Public Mutual launches PB US Eagle Fund (PBUSEF) - United States of America focused fund

Public Mutual Berhad (PMB) just launched a United States of America focused fund called PB US Eagle Fund (PBUSEF). This fund is heavily invested in equities and focuses on US equities with a small portion hedged in Malaysian equities. This is not the 1st US focused fund, Public Mutual's other US fund is the Public US Equity Fund (PUBUSEQ) and Public Islamic US Equity Fund (PBISUSE). Note that all previously launched funds were Public series of funds (footnote on the difference PB and Public series of funds), therefore this fund will also be marketed at Public Bank branches.

I'm contemplating starting investing in this fund. I see a lot of potential in US but at the meantime US stock prices are trading a quite high valuation, the S&P 500 index is at all time high even during this Covid19 period. Having said that, US Indices (S&P 500, Nasdaq) has always been having an upward bias in the long term. Only in US they have so many big names stocks like Tesla, Nvidia, Salesforce, Google, Amazon, Microsoft. US also is a leader in Biotechnology, finance and AI so these are the attractiveness of the US markets. The world's 2 leading covid19 vaccine comes from Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna are also US companies. (Disclaimer : I have no idea what the fund will be investing)

With the vaccine rollout to major parts of US, I think US economy should be able to stage a rebound by August 2021. I feel US will still lead the world in innovation eventually. Historically, US stock markets have shown its resiliency even during the subprime crisis 10 years ago.

I will updated this post if I decide to take up this investment.

However, US has got a lot of issues of its own also, they are tackling massive levels of debt and worrying unemployment due to Covid19. US is also a very divided country at the moment in its political divide. I'm not bullish at all on the US economy but I like the multinational companies in US, I find these companies are very resilient and have a global reach in their businesses so I hope the fund would invest in these blue chip companies. US economy could be the next country to emerge out of Covid19 as I see the new Biden administration dead serious on getting more of their citizens vaccinated.

For a country however I am bullish about the Vietnam economy but their companies is still a long way to go before becoming like US companies.

Warning : This fund is rated very high risk and it has high sales charges (5%). However if the fund is able to outperform by a large margin in the next few years then this fund can be considered. This fund is an actively managed fund with professional fund managers behind managing it, so as usual the management fees is 1.8% per annum.

The fund is also exposed to forex risks when there is fluctuations in USD/MYR (currency impact) currency pair.

For a passively managed fund with exposure to US, can consider signing up to Akru Invest robo advisor, it is a new robo advisor in Malaysia that is exposed to US equities via Vanguard ETFs.

📌Updates 20200201

ok. I've decided, I just loaded up RM1,000 into the PBUSEF fund. I'll document the journey here. Hope I can make some money here.

I'll have to update my Public Mutual unit trust portfolio post now. I blogged about my 2020 Public Mutual unit trust portfolio here. I attended a talk by Fundsupermart on US stocks and the speaker from AmInvest mentioned that the worst is likely over for the US.

📌PB and Public series of fund by Public Mutual

Public Mutual is registered as subsidiary to Public Bank and its role is to sell unit trust only while Public Bank handles all banking related business. Public Mutual markets 2 types of funds for both entities (Public Mutual and Public Bank).

Public Mutual agents only sell Public series of funds while Public Bank Sales Executive sells PB series of funds. Both sales executives derive some additional income from the sales charges upon purchase of either both funds, that is why there are sales charges during the purchase of these funds.

Performance between PB and Public series funds are expected to be similar as both are managed by Public Mutual, just the different funds are sold by different entities (eg Public Mutual agent and Public Bank sales executive).

Do note the term unit trusts and mutual funds are used interchangeably as both mean the same thing.

📌Links

https://www.publicmutualonline.com.my/

https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2021/01/05/public-mutual-launches-us-eagle-fund

https://akrunow.com/