if they go down...you money is still being held by trustee.

if really concern of forced liquidation in time of unfavourable time....be it ex: (war inclusive)
so are your money in EPF, money in unit trust, gold and all other investments.....

your concern is valid, but
while waiting for the chances of it to happens......
i will do this.....

i got some cash. but i dont know want to DCA in SA or DCA in stock market.

haha. of course i wont DCA in bursa. cari pasal saja. bursa companies tak boleh pakai punya. even big companies, once it crashed really hard to recover back.

i got some Apple shares. and a few thousand ringgit in SA.

it is tempting to catch Apple at the dip now. but at the same time i feel it is safer to just DCA in SA.

Since you mention this, as a comparison, how about ETF performance during dotcom bubble?

If you dca msft from before dotcom bubble I don't even doubt to check that by now you will already have been very well rewarded.
In fact perhaps only yahoo is one of the tech companies until today not returning a strong growth from the 2000s till now. But im not checking and I might well be mistaken.

As Jack Bogle says, over time stocks tend to rise. (The inverse implied is that some stocks will just tank and kaput).

But we digress. And again and again, this has been discussed and discussed every page. Just enter, if you have big amount (to you) then just spread it out over 3 amounts in 3 months. The longer you wait the higher the risk of opportunity lost.

For comparison, a good stock vs s&p500 etf.

i would recommend u start a new 36% and leave the 10% alone, cause switching it to 36% would just realized your lost...
might as well just start a new one and let 10% to slowly roll up and get back the gain in coming time.

ps: did you tracked your past transactions on what price and how many units when u bought and sold? you may have clearer picture on your gain and lost.

Like I mentioned, SA came in at the right time and got the right people doing the marketing+funding Pandemic only spurred further interest in the concept of AI and doing things via phone to most investors with deep pockets. Malaysia and Singapore society are both very conservative in general especially when it comes to finance and wealth management. Majority of the big money movers are more likely to invest in mutual funds, real estate, or shares. SA's target market are mostly Millenial generation who can't yet provide the high amounts of investment the way that older people can, unless they're the lucky few with rich inheritance or have made a successful business early.

Whether they'll be able to succeed and survive is still up in the air, and hopefully other people who use them as an investment platform knows that. Even studying banking history or recent fintech companies like e-pay/e-wallets etc., it takes years before can see if a company makes enough to survive, much less profit to the startup investors. Eventually market will start to consolidate and mergers/takeovers will happen etc.

Four years is really too early to predict or decide if something as new as robo-advisors in the ASEAN region is going to do well or not.

Automation is the key word here.

When something is automated, it's a form of AI. Still a crude form of it, but AI nonetheless. It becomes AI when it's able to "learn" from data it picks up, automatically adjusting its actions based on data.

Robo-advisors collect information from clients online, and then use this data to provide financial advice or invest client assets with moderate to minimal human intervention. Using AI, they work based on mathematical rules or algorithms.

StashAway's ERAA is a programme that analyzes data and makes decisions based on parameters keyed in by SA's analysts and investment team, where after receiving instructions it then operates without human intervention (mostly), continuously analyzing and observing market conditions to make decisions based on the data collected and the market movements. The buying and selling of your units whenever a transaction happens on the robo-advisor is done by the ERAA.

Part of why robo-advisor companies claim to keep costs low is how AI goes the grunt work of going to market to buy and sell, so they don't have to hire humans to do that for the company.

Nice to bring it up sometimes, think many people would already know this though.
The AI is marketing as you said. But many people use the platform for a convenient way of investing in etfs. And the convenience of multiple portfolios to choose from.
Never seen anyone so far who was impressed by its "AI" and decided to use the platform because of it.
More on the etfs and what are the holdings in the etf.

For pure speculation and discussion sake, what will be the next Optimization looks like?
Last year Optimization was China centric. US presidential year was well dust & dusted US is on the road of recovery (or yet?). China & AXJ seems lost streams.
Eagerly to know (welcome speculate) which etf in and/or out.