Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Invest in ETF

Hi Mr Tan,

Thank you for giving us precious advice via your blog and book and my sister and I are greatly enriched by your knowledge and expertise in giving us a transparent picture of how various investment instruments work.

From your experience, if we wish to diversify our ETF portfolio and invest beyond just STI ETF, which other ETF would you advice? We were informed by a financial advisor that we should invest in CAF, the Morgan Stanley China A share on NYSE but we hesitated as the trading hours are different and there are tax implications.

Do you think its good advice us to trade under Foreign Stock Exchange? Which China ETF is illiquid and comparable to CAF in the SGX? How do we know if the ETF is liquid? Thank you for your advice.

REPLY
STI ETF is already well diverisfied. I suggest that you do not invest in overseas ETF as it may have high charges or other problems. Some ETFs are based on deriviatives and should be avoided.