A tip I followed: Aberdeen New Dawn

Apodemus

d712 wrote: »

The fund's objective is 'to provide Shareholders with a high level of capital growth through equity investment in the Asia Pacific

Are there any significant events that have caused this?

Exchange rates probably won't have helped either.

dunstonh

People who check investments and get nervous about movements to a level that they resort to posting their concerns on a website tend to mean that the person has invested above their risk profile or invested in a manner that is not within their scope of knowledge. The fact you bought from a newspaper tip reinforces concerns about low knowledge and hints that fashion investing is in play here. So, the comments are fair and valid and certainly do not deserve the response you gave.

The fund you are invested in has a loss potential of around 80% in 12 months. Yet it is only down 12% since you bought it. A very small level of loss for such a high risk fund.

The fact you need to ask why it lost money indicates a lack of knowledge. That is not a bad thing and you should not take it as a criticism. However, if you are going to DIY, then you should either take the effort to learn if you are going to build a bespoke portfolio or you should stick to investments within your scope of knowledge (such as multi-asset funds).

Hopefully, this fund only forms no more than around 5% of so of your portfolio (it could sneak more towards 10% if you are a high risk/speculative investor). So, short term volatility should not be of concern because you know it is acting exactly how you would expect it to act.

d712

dunstonh wrote: »

People who check investments and get nervous about movements to a level that they resort to posting their concerns on a website tend to mean that the person has invested above their risk profile or invested in a manner that is not within their scope of knowledge. The fact you bought from a newspaper tip reinforces concerns about low knowledge and hints that fashion investing is in play here. So, the comments are fair and valid and certainly do not deserve the response you gave.

I don't want to make a big debate out of this but then again if I object to what someone has said I will respond to it.


I objected to one particular comment because it was abrupt and dismissive and it had nothing to do with the question I posted.


The question was what specific factors may have caused a drop of 12%.


That's it, that's all I wanted to know and I've now said that 3 times.


I don't have time to be looking at what may or not be influencing markets in different parts of the world so I posted a question on here about it.


I'm not nervous about the movements nor did I post any concerns in the original message. This is the one tip I followed from a newspaper because I had some funds left over, I'd agree that fashion investing was taking place if that was my general approach but it isn't.

d712

bowlhead99 wrote: »

If you can't handle salient observations about the futility of checking equity prices every two months, and you judge the quality of each response on a 'politeness' scale, then:
I'd say you are not cut out for posting messages on internet forums.

But it wasn't a salient observation because it wasn't relevant to my question.


I judge responses by their relevance and politeness. The one I objected to failed on both counts.

d712

jimjames wrote: »

At the risk of getting the same response you need to remember it's a long term investment and frequently checking prices will not help.

What other investment do you have?

I own Aberdeen new dawn and have done for over 15 years. In that time the price has gone up over 5x. That's why you look long term not a few months.

I am looking at this long term. I want to stress that I'm not twitching nervously as I refresh the page in the hope that the price goes up. I've said that I will hold onto the investment because I see it as a long term thing.


I check up on investments regularly out of interest but it doesn't matter one way or the other because I have no intention of selling them anyway.

bowlhead99

d712 wrote: »

I objected to one particular comment because it was abrupt and dismissive and it had nothing to do with the question I posted.

The question was what specific factors may have caused a drop of 12%.

That's it, that's all I wanted to know and I've now said that 3 times.

But are you au fait with all the very specific factors that may have caused the 20% rise over the 6 months before you decided to buy in?

I suspect not; and if not, it is fruitless to tell you that some of those factors have reversed and some other ones have appeared and the weighting of different underlying holdings has changed due to market movements and the manager's choices. It's simply another two months in the life of the fund.

If you wait about another week, Aberdeen's latest factsheet will be available (for the May month-end) which will give you some commentary on particular holdings or macro conditions.



Looking at the last decade, the fund doesn't seem to be doing particularly badly or spectacularly well against the universe of surviving asiapac-ex-japan investment trusts (which of course includes itself). So it seems unlikely you bought a lemon, or an absolute superstar.



That peer group will have a variety of different strategies and risk factors and therefore may not be directly comparable with your trust of choice; but whether you are assessing your fund's performance against the asia-pac region, or emerging markets generally, you should find those comparators more relevant than, say, FTSE100 which only dropped 4-5% in the last two months.

HTH

d712

Now that IS a great response.


Thanks bowlhead, much appreciated