Give Me A Break PB Fund Fanatics

Spoilers: PB fund agents or those who own PB funds might get insulted so I will apologize beforehand. I have no intention in what so ever to discredit such a big financial firm managing a lot of people's money. They are good in what they do BUT the question I have is "Are they that great to deserve widespread attention?"

One of my earliest blog post regarding the ugly truth of unit trusts and mutual funds specified 4 main rules that you could apply when choosing a fund to invest your hard earned money.

Rule 1: Avoid choosing big sized popular funds.

Rule 2: Compare fund expenses.

Rule 3: Information on the fund manager.

Rule 4: Good funds don't advertise.

Rule no.1 and no.4 are the easiest to spot as such I am going to use that as examples. I use those as filters before I move on to rule no.2 and rule no.3. The picture size might be too small but you can click it open in a separate tab in your browser. Fund size is in the millions and the source is from Lipper.

Equity MYR Class Funds: Notice the five biggest funds are from PB and they deliver mediocre returns ~15% p.a. if compared to the top 5.

Bond MYR Class Funds: Again the humongous PB funds lags in returns if compared to the top 5. With such a big fund size, I reckon CIMB is going to perform poorly as well, just look at their 1st year record & you can tell it.

Money Market MYR Class Funds: We see the same trend again, bigger funds never outperform the smaller ones.

Come on people, it is pretty obvious isn't it. Big sized funds are tantamount to popular funds, this is why they are big. If you have RM1bil to manage, you cannot dump them into 30 different stocks as they will be too overvalued. What they do is they spread it out vastly on more companies like 300 which make them look like their are the stock market itself - and probably end up spreading the fund manager's attention too thin.

PB likes to advertise its funds, from walking agents to newspaper printouts to shopping malls and public events, I can see them basically anywhere I go. If you are so good why do you need to advertise le?? Advertising need money le, and guess whose money that is? The very people who invested in your fund laaa.

What other funds don't work and are hyped?
Equity Greater China class funds: I'm sorry man if you are in it, your agent missed out one thing, the stock market in China does not correlate with its economic growth.
Equity Global class funds: Our local managers don't seemed to have the expertise to tackle overseas market. This applies to all funds names.
Others: There are other small ones that don't really work like commodities, utilities, and real estate global.

There is one exception and I know this has been quite good for PB. Their small and mid cap class fund. It looks like they are very good at picking up hidden gems but until I go into details of the fund I cannot tell yet. As for the conservative funds, it was difficult for me to go which for the top 3. From the time of investing in it until now they have remained top 3. Even though HwangDBS SIF is the biggest in its class, it has one big advantage: no defaults on its bond investment and it has the lowest volatility of the 3. Just perfect for my conservative portfolio. Look at PB which is the 2nd biggest but severely lacking behind in performance.

Mutual funds and unit trusts will always be there, it is just my take that I do not wish someone else to handle my riskier ventures like equities. If you could get 20% or more from your own hands you do not need them. Some of you might not like the idea of handling it yourself or may not find the time which is fine. Think wisely and put your money to good use into the correct fund. PB funds can generate money, they really do; BUT they do not generate the best returns, this is my point so pleaseee laa give me a break.