30 of you have responded to my poll and revealed your investment asset classes in your portfolios.

Joint Number 1: Bank Savings Accounts (67%)

This is not surprising as all of us will start with a basic savings account and continue to maintain one even as we move the rest of our investible savings into other asset classes. In this time of low interest, 1% savings rate given by Fairprice Plus Savings beats treasury bills and even some fixed deposits over the same tenure!

Joint Number 1: Stocks and Shares (equities) (67%)

Stocks and shares come in joint first as the investment asset class of choice of fivecentstencents readers. Equities while being more complex than fixed deposits and bank savings do offer decent dividend yields for some of the blue chip companies that are in monopolies e.g. Singapore Press Holdings, Singapore Petroleum Company, SMRT etc.

In addition, readers of this blog would be IT savvy and with internet trading platforms being readily available through the internet, it is not surprising that investing in stocks and shares feature so high in ranking for this poll.

Number 3: Unit Trusts (50%)

Unit trusts come in third. The growth of the fund management industry as well as the Central Provident Fund (CPF) board allowing some portions of our special and ordinary accounts to be used to invest in such asset classes has seen this asset class rank number three. Unit trusts allow for investors to access certain markets closed to individual investors and provides for professionally managed investments. However, their costs and performance remuneration structure tends to favour the managers rather than the investors who pay their fees. On average, most funds under-perform their benchmarks in the long-run.

Number 4: Fixed Deposits (27%)

Fixed deposits rank after savings, equities and unit trusts. This confirms my personal opinion that this blog is preaching to the converted. You, my dear reader, are already investment savvy and fixed deposits are used for the relative risk-free portion of your investment portfolio.

The other asset classes such as property, and more exotic investments such as artwork etc are the domain of the few and selective.

This poll has been interesting though it’s hardly scientific. I will continue to let it be open to see if it can gather more responses. It is some of the ways to give us a glimpse into the profile of a Singaporean investor who is IT savvy, reads personal finance blogs and is in his/her 20s to a shade under 40s.

What other polls do you think you would be interested? Let Panzer know and he will consider running it here!

Be well and prosper.