It is the time of the month again. I must say I have been really satisfied with the way it Endowus has been working out well for me thus far.
November has been a quiet month. The portfolio makes diversification much more important. As I have always said, being systematic about investing is quite important. Month on month and it still fulfills what I am seeing so far. This is going to be one of my core robo-advisors that I would like to be on for the long term.
SRS Portfolio
Overall, portfolio is up 4-5% month on month in terms of SGD. In USD terms, due to no FX impact as the portfolio is USD ETFs, the performance will definitely be better. We are spending Singapore dollars so this is our reference currency. This is the SRS/Cash portfolio which consists of my favourite Dimension Funds in a 40% bonds/60% equity. Overall from May 2020 to 11 Dec 2020, it is a 11.30% increase in absolute terms.
CPF Portfolio
For the CPF portfolio, it does not come with the Dimension Funds due to the restrictive nature in what you can invest in but I think this is excellent performance compared with the 2.5% in CPF.
Month comparison from Oct to 11 Dec 2020, that is 9.32% in absolute returns ever since investments were made in May 2020. and comparing the previous month, that is estimated to be around 3% higher.
This is very good in my own opinion that I have not been doing anything to this portfolio.
Recently they came up with a SmartFund DIY portfolio which looks really interesting. I would definitely be looking this up when there is a market pullback like i mentioned last month.
A quick review once more:
Endowus is the first and only robo-advisor to be approved by the CPF board to use your CPF OA excess funds to invest.
100% trailer fees back to the consumer, not the fund management fee.
Content and education still remains relevant at least in my opinion.
At least they are one of the robo I trust that wants to help retail investors.
So, it goes on and on for robo advisors. Many would probably be tired of hearing this. I mean, this is pretty normal. Unsexy stuff is not always exciting than the buzz of trading. Just only a couple of years back where i left the financial industry, I seem to be able to take a step back and think about what is an investing portfolio.
From where I came from, building a long term portfolio is very rare. The emotions, drive, passion and revenue counts a lot. Customers want quick and fast trade execution with low rates and high profits, sometimes it comes with terms like low duration and low risks. Let’s face it, people are a greedy bunch – most people just want guaranteed returns, beat the system, make huge profits and take low risks. I rather people show me how to make those returns guaranteed and i’ll put money with them instead.
I get it that property, gold and some asset classes do generate huge returns over the past few decades. That is history and history doesn’t mean it will return the same going forward. All these talk, there can only be a process when there is a conversation around planning, finance or even trading. Most people are just classified under the one way channel.
Investing especially in spot market is a tough business. Most people cannot accept fluctuations in their portfolio. Autowealth is yet another solution for me. Just that this time around, this is for my kid to start out her investment journey when she can. Teaching financial literacy is something I would recommend to anyone.
Why Autowealth?
My two reasons for doing so is really just (a) try out one more robo advisor and (b) segregate this fund for any other purpose other than the kid’s investment journey. We shall talk about if robos die off in the future but this is conversation for another day.
My take about the investing journey has been the same since day one. Don’t sweat the small things, the costs of robo are so low. We are talking about a 15-20 year horizon here so heck those low costs. You need to pay them to keep their lights running. For companies like Endowus and StashAway, these guys have the experience and passion and these translate into action.
Perhaps Auto Wealth is in a different segment all together but they are the ones I see positively after the other two. After signing up in June I finally got to funding the account in September and October when markets were on the downside. The idea of doing this over the long term is to really to buy in when markets drop. Down the naysayers, just take a look at this historical S&P 500 chart for the last 50 and 100 years. Markets will go up and each time it drops, just pick some up and let the robots do the work on balancing and re-balancing. As long as fees remains low, the portfolio will grow over time and over a longer period. It should remain in the black based on some backtesting.
For a 50 year horizon on S&P 500 (roughly around 1970 to 2020):
Big time hedge funds and billionaires made their market on the equity markets during US boom time. Naturally, capital market are still the source of capital funding even till today.
For a 100 year horizon on S&P 500 (roughly around 1920 to 2020):
From 1920, US markets isn’t that global and the equity markets isn’t that advanced so there is a long plateau. There are more factors than not being global as capital raising. It is not a popular medium since investors are less savvy as well.
Performance
Looking at the portfolio, it looks pretty nice ahead of the 15-20 years horizon. This is a portfolio which is set at roughly 40% equities and 60% bonds. The investment vehicles will be through ETFs. It does look like it can withstand long term peaks and troughs. What i really like is that i can switch between the SGD and USD currency performance portfolio as well as the impact on USD SGD forex on performance. I wouldn’t say this does as well as the portfolios but to be fair, markets were already slightly upwards and I would like to deploy funds out into the market in tranches over time.
+3% absolute is decent in my view and this is as at 16 Nov. If markets drop, the rule is to fund the account more. Do note that all of these will have USD exposure. Time versus DIY – it is really about what is important. I usually will want to see the ultimate end goal whenever I start anything.
Disclaimer
This is not a sponsored post. This is purely my own opinion after using their service and/or products. If you like what you are seeing, do remember to check they out and do your diligence. There is no one size fits all investment strategy.
The pictures were taken from Auto Wealth website for this article. If you need a referral code, drop me a message and you can indicate my full name during registration. From there, both of us will get $20 each to supplement the fees.
I’ve not been diligent in posting my performance that i invest into Stash Away. It has been positive so far (the experience) and I’ll say it is on par with what Endowus is providing. In my own words, I’ll say that they complement each other and offer different perspective. I do trust and believe their views on certain aspects of investing and hence, SA shall be the second robo advisor that I will build a long term goal with over time.
I have since adjusted the risk index to below 20% as I felt that there isn’t a need to go all out Risk On. Having calculated risk per $ makes more sense in my opinion as news and information goes on a random rampage. Most importantly, I am invested – So if Mr Market decides to go up that is fine too. If Mr Market decides to go down, then it will be time to put more funds in. After all, it is a long game.
Retirement Portfolio A (risk-14%)
The SRS account since deposit is currently at +2.46% as on 5 Nov 2020. It’s one of those that I went in February 2020 before the crash came in March 2020. Nonetheless, I believe in the long term strategy that S&P 500 or index generally rises over the longer term so I have a super long horizon on this. I haven’t decide if I should fund more SRS monies into SA or Endowus. We shall see how things turn out.
Education Portfolio B (risk-16%)
This is something I set on a 15-18 year horizon. It is at +5.06% as at 5 Nov 2020 and I think that is a good return in my view. I have been averaging in whenever there are market dips. The risk index is at 16% and I will adjust from time to time as I do believer that by doing so, you sell some assets while buying into a new asset class based on the risk you set so in a certain sense, I can take profit while increasing or reducing my risk. Try not to touch any of those if you don’t quite understand how that works. There is some level of punting involved.
Education Portfolio C (risk-20%)
This portfolio has a shorter horizon of 12-15 years so I feel that I need to take on some risk to achieve my goals. This SA risk index is currently at 20% and will take on to be one of my riskiest portfolio. More funds will be added over time to achieve my targeted invested goals.
Conclusion
So far StashAway has not failed me in a sense that it fits in to my investing style and logic. I wish to put more into the accounts but I cant bring myself to invest when prices are going higher and higher. Instead, when things come down I find it easier to put money in.
To sign up or try out Stash Away, visit the website and use my referral code at Stash Away Referral
We’ll both get up to $10,000 SGD managed for free for 6 months which is a good deal.
I should actually do this regularly on the monthly updates to reflect how effective this portfolio can be. I missed one month of record in Sep 2020 and hence this jumped forward to the Oct 2020 portfolio.
As you can see, the last period of Oct has been a pretty volatile US market which makes diversification much more important. I am beginning to see the benefits of using Endowus as it is a systematic approach. When i initially signed up for this in May 2020, I wanted to see how the CPF portfolio and SRS/Cash portfolio performs. Truth behold, there wasn’t any worries about market dropping off and if I should sell any tickers.
SRS Portfolio
This is definitely up my alley in terms of overall portfolio management as well as long term Core portfolio. Without more talk, let’s take a look at both portfolio. This is the SRS/Cash portfolio which consists of my favourite Dimension Funds in a 40% bonds/60% equity. Overall from May 2020 to 5 Nov 2020, it is a 6.86% increase in absolute terms.
CPF Portfolio
For the CPF portfolio, it does not come with the Dimension Funds due to the restrictive nature in what you can invest in but I think this is excellent performance compared with the 2.5% in CPF.
Just simply, 6.66% in absolute returns ever since investments were made in May 2020.
Frankly, initially when I got to know about Endowus it felt like oh gosh another robo-advisor but when I started to listen and understand what they are trying to do, I am beginning to trust that what they are doing is for the good of the community and retail investors. Their fees are arguably one of the lowest in terms of value from the way i see see.
Recently they came up with a SmartFund DIY portfolio which looks really interesting. I would definitely be looking this up when there is a market pullback.
A quick review again:
Endowus is the first and only robo-advisor to be approved by the CPF board to use your CPF OA excess funds to invest.
100% trailer fees back to the consumer.
Over the months, investment content and market overview has been valuable.
During the earlier part of 2020, Grab announced an acquisition of a wealth start-up, Bento. The have since re-branded them to be GrabInvest. It looks like they have ambitious plans to expand into South East Asia with Singapore as its base. We have seen quite a number of new services and products that Grab has been rolling out. That is the benefits of having strong backers as well as a branding that aims to disrupt some industry. I’m not too sure how big they can become but they have been throwing marketing dollars for some time to build their brand. You can read more about the acquisition here at Bento As GrabInvest.
Invest, Save and Grab
It sounds like Grab is going to bring out the brand in their app once more. They probably want to integrate this into the Super App that we often hear about. The tag line is pretty effective I say.
Almost No Barrier to Entry
It takes only a small amount to start investing. I don’t think Syfe and StashAway has a minimum amount to start investing but this set them apart from the usual investing through micro-investing. I’m not too sure about the effectiveness though.
Saving Money
Each time you use the app to do certain actions, you get to choose an amount that will be used to invest automatically. Good habit though.
Spend
There is no lock-up for your funds so you can transfer your money back to the wallet anytime. Talk about flexibility.
Underlying Investments
Okay, looking at how things are. This is similar to the other robo-advisors as to their cash solutions. The underlying funds would be Fullerton Fund and UOB asset management. My guess is the usual short duration bonds or assets as close to cash funds. Due to the nature of the expected returns projected at 1.8% p.a., it is most likely the case.
Fees are simple at 0.45% p.a. Similar or higher than other solutions. If you ask me, I’ll go for Singlife account where you can deposit up to S$10k at 2.5% p.a. and it is SDIC protected. Micro-investing versus Singlife – Singlife wins hands down but integration wise and branding, Grab edges forward a little more.
For excess funds of more than S$10k, get into Dash and Earn. The first year will be at 2% p.a. capped at $20k. Then go for Tiq Gigantiq at 2%p.a. (For the first year) capped at S$10k. On the options available, I’ll give grab a miss unless I have too much spare cash in their wallet that I can’t take it out.
Conclusion
It seems like it is a hype for now. Other for convenience, I can’t find much differentiation from the rest of the many options available in the market except for convenience. It doesn’t help that Grab is trying to take over the world by trying to integrate everything. I don’t support a monopoly so that is a minus. However, I do think that there are other services which will show up on the app in the near future. Coupled with the fact that digital banking license will be announced in Q4 2020 or in 2021 should there be any delay. As a consumer, we should be happy about competition.
I do see more pros than cons though, given their history of data breaches and bad marketing. Also, I don’t see that they are MAS licensed or approved nor are they working with any financial institutions other than the mentioned fund houses or asset managers. On top of that, monies are held in custody of Grab. Reading their Terms and Conditions, it seemed like they got their own ass covered as compared to the consumer so I’m not too sure about that.
I still don’t see it on my Grab App even after updating the app so I’m wondering how buggy their app can be over time.
Disclaimer
This is not a sponsored post and purely my own opinion that I am writing about in my thoughts. If you like what you are seeing, do remember to check they out and do your diligence. Don’t be too fixated with what is the best.
I realised that such posts actually attract more viewership as compared to technical breakdowns. I get it that most people want a quick and fast way to read content and download views. The first 3 seconds of every post will most likely decide if the reader would like to continue reading, be skeptical or just scoff at it. In my earlier posts, I talked about having an emergency fund. It takes time to build such things so don’t forget, the little things count.
In this article, I’m going to discuss more about what to invest and why especially for folks who just got out of school. When I graduated, I remember vividly that it seemed to be pretty hard to save money. A few years on, I realised what constituted the bulk of my spending and why I could not save more. These life experiences cannot be bought so I would say the money spend networking and forging friendships are my human capital.
Going back in Time
Going back to 5 years ago, there wasn’t many choices to invest extra funds into. It was the standard brokerages, fund houses or at most bank/custodian brokerages. There wasn’t a lot of tools to invest in and let’s be honest, the retail bankers can’t be too bothered with a S$10,000 fund. It just isn’t worth their time. So, like many others who preaches, I shall say it again – If you do not care about your own money, no one will. I remember I used to buy funds via FundSupermart, trading some Forex with CMC Markets/Saxo Capital and used Standard Chartered Brokerages to buy US/SGD equities. Nothing fancy that you can really do though.
Moving forward 2020
With the current options we have available, traditional investments seems really cool. (At least it is for me) I really like the options out there for me to pick and choose. You can Insurance Tech, Robo Advisors, Cryptocurrency, Real Estate Block-chains, ETFs, Leveraged Equities/Indexes and many more. With the upcoming digital bank in Singapore, I think that this is going to be great for consumers. The key problem now is to get more people interested in their own personal finances.
What to do with S$10k?
We are going to take away the cash solutions for this since this is on the assumption that cash funds are kept away in a safe place. With the new funds, this is money that you can afford to lose. I used to know something who likes to take a punt, he would leverage and buy options on the same counter without considering the risk. Well, he wanted to win big but eventually his portfolio became pathetic and he lost his job while these options expired and markets dropped. The objective of sharing this story is to always abide by your investment discipline.
I am reminded of the rules:
No one has the crystal ball and you will never know when the markets decide to be green or red.
A small amount of leverage is fine but not when it is concentrated into one counter. Remember to diversify but not over diversify.
Always use option to your advantage, not to speculate.
When you lose to the market, blame no one but yourself because no one forced you to invest. You can keep cash and seek cash solutions but if your cash deflate, that’s on you and no one else.
With a S$10k portfolio, I would split it up into a few tranches.
Robo Advisors
Robo Advisors are a great tool if you do not know what to buy or when to buy. The whole idea is to buy when markets go up or down. The entry level for robo investing is so low that anyone can invest. Let’s also be real, all platforms have a cost upkeep so fees are unavoidable. For this I would Assign at least S$6k (~60% – 70%) into such funds and this forms the Core part of the long term portfolio
The first option can be Endowus (USD ETFs) which i discussed before here at Endowus
The second option can be Stash Away (USD ETFs) which i discussed before here at Stash Away
The third option can be Syfe (For SGD related equities or the Global Equity Portfolio) which i discussed before here at Syfe
Now, you must not forget to top up your investment on a monthly basis. Treat that as a form of savings. The earlier you save, the faster your will reach your retirement goals.
From the robo advisor portfolio construction, you can choose a partial bond|equity balanced fund. This is where your bond exposure comes in. Do not waste your time with SGS or SSB during this period because they returns are not great.
Cryptocurrency
2. They say that trend is your friend. The trend now with all the hype is about Cryptocurrency. I can’t help but would add a small amount to the portfolio. They are supposed to act different as compared to fiat currencies. For this I would assign at least S$1k (~10%-15%) and i consider these as alternative asset class.
The first option is to buy Bitcoins. They are by far the largest Cap in the Crypto World.
The second option is to get a foot in to Crypto.com. I previously discussed about this as well here at Crypto.com App/
Funds
3. Personally, I like income or dividend equities or funds. If you are more risk adverse i would suggest to put some money into the PIMCO income funds. They are just the best in class for bonds. Depending on what you like, the average dividends is roughly around 3-4% p.a. For this, I would assign at least S$2.5k (~25%-35%) and these are supposed to be a stable source of dividend funds.
Trading
4. Finally, what fun is there if you leave everything in the Core Portfolio. The balance 15% of funds (~S$1.5k) can be use to buy in specific equity counters in the SGX. (for e.g. bank stocks or reits whenever there is a market pullback) If you really wish to fully invest these monies, just put them back into the Robos or ETFs.
What other options would you do or suggest to do? Feel free to comment. The whole idea of writing is to really share about opinions and you never know when an idea strikes you.
Disclaimer
This is not a sponsored post. This is purely my own opinion after using their service and/or products. If you like what you are seeing, do remember to check they out and do your diligence. There is no one size fits all investment strategy.
Stash Away is another Robo Advisor with different proposition. In my previous posts, I discussed about why I chose different Robo-advisors. Part of me is really to try out what works for me and if I would stay with them long-term. After using Stash Away since Jan 2020, my answer would be a yes. This is the first time I am writing about Stash Away and the experience has been good so far.
Stash Away has a ERAA® (Economic Regime-based Asset Allocation) based robo-systematic allocation system and there is nothing much to complain about. For any SGD funded into the account, it would have to convert to USD in order to buy into the portfolio which involves fees. For dividends distribution, most likely there will be the usual withholding tax. (30%)
One little tip that I realised with cash deposits is that when the US market comes off and I deposit some cash into the portfolio. Within the day, I can see the prices in the app. With SRS funds, It is not that simple. It takes about 2-3 days to do so.
On my view on Stash Away
The Good so far
I really like the App. It is simple and easy to navigate. The colours are all nice and warm, it makes you feel secure with your funds. I like the way they use the technology and methodology to invest the money. The idea is based on an algorithm approach. Recently they reallocated to add on Gold to the portfolio and I think that it was a great move. For cash funds get invested almost immediate in the morning without any lag time sounds good.
One of my habits is to listen to market outlook but that is hard to come back these days. Stash Away has a weekly market commentary by the CIO, Freddy Lim. The very first time i heard him speak was right before the circuit breaker where he shared about risk reward ratio for Stash Away in 2019. Thereafter, his views and comments about the market have been succinct and easy to digest. This makes it easy to understand for everyone. The market commentary is only 15 minutes so it doesn’t take up too much of my time yet it allows me to take back a lot more.
The bad so far
They use a custodian account so the funds are not under your own name. That said, it just means that they have more control and flexibility about the fund flow in a legal way. Even though the move to add commodities into the account, I still feel a little uncomfortable but then I have a long horizon of 10 years so I guess only time will tell. I also do not quite like that they use Saxo Capital to execute the trades. I find that Saxo is generally more costly and offers poor FX rate for the retail and private clients. Given the options we have for brokerage these days, Saxo is not competitive at all in my opinion.
Summary of my portfolio
I have separated three portfolio:
A. Education Funds A – Risk Adjusted to 26%
B. Education Funds B – Risk Adjusted to 22%
C. Retirement Funds C- Risk Adjusted to 30%
From time to time, I will adjust the risk portfolio in the app accordingly when I feel that markets are moving up or down. I take certain risk in that but that is just a very small tweak I make. This is an extremely interesting feature for Stash Away.
Fund A Performance
Since April, the portfolio is up about 7.0% annualised which is pretty good.
Fund B Performance
Since April, the portfolio is up about 4.0% annualised and if markets were too pullback, it would be a good time to top up. Fund A and Fund B was invested in the same time. The main objective was to find out how the fund would perform while using different risk matrix.
Fund C Performance
Fund C was invested since February 2020 before the market pull back. This portion of the fund wasn’t doing well back then in march 2020 and at one point in time, it was at the – -30% mark. But it has since recovered and I have put in more funds into this retirement fund. This Fund has a 20 year horizon so it has a long way to go and I’m not too worried about where it is going in the next 5 years.
As a totality, the full portfolio performance is doing pretty good at around 3.8% annualised.
As you can see in the transaction reports, the details in SGD conversion to USD (1/0.7268 = 1.3759) and investments into the respective US based ETFs that the portfolio chose to follow before funding.
To sign up or try out Stash Away, visit the website and use my referral code at Stash Away Referral
We’ll both get up to $10,000 SGD managed for free for 6 months which is a good deal.
Roughly about three months ago, I made the call to go with Endowus to try out the Robo-advisor. I must say that I did and still having a good experience with them. I guess it is time to let people know that they are a dependable and competent group of people whom you can trust your money with. They also have a bunch of good content, the only thing is that their video content always over run but it just means that they have too much to talk about.
They are also one of the first robo-advisors to allow CPF investments into the funds and that tells a lot about this company. Of course, the investment funds that they use to build the portfolio is different for the Cash or SRS options which uses the competent Dimension Funds which used to be only available to institution clients (Meaning big corporate and deep pockets could only access to these funds)
Fund Fees
Now, Dimension Funds are available to retailer clients like anyone else on the street. The problem is that most places actually charge you a trailer fee, platform fee, recurring fee on top of the management fee and upfront fund fees. Yes, it is the financial industry. Endowus actually rebate those fees so that they only charge what they should be charging – the Fund level fees.
Something that really like – Endowus will only charge you fees at the end of the quarter. Comparing an upfront fee or taking a fee after your portfolio actually returns something. I would choose the latter. Don’t get me wrong, i am agreeable to paying fees and it is necessary to keep good companies running. In general, fees are the ones which keep your investment returns compounded at a lower rate.
When to Invest?
In my previous articles, i discussed about the best time to invest and frankly there isn’t any. To get a head start, the best time is really to plonk in some money to a diversified asset class when the markets have come off. Simplifying things, if you only invest 10% of your Networth each time there is a correction. Doubling the portfolio just means roughly about 9% of your portfolio. (assuming it doubles) So, it is something worthwhile to think about the risk and rewards. It also doesn’t mean that higher risk will eventually give you a higher return. In all conditions, the nature of things is that by taking a higher risk, you should get a higher return.
Portfolio
I had split up my portfolio into two parts. The first – A S$5000 SRS portfolio invested since May 2020. The second – A S$5500 CPF OA portfolio invested since May 2020 and YTD the returns have been pretty decent.
Figure one below is the SRS portfolio:
Figure two below is the CPF OA portfolio:
If you use my referral code to sign up and invest minimum S$10k, we both get $20 each which can be used to offset the management fees to keep their lights running: https://endowus.com/invite?code=EDZ8M
Disclaimer
This is not a sponsored post. I will still add on more of my CPF OA money regularly. I will definitely pick up more when markets come off to add on to my portfolio.
Singapore Reits is something that many Singaporeans understand and take heart to. Some folks actually build their income/passive income via this source and I can see why.
My take on Reits on SGX
a. First it is based in Singapore – There is this local bias that it can do well given most people like to see for themselves if the malls are working out well in terms of retail quality, crowd, spending and how many shops are still in business.
b. SGD payouts avoids the currency risks. For a retiree or someone drawing on income from dividends, this payouts serve as a source of bill payment.
c. An alternative and cheaper way to enter the real estate market in Singapore is really through the reits/stock exchange. I know that people will argue that it is different but technically in my view, it is the same (And you do not need to pay stamp duties, get a mortgage and pay sales charges)
d. It is more liquid than real estate.
For a long time now, Reits have been growing big and popular within the investing community. Again, all investments comes with risks – Most people have more comfort in dealing with things they can see or get a sense of. For a long time, there have been plenty of wins for reits but as you can also see, the Circuit Breaker period in April through May have affected them in a way or another.
Diversification?
So again diversification is key to investing once more. If you put all your eggs into the Reits for passive income, then with such dividend cuts your bottom line is definitely affected. Currently, it doesn’t seem like this Covid situation is going back down or slow down whatsoever so dividend cuts is going to be prolonged in order to save businesses and jobs. Then again, there are certain sectors who might see a booming business such as Data Centres or even certain suburban reits. Sub-urban malls are definitely crowded but the former shopping aisles in orchard and high end malls are definitely missing the tourist crowd which rakes in the cash and spending. It is no wonder why people are worried about their livelihoods.
It is not all doom and gloom. Sectors will emerge while some will recover. It is definitely time to pick up some if you did not have any. The idea is to really have a long-term goals when you pick a stock and stay disciplined. Once you sell it off, you may never be able to pick back the company at their valuations again.
The Passive or Lazy Choice
If you are lazy, let Robo-advisors do the trick for you. For e.g. Syfe. https://www.syfe.com/ Initially i only took on the Reit+ portfolio some time in April 2020 to test it out so that I do not need to manage the portfolio and incur those trading fees. They have expanded other products such as a Global ARI portfolio (Long term investment into equity,bonds and commodities) and Equity100 portfolio which is 100% into global Equity ETF (US and UK listed ETFs)
Auto-rebalancing
Syfe has invented their ARI (Automated Risk Investing) methodology, which is a risk-based rebalancing strategy, which changes the allocations of your portfolio according to changes in risks in the market in order to limit your losses. In short, once it triggers a certain level, the system will trigger an alert and things start to sell off to re-allocate. It also means that over the longer term, you will naturally see a better performance of the portfolio.
Every rebalancing of course depends on what portfolio you choose from so everyone is different. I personally like the idea of investing into a portfolio of reits instead of picking it on my own. In terms of fees, it depends on your investment amount with them.
This is not a sponsored post. This is purely my own opinion after using their service and/or products. If you like what you are seeing, do remember to check they out and do your diligence. There is no one size fits all investment strategy.
MoneyOwl is an initative from NTUC Social Enterprise. They are sort of a Robo-advisor coupled with a suite of wealth planning tools such as will writing and insurance solutions. What really attracted me is their rather simple way of investing and using Dimension Funds as part of their portfolio construction.
As a retail investor, you will most likely not be able to access such funds. When the market tanked sometime in Feb 2020, I picked a few Robo-advisor to invest into and look into performance a few months later. Almost six months has passed now and I will most likely show some of the performance in my later posts but I must say, by doing nothing much, all advisors reported positive returns as compared to my own stock picking.
Changes to MoneyOwl
Recently, MoneyOwl announced that they have lowered their investment advisory fees as well as absorbing the platform fees.
a. For Asset under management S$10,000 and below, there will not be any fees through 31 December 2021. This fee will be rebated back to the portfolio. So take note that only Cash investments are eligible for this rebate. The cash management accounts do not have these in place and your total portfolio value has to be above S$50.
b. There is an introduction fee of S$99 which is worth about S$535 for a comprehensive Financial Planning. Money Owl’s advisors will sit down with you to review your portfolio with detailed report and recommended next course of action. (~2 hours)
c. Additionally, they are introducing free financial resilience workshops to focus on cash flow management and debt management. Likely through Webinars and anyone can join in.
It is nice to see that as a partner to our national social enterprise, they are making moves to help Singaporeans. The reduced fees on investments which is one of the key points in long term investments. The more fees you pay, the more it affects your own portfolio performance.
However, they should really look into improving the interface. (for e.g. making it into an app) They also introduced a referral fee scheme or some promotional fee scheme for new sign ups. Not much complains other than that.
This is not a sponsored post. This is purely my own opinion after using their service and/or products. If you like what you are seeing, do remember to check they out and do your diligence. There is no one size fits all investment strategy.
Lifejourney 