Starting A Mutual Fund For Thai Wife?

[Svenn]

I am completely ignorant of all things financial and investment related, but I am considering ways to have my Thai wife get a reliable stream of income besides what she gets from her business... a back-up security if you will. If I were to have say a lump sum of $100,000, what's the best way to have her capitalize off that? Obviously if I just put it in her bank account, she'll just piddle along at 2% return every year or whatever (which is like $2,000 a year right?) ...that's not bad, but aren't there things out there called "mutual funds" or something that have higher returns? Are they reliably higher-returning than mere savings accounts? If I were to do a most basic, conservative mutual fund, what kind of percentage return could I expect? Or maybe I'm confused and mutual funds/bonds are those things you can't touch until their term is up or whatever...

Thanks

[chiangmaibruce]

For information about the number and types of Thai mutual funds, take a look here ... also shows historic returns: http://www.aimc.or.th/en/20_infostats_index.php

For general information about investment in thailand, maybe try to get hold of this book:

www.silkwormbooks.com/catalog/info/investment-guide-thailand

[Svenn]

For information about the number and types of Thai mutual funds, take a look here ... also shows historic returns: http://www.aimc.or.th/en/20_infostats_index.php

For general information about investment in thailand, maybe try to get hold of this book:

www.silkwormbooks.com/catalog/info/investment-guide-thailand

thanks bruce, but could u link me to the place where it shows historic returns? I couldn't find it. Does that mean the average percentage the investor got back on their investment?

[chiangmaibruce]

OK, you will need to play around with this web site to find exactly what you want.

starting at the page I gave you the link for ... then click on mutual fund (under fund information) ... then click on fund performance under mutual fund heading ... scroll down and select fund classification ... use drop-down menu to select equity fund <or any other type of fund you want to look at>. You now have a big table with performance figures

[wordchild]

The problem with most mutual funds is they dont pay you much income. This is mainly because income is only paid out after all the fund charges are deducted from the income the fund recieves from the investsments it has made. These charges can be 2% or more on an annual basis, that takes a big bite out of your income.

A key consideration is where does your partner live. If she lives in Thailand then you would likely want to ensure that the income is in baht. I strongly suggest that ,if you have the time it, it is worth doing the work that would enable you to invest a sum of that size directly yourself in shares and bonds . This will keep costs down, give you more control and can be alot of fun. The risks of doing this are often overplayed by those who have a vested interest in selling you packaged investment products on which they can earn commision. A good place to start is to read a book called "one up on wall street" written by a former famous US fund manager ,Peter Lynch. The thesis of the book is that with a bit of common sense the "man in the street" can do much better with their investments themselves rather than employing a professional.

There is quite alot of good stuff on this site on investing in Thailand, see for example the thread on Thai dividend growth stocks. It is not difficult right now to put together a portfolio of Thai investments that would produce a yield of 6% + ie 6000 bt for every 100000 invested. eg EGCO, one of the Thai electricity generators, is mentioned on that thread. Its shares yield close to 7% and the company has a policy of raising this by 5% (at least) every year. The Samui Airport Property Fund ,which is the land-owner of Samui Airport and gets its income from aircraft usage of the airport, is currently yielding 9%. I dont mention these shares to suggest you buy them but rather to give you a flavour of the sort of things that you could invest in after doing a bit of work. Good Luck

[Bizz]

Where does one find out which Thai stocks pay the highest dividends. I do know Thai stocks historically pay the highest dividends but where.

[wordchild]

The Bangkok Post , on certain days carries stock yield info.You need to double check this data as it is not always that accurate. Other than that try www.set.or.th or www.settrade.com. Also many good Thai brokers will provide dividend info on request. I mainly use Bloomberg which is pretty good but expensive.

[Svenn]

I would stay away from funds, as the management fees eat into your gains. Why not open a Thai brokerage and get some high dividend paying stocks? My wife has this and is pleased with the flow of Baht into her account.

Best

That's good to know... but what if I don't have time or competency to manage these stocks? That's awesome that some of them yield 7% as wordchild said ($7000 a year for kohn isaan would be a good income), but I don't want that to depend on financial times being good, etc. I was hoping I could just dump around 100k into an account and then forget about it. What is a "Thai brokerage" exactly?

[Naam]

You can dump 100K in a Thai brokerage and forget about it. We use Phatra Direct. We buy our high dividend stocks through them, and they hold them for us. All done online. There is nothing to manage, just buy the stocks and get the dividends. Our highest dividend is yielding 22%. Some are 4%, 6%. 11% and so on and so on. We also have capital gains on most. If you use the SET index link that someone posted, all the info can be found on there.

please name some of them. my question is based on the fact that since nearly a year the SET's P/E is above 20 and stands presently at 24.22 and which (extrapolated) represents an average dividend yield of 3.50% after 15% tax.

[ExpatJ]

I would stay away from funds, as the management fees eat into your gains. Why not open a Thai brokerage and get some high dividend paying stocks? My wife has this and is pleased with the flow of Baht into her account.

Best

That's good to know... but what if I don't have time or competency to manage these stocks? That's awesome that some of them yield 7% as wordchild said ($7000 a year for kohn isaan would be a good income), but I don't want that to depend on financial times being good, etc. I was hoping I could just dump around 100k into an account and then forget about it. What is a "Thai brokerage" exactly?

ADVANC has the highest dividend this quarter- 9.4%- the XD date (the date before which you need to buy the stock in order to be eligible for the dividend payment) is April 12. Next is BLS 8%, XD 26 April. You can see where i am putting my money here: http://siamstocks.blogspot.com

EDIT: I just reviewed ADVANC and its price is likely to go down - its relative strength index just dropped below 70 which is a clear sell indicator. Will be interesting to see if the price falls by anywhere near the dividend level i.e. 9.4% in the period up to the dividend payment. I am waiting to see what happens to the price this week ...

[wordchild]

You can dump 100K in a Thai brokerage and forget about it. We use Phatra Direct. We buy our high dividend stocks through them, and they hold them for us. All done online. There is nothing to manage, just buy the stocks and get the dividends. Our highest dividend is yielding 22%. Some are 4%, 6%. 11% and so on and so on. We also have capital gains on most. If you use the SET index link that someone posted, all the info can be found on there.

please name some of them. my question is based on the fact that since nearly a year the SET's P/E is above 20 and stands presently at 24.22 and which (extrapolated) represents an average dividend yield of 3.50% after 15% tax.

The average can be a misleading statistic particularly when looking at stock markets where it is usualy weighted by size. This is the case with and p/e and yield measures for the SET so the bigger companies such as PTT have a much greater weighting. In general these are the poorer value stocks . The cheaper p/e and higher yielding stocks on the SET tend to be the smaller companies,and there are many that you can find with p/e under 12 and divi yield 5% +. I gave 2 examples above.

[Naam]

" I dont feel like mentioning them, as they were not free for use to find."

you paid a finder's fee?

[lannarebirth]

" I dont feel like mentioning them, as they were not free for use to find."

you paid a finder's fee?

Just guessing:

http://www.thaistocks.com/

Though I couldn't have been more polite, I had a most acrimonious correspondence with the a-hole that runs this site.

[wordchild]

" I dont feel like mentioning them, as they were not free for use to find."

you paid a finder's fee?

Just guessing:

http://www.thaistocks.com/

Though I couldn't have been more polite, I had a most acrimonious correspondence with the a-hole that runs this site.

yes he has a bit of a reputation for that!

[hhgz]

"I am completely ignorant of all things financial and investment related...If I were to have say a lump sum of $100,000...she'll just piddle along at 2% return every year or whatever (which is like $2,000 a year right?)..."

Yep, 2% of $100,000 is $2000. Rather than risk your $100,000, why don't you just give her $5,000 a year?

[ExpatJ]

You can dump 100K in a Thai brokerage and forget about it. We use Phatra Direct. We buy our high dividend stocks through them, and they hold them for us. All done online. There is nothing to manage, just buy the stocks and get the dividends. Our highest dividend is yielding 22%. Some are 4%, 6%. 11% and so on and so on. We also have capital gains on most. If you use the SET index link that someone posted, all the info can be found on there.

please name some of them. my question is based on the fact that since nearly a year the SET's P/E is above 20 and stands presently at 24.22 and which (extrapolated) represents an average dividend yield of 3.50% after 15% tax.

Hi,

I dont feel like mentioning them, as they were not free for use to find. I do not know what the "average" dividend yield is for the SET, but our average is:

2.75

12.62

4.07

5.42

7.06

12.50

6.37

6.28

5.53

14.38

76.98

So our average yield on the stocks that do pay dividends is 7.70% I have not checked it for a while, a lot of the stocks have lowered their dividends from when we first bought them, but we will continue to hold them. We are also up on the capital by 6.59%.

Your broker should be giving you this information for free; i am afraid you are being scammed if someone is charging you for this.

I recommend siam commercial bank securities- the only fee you pay is 400 baht whenever they buy or sell stock for you (their commission) , ALL other material and advice is given to you for free.

[ExpatJ]

No one is being scammed, as my broker does not charge for research info. Nobody said we get our stock picks from our broker, and I did not say just what exactly it costs us. If you want to know what a scam is, its being charged 400B in commissions.

Your words "I dont feel like mentioning them, as they were not free for use to find." so if they are not free, so you paid for them. My point was that dividend levels per company is a free good from most brokers- why pay for it?

400 baht to pay a broker to buy /sell a stock...is that a scam? How much do you pay to buy and sell a stock?

[ExpatJ]

Yes, those were my words. But please show me where I said we pay our broker for them? I didn't, you did.

Yes, dividend info is a good source of free info, however, I do not have the time, nor the skill to go through the hundreds of company's to find the ones of value. This is why I sourced our picks from an outside professional. Ok? I would rather pay for the info of what successful high net worth individuals are buying, than just pick my own and hope for the best.

Thats the way we invest. To each their own.

As far as what we pay in commish, see the following link:

http://www.phatradirect.com/phatra/StaticP...ountDetail.html

I see now- there wasa misunderstanding- you list was not just dividends but also had been reviewed/selected by your broker- its certainly normal to pay for that service.

[TheBullionExchange]

What do others pay for fees?