Those 'agent' that tells you mutual funds are an asset class don't know what they are talking about, so in conclusion don't believe anything they say.

Major asset class are equity, bonds and cash equivalents. Minor asset classes includes commodities, real estates and derivatives. Maybe there other minor ones, but they are less used.

This post has been edited by gark: Apr 7 2010, 04:56 PM

Bid Price = NAV = Price you get when you sell

Offer Price = NAV + Sales Charge = Price you get when you buy

Some funds do not have sales charge but have redemption charge. Also all funds have annual management fees & trustee fees. Some foreign funds have double layer charges as the local fund invest in a foreign fund. Some hedge funds have high watermark charges as well, which can be substantial amount of profits. For Islamic funds, the charges are based on % of the profits which they will pocket, in addition to running costs. Please read the prospectus and understand all charges before you proceed.

Some investment especially ILP's, have the charges taken out directly from your premium. These are usually not declared and very substantial.

This post has been edited by gark: Apr 22 2010, 08:42 AM

Most of the time the agents pocket 80% to 100% of the sales charges depending on distributor. Also the agent will receive a portion of the annual management fees of about 20%-40% of the total annual fees, widely known as trailer fees. In fact the fund manager only actually pockets around ~1% of the annual fees only.

For bond funds they earn very little or next to nothing if compared to equity funds, that's why most agent prefer you to be long term equity and 'Dollar Cost Average', so that they get constant long term commission from you.

So you should better get much much more value out of your agent if you think the 5%-6% is reasonable, as most of it does not go to the fund manager

This post has been edited by gark: Apr 22 2010, 12:24 PM

A fund is a diversified collection of shares, so the risk is actually much lower than a single share. Smallcaps are considered the riskier portion of equity fund. Need to get your facts rights before investing.

IMHO capital guaranteed funds are a big scam, it is nothing more than investing 90%-95% (depending on maturity)of your fund in a negotiated certificate of deposit or short term bonds, which the amount is designed to come back up to 100% upon maturity. And the rest of your 5%-10% is off invested wildly into whatever flavor of the week (popular themes), and then charge you a bunch of up-front fees from it, and lock your money away for 3 -5 years. Totally not worth the cost, time and investment. Don't know why is it so popular....

This post has been edited by gark: Jun 7 2010, 10:44 PM

Yes you are correct, there will be penalty for early withdrawal, and true you don't lose your money if you keep until maturity, but.........................have you seen the performance?

CIMB Islamic Commodities Structured Fund I so far (03/06/2010) have a 1 year return of 1.48% and 6-month return of 0.72% and you say it is better than FD? You can barely recover your sales charge of 1.25%! Haiz you definitely need to read up more before you lose all your money.

P/S Currently 1-month FD is offering 2.5% interest per year.

This post has been edited by gark: Jun 7 2010, 10:48 PM

Chasing the flavor of the week eh? Good luck.

Not bad at all, the FTSE Xinhua 25 is concentrated on the largest 25 red chip companies in HKSE. Good diversification for those who want a low cost index fund for china shares. The ETF will be most probally tracking with slightly lower gains percentage compared to HSI Mainland.

FTSE Asean 40 is also ok, abput 40% singapore, 30% Malaysia, 12% Indon, 10% Thailand and 1% Phillipines. But for both ETF the amount of companies represented is quite low, which does not have major diversification properties. You can expect slower but more stable growth, maybe lower than the country index as medium cap and faster growth companies are not represented. The cost is low as passive index fund should be.

If the liquidity is good, then I will only consider these index funds. If liquidity is poor, when you want to sell and no one wants to buy, then you have sell way below cost, which is never good. Anyway will not participate in the IPO, as ETF usually trade 10-20% below their NAV. These are traps of ETF.....

This post has been edited by gark: Jun 9 2010, 12:59 PM

Further checking of the fees.... not so interesting anymore.

CIMB FTSE ASEAN 40

1. Malaysian Management Fees : 0%
2. Malaysian Trustee Fees : 0.08%
3. Feeder Fund Management Fees : 0.65%
4. Feeder Fund Account Maintenance Fee : 0.3% (what? )
5. Other Fees : Administrative and currency exchange loss

The fees will be about 1.03% before admin, so it will be about 1.2%~1.3% all in, not much discount from normal UT's.

CIMB FTSE Xinhua China 25

1. Malaysian Management Fees : 0.6%
2. Malaysian Trustee Fees : 0.08%
3. License Fees : 0.04%
4. Other Fees : Administrative

The fess will be about 0.72% before admin so it will be about ~0.9%-1.0%. This fees is much more reasonable than the first ETF, but still consider high by international standards.

The only good thing is the total brokerage fees about 1% compared to sales charge of 5% here.

This post has been edited by gark: Jun 9 2010, 03:36 PM

Check the seminar details, looks like you have to register and be a CIMB i-trade customer, or you could just show up, I am sure they will let you in.

CIMB ETF Link

KWSP does not evaluate the performance, there are funds in KWSP approved list which has performed badly compared to peers. As always, know what you are investing in and the risk tolerance you are capable of.

Can try www.poems.com.my or cimb clicks, other than that, there is not much choice to buy cheap funds unless you venture overseas. Another investor has learned not to pay retail for funds.

Go there and check it out, POEMS is about 2%, while CIMB clicks is 2.5% for equity funds. For bond it is about 0.75% to 1% for both.

Yep, unless you buy ETF = 0% sales charge, works just like a equity fund (buy have to pay brokerage 0.42%). You can find some very interesting ETF in SGX and NYSE. That is the future of fund investing, annual fees also 0.75% to 0.5% cheaper per annum. I am planning to move most of my equity fund holdings to ETF, in the near future. Malaysia got a few ETF which is not too bad, ASEAN40 and Xinhua25. For closed end fund there is iCapital.

This post has been edited by gark: Sep 15 2010, 02:34 PM

I have lost faith in Fundsupermart, gradual to change my holdings to dollardex since they start charging 0.5% wrap fee.

This post has been edited by gark: Sep 16 2010, 01:33 PM

Allowed, I am a Dollardex MY client. It's just that you cannot register online, and they to verify your identity. Go the office and you can get it done in 10 mins.

They sell more international funds, which are barred from Malaysia (to protect the local fund industry). In fact for performance outside from Malaysia, these intentional funds have better expertise for foreign investment, so far I have compared, I have no good alternative offered by Malaysian Fund Companies. I hold, Malaysia funds and bonds by Malaysian fund companies (Mostly Public Mutual), but my foreign fund holdings are mostly from International fund companies such as Templeton, Fidelity, Aberdeen, DWS and First State.

Any reason to limit yourself to Malaysian fund companies? The world is your oyster.

This post has been edited by gark: Sep 16 2010, 03:11 PM

Dollardex is quite similar to FSM.sg, in fact thier fund offering is 80% overlap. I also like the service given by FSm.sg very much, been their client for many many years, but recently the have the platform fee thingy, so I am moving my assets to another fund house or ETF.

Platform fee is a fee introduced by FSM.sg which charges 0.5% p.a. and 0.2% p.a. for equity and bond funds holdings. In exchange we get lower sales charge of 0.75%-1.25% equity and 0.1% to 0.75% bond, with free switching. Not worth it unless you buy, sell, switch your fund very often. Due to the new fee structure (and protests), they are now offering 0.85% for all equity funds until end of year. I staying put, and buy until their offer runs out, then switch to other fund house by transferring my holdings at no charge.

In fact if you are sneaky, buy bond funds at 0.1% + 0.5% switching charge = 0.6% to buy new equity funds.

Dollardex is more expensive, and charges 2% for both Templeton funds, but for longer term it's good.

This post has been edited by gark: Sep 16 2010, 05:12 PM

No. Switching from money management fund with 0% sales charge to a equity/bond fund, you will end up paying the same sales charge as cash. So no difference.