Invest Saver Or SCB

[hozhijie]

Hi everybody. I believe everyone here in noney mind who has been investing using SCB platform would know that they will be implementing a minimum $10 fee for the purchasing/selling of stocks.

So I would need some advise here and hopefully some of you can give me some good suggestions!

I am going to start working as a Poly graduate and study part time as I work. So for now i. Currently using SCB to DCA ~$300 monthly. But with new charge coming in, I would like to ask is it better to :

1. Buy STI ETF using SCB 1 time per year ($3600)

Or

2. Buy Nikko STI ETF monthly using POSB Invest Saver

I have previously bought shares using the Invest Saver but stopped ever since I started to DCA using SCB platform instead. So I currently have around ~500 shares from POSB Invest Saver. So i was thinking about these two options of which would be a better one to go with.

Thank you for your time people!

Sent from - using GAGT

 

[Darkzi0n]

How do u DCA using scb?

Buying the same number of shares each month/quarter is not DCA. DCA is buying the same dollar value of shares each month/quarter.

The difference is that the former totally miss the 'buy more when cheap, buy less when exp' mechanism.

 

[Slowdown]

Hi TS.

Your question may have come across as still being unsure of what you want.

Invest Saver is a Regular Saving Plan (RSP) with a certain objective. SCB is a trading platform for buying and selling stock. In the past SCB has been compared to other RSP tools like Invest Saver because of it's low commission and thus allowing it to mimic the behaviour of a RSP. At the end of the day, SCB is not a RSP. Now that the party is over for SCB, we should not really take these two very different platform to compare.

You may want to go back to Basics and ask yourself what is your objective. If you are truly looking for a RSP tool to have regular contribution, then SCB is not the platform. Using SCB you are effectively timing the market. An earlier reply has also explained that SCB is not DCA.

Maybe I share what I am doing so that you can have a better picture. I started Invest Saver more than 2 years back. Each month I contribute 500 to the program. I intend to do this for 10 years. My end objective is to have enough money for pay for my child's local university fee. If I managed to do that and suffer no loss of capital I would have 60K SGD then. Hopefully a nice sum for my child education. I selected Invest Saver because it was simple to understand and easy to use. Walk to the ATM machine, press a few button and I am set.

I uses SCB to trade stock in the market. Recently I saw the market dropped below 3000 and I wanted to increase my monthly exposure to the market. I decided that rather increasing my Invest Saver, I can increase my exposure using SCB. I started buying 100 unit of STI ETF a month. My intention was to put an additional 300 into the market every month as long as STI is below 3000.

After 6 months so doing so, I now have 600 units. However this is not 1.8K capital. Due to the different purchase price each month it worked out to be lesser. If I have used Invest Saver, I would effectively have 600+ shares, not exactly 600.

However this is short term investment. I may sell when the market is good. Or keep. I dunno. However this extra 300 a month is fluid for me. It is not a long term commitment on my part. If I lose my job I will stop this purchase. I however will not stop my Invest Saver despite losing my job. I see my Invest Saver as a long term plan and my loss of job is short term by definition.

So back to you. What are you looking for? If you still do not know, my recommendation is to go for Invest Saver. That is truly an 'Investment for Dummies' platform. Because we can't even figure Invest Saver, then forget about trying to understand all the other tools/platforms.

 

[hozhijie]

Thank you so much Darkzi0n and Slowdown! You both gave me muh clearer picture. One more question, if I want to start back Invest Saver, and previously i only put in 150 per month but for now i want to put in 300 per month, how does thos affect my previously bought shares? Current Average value is at $3.21/share. Thank you!

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[Celibrium]

Your previously bought shares aren't affected. You'll just be getting $300 worth of shares as compared to $150 previously.