What's up -11% gang!

Imagine swing trading your new house down payment / wedding fund through a roboadvisor 👀

IMO the more capital you have the less reason to put to UT... Get other people rich only

I'm surprised you've decided to go "well akshually" on that...the house always wins, that much is obvious I believe.

For my DIY portfolio, I pay a broker $2 flat a month, not a percentage+flat fee of my deposit amount, management fee and then some to get them out/switching, along with all the hidden fees like stupidly high turnover ratio that goes with a UT.

Even for my SA portfolio, I pay them 0.8% p.a. fee or roughly 1% p.a. in total fees, calculated reasonably, no hidden charges, and they at least have the benefit of enabling super granular DCA and good way to turn spare money into non MYR as soon as possible - seems like a fair deal.

It's not the same use case for everyone, but in general UT are so far down the list in terms of sensible investing IMO that I'd rather people just put their money into roboadvisors or even just blindly buy Maybank for 30 years and it'd make more sense long-term.

Hell, I'd bet SA 10 year performance will beat any equal value at risk UTs just on the virtue of better fee structure alone.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 3 2022, 05:03 PM

Flavoured sector ETF is as much of a trap as most UT, which is why some SA user here are dubious of SA's inclusion and promotion of them. They are almost similar in nature that for some ETF the only difference might just be the fee structure.

As you've mentioned, everyone is entitled to their own investment method, their risk appetite, how much fee is too much, or how much temporary out performance is worth the extra fee - but actively managed, high turnover portfolio with high fees costing the investor more than other option when everything is trading sideways are very very objective and real.

And this is before you start going into empirical evidence on most if not all actively managed fund underperforms passively managed fund over time...but that is a problem SA shares with UT, albeit with SA handling it so much more better, so there's little reason to discuss it further here.

Plus the idea of UT not following an index makes it incomparable as an investor is so.... unwise that I don't know where to begin. Don't be like the facepalm guy.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 3 2022, 05:15 PM

Off the top of my head reply, citation may be needed, I am happy to be corrected.

Answer to your preambles: For standard portfolios (up to 36% value at risk), long time investor of SA in this thread is generally positive if not outperforms if they stay invested since 2017, doubly so if they didn't pause/reduce deposits during downturns.
Most investor who are in the red (-3~-10+%) invested during Q1 of 2021. But all "losses" so far is well under projected volatility and will likely be fine over time. Those who have cut losses would have suffered about 3-10% of their capital and about 3-12 months of opportunity. Most sentiment from people who lost money during this period is unhappy about SA underperforming most indexes in an overall bull market, or a strong disagreement against SA's choice of ETF allocation.

Personally, I have mostly withdrawn for SA in favor of manually investing my money to save on overall long term cost with broader diversification and to be more in control of my portfolio. I've left a few thousand in SA just as a reminder to myself of the decisions I've made here.

However, if you do not wish to learn how to invest through a brokerage, and you believe the fees Stashaway charge is reasonable, Stashaway remains the only roboadvisor I would recommend. Its offering and user experience remains unparalleled, so long you don't touch the weird products they've put out to attract investors who wanted those portfolio because other platform had it.

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As for your specific questions;

1. USD portfolio "should" be the better portfolio. You don't have much of a choice in this, you are only allowed to access GBP account if you have high domestic ringgit borrowing, and you are locked out of riskier investments completely, no thematics, no ESG etc, to my knowledge.

2. When you need the money. This can be your emergency fund running out, can be your retirement, can be your goals reached. The only thing it shouldn't be is "I feel that the market is going down".

3. I recommend ignoring Thematics and ESG as they are both flavor of the year products, not to mention the underlying holdings of most Thematics is questionable.
Personally, the original portfolio remains great, sane, and well thought out. Pick your risk tolerance (22% is my personal recommendation for the average person), stick to one portfolio, set up your monthly recurring deposit, uninstall the app.

4. The question doesn't really make sense to me, your deposit amount should be derived from your saving rate and how much you are willing to risk into Stashaway, not for cents of dividends. Portfolio tend to have different asset type allocation depending on its risk level. It's not something you'd worry about if you invest properly and stick to a single portfolio.

5. It's not "refunded" so to say. For details you may read https://www.stashaway.my/faq/115010107948-d...dends-get-taxed
US stocks indeed have 30% withholding tax over Irish/Ireland-domiciled stocks' 15% - Stashaway says that their brokerage to try to reclaim those that can be claimed, but I wouldn't count on it being that much of a difference.

6. It doesn't matter. Deposit consistently, ride the up and downs of the markets.

Finally, remember that Stashaway is named that because you are intended to put away a portion of your money and don't think about it daily.

If you want to time the market, you need to be right twice. If you can do that, don't worry yourself with ETFs and getting average returns, leverage to the tits and trade options

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 7 2022, 12:42 AM

A few reasons, listed in the order of importance to me. These are all personal opinions and as always, I am happy to be corrected.

1. Fees are higher, way higher. You are very likely to be paying more to have your asset locked into a fund that trade sideways for a very long time.

2. Potential for regret and mistake from chasing returns are a lot higher.
Let's say you bought into Tech. Enablers, you proceed to lose 10% immediately while Healthcare Innovation went up by 10%, you falters, stop depositing into Tech or even cutting loss and fully withdraw from Tech, move those money to Healthcare Innovation. Next year Healthcare Innovation drops due to whatever reason, and Tech somehow go through a second renaissance. Now you are sick of losing money when everyone else made lots of money. You correct your mistake and switch to a sane, well diversified fund.

3. I believe that investing in sector ETF is taking on more uncompensated risk - i.e. I am risking more of my value but over time my return is not higher.

4. Most of the underlying stocks in most Thematics are either (imo) overpriced or near/was near ATH.

5. Some of the ETF in thematics are managed by a monkey that have made multiple severely bad calls in the past year. If you have invested in those, you may have already taken on quite a bit of losses.

6. For ESG portfolios, know that ESG investing does not necessary translate to ethical investing due to the implementation. Plus, personally, while I won't exactly start investing in African warlords because they offer better returns, I am happy to benefit from having money in questionable or non-halal company.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 8 2022, 09:51 AM

...wait, why are we comparing SA36% (72% equities) vs SP500 (100% equities) in returns? The argument is fundamentally flawed.

There are plenty of things that under performs SP500 - VT, having a fund size of 35billion, should and would under perform SP500, but over long periods, not by much. However, the short time period volatility is much more severe for SP500.

If we are just talking about chasing returns, SP Small Cap has a ~10% annualized return too, not much people advocate buying into that because it's hell of a rocky ride.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 9 2022, 01:10 PM

1. Actively managed fund with the primary intention of reducing volatility without sacrificing too much return. Their primary goal is not performance chasing against SP500. They benchmark against that to clearly demonstrate what you are giving up for the reduced volatility/what you are still making despite the reduced volatility.

2. Reduce user cost by reducing FX/fixed fee impact on small deposit amounts. (You can deposit RM10 without incurring a loss. Any stock broker would eat you alive for doing that)

3. User likely benefit from lower spreads due to high liquidity both on SA side and chosen ETFs side + partially re-claimed withholding tax + rebate from funds if using Stashaway Simple.

I believe that some may have fundamentally misunderstood the intention and offerings of Stashaway...if you wanted max performance, Stashaway ain't it.

Reminder that people who directly invested in KWEB and ARKK had losses of ~50%. Stashaway 36% barely lost ~12% even if you were the world's worst market timer.

Stashaway investment principle is "don't take extra risk for the similar returns".
The core portfolio is a implementation of their principle: you get a good balance of reward to risk ratio, further adjusted by your risk tolerance (10~36% adjustment). and it would be far below maximum possible performance, but at significantly lower volatility.

https://www.stashaway.my/r/debunking-high-risk-high-return


If you mistakenly put your wedding-in-3-years fund into Stashaway, you might walk away from a 2008-level crash with a slightly downsized wedding.

If you mistakenly put your wedding-in-3-years fund into SP500, that wedding is not happening with a 2008-level crash.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 9 2022, 01:27 PM

Akru's highest risk portfolio is 95% equity of which 55% is SP500, which has a CAGR of ~10%, so its basically just a broker at that point, having the same risk, and paying an extra Akru fee on top of terrible Akru user experience.

If an new investor wanted to chase performance, Akru's behaving like a pseudo broker functionally. At that point you can truly say why not just DIY.

As for SA, i do kinda blame their marketing team. But I don't think they could have gotten their AUM to this point by saying "Yeah we make less money". Probably the same reason they added Thematics and ESG...

What can I say, the general public is hella blinded by performance chasing. You can only make money by selling to the lowest denominator.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 9 2022, 02:00 PM

I think the regulars here are generally more mature than that. Plenty of people have came by and questioned Stashaway, where they received feedback without getting reported...

Actually, what are the criteria to warrant a new thread? I never knew why people made V2 or V3 after years of being here. Usually its because TS inactive isn't it?

Some brokerage, including Syfe Trade even offers 5 US trade a month, cutting that transaction fee down to 0.

Both IBKR and Syfe don't accept deposit in MYR, so Wise/FX fee are the same in this case.

If done through Syfe Wealth/Custom Portfolio, their fees on top of everything is 0.65% p.a.

Considering real annual growth is maybe less than 3% if you take out inflation, 0.65% is a pretty big deal - its why I stopped having the majority of my money in Stashaway, due to the 0.8%+ fees.

Fees, fees, fees.



This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 9 2022, 06:38 PM

If Stashaway can offer me a portfolio that only has VWRA and charge me 0.3% p.a. fees for it I'd be all over Stashaway

Syfe is offering that but only accepting SGD deposits (They do have IWDA, VWRA, CSPX selectable afaik), and quite a hefty fee, otherwise I'd happily use that too, since I am ikan bilis retail investor too.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 9 2022, 06:47 PM

I don't know VWRA/VWRL had a mutual fund equivalent, I bought it because I concede that there is no VT/VTWAX Ireland-domiciled alternative.

Care to share the fund name so I can look more into it? Can keep in view if Endowus ever accept MYR.

Ah, alright. thanks anyway, appreciate the correction regardless!

As for trailer fees rebate, I don't think too much of it, because those fee are exclusive to funds and unit trust to my knowledge? So lets say there are two roads, one road has toll but offering 50% off its toll fee and one doesn't, assuming both road are similar length and traffic condition, I see no reason why the road with toll would be more attractive just because it had discounts.

It feels abit like seeing a 50% black friday sale but the price was 50% higher to begin with.

Looking at Endowus fund list, most of them have really high fees. Sure, something like Dimensional Global fund which is actually a broad based index fund that barely charge 0.23% is pretty great - but you'd still have to pay 0.3% to Endowus on top of that bring it to a massive 0.53%.



And some other are far worse than that. 2.38% pre-discount, 1.39% after discount. 1.69% with Endowus fee included. 1.69%! That's a lot of your return gone immediately every year if you are unlucky, and factor in compounding, Lets say I put in $500 a month, and the example fund had a 5y return of 4.57%...



Fees matter - as long the fee's is right, and the investment is sound, I don't care if its an ETF or Mutual Fund and whether its brought through a robo or a broker - whoever can offer what I want with a lower fee, I'll go with that
Call me penny wise pound foolish if you will, but for ikan bilis like me, it's these little advantages that can get me to retire comfortably. Some people think this is mentality is a sure way to get rich when you are old - but at least I'll HAVE a retirement.

I think you can elaborate on the trailer fee too regardless, since this is Stashaway thread as relatively speaking, Stashaway is one of the most ikan bilis friendly platform so far. Should Syfe start accepting MYR deposit one day, it make a difference between choosing Stashaway vs Syfe if all else being equal.

If anything I started on Stashaway precisely due to a significant lack of capital and was ridiculed as such in this thread before. For my RM300 a month there is hardly anywhere else better to DCA, so I was happy to pay Stashaway 0.8% p.a. back then. So it's not like I am a stranger to making choices due to capital limitations.

Like seriously man I make peanuts compared to all the taiko taiko here. It's exactly due to how ikan bilis I am that I have to care about a couple tenths of basis points of difference. I am doing some really funky shit just to pay IBKR 2USD less per deposit So trust me, ETF is not exclusive to high net worth investors. I just need convincing reason behind every cent that isn't going directly into my investment.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 10 2022, 01:00 AM

https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2...overtime-debate

Regulation time again or all talk no walk?

0% fee + free trade (at least 1 per month) + no fee for deposit/withdrawal + 0.1% FX charge to buy US/Europe Stocks & ETF

The magical dream See who willing to eat air and provide me such service

Stay in the market, but stay diversified friends. don't take uncompensated risks. Winners rotate.


This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Feb 10 2022, 02:28 PM