Not just you. If I check SRI 30% that's the current target weight for IVV:



Note that IVV is under their "International Equities" in asset class.

Agree with this, especially if you're a newbie investor.

There's no optimal VCA in StashAway because

1) There's always a processing time of at least 2 days between deposit and the actual buy order executing, so depositing that day NEVER GUARANTEES that you will invest in a "low" time, as buy order could just as easily happen to execute on a high day.
2) diversified portfolios, so overall highs and lows are not drastic enough to justify the waiting for high/low to happen, especially due to the processing time of #1. It also means highs and lows tend to happen gradually, so it's hard to predict when is the absolute low and when is the absolute high.
3) forex risk, as we're converting from MYR to USD (or GBP if you're assigned a profile under GBP due to domestic ringgit borrowing), so even if the stocks is on low, MYR might be weak on the day you're converting so you have less USD to buy with.

The only viable strategies in SA are DCA or just lump sum investing regardless of timing. Lump sum works in your favour in the very long term (many years) most of the time, but it can be uncomfortable to see the ups and downs especially if you're bad luck and invest during a high. Again, StashAway's portfolio by its nature will not climb high or drop low drastically, most of the time the value is in single digit % or decimal points of a % of earn/loss. Exceptions are during major events like recent pandemic crash and crackdown of China tech, none of which are predictable.

StashAway should be treated like EPF/SSPN/ASB/regular mutual funds: put in what you're comfortable putting in, and forget about it until it's time to withdraw.

This post has been edited by DragonReine: Jun 8 2021, 02:52 PM

StashAway is like most private investment vehicles (stocks, mutual funds etc.) in that you cannot nominate directly the way you can do with EPF which is government incentive and meant to be a retirement fund (exception is PRS funds which are also government incentive, just that it's managed by private investment fund houses)

You need to specify in your will/wasiat about any investments and assets you own. Otherwise StashAway is unable to release money to your beneficiary: https://www.stashaway.my/faq/900001773963-w...er-passes-away/

Potentially, but some problems:

1) Cannot buy fractional shares the way that StashAway can, so it gets very expensive very quickly unless you're loaded.
2) It's very tricky and expensive to balance and manage weights for so many different ETFs on your own, unless you're experienced, as you're juggling easily more than 7 ETFs
3) Exchange rates for currency and other potential fees might not work in your favor, which may negate any gains you get from not needing to pay fees to SAMY
4) SAMY reoptimises their portfolio every now and then which increases the cost and hassle because you'd need to buy+sell the relevant ETFs

Self buy ETF is probably only good for lump sum strategy with large capital, but loses out on flexibility of reoptimising.

If you want similar diversification but DIY it's better to follow Bogleheads' strategy of 2-4 fund portfolios.

This post has been edited by DragonReine: Jun 10 2021, 09:49 AM

👍🏻 Good points, but I do consider that if a person has the financial capability and the knowledge+confidence required to attempt or seriously consider DIY, they're already not suited for SA and not SA's (and most robo advisors) target audience, which are investors with low investing capital and who don't have the time/capability/confidence to DIY invest and manage their own portfolio.

SA to me is autopilot investing, which comes with its own pros (low barrier to entry, little need to manage and track portfolio) and cons (no control, paying fees accumulates), so it depends on the investor's needs and investing strategy whether SA or DIY it's better.

This post has been edited by DragonReine: Jun 10 2021, 10:11 AM

Yes, on top of 2-3 business days to process funds there's another 2-3 business days to open nominee account. Since it's your first investment, they must open up nominee account for you before they consider it "received" in their app.

5 - 6 June: Weekend, no processing
7 June: Holiday, no processing.

This post has been edited by DragonReine: Jun 10 2021, 01:08 PM

Depends on the ETFs in the portfolio, some ETFs give monthly (bonds and fixed income ETFs), some give "incidental" which is once a year.

As for how much, I'll give perspective:

BNDX (fixed income) is around USD 57 per unit currently, their monthly dividends on average is USD 0.03 (3 cents) per unit.

EMB (government bonds) is around USD 112 per unit, their monthly dividends is on average around USD 0.24 (24 cents) per unit.

Summary? Don't rely on dividends in SA, if you want growth it'll usually be capital gains based (unit prices rising), not dividends. Even the lower risk portfolio gains are mostly from unit prices rising but slowly. You want dividend based investment better to invest in EPF/ASB/SSPN.

1) Set your jompay instruction
2) Go to "Manual Deposit" and your manual monthly deposit in StashAway as EXACT AMOUNT of your instruction. example: it each jompay is RM100 per week, set monthly deposit as RM100. No worries about "going over" StashAway will simply follow your instructions on how to handle your deposit based on your instruction.
3) Manual one-time deposit is for people who do lump sum.
4) No need, just create a one-time deposit for the extra amount and deposit the extra. StashAway executes one-time deposits first before they execute monthly order. Ref-1 (for Jompay) will always remain the same for each account so you can even just use the saved "Favourite bill" in your banking site/app.

This post has been edited by DragonReine: Jun 17 2021, 12:14 AM

Depends lor, if you're doing this for long term (as you should) then take the fall as a windfall and shoot a few extra bullets.

Markets taking a hit is to be expected with the past trend of prices stabilizing and inflation risk. Once economy reopens in full it'll go up again. Just part of the market cycle.

NOOOO don't do this.

When you switch SRI, StashAway will sell off the units in the sectors that aren't relevant to the new SRI (read: convert into cash) to buy units in relevant sectors, which means REALISING YOUR LOSSES.

Do this constantly and you'll LOSE money from all the buy/sell orders happening and increase chances of buying high/selling low because of SA's delay.

You want to time market, go trade in stocks. Not StashAway.

US market stagnant + if you'd started after May 2020, MYR continuously strengthen against USD so it flattened out any gains in USD. Remember that StashAway carries some forex risk so if MYR gets stronger, gains might end up lesser.

unfortunately Malaysia isn't great at exports 😂 except in oil and latex, arguably

This drop is across entire markets, not just StashAway 😂 RM200+ to -RM51 is a very tiny movement relative to current drop with gold sell-off and inflation fears + investors reacting to potential Fed Reserve policy changes.

gains vs volatility strategy you want gains means potentially higher risk

SA's strategy is not "high gains as possible during bull market" but "as little loss as possible during bear market" so don't expect zoom up like investing in ARKK or similar.

why would you even compare YTD performance 😂 it's not a comparable benchmark for diversified portfolio like SA

If I remember correctly, they added the 20% gold allocation in 2020, before this was different.

The ones who buy higher SRI near KWEB surge (in late 2020 to earl 2021) also ended up red by now 😂 my SRI 16% still holding quite steady even though i bought after the gold reallocation, mostly propped up by the good performance of IJR and XLV under US Equities sector.



This post has been edited by DragonReine: Jun 25 2021, 10:22 AM

same with my 36% 😂 the MYR-USD exchange rate post March 2020 really worked against USD-based investments deposited during that time even while stock markets rocket up hahaha

StashAway's ETFs are traded in USD, so USD is the value of the actual funds itself.

However, MYR is what you deposit with and what you get when you withdraw, so MYR is the actual money you get.

Money that you deposit AFTER input the code. Means if you already have money in SA before put promo code, that money won't get 100% off from fees, but monies after redeemed code will get the 100% off.