Caveat Emptor (Buyers Beware)

For the SG AM O MENA fund, it has a T + 2 dealing basis. It means that the price will be based 2 days after the transaction date. I didn't realised it until I saw a price gap.

I had sold on 8 Oct but the price transacted was lower by 3.7%. I was lucky I sold before the crash.

But this difference is huge because $10000 in the fund stands to lose $370 because of time difference. If a person sold $10000 on 10 Oct, he would have been in deep trouble because the difference would have been 0.692-0.649=0.043 which is 6.2%, a loss of $620. And he would had sold at that very low when the market bounce temporary upwards.

The lack of transparency has got many "investors" angered and never to touch unit trust again. But as financial firms will offer new products in the future, there will definitely be a buyer. It is a matter of time.

So are there alternatives?
Yes there is, it is in ETFs, which provides price transparency on real time trading basis. The disadvantage is that for small investors, they cannot dollar cost average.

The future will see more money in ETFs than unit trust because of the real time trading basis because of the increasing uncertainty in this world which investors react with increasing speed - as proven with the average holding period of investments.