Wahed Invest roboadvisor has launched their US 🇺🇸 (United States) only portfolio. Previously, all the classic Wahed Invest Malaysia portfolios (conservative, moderate, moderate aggressive, aggressive) were a mixture of US/Malaysia equities, Sukuk (Islamic Bonds), and Gold. The investment allocations then will done base on the investor's risk profiles. The US only portfolio on the other hand is 100% concentrated in US equities/stocks.
Wahed Invest's US only portfolio isn't very much different from the other classic portfolios, the US portfolio is still invested into Wahed FTSE USA Shariah ETF (exchange traded fund) also known as HLAL ETF. HLAL ETF is an ETF managed by Wahed that invests in shariah compliant companies in US. This means that this new portfolio will be 100% invested in HLAL ETF. The US only portfolio will not have any investments into Malaysia Equities, Sukuk and Gold.
HLAL ETF is listed on the NASDAQ in US. It's ticker symbol is HLAL. If investors have a broker that can buy US stocks (eg Interactive Brokers, Tiger Brokers, MIDF Invest), they can buy the HLAL directly instead of using Wahed Invest.
Interestingly the HLAL ETF invests in big name blue chips like Apple, Tesla, Intel, Pfizer (as of Jun 2021). I think these stocks are quite a no brainer for any funds to have, the stocks in the HLAL ETF closely resembles a technology and healthcare mutual fund. For muslims, there is peace of mind that the stocks selected have been vetted through by Wahed Invest's shariah committee.
It's a trend now for unit trust companies and robo advisors to give investors more US centric portfolio as US is expected to make a recovery from the Covid19 pandemic in the following months towards the end of 2021. However, there's also some risk if there will be other variants that might be resistant to the current vaccines.
One thing I want to bring up to readers of this post is that a lot of scammers are using Wahed Invest name to scam people, Wahed Invest only manages the NASDAQ ETF HLAL and the robo advisor app Wahed Invest. If someone claims to be Wahed Invest and offers investment packages that can generate returns more than 20% is most probably a fraud.
I've put in RM200 to test out this new US only portfolio, will update my results hopefully on a monthly basis. The political and economical situation in Malaysia is not looking good at the moment (June 2021) and as such Bursa Malaysia will not be doing well as foreign funds exit the market. I figure it's a good to rebalance more to US equities, one of the channel to do so is via Wahed Invest's US only portfolio. I plan to increase my investments in US only portfolio gradually but will depend on how the US equities fare in the next few months towards the end of year 2021.
📍 Links
Wahed Invest | Facebook ➡️ Official Facebook Site
📍App Store Links
Updates 20210713
My initial seed RM200 has been invested to Wahed Invest US only portfolio. As can be seen , it is all invested in US Stocks. I hope the timing is correct as the US stock indices are threading new highs daily.
I named my US only portfolio as "US Covid Free". It dipped slightly but hopefully it will go positive in tandem with the economic recovery in US.
Updates 20210729
My US portfolio in positive territory now. I also realize the Wahed Invest app supports dark mode. There's some concerns in the market right now as the Covid19 delta variant is spreading fast in US, hopefully it does not affect US markets too much.
🎉Referral / Invite Code - cheong1
If you're still not on Wahed Invest roboadvisor and want to register, you can use my referral/invite code : cheong1 when signing up to Wahed Invest. You and I will get RM10 for each activation after you have topped up a minimum RM100, from there you can do your invites to friends also and make some spare cash. A referral is basically how startup companies get the masses like me who like the service to promote their products to friends. This saves the company a lot of advertisement fees while growing fast by having customers who use and like the products to promote the company.
Here's a post of Wahed Invest intro I posted :
What is an ETF (Exchange Traded Fund)
Below is a basic explanation of what an ETF is.