In America, you can invest in "no-load" funds. They do not have any upfront charge. 100% of your money is invested.
In Singapore, the usual upfront charge is 3% to 5%. Some unit trusts offer promotions that reduce the upfront charge to less than 2%.
I like to ask visitors to my blog to submit a comment. Are you aware of any unit trust that offer a upfront charge of 2% or lower? Give the following details: name of unit trust, distributor, website, upfront charge, expense ratio, size of fund.
I think there was one no-load fund planning to come to Singapore but they were not successful. Scudder info here
ReplyDeleteyou should take annual management fee into account. some funds have low upfront fee but higher management fee, and vice versa. in my opinion, it is better to have higher upfront fee than higher annual management fee. the former is one time fee, but the latter is charged as long as you have money in that fund.
ReplyDeletethis is especially true in the US where management fee is relatively high. we could minimize this cost by choosing 'index funds' which try to follow the market rather than trying to beat the market, and so the fund would require far less human management.
Hi Mr Tan,
ReplyDeleteInfinity global stock index fund has a fund size of S$12.3 mil, expense ratio of 1.08% as at 31 Dec 2006 and available at a sales charge of 1% at Fundsupermart.
(see http://www.lioncapital.com.sg/default.asp?action=category&ID=24&order=rank&sort=asc&limit=0)
Money market funds are no load.
ReplyDeleteThere is also infinity global, us, and europe index funds, which have a low sales fee and a low management fee.
Would appreciate if you could give your comments on them.
Fundsupermart charges 2% to 1.5% upfront fee depending on the total amount in one's investment account. It carries a wide range of unit trusts.
ReplyDelete