Focus On The Right Spot

Ryan is a basketball player who play a forward position in his team. He trained hard in every training session. No matter on his stamina, shooting skill, dribbling, blocking and he is strong on physical too.
He is a determined player and he wants to score at least 20 points in every game that he involve.

During the game, when Ryan got the ball, he quickly pas the ball to his teammate. Even he had a clear chance to throw a shoot, but he just pass the ball out.
End of the game, Ryan only scored 6 points.



The coach asked him, "Why you didn't take the shoot when there were several chances to throw the shoot?"
Ryan replied, "Coach, every time when I get the ball... I feel no confident and doubt on the ball, I am not sure the ball that I shoot out can score or not?"
The coach and teammate were shocked.



"You had been training so hard all the while and now you have the doubt?" Coach said.
"You have to focus the right thing son.."
"You got to focus on the ring, you got to focus on your goal and objective. The DOUBT won't help you to achieve what you want. You have to keep shooting when there is a chance to score until you achieve your target. There is not possible for you just throw 3 shooting and reach your 20 points in the game."




What do you think on Ryan's scenario?
In life, some time we keep saying we wanna achieve something and start to plan on it.
The sad thing is we stopped the execution after few tries... We doubt, we lost focus, we lost confident, we lost direction...

Same thing happened in unit trust investment.
There are many investors started to pick up a fund for their long term investment.
Normally a good unit trust consultant will encourage the investors to do the regular investment, which is to invest monthly with a small amount after the initial investment.
The reason of doing this is because UTC want to emphasize on long term goal and to build and grow the money for the investor according to their financial goal.

Many investors just lose focus and stop the regular investment just because of they lack of patient.
The investor might start an initial investment amount and start to top up the regular investment for few months. They stop for one reason, no movement on their investment.

One day, I sat down with an investor and review her unit trust fund portfolio.
(I am not suppose to review on this portfolio within the first 2 years)

"Here is your investment since 8 months ago, you started your investment with RM3,000 and regular investment of RM300 a month."
"You stop your regular investment after 2 months, which is now you have the total investment amount of RM3,600."
"Why you stop your regular investment?" I asked.
The investor replied, "I saw the investment not performing and I stop it for observation."

I continue ask the investor, "Let me ask you one question before we go further on the fund performance."
"Do you continue to save your RM300 in the third month?"
"No." Investor replied.
I smiled and told her this, "You see, the main purpose of having this investment plan is to develop your savings habit. That's why I encourage you to invest the unit trust fund regularly. I suggested this plan for you according to your situation after our earlier discussion."
"Now you stop your regular investment due to the doubt on the fund performance, but you didn't continue the monthly savings habit by replacing the unit trust fund."
"And end up you might not have any savings after few months or few years?"

I know some time the way I respond to my investors is a little bit too harsh but I just wanna tell them the truth.

(By factor out the return and loses in her unit trust fund.)
If she keep invest the unit trust fund, at least now she has RM5,100 ( RM3,000 initial + RM2,100 regular investment).
But now she only has RM3,600 in the fund and the other money been spent out.
Objective didn't achieve.

Let me tell you all, by stopping the execution on the monthly investment, many investors forgot about the main objective is actually to save money regularly. Once they stop it, they won't continue the savings habit.

Remember to focus the right thing!
Just continue throw the shooting when the ball is on your hand, else you won't achieve the point you want in the basketball game.

Disclaimer : The contents of this article is based on an experience shared by an UTC. It does not constitute recommendation to buy or sell unit trust funds.

Investors are advised to go back to individual UTC or mutual fund company to get more information about the risk & return on the unit trust funds.