Monday, March 17, 2008

Negative return from unit trusts

Hi Mr. Tan,
Your website is very useful to improve our financial awareness, especially for people living in Singapore. I visit your blog every day.

I read your article about Investing for the Long Term. I look forward to a Unit Trust that offers quite similar feature as ETF.

Currently, I have invested more than 60% of my savings into several unit trusts since mid 2006. (Details of funds removed). So far, my investment showed a loss of 20%. I consider my investment to be for the long term, and have not made any withdrawal.

Do you have any recommendation what I should do in the midst of current credit mess? Should I invest through a personal advisor from financial institution? I have been approached by an adviser who offers advice for an annual cost wrap of about 1%. Is it worth while?

REPLY
What are the upfront and annual charges of these funds? If you invest in 2006, you should have a period where you made a big gain (i.e. last year) and it should have broken even now, even with the market downturn.

I am surprised that you you have lost 20% of your investment. Perhaps you have invested in the more speculative funds, or the fund charges are too high?-

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you have a very risky portfolio made up of narrowly focused equities. May not be even properly diversified and might also substantially in US sector. . This explains why you lost as much as 20%. If yours is broadly diversified it should not lose more than 12%.
Anyway, this is just speculation. This is my bull.

Zzz said...

Well divserified won't result in 20% loss. I start investing on Nov 2007 when price is at all times high, but loss is ard 10% currently.

Anonymous said...

Warren Buffet invest for long term, but one of his point is to unload when it reached fair value.

Invest long term but when the next boom comes remember to liquidate some. No need to wait for peak as peak will come the doom.

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