Looking at PM charts can be misleading for the following reasons.

1. The initial fees of 5.5% are not deducted, if we remove the fees, the compounded gain will be much much lower. However in the chart the management fees are accounted for and dividend reinvested.
2. The index these mutual funds use are all wrong, remember KLSE also pay dividend, the comparison is purely the KLSE points without accounting the dividends that these companies paid. It would be much fairer to compare with the MSCI Malaysia Index. If you have bought the iTrust Malaysia Index (which follows the MSCI component), it would have started at $7.53 points in 1997, and will now be worth $13.90. This is a total gain of roughly 184% which is not much different from PM funds (after minus fees)
3. Most of all reputable funds use MSCI Index as a benchmark, as it is a fairer way to gauge performance, most of Malaysian UT use lousy ebnchmarks to show their funds having very good gains.
3. However PM Do have some really spectacular funds. Public Smallcap anyone?
4. To get good quality index ETF, you need to learn to invest abroad. Singapore and US is your best bet.

This post has been edited by gark: Oct 11 2010, 09:21 AM

1. FD are the safest option, which is currently yielding only about 2.8% to 3.6%. Suggest to put 3-6 months of your salary in this option, on a 1 month auto-renew FD. This will form the basis of your emergency funds, in case you need funds for unexpected payment, medical, injury etc. If you do use these funds, you need to replenish it asap. After you have done this only, then you can invest in higher risk options.

2. You do need insurance, but ignore those investment and savings type insurance, as their premium, fees, and returns are not exactly great. Some savings insurance do return (guaranteed portion) slightly lower than FD over many years. For insurance you be best look for term life and medical insurance without investment option, they are many times cheaper and gives you max protection.

3. If you prefer low risk investments but want something better than FD, suggest you invest a majority portion of your funds in a bond fund, and the remaining some in equity funds. It all depend on how 'low risk' you want your investment to be. If you are young and have no commitments, suggest that you put a greater portion into equity funds. It all depends on your age, financial commitments and risk taking ability.

4. Not all mutual funds are bad, in fact some are quite good, but the majority (80%) performs below expectations. For mutual funds, the basic things that you want to focus on is the sales charges (~5.5%), Management fees (~1.5%) and performance over the benchmark over 3 to 5 years. basically the cheaper the fees and charges are is the best, and they also must perform better than the benchmark. Also if you look at the annual reports, keeps a good eye on the total management ratio and the turnover ratio, anything that looks high means that your fund manager is gambling and not investing. There are a lot of places now you can purchase funds for as little as 1-2% sales charges. Ignore dividend yield as they are not relevant in a mutual fund.

5. For mutual fund performance, go buy the Personal Investor Magazine and read the charts on mutual fund performance. For general investment knowledge go and buy the book "A random walk down wall street" by Burton G. Malkiel. This book started my investment journey many many years ago.

Hope the above helps you to get started, anyway never buy something which you do not understand.

This post has been edited by gark: Nov 3 2010, 09:59 AM

ICAP is a closed end fund, mutual funds are usual open ended funds. Close end fund means you have to buy and sell the unit among the investors, open end fund, you buy and sell with the manger. Each got it's own advantages.

It's a closed end fund traded on the stock exchange, that is why it is different from other open end funds. To buy and sell closed end funds, you need to trade among investors, therefore the sock exchange is the best way to do it. Closed end funds have several advantages compared to open ended ones, but also some disadvantage. Actually I prefer closed end funds more than open ended ones.

This post has been edited by gark: Nov 4 2010, 11:12 AM

If the interest rate for 1 month is the same as 3 month, might as well go for 1 month, auto renewal insurance, that way your interest will earn interest as well, and will be higher than a lump sum 3 month FD, not to mention better flexibility too.

1. You can choose,
a) Interest goes to principal and bank renew your FD automatically
b) Interest goes to your account and bank renew your FD automatically
c) The interest and principal will goes to your designated account at end of period

2. Need to open new FD, no worries, i have lots of FD account and all of them i choose option a. Consider open FD online as it is easy to keep track.

There is always "good" new funds launching. That's how they make their money by churning funds.

[quote=BboyDora,Nov 15 2010, 10:32 PM]
Thank you very much!!

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Added on November 15, 2010, 10:41 pm[quote=gark,Nov 15 2010, 09:26 AM]
1. You can choose,
a) Interest goes to principal and bank renew your FD automatically
b) Interest goes to your account and bank renew your FD automatically
c) The interest and principal will goes to your designated account at end of period

2. Need to open new FD, no worries, i have lots of FD account and all of them i choose option a. Consider open FD online as it is easy to keep track.

Is that possible to have few FD accounts in the same bank?

[/quote]

No problem at all, i have up to 8 FD at one time with one bank, one branch. Try online FD, much more convenient.

This post has been edited by gark: Nov 16 2010, 09:00 AM

Public gold is not related to Public Mutual or Public Bank

1. Good performing bond funds which invest in Medium Term BBB-AAA Corporate Bonds - but is is more risky than A-AAA bond funds. Also there is a 1% exit fee you must note.

2. Another mixed bond/equity/cash fund.. but RHB's bond fund performance is not too good over the longer term....

This post has been edited by gark: Apr 18 2011, 05:44 PM

Public Mutual is one of the cheapest bonds funds you can find in Malaysia. 0.25% Sales Charge, 0% exit fee and 0.75% annual management charge.

Read the annual report, monthly factsheet and/or prospectus, you can get this online or through PB agents. If you are not willing to find out or do not understand, don't simply buy.

Do some homework, it will benefit you greatly with some financial knowledge.

It's ok, we are all still learning. We are here to help you learn. First go and get a copy of the annual report from PM branches. Or get a copy from the website. Look through the holdings and you can see what each fund holds.

Attached below is the monthly fund report (public series) for the month of April. You can check out your fund holdings, performance and other important info. please look through it, and if you need help explaining, we are glad to help. But no spoon feeding...

 PM_April.pdf ( 1.29mb ) Number of downloads: 64


This post has been edited by gark: May 26 2011, 12:01 PM

Structured or 'Protected' funds is one of the worse investment ever invented. Basically what they do is they put ~90% of the money you have invested in a negotiated instrument of deposit with the bank (like long term FD) and then take the remaining ~10% and gamble in the market, making very risky bets (warrants, swaps etc). The amount invested in the FD like instrument depends on the current interest rate. Afterwards there will be two outcome.

Scenario A : The punting of your 10% is successful and they gain some earnings, coupled with the money from the 90% kept in FD you may get between 10%-20% earnings over 3 years period. Somewhat better than FD...

Scenario B : Lets say the punting of 10% of your capital is not successful and lost it all. The 90% kept in FD will have interest earned over the 3 years lets say about 10%. So in the end you earn nothing, and this is the so call 'capital protection'.

And in the mean time the sneaky bankers will take management fees from the fund, even though they just put 90% of the money in a NID or long term FD deposit. Expect about 3-4% taken off as fee's over the 3 year period. The rest they gamble blindly.

Worth it or not? You decide.

This post has been edited by gark: Jun 11 2011, 09:51 AM

ASW, AS1M & ASM are balanced or mixed funds. Typically they invest about 60% into equity (mostly stable, dividend producing ones) and another 40% into fixed rate commercial/govt bonds.

I also beg to differ...

I invest in both mutual funds and direct share trading, both is equally risky and the gains are comparable as well. Just think of it this way, mutual funds are like diverse investment, where you are using a shotgun to hit a target, where you get everything including the good, the bad and the ugly. Stock investment, is more refined, like using sniper to target and get the investment return you want (but you might get an ugly one ).

Using unit trust investment, you need to monitor the macro economy where the funds are highly correlated to the benchmark. In direct share investment, you can be more versatile, as you may even gain when the stock market performs poorly (and also the opposite ). Some UT have risk higher than shares (swaps) and some shares have lower risk than UT (REIT).

Both have it's pros and cons, and none is more superior to the other. Basically I use mutual funds for fixed income investment (local and international), specific niche investment (commodities swap etc) and foreign shares (China A-class, Korea stock exchange etc.) which is not widely available for purchase.

Relying on only 1 type of investment might get you boxed in if the time is not right, but don't over own everything until your investments can't even move. Balance your investment to specific target and stick to it, don't go and buy every tom, d*** and harry investment you can find.

This post has been edited by gark: Jun 13 2011, 07:30 PM

1. Check the fund invest in what resource producing/mining companies
2. Check if the fund hold any swaps and/or comm. futures & what is the risk factors
3. See if the UT purchase currency hedges
4. See if the fund performing according to index. GS all commodity index and Rogers comm. index are popular ones.
5. pricing & commission - some comm. funds tend to be very expensive & risky (due to futures trading)

Remember, AmDynamic bond have a 1% exit fee, it is not only for 90 days, READ THE PROSPECTUS, it is for the LIFETIME of the bond.

This works out higher than the usual charged, if you intend to take out the money later when the earnings are fat.

Lets say you invest RM 1,000 0% entry fee, 20 years later the bond is now worth RM 5,000, you want to cash out you have to pay 1% exit fee which is RM 50. If you divide this over the initial RM 1,000, the entry fee equivalent will be 5%.

Anyway Amdynamic have quite high management fees, of about 1%, which is on the high side for bond funds. PM still have the cheapest bond fund fees in Malaysia at 0.25% entry and 0.75% annual.

This post has been edited by gark: Jul 23 2011, 12:15 PM

1. How can you mess up your FD and get <1% after 5 years? Unless what you put in is a savings accounts and/or capital protected products . Now FD is min 3.00% p.a. For longer term ones, you can achieve up to 3.7% p.a.

2. For the plan above you deposit 262,000 in 5 years and then mature at 20 years with 435,553, you will get roughly an annual return of 2.6% compounded interest. However if you take option 3, lump sump, then the rate will be 3.86%.

3. IMHO at the calculated rate above, if you are interested in the 'guaranteed' yearly payment, might as well go to get a long term FD done and get better rate. Then if you are interested in lump sump, it is only ever so slightly better than FD, but with commitment of 20 years. Then I suggest that you invests these money in a PNB fund (AS1M, ASW) to get an almost guaranteed 6-7% return or put in a nice reliable bond fund with an average return of 5%.

4. If you are nice to WMK, I am sure he will be happy to guide to purchasing a suitable bond fund.

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Added on July 27, 2011, 9:34 amYeah, but FD yield better, and is more flexible with no 20 year commitment. Still want to go ahead with this investment? Calculate before you make decision.

This post has been edited by gark: Jul 27 2011, 09:34 AM

You need to calculate, the 5% portrayed is basic sum assured and NOT interest. This is currently the No 1 tactic to mislead the masses.

If it is really 5% effective compounded rate the RM 262,000 will turn to RM695,194 in 20 years. Do we see that here? No wonder so many people are easily misled by these so called 'guaranteed' savings 'fund'.

This post has been edited by gark: Jul 27 2011, 10:07 AM