlikely.

If you're looking for local stock tips, he said he's been buying Bumi Armada and Mega First (for their Laos dam project). I asked about his fund buying shorts and he answered that while the fund can buy shorts and hedges, they normally don't do so and that in fact the short they bought towards the end of 2016 was a mistake which he did out of worry about the US elections.

He claims the minimum investment amount is RM100,000 for now but will likely rise to RM250,000 in a couple of months once the fund reaches its new soft cap. There were about 20+ investors in attendance. I found it odd that all were Chinese though FSM specifically stated in its invitation that the luncheon is pork free.

I'm a platinum member. Actually I felt a bit nervous about being maybe not quite rich enough to sit among the other attendees. Ng told an anecdote about stocks being expensive or cheap. He used houses in Bangsar as an example, as the event was held in Bangsar Shopping Center. He said if the house cost 2 million it would be dirt cheap and you would snap it up without thinking twice. If it were 20 million, it would be too expensive to buy even if it's a good house. 2 million is still a lot of money to me, ouch, but I guess it must be nothing to a lot of the people there.

They make you sign a declaration to that effect for the purpose of complying with Bank Negara rules but I don't think they have any way to check.

I think it's a China fund only in the near or medium term. Apparently turnover in this fund is quite high and they will buy anything anywhere depending on what they think is worthwhile.

Does this mean you think MYR will start rising? Seems odd. Oil prices are down again and we might have an election. US raising interest rates would also mean more cash flocking that way.

I think FSM is always hesitant about people using their funds mainly to chase forex returns. I can agree that MYR has limited downside from here on out but I'm not so sure that it has any upside either.

My GST is your bond platform fee total.

Total Bond Fund Platform Fee RM 94.35

Total GST Amount (6%) RM 5.66

Total Charges RM 100.01

Is the little distribution symbol on CIMB-Principal Asia Pacific Dynamic Income Fund ever going to go away?

So a while back I bought a wholesale fund Affin Hwang Absolute Return Fund II as some of you know. It has since been closed to new money, which is fine. Affin Hwang Select Asia (Ex Japan) Quantum Fund which I also have also closed to new money at around the same time.

But now while Affin Hwang Absolute Return Fund II is still visible in my FSM portfolio, all other mentions of it has disappeared from the FSM website. No price histories, no prospectuses, no fund info page etc. Isn't that kind of weird?

Why is the list of FSM's top performing funds full of Japan funds? What's going on?

But Japan is right next to Korea! Weird that people think of it as a safe haven at a time like this. Why not Europe or something?

Could you please explain some of that reasoning? Doesn't it add extra costs on top of existing fund costs?

How often do you need to switch funds though?

Generally speaking do the rest of you switch funds very often?

I very rarely switch funds as well. I feel that directing the regular inflow of new money flowing into funds is already a way to rebalance the portfolio without needing to actually sell any units.

I don't think they check, you just have to self declare. At the same time, these funds do have high minimums so you need to be able to afford them in the first place. (Yes, I am a 'sophisticated investor' and an FSM Platinum member.)

Kind of silly being depressed about this end-of-year downturn when the rest of the year has been pretty fantastic.

So you're aiming to get an average return of more than 10% per year? I don't think that's very realistic over the long term unless you pick your own stocks and are great at it.

Good luck to you if you really can pick your own winning stocks. I know I can't keep it up and I've tried.

But I still don't understand the need to constantly switch funds. Unless you really do want to constantly do that, it seems to me that things like switching charges and processing times don't matter.