The shortest route to top quartile performance is to be in the bottom quartile of expense. - John Bogle ( Founder of The Vanguard Group)

This post is to do a comparison in relation to investment expenses between Unit Trusts, ETFs through DBSV Cash Upfront and other brokerages and POEMS sharebuilders plan. In relation to sales charges, based on the spreadsheet done below, there is an optimal way to invest, so as to reduce charges or fees, based on the investment amount if one is to follow a monthly dollar cost averaging strategy. Generally, dollar cost averaging means allocating a fixed amount of money into investments at regular intervals, so as to lower the average cost of the investment, since when share prices go up, less shares are bought and when share prices go down, more shares are bought. The other reasons for dollar cost averaging (DCA)include not having enough funds to buy a pricey blue chip company say, the minimum 1 lot DBS shares and so DCA allows one to slowly accumulate DBS shares. Other reasons includes a person not being savvy enough or having not enough time to monitor the market so as to "generally" time the market to enter. The reason why we are comparing the said instruments is because these share a common trait, which is, they allow one to so call diversify their portfolios. Well, personally, SGDividends do not use any of this said instruments, that is Unit Trusts, Share Builders Plan or buy any ETFs, but oh well, to each his own. For those who don't know what POEMs share builders plan is...read below. Read more...