Roboadvisor: Stashaway vs Syfe

[WoShiPro]

Drawdown and recovery are both important. Eg. Stashaway drops by 35%, recovers in 1mth to positive zone, competitor drops by 30% and is still underwater by -15% in 1mth.

Is it because syfe sold equity and bought bonds in March when the market is crashing?

 

[assiak71]

Drawdown and recovery are both important. Eg. Stashaway drops by 35%, recovers in 1mth to positive zone, competitor drops by 30% and is still underwater by -15% in 1mth.

An important lesson for diy investors. Stay the course. Jack bogle is right

 

[ongkinhong12345]

We shall monthly deposit to roboinvest account?

Example
Deposit 1500 1st month
Following month sgd100++?

 

[dappermen]

i trust Stashawy done similar too, by reoptimising!

Is it because syfe sold equity and bought bonds in March when the market is crashing?

 

[2474265]

I mean the holdings in the etf Microsoft, apple etc they operate worldwide.. I see the holding of the china tech and only recognize 2 of the company.. Tencent and Alibaba..

Anyway I feel that this is a bad rebalancing.

In the email Point #2 state reduce USD exposure yet the underlying etf is still traded in USD.

Not sure if it was a good or bad rebalancing, but the fact that the ETF is still in USD, doesn't really matter. If USD depreciates, the value of the ETF will go up as most of its exposure is China...

For me the rebalancing looks very much like active management by a fund manager (what if he/she is wrong?), which most investors don't want when investing with a robo advisor...

 

[2474265]

Something else which I miss in this discussion is the different risk profile of the 2 portfolios...

Syfe: currently at ~30% equity
Stashaway: ~90% equity (seems not to change)

volatility is super high, new records for unemployment every day and markets increase...

if markets drop again, which i think is definitely not unlikely, stashaway will suffer much more. if the markets keep rallying, syfe will grow slower. so the question is do we trust that the rally will continue considering all the news we get daily?

but definitely very hard to compare 1:1 if one is 30% vs 90% equity... one is taking the safe route while the other takes a lot of risk it seems

 

[zarray]

Is it because syfe sold equity and bought bonds in March when the market is crashing?

It’s because the current line up of Syfe portfolios is shorting the market with large allocation in TLT.

If the market goes to hell and re-test the lows then maybe we will see outperformance.

 

[tutonic]

Something else which I miss in this discussion is the different risk profile of the 2 portfolios...

Syfe: currently at ~30% equity
Stashaway: ~90% equity (seems not to change)

volatility is super high, new records for unemployment every day and markets increase...

if markets drop again, which i think is definitely not unlikely, stashaway will suffer much more. if the markets keep rallying, syfe will grow slower. so the question is do we trust that the rally will continue considering all the news we get daily?

but definitely very hard to compare 1:1 if one is 30% vs 90% equity... one is taking the safe route while the other takes a lot of risk it seems

The underlying risk profile for both portfolios are almost the same. For Syfe, it's just that the current allocation varies significantly from the underlying allocation in normal times. The reason for the disparity currently is due to each robo's algorithm for re-balancing.

The whole intention of the OP's comparison threads is to compare the performance of portfolios with similar risk level across various robos.

So yes, even with the current make-up for Syfe's bond heavy allocation, it is still a 1:1 comparison, since the underlying portfolios have similar risk profiles.

Not sure if it was a good or bad rebalancing, but the fact that the ETF is still in USD, doesn't really matter. If USD depreciates, the value of the ETF will go up as most of its exposure is China...

For me the rebalancing looks very much like active management by a fund manager (what if he/she is wrong?), which most investors don't want when investing with a robo advisor...

That's why every robo has the option to opt-out of the rebalancing/re-optimisation exercise.

 

[dappermen]

We shall monthly deposit to roboinvest account?

Example
Deposit 1500 1st month
Following month sgd100++?

i didnt DCA, i have no mthly regular plans at all but u can if u wish to. Esp now as stock mkt might be slowly picking up so still good to buy in "when" low as we can never "time the mkt

 

[dappermen]

rebalancing/reoptimising can be opted for stashaway, i m not sure of the other robo
1 can opt NOT to rebalancing/reopt...

to me whether is it more equity or more commodities (gold etc) or bonds, it is all reopt according to your "Risk" tolerance/level.

Not sure if it was a good or bad rebalancing, but the fact that the ETF is still in USD, doesn't really matter. If USD depreciates, the value of the ETF will go up as most of its exposure is China...

For me the rebalancing looks very much like active management by a fund manager (what if he/she is wrong?), which most investors don't want when investing with a robo advisor...

 

[blurpandasg2014]

Updated.

 

[dappermen]

https://www.theedgesingapore.com/ca...MVeBUcpNHlyoesVkl1n_slC0x0#Echobox=1590056953

 

[assiak71]

Updated.

Are you able to see the max drop (peak to trough) for both?

 

[hkchew03]

Wow, kinda impressive SS is already green!

Posted from PCWX using SM-T720

 

[mango_car]

Wow, kinda impressive SS is already green!

Posted from PCWX using SM-T720

SS is Stashaway ?

 

[s0crates]

Lol at Endowus trying to draw it's differences with Stashaway and other active robos lol. Why wasn't syfe featured?!

https://www.theedgesingapore.com/ca...MVeBUcpNHlyoesVkl1n_slC0x0#Echobox=1590056953

 

[blurpandasg2014]

Are you able to see the max drop (peak to trough) for both?

Yes later I check and update

Stashaway
Peak: $763.25 (19 Feb 2020)
Trough: $584.52 (12 Mar 2020)

Rebound to $630.75 on 13 March

Syfe
Peak: $751.71 (19 Feb 2020)
Trough: $588.29 (12 Mar 2020)

Rebound to $618.36 on 13 March

 

[cfleee]

I was watching a recent Syfe webinar and took this screenshot, they were showing their 15% risk level portfolio and when the asset allocation was changed in the recent market turmoil.

4 changes seems like quite a lot, at least compared to StashAway which didn't do anything until it was over. Strategically quite different I guess? (I don't have more data about how often Syfe has done their allocation changes in the past or in backtests, but SA has only done their re-optimisation thingy a couple times, maybe 3-4 times since they started in Jun 2017?)

 

[benlzy]

4 changes seems like quite a lot, at least compared to StashAway which didn't do anything until it was over. Strategically quite different I guess? (I don't have more data about how often Syfe has done their allocation changes in the past or in backtests, but SA has only done their re-optimisation thingy a couple times, maybe 3-4 times since they started in Jun 2017?)

From the webinars I've seen, Syfe basically just rebalances as many times as necessary if the risk exceeds their risk corridor. Not 100% sure how they determine if the risk exceeds, or what the perceived risk is benchmarked against.

 

[cfleee]

From the webinars I've seen, Syfe basically just rebalances as many times as necessary if the risk exceeds their risk corridor. Not 100% sure how they determine if the risk exceeds, or what the perceived risk is benchmarked against.

After looking some more at their stuff this seems like it is by design -- overweight riskier assets during less-volatile run-up, then rely on frequent adjustments (based on sustained volatility?) to get out of the riskier assets when it drops. So it will perform especially well during a long run-up, as they like to mention their algos would have brought some portfolios to 100% equity (!!) during a bull run, but overall performance really hinges on how their algo responds during the drawdown. That's what we are seeing now.

It sounds very human in a way Everything looks good, let's go to 100% equity (or even extra risky but performing very well subsections of equity), then oops market is dropping I'm very scared let's sell equity and buy bonds to prevent portfolio dropping too much.

Interesting. Very different strategy from StashAway which does their medium-term macro kind of thing, even if both talk about constructing portfolios based on value at risk and expected loss in a year kinda thing.