Automating Your Investments With FSMOne

Do you feel like you don’t have enough time to research or monitor your investments?

I’m currently on a drive to automate my investment process where possible. My aim is to reduce the time spent managing my family/retirement portfolio, especially the core components which comprise mostly of index funds.

Why automate?

After manually buying almost every month, I realise that I tend to time the market and wait for dips before buying. If I happen to not be monitoring the market that month and missed the dip, I will tend to put off buying and wait for the next dip.

However, as time goes by month after month and looking at past transactions, my gut feel is that I’m not gaining additional value by trying to buy the dip every month since I’m not able to catch the bottom anyway in any given month. Over the long run, the incremental benefit is also small by trying to save a few dollars off the share price. More important to me is the consistent buying.

I’ve decided that I’d rather spend the time studying deeper into a handful of investments (could be individual stocks, commodities, thematic ETFs, crypto, options, etc) and try to make larger gains from there. I’ll also split the portfolio into a core component which will be partially or fully automated if possible, and a smaller speculative component to chase higher returns.

What I’ve done in the past

In the past, I used to subscribe to regular savings plan (RSP) with DBS/POSB buying the NikkoAM STI ETF (G3B) monthly but gave it up when I realised that the STI trades in a range over the very long term.

Then for a short time, I set up RSP for the NikkoAM-StraitsTrading Asia ex Japan REIT ETF (CFA) with DBS/POSB and Lion-OCBC Securities Hang Seng Tech ETF (HST) with OCBC.

However, I’ve stopped all RSP and sold off G3B and CFA. I’m left with remnants of HST which are deep in the red.

Concurrently, I’ve been manually buying the Vanguard Total World Stock ETF (VT), Vanguard Real Estate ETF (VNQ), Invesco QQQ Trust (QQQ) and ARK Innovation ETF (ARKK) at irregular intervals. I don’t have a particular buy signal, just whenever the price dips and I think the price is good.

Summary of FSMOne benefits

• Can automatically RSP monthly into US/HK/SG ETFs, wide range of offerings
• Can automatically fund your account through eGIRO (eDDA)
• Low RSP fees – no platform/custody fees, processing fee waived until 8 Dec 2022

How does FSMOne RSP work?

I’ve recently discovered that FSMOne through Fundsupermart.com offers RSP in a much wider range of products in different markets than DBS/POSB or OCBC. Here’s a snapshot of the advantages from their website:

FSMOne offers access to 71 ETFs listed on HKEX and US markets in addition to SGX. They also offer RSP into 1616 unit trusts and 10 managed portfolios (which I’m not so interested in). I’ll focus on RSP in ETFs since that’s what I’m investing in.

The minimum RSP amounts is also very reasonable at just SGD 50 for ETFs regardless of the trading currency.

Fees for RSP into ETFs are also very reasonable at 0.08% or min SGD 1 / HKD 5 / USD 1 whichever higher for buying.

As for selling, the normal selling fees apply which according to their Pricing page is a flat SGD 8.80 for SGX and 0.08% or min HKD 50 / USD 8.80 whichever higher for HKEX and US markets respectively.

You can find more details on FSM pricing structure here.

What’s more, FSMOne is even waiving the processing fee for ETF RSPs until 8 December 2022. I stumbled upon this when I was cracking my head trying to figure out why FSMOne wasn’t charging me any fees whatsoever for my RSP transactions (started last month March 2022). There’s no platform or custody fees either. See the promotion details here.

To fully automate the process including funding, you can set up an eGIRO (Direct Debit Account) arrangement to auto-debit a chosen amount from your bank account. Both the eGIRO auto-debiting (funding) and the RSP (buying shares) is scheduled for the 8th of every month, so make sure your bank account is funded before that day.

If you’re interested to sign up for a FSMOne account, you can use my referral code P0267058. Unfortunately there’s nothing extra for you though, just my thanks for helping a blogger/fellow investor out. For full disclosure, I’ll get some reward points as referrer.

What I’m doing

So far I’ve only set up the RSP for VT starting at $100/month but I’m planning to ramp it up to between $500-$1,000/month.

For the ETFs that I intend to RSP, FSMOne offers VT and ARKK but not VNQ and QQQ. If the RSP works well, I might also consider it for China tech exposure through HST or CQQQ later on.

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Disclaimer: This is not financial advice. I am not professional financial advisor nor do I work in the finance industry. Anything I write here is purely my personal opinion. Please do your own research and due diligence before investing into anything. All investments come with associated risks. Best to consult a financial advisor if you’re still unsure.

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