KDI is Kenanga Digital Investing - it's a very recent comer to the roboadvisor foray and their user experience have been very mixed so far to say the least. However, once you get over some quirks, it's offering is very good.

In my allocated highest risk portfolio (Aggressive) contains majority VT, a handful of QQQ, SPY and BNDX, which are all very good broad based index to invest in. Their first RM3k invest is fee-free, but you will get charged an 0.3% forex fee on your deposit amount. If I did not have access to a DIY portfolio, I would happily put my money in KDI Invest.

Of course, they are still very, very new, I have no clue on how high their turnover rate is going to be and how actively they are going to mess with the portfolio. I wouldn't put too much money into it, so below the fee-free threshold seems good to try the waters.

I personally can recommend it over Stashaway if you are just starting out, just put RM2500 in it and don't look at it for a while. The rest and new funds you can continue in Stashaway at your selected risk portfolio.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 8 2022, 12:21 AM

MyTheo charges the highest fee among all robos available to Malaysian if I remember correctly, so do keep that in consideration.

Ben Felix's a good man. I can vouch for his opinions too. My view towards thematics and questioning ESG investing was largely inspired by him too.

I did not leave or question KWEB until they fully sold off the position. I left immediately when I saw thematics is now part of Stashaway. I view it as a complete and total loss of integrity. That's a fundamental change in what I was investing in.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 10 2022, 10:45 AM

IMO, don't invest in something you don't believe in just because you had sunk cost into it. You are still paying them 0.7% a year to lose you money...

Hmm, we have different approach to investment I guess. My portfolio is 90% things I believe 100% in and 10% casino. The former will always be tracking the general market, and I only lose money when market as a whole explodes - which with how capitalism are, it would keep going up even when it's hell on earth; The other 10% is my fun money I actually gambling with to keep my hand less itchy and protect the 90% I trust.

I have no allocation in my portfolio to terrible fund managers that make money regardless if I win or lose - in comparison, the flat fee paid as commissions to brokers seem much more sane.

Though, if you truly believe investing is just sugar coated gambling... I'd very much hope you'd reassess your investments and investing philosophy. There are many ways to turn brokerage access into casino access, but there is still a few ways to invest reliably (Credits to wongmunkeong).

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 16 2022, 05:43 PM

The general market is back to December 2020 levels, the slight drop recently shouldn't have hurted that much that only a decade old portfolio would be green I think.

To chop you kaw kaw while getting kickbacks from KraneShares... and if no charge you fee, how to offer discount code to attract you? So many people lost money still willing to invest if they give one time lump sum fee promo code lol...

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: May 1 2022, 12:53 PM

Just sharing, since I've had long history of commenting against Thematics in this thread, and the primary reason I exited Stashaway.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: May 5 2022, 12:03 AM

About 9% loss in a global economic downturn isn't too bad all things considered, considering the global index is down around 8 to 12% in similar time frame. (My DIY portfolio is sitting at about 6% loss, started around March 2021)

I think both numbers have their own merits, and the average between them would just make things harder to compare among other Stashaway user in this thread.

Personally I am more of a "look exclusive at USD" kind of person because the underlying assets are primarily USD anyway, and as my total invested value increase, USD strengthening is going to be less of an annoyance and more of a slight welcomed benefit I guess?

Just my 2cents tho, I imagine this doesn't apply to everyone.

Discussion doesn't have to be vitrolic, calm down friends.

Though, my personal two cents is that Stashaway's annualized return infographic can be very misleading to some extent?

Their numbers are very optimistic and not very representative of real use cases, and their methodology is not fully clear, there's plenty of way to fuzz the numbers to make it look a lot better than it is.

For example, in the returns infographic, it does not take into factors such as
1. Stashaway Fees
2. Reoptimization
3. Deposit/Withdrawal timings
4. USD/MYR forex returns

Most of their returns are still from the initial inception bullruns and lucky successful reoptimizations, on the flip side, anyone who's been here from late 2020 onwards would still be looking at a sea of red for god knows when to come, so I wouldn't be surprised if tension runs high.

Ultimately, fund performance within a 2-3 year window are far from a useful judge of a portfolio performance - seeing that the average investor here probably has a horizon of 20-30 years.

My take is always judge Stashaway for everything surrounding it except their performance - is their fees good? Is their investing philosophy sound and aligned to your interest? Would the alternative to Stashaway (to you) is just not investing at all?

When I evaluated it for 2 years, I've found Stashaway incompatible with me - I love how easy it is to set up a reoccuring deposit and forget about it - the truly "Stashaway" nature of investing. It's great that to some people that would have just let their currency rot in their back for 0.25% interest, Stashaway is incredibly straight forward and encourages "set it up and forget".

But, I dislike their reoptimization and stock-pickiness nature, their crazy KWEB sector tilting saga (which was not indicated to me that this is going to be a thing before I started their portfolio), their slow deposit to investing period, the MYR->USD conversion process, their almost misleading fee structure, their app changes and fuzzing of words and numbers during bearish times, the messy MYR/USD return values, and fortunately for myself, I have access to alternative ways to invest in a fashion that's more aligned to what I have in mind.


But above all else, I do not judge them for their returns in a 2 year period out of my next 30 - that's just plain silly, in my opinion.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Mar 19 2023, 09:07 AM

The optimistic answer is "So I don't miss the ride when it goes up - time in the market beats timing the market".

The pessimistic answer is "I have too much money, let's pay a portion of it to a fund manager regularly while I eat losses for the upcoming decade"

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Mar 19 2023, 09:26 PM

Hmm, now that makes me wonder if in Stashaway's marketing material, their benchmark index performance doesn't include forex gains, but SA's portfolio performance include forex gains...

I'm all for shitting on Stashaway, but at least be reasonable.
I'd like to see where did Stashaway annouced their mission statement is to beat the SP500 index.


SP500 is an incredibly US-centric index, while most Stashaway portfolios have a more balanced international:us ratio and not pure equities.

I would put every single cent I have access to into Stashaway if they are such miracle maker that they can create a portfolio with a mixture of Equities, Bonds, Fixed Income, Cash that is globally diversified and still outperform a raw equities SP500 only portfolio.

That's simply not how it works. You pick Stashaway because you want to minimize volatility without losing too much upside, not to outperform SP500.
https://www.stashaway.sg/r/debunking-high-risk-high-return

You are so far off the mark that I ended up agreeing with the local misinformation spammer and defending Stashaway. That's how far off you are.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Mar 30 2023, 08:54 PM

Just remember not to be penny wise pound foolish! As far as ease of access go, Stashaway is pretty high up there considering the fees and general experience compared to other options.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 4 2023, 06:59 PM

Sorry, I worded it poorly, I mean Stashaway is basically the best if you evaluate it based on
1. User experience
2. Fees
3. Low investment minimum
4. Easy to setup recurring deposi

So for your use case, this is likely already the best choice, unless you want to save up 2-8k and lump sum other method.

But the way they manage the portfolios are a hard no for me, so I went for DIY route after trying for 18 months.

The underlying fund is AmIncome fund, you can find the details here. Please correct me if I am wrong.

https://www.aminvest.com/OurFunds/UnitTrust...PHSAmIncome.pdf
https://www.aminvest.com/eng/IndividualInve...dOfferings.aspx



Corrected below. It's been a long while since I logged into Stashaway.

This post has been edited by Hoshiyuu: Apr 16 2023, 02:35 AM

More troublesome and doesn't have Stashaway's granular reoccuring deposit benefits.

But honestly there are way better choices than Stashaway Simple as mentioned above.

Also I think it goes without saying, but please don't take financial advice for retirement planning from a random forumer LOL

At that kind of networth, get a fixed rate/no commission CFP is probably a better idea.

https://fintechnews.my/36609/wealthtech-mal...wnership-goals/

Nothing concrete available yet right?