During this period of economic downturn, many investors have suffered losses in all types of investments. No matter how diversified their portfolios are, the losses were inevitable in one form or another. The only hope is that there was a good mix of asset classes in there that could have helped to sustain huge losses.

Even for relatively safe investments like unit trust funds suffered. Before this economic crisis hit, many fund houses launched a suite of offshore and equity funds and we were all gamed like hungry investors. For those who have bought many equity funds, you will now see a lot of red in your fund statements. But not all funds are losers, fortunately. The more conservative ones have yielded rather good returns.

In the latest issue of Personal Money, the top 10 and worst 10 unit trust funds in 2008 were tabled and they are as follows:

Top 10 funds in 2008

Bond and guaranteed/protected funds have come out tops last year. And many of us wouldn’t have gone for bond funds as they were less interesting then. Does that now teach us a lesson that amidst all the sexier equity funds, we still need to put some eggs into safer and less sexy assets?

Worst 10 funds in 2008

Needless to say, equities did the worst of the lot, as can be expected. And I think this is where many of us got burnt. Well, perhaps not exactly burned just yet if you are still holding on to the funds. Wait it out, and wait for these funds’ performance to climb again when the economy recovers. After it has gone all the way down, there’s no where else to go but up!

So what kind of funds would you now think about going into? For a year now I’ve been interested in exchange traded funds (ETFs) but never made an attempt to lock in. There are only 3 ETFs in Malaysia so far, which are ABF Malaysia, FTSE Bursa Malaysia 30 ETF (FBM30etf) and MyETF Dow Jones Islamic Market Malaysia Titans 25 (MyETF-DJIM25). I’ve been eyeing the latter for over a year now. Now that the price has come down, it looks like an opportunity to invest.

ETFs slowly but surely gaining popularity domestically and in times like this, they are much safer bets than investing in stocks directly. In fact, today’s article in The Star wrote about them being the safer investments too.

For now, I’m not quite interested in purchasing unit trusts and will most likely make a start in investing in ETFs. What about you? Are you gamed in ETFs too?

To read more personal finance and money related articles, visit Penny Sense.

Which unit trust funds to buy

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After getting some good advise about ETFs, I’ve been doing my own research on it. Locally, there has been a recently launched ETF which seems like a good buy. It’s the first national ETF that buys into blue chips stocks. I had a look at the full listing of basket of stocks and I was impressed.

I am strongly convinced about this particular ETF and will seriously think about how much to buy in.

This will be my first ETF, ever!

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ETFs

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