The new thematic portfolios look interesting. I currently have the 36 sri and 22 sri. Was initially thinking of just dumping the 22 into the 36 and just maintain that. Now with the thematics I was thinking of buying into that instead. If my 22 sri is down by about 4% or so would it be a bad time to switch into riskier portfolios like the thematics? I’m just thinking that if my 22 is up that would usually mean that the riskier portfolios are overvalued as well. 🤷‍♂️

Also, not sure which of the three to go into tho I like some of the sub themes of each. Interested in knowing what are your favourites of the 3 main themes tho? Mind sharing?

Hi guys. Does anyone know how to calculate your money weighted return for the year? What is a good way for us to measure the performance for the year, especially if we are investing new sums through the year etc.

What do you guys think of SA returns generally? I kinda feel that my UTs seem to be doing a lil better. Both portfolios have similar-ish risk. Then again now is a bad period time will tell I guess. Interested to know what you guys think tho. How has it been for yal vs your other investments?

Yeah kind of similar I guess, I have a 90:10 UT portfolio between equities and fixed income, and I have 2 portfolios in my SA (36 sri & 22 sri). I have mainly been observing the 2 (UTs and SA) for about 2 years now, not long enough to observe a significant pattern yet tho. I suppose the impact of the difference in fees would only be noticeable several years down the road.


Yes the hassle free part is really quite the selling point here. Yea the timing thing is a stronger factor when the period considered is shorter. 30+ in 4 years seems decent enough regardless.


I have 10% in Amanahraya unit trust, 40% in developed markets; Principal global titans, and 50% in APAC markets; Affin select apac ex jp dividend and Principal apac dynamic growth (25% each). Yea its mostly down currently, as is everything else I suppose.


Right that makes sense. So essentially UTs would have better downside protection as opposed to robo advisors? Wonder if that means robos would be good for growth for younger investors and then may slowly increase UTs in later years as a retiree or when reaching retirement.

Hi man. I notice that youre not too keen on SAs thematics. Was hoping you could elaborate on that. Interested on your opinion regarding the thematics. What else besides the lack of long lasting favor for a particular theme? Are there any of the thematics that you dislike the least maybe? Lol

Sorry guys might be a little late to anak this, but does anyone know why they drop per exposure to China? Like what was their reasoning behind it? Can’t seem to find the article/ market commentary video about it.

Cool. 👍 Thanks a lot man.

So for those of you opting for the flexible portfolio, what do your portfolio allocations look like. I was thinking of just the s&p500 and the apac ETFs for my equity side 75% and 24% in bonds (1% cash mandatory). Not too sure how to allocate the bond side tho. Not sure what’s good/balanced to begin with.

Yeah ideally I’d just wanna get local bonds, but that’s not really an option. I could invest externally in a bond fund to balance things out but then I’d be doing the balancing myself (would be paying 0.8% pa unnecessarily) plus it doesn’t work out with my monthly dca amount.

Yes that looks quite comprehensive indeed. Why the low allocation for Asia tho?

I was considering something like the list below. What d’ya think?

Equities (75%)

US - S&P 40%
Asia - AAXJ 25%
Euro - VGK 7%
Jap - EWJ 3%

Others (25%)

Govt bonds
US - TIP 5%
EX US - WIP 5%

Corp bonds
US - FLOT 5%
EX US - BNDX 5%

Commodities
Gold - GLD 4%

Cash
$ 1%

Very well explained. Right so its market cap weighted. I made the initial allocation based on GDP. Based on some of the research online on GDP weighted vs cap weighted in terms of performance, the results seem to be conflicting. Some say one is GDP is better some say market cap is better. Lol I’m quite confused now. All research papers justify their claims and methodology well. Cant quite get why the conflicting results tho.

Yeah with regards to the gold, essentially I’ve learned that it is best to be more prudent as far as risk goes, not necessarily due to tolerance per se, rather I feel that my current emergency fund is not solid enough. Perhaps if i have a full 6-12 mnth emergency fund then I’d consider going fully equities. What do you think about the whole Gdp v market cap debate?

As such i decided to allocate about 25-20% in FI assets. However the returns seem rather lacklustre especially when compared to its risk. Also as you rightly pointed out, recent performance indicates that bonds may no longer be the Yin to equities. Both seem more correlated albeit with varying magnitude. So I thought I’d throw in a bit of gold, being a less correlated asset to add some diversity to that 20/25 part of the portfolio. I suppose i need to do more research regarding fixed income first

Hi all. Does anyone understand the advantages of the new “black rock powered” portfolios? Are they any better than the regular SA general investing portfolios?

That’s interesting. So would it be fair to say that the SA GI portfolios are more active than the Blackrock ones? I can see how that could be attractive for those who fear bad calls from a more active/tactical approach like that of the KWEB saga for example. The flip side would also be true then, whereby the Blackrock ones would be less likely be able to put perform the market over the long term (but would be more or less the same just slightly lower perhaps). Relatively to the SA ones that is.

Yeah that was a loaded one, lots to unpack . Waiting for the uploaded version.

Hey guys. Does anyone have any experience with the flexible portfolios? I’ve got a question about the balancing. Does anyone know what’s the boundaries that trigger the rebalancing? Like is it 5,10,20% off from your target allocation, or something like that?

I see I see. So the boundaries that trigger rebalancing is quite large. 60% to 80% before rebalancing is triggered. Would make for a more volatile portfolio. Probably save on rebalancing costs I guess.

Did not know this was on their list. How new is it?

I moved all my GI predominantly into IVV.

Currently I don’t have much invested also my monthly dca amount is very small. So investing in IVV etc via SA makes sense for the time being. Even with the 0.8 annual fee, seems to be better than unit trusts at the very least.

That being said, at what point do yal think I should consider switching to a brokerage account tho? Like what portfolio size?

Also does it make sense to go full US given that adding Asia/Eur doesn’t seem to lower risk for the past few decades. Seems to add risk if anything. Looking at the long term trends, there are more instances where non US is down while US is up or flat. And when US is down non US would follow too. Hardly see any times where US is down and non US is up or flat. Of course past performance isn’t an indicator of future performance and all but yeah…

Any thoughts?

This post has been edited by george_dave91: Oct 17 2022, 02:03 PM

Hi guys.

Was thinking of create a small high risk high reward flexible portfolio for my overall portfolio. What do you guys recommend. Was considering to add a few high risk high reward type ETFs like Nasdaq qqq etc. any ideas what ETFs would be good and what sort of allocation for each?

That is true. I suppose what I was referring to are high quality but volatile equity ETFs as opposed to questionable ones or trendy ones that can very likely go to zero and stay there. Know what I mean?

Well that may be so. However I’d only be putting in small amounts here monthly. Like less than 100. For the time being at least. When I get better pay I’d increase it accordingly. Also I’m not quite able to invest via any exchange I want due to my job. The one I can’t invest through is kinda pricey for foreign investments. 0.8% pa seems to be the lesser of the evils at this point. Plus for me I do get value through sa mainly thorough their rebalancing, sorting out the paper work such as making claims for some portion of the withheld tax amounts taken from the dividends issued, getting access to fractional shares via an sc regulated platform. Just to name a few.

Wow that is risky indeed. I think the random policy changes make them unjustifiably risky tho. It’s something that we have almost no certainty would return to a favourable state from an investor’s perspective, let alone a foreign investor. Whereas if it were merely market volatility due to economic factors I’d find that to be better risk to reward, given the expected possible returns that is.

Do you feel these would do better than something like the nasdaq 100 or a us small cap etf over a period of 10 years or so tho? What’s your take on this?