Admittedly I was one of the haters, because I entered SA at Aug 2020 (right before gold started tanking) lol. Actually thankful now for having some exposure to gold!

Few months down the road, I was salty that everyone was earning a lot while I was suffering losses from gold ATH entry. So on Feb 2021, I split 50% portfolio into 36%... Few days after my buy/sell orders locked in, KWEB tanked from its ATH

SO YEAH, I'm one of the idiots who hopped "from investment to investment because you're always feeling "not good enough"", and immediately suffered the consequences. My only saving grace was keeping my other half in the lower risk profile for diversification.

It does make me wonder however, whether SA might be repeating the very same mistake? I'm still banking on KWEB bouncing back eventually in a long term (3+ years) horizon, mainly because I believe the big tech companies will still be around serving 1.4 billions of Chinese even without the rest of the world. I'm not happy that SA is completely exiting China markets, but I'm not sure if I'm too optimistic with China companies.

I'm gonna ask a stupid question. How much do you think SA's KWEB selloff can affect its share price?

On another note, I'm guessing many had been waiting for an opportunity to exit.. the sharp rise was it 😂

Congratulations, you're close to hitting that 1% jackpot SA claimed!

Personally, I look at MYR numbers in both SA and DIY, to allow apple to apple comparison, mainly because my DIY portfolio has mixed currencies and finally denominated to SGD (because of my CIMB SG route...).

It allows me to see how well I'm doing, including "did I transfer out at a good timing?" <--- but this is almost always true lately, painfully so because of weakening MYR.

But also a good point to look at original currency, basically another way to look at it, is when I compare individual items like stock A, stock B, stock C, SA etc... To look at paper profit/loss.

Aren't you then timing the market, which is against DCA philosophy?

I get Lee's point about staying invested and having a separate emergency fund that you DO NOT TOUCH while you invest. If market downturn is.."shrinking" your emergency funds then you're doing it wrong. If you only have RM 1k as your emergency funds then yes indeed you should stop DCA... not because of bear market, but because you gotta build up your savings.

So back to normal case - you may ask, why DCA if I think I'm catching the falling knife? Well, you can think of it as "doubling down" but in a mild manner... Price drop means discount/buying opportunity for you. It then allows you to reap more profit when it goes back up.. but when? We don't know... Hence, DCA. Go lower, buy saja. Lower again, buy saja. This is assuming you trust in SA portfolio, or S&P500, whatever you're investing into.

It's also something I find interesting so far that several forumers mentioned to pull out or stop investing in SA because of the bear market. I find it weird because that means you'll stop everytime it's bear market, but buy only when it goes up? Buy high sell low? Isn't that making your SA portfolio perform even more poorly because of your own attempt to time the market?

I'm not defending SA but I'm questioning these people's attempt to time the market...

As for me personally, I halved my investment to SA since the March KWEB pull out fiasco. They lost my confidence but I'm kinda on hodl sentiment and I still like
- their UI
- ease of constant investment per month
- a different perspective at various instruments/industries
... All of which I feel lacking with my other portfolio in IBKR (after all, I'm a noob investor...)

Thanks for sharing your backstory about retrenchment scenario; I almost wanted to question why the extremity... But I am humbled again by how life just works :')

Back to your questions, my reply in line above. That said, if I do somehow end up retrenched, I would stop DCA also, although I have 6 months funds stored. It just doesn't sit right with me to continue throw money out for years into the future when I now start worrying about the weeks ahead. Basically gotta secure my NOW even if it means a worse future, else it's NO future

Been so long gone from SA, I missed first few months of flexible portfolio promotion

I like this new approach as I like their UI and ease of monthly investment, it allows me to devise a portfolio that complements my DIY portfolio while allowing constant investment monthly. I'll admit -- I barely tinkered with my financial stuff for the past half year, I've accumulated quite some "depreciating bullets" now

Soooo.... having an autopilot mode to help me take my money to invest + auto rebalancing of my portfolio, minus the surprise-pikachu.jpg re-opt, sounds like a good fit for me. I removed the auto debits to my existing portfolios (SRI 16 and 36), gonna let this new portfolio run a little first before I decide to "stop loss" and migrate the money over.

Anyway, here's a mandatory "look at my beautiful negatives" screenshot:

Don't forget interest was down bad during COVID, that was uhhh 2 years of <2%? So annualised in the same period, SA does beat it more than you think. Can watch this for more info:


That said, I agree SA is underperforming lol