Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Unit Trust for Beginner


unit trust, mutual fund, amanah saham, whatever the term is, it's refer to the same thing. in UK, it's unit trust; in US, it's mutual fund; in Malaysia, it's amanah saham and unit trust is widely used in this country as well.

the unit trust concept is like this, it is a kind of investment by means of pooling funds from many individual and corporate, to be invested into various investment opportunities, in other words, in the different companies. unit trusts raise the money by selling shares of the fund to the public, much like any other company can sell stock in itself to the public.

there's might be confusion between unit trust and share market investment. here i highlight the different and similarities between those two.

Investment Portfolio
1. unit trust invests in various companies.
2. share invests in one exclusive company.

Investment Risk
1. unit trust risks are medium and diversified. example, if company A goes bankrupt, the other companies can back up the NAV price.
2. share market risks are very high and exclusive. if something happen to the company (rugi, tutup, bankrupt) you'll dragged into the same dilemma.

Investment Style
1. unit trust is for long-term investment since the NAV is stable upon time (depend on what type of fund you're invested in).
2. share market gives high return in relatively short period of time.

Investment Strategy
1. unit trust investor has to know the type of fund and the fund's portfolio prior to investing. he can invest at anytime.
2. share market investor needs sufficient information, experience and know the right time to invest.

Investment Trend
1. unit trust's price fluctuation is not slightly significant. e.g. if the price decrease dramatically, it won't raise as dramatic as it went down. remember, the trend is slow but stable.
2. share's price is very significant in price fluctuating. it may has a stable price for months but in a day, it can goes up to 150% or goes down to 70%.

for a layman like us, investing in unit trust is a smart way to doubles or triples our money provided we have enough infos about investing in unit trust especially in choosing the right unit trust management company. we have lots of unit trust companies in Malaysia and there goes the choice to make the right decision so that our monies will be save and actively compounded.