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.

Disclaimer

If you like what I am sharing or if it resonates with you, do use my referral codes for other services at https://atomic-temporary-178675883.wpcomstaging.com/contact/

The pictures were taken from the Stash Away website for this article.