While we understand that to invest in a unit trust carries certain risk, especially so when the unit trust carries lots of equity component and more so if the investment is on foreign market. It is repeatedly emphasize on my previous article that studies need to be done before investing in unit trust or investor will risk losing big chunk of his investment for nothing but being lazy, the very first part of studies we need to do is on the master prospectus or the proposal prepared by the fund manager; on this single master prospectus it contain almost all the information that an investor needs which include the percentage of investment on each sector & industry that the fund invested in; investor will also find information that provide a benchmark for investor to compare the fund performance against the benchmark of the country such as the stock exchange. But however the benchmark studies is on an average basis and does not truly provide an accurate comparison, it is however good to take note on this comparison studies as a guide for all of us.

Identifying these investment sector & industry is important as the performance of the economy as a whole will reflect on the performance of the fund as well, for example if a particular fund have its investment 70% on equity and out of this 70% equity stake 60% is on a particular company equity then investor might want to keep an eye of that company performance and equity price. It is important for us to know the some information of the industry that the unit trust invested in, to study its profitability and the risk involve in the investment. The most important component will be the major sector and industry that the fund invested in while other smaller component is not as important as those in major component. In most cases, investor themselves are not aware of this information and what their unit trust invest in which result in poor self management and at the end investor themselves are at the losing end. (more…)