SA regular portfolios are subject to market losses, so it will be dangerous for you to put your emergency funds there because emergency fund is meant to be
1) stable - what if you need the money but your 18% RI portfolio currently has 10% loss? Withdrawing it means realising your losses.
2) liquid - 3 business* days(?) doesn't sound all that liquid to me, but up to you I guess.

they are meant for long term investment, which are more likely to come back in green given a few years for market to go (usually upwards).

So with your 50k for example, you can consider putting in 10k at a time, (bi)weekly (LYN norm), or monthly (public norm), whatever floats your boat. While the rest of the amount isn't in the portfolio yet, you can consider
A) SA simple (the advantage here is then, you can schedule DCA via SA itself)
B) FD (easy, liquid, safe)
C) any other short term investment like MMF

That will give you a peace of mind of not losing too much at the same time.

Yeah... this is coming from someone (me) who has no fundamentals on stock chart analysis, extensive studies on the market, global economy and various companies/industries. If you have any of that then your educated guess may fare better, but everything is 20/20 in hindsight. DCA eliminates the need for you to "own up your mistake" of trying to time the market, it's better in terms of emotional well-being I guess haha.

These days, I highly doubt anyone who says "cash" means literal bank notes and/or coins. So yes you're right - FD is in fact "cash", added with the fact that you can easily do them online, so it's not like the past where you had to go to bank counters queue to place/withdraw. It's almost as liquid as your regular saving account, but with higher interest.

My take on DCA vs lump sum (high5 if anyone said the same in this sea of 10k+ replies!):
- Why/How is DCA better for your mental/emotional state? It is because you're no longer making a decision on when to put in, so you're no longer "directly accountable" to your action.
- On the other hand with lump sum, your time of entry is in your hands. If you happened to enter at a certain peak, then the next days/weeks it dips, it's very easy to think, "damn, if only I did this a bit later", then you feel bad every time you look at this red portfolio. I'm not talking about paper hands pulling out immediately, but the psychological damage that your decision has a direct impact and it reflects on your profile.
- for SA, I am more inclined to advise to DCA for a few reasons:
1) you're here because you want someone else to manage your money, probably because you can't (knowledge, time, effort, whatever).
2) SA processing is not instantaneous (a few business days); timing the market is less effective and you have less control
3) SA has a vast portfolio that you need to track: multiple ETF, gold price, global market etc. It's a lot more difficult than focusing on a single option as compared to your DIY
- Instead, I strongly recommend lump sum approach on DIY - to actually have your own account on a brokerage and do your trading
1) each trade has a fee; you want to minimise the fee by trading as much as possible in one go
2) the opposite of points 2) and 3) for SA.
3) sure you'll feel the same pain if you lump sum at a bad timing, but what I'm saying is - feel the pain on where you have more control on so you can learn easier.

Anyway, definitely try out both and reflect on it -- that's when you'll learn what you really prefer for yourself (just be warned of the potential "lesson fee" that you may lose to market )

Comment regarding your point 1. Do not change risk index halfway through. Stick with it:
"Do not" sounds strong; it's not wrong to do it, you just need to know what and why you're doing it. Changing RI tells SA to sell and buy different things using your money, and in doing so, realising whatever profit/loss then and there. Somewhere down the road, you may find yourself having different risk appetite or you're investing on other different stuff, that will prompt you into changing your risk index, nothing wrong with it.

Answers:
1. Short answer: yes. Long answer: pick one that complements your other investments, for diversification purpose. Look at 36% SRI portfolio allocation, it weighs more heavily on China market(?) and is 100% equities. If you have your own brokerage account and you're already investing heavily on the same side, then you probably want to pick a different SRI to have more exposure in different market/instructments.
2. Do what is most comfortable to you look up on "DCA" and/or "lump sum" in this topic and I'm sure you'll get many recurring advices on that.
3. Like you said it's similar to Q1, the answer is similar to A1 see bold

Welcome to investments!

Alternatively, what I did:
Pass this test at 90+%: https://onlineeducation.sgx.com/specifiedinvestmentproducts
(Also applicable to Malaysian)

Then show StashAway your result, they'll unlock for you immediately.

Keep simple +1, but I'm an advocate for monthly DCA here

Adding on: given that SA invests on ETFs instead of direct stock, as well as a mix of various other instruments, they have already got the volatility cushioned by diversifying their portfolios. One can then argue, it is overkill to DCA by weekly -- of course, we can talk about market correction/crash that happens in the next hour of me typing this, thus invalidating everything I say.... But my point goes back to keeping things simple, and each of us here have very different risk appetite and rationale on our investment strategies. Pick your poison.

This post has been edited by Takudan: Jul 7 2021, 06:29 PM

Hey there, based on your other question and this, I fear that you may not necessarily understand SA and/or what you're doing.

@skyzone101 quoted his 30% portfolio is giving him good returns, but you also need to understand that you going to 30% portfolio right now isn't going to magically spawn double digit profit to you, whether immediately or not. The reason he can have profit is because the market had already gone up from the time he bought. You entering now, means you'll be buying in at different price.

When you change your risk index, SA will sell off (i.e. realise profit and loss) some of your positions, then buy other positions, such that you will align to a 30%SRI portfolio. It's still entirely up to market fluctuations. Higher risk index means higher chance you'll lose money in the short term (hence, the risk) - you'll need to be able to stomach the fall and believe that it'll rise back in the long term. Over-tinkering your RI may make things worse.

What do you aim to do with this money you have in SA? Is it something you'll stash away (no pun intended) for many years?

welp that's where you thought wrong then... honestly I doubt there's any clairvoyant system like that in the world, if there is then it would be owning the market and everybody wins (which is a paradox in itself, cuz there are always losers on the other end of your winnings).

If you don't want to realise your loss then hodl for now and ride the shaky boat with us. But if you really want to just cut your loss and play safe, then lower your SRI where KWEB has less/no weightage, then that's where robo advisor will do its job, to calculate how much buy/sell to adjust your portfolio

You're the one deciding how much to credit into each portfolio, so I would imagine your auto deposit instructions would look like this:
Portfolio 1 RM 300 on 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd of the month
Portfolio 2 RM 100 on 1st, 8th, 15th, 22nd of the month
Portfolio 3 RM 100...
...

Guess we can call you penny wise now

I'm a good sleeper 🤣🤣
SA is definitely not a reason I'm awake at night, but I do have my "pain points".

It's very difficult for me to swallow that my DIY portfolio is doing better than the experts, but I keep reminding myself that I am "lucky". My overall SA is still in the red as we speak.

On the other hand, my DIY portfolio includes MSFT stock which soared 40% since I last bought. It's very easy for me to feel like pr0 at investment, but I'm also aware that US tech is bubbly now, I may lose this unrealised profit anytime.
Oh yeah I do wonder sometimes whether I should lock in my profits (not enough to keep me awake at night still), but I keep reminding myself it is a long term investment and I shouldn't try to time the market... 🤷‍♀️

For context, I'm a newbie investor.

High five mate. But, if this makes you feel any better... For me I think like this:
I'm mmg interested in China market (that's why I too, was a believer in KWEB). SA served as my "foot stepping into the unknown waters", true enough kena stabbed lah...at least their diversification helped dampen the fall.

I share your woes... I'm also contemplating whether to pause my DCA or not... And using that amount, perhaps move into DIY, because I'm more eager to do dive into China stocks because I feel they're at a discount now. But probably will avoid ADRs because of the big bros trade war :S

If you're small fry receiving that email, then I guess I'm just a plankton

I watched this video, thanks for sharing!

Very good point about being sustainable -- the very fact that there exists such a standard says that a company needs to do something to maintain its sustainable status, may reflect in its earnings (or at least the expectations from the investors).

I for one support that but only by a mere fraction; I am against tobacco industry for example, so while I definitely won't invest into these company stocks, I wouldn't choose an ESG ETF on purpose to kill my diversification. So like Ben Felix says, figure out your stance with ESG and decide what you wanna do with it - no right or wrong, just different values from one another.

It was indeed a good lesson by Emperor Xi to us (or me, at least)

I'll admit that I jumped on the 36% bandwagon, and I did that on Feb 2021 (probably verifiable based on my historical posts in this thread). That's how I was able to share double digit loss at some point lol.
...well, at least I have enough to ride along the rollercoaster.

With the recent 50+ posts here, it got me thinking about my SA portion in my portfolio.

I've been saving about 40% of my salary annually, and I am also building up my DIY portfolio (albeit very amateurish still, I must admit). I have like 10% salary regularly dumped to SA monthly, and now I'm starting to feel it's a little saturated. So... Say if I want another autopilot mode of auto-depositing my money elsewhere, say, to something that complements SA (different baskets), what would be a decent alternative?

More context:
- tarak and not planning to get ASNB nor SSPN yet.
- my EPF is not much, it's one of my options although I can't help but to feel worried for our country's future.
- I was interested in REITS but I got information overload and decided not to DIY there. Would be nice if there's a dividend reinvested ETF that I can just dump money in and watch it grow(?)
- I have DIY but I don't intend to increase that portion or do anything fancy.

Yeah, especially this being SA thread, I can't be asking people here how to be better at my job or how to do a side gig, right?

On another note, in earning more retirement money, we can also look at how to keep expenditures low. Alas, that is also a topic for another thread

Err yeah I wasn't disagreeing with the post actually 👀 I too have a job with a healthy yearly increment... touch wood. I also have my budget tracker to plan my spending and investment on the same page.

May I remind, you seem to be getting a little carried away by the abnormal bull market. Someone already shared a nice little reminder few pages ago this 10-20% annualised return you currently enjoy from your higher risk investment can be wiped in an instant, I hope you have your emergency funds readied in other baskets in your bank/FD. Also maybe medical card, insurance and whatnot, especially if you have people depending on you.

...or forgive me if you're already a seasoned investor with bear market experience.

Haiyaaa bro no need to debate. In this thread we can already see there are winners and losers, because one's profit and loss heavily depends on your entry point, buy/sell prices, yadayada... For him to simply say one profits/loses without any basis/benchmark/reference is a huge facepalm back at himself