Investing in Kenanga Digital Investing (KDI)

Kenanga Digital Investing (KDI) has been around for a few months since early 2022, and I have just joint on the bandwagon last week.

KDI is a robo-advisory investment platform under Kenanga Investment Bank. It can be accessed either using web browser to its website, or via its mobile app available for Android and iOS.

FYI, this is the same Kenanga Investment Bank which has another popular investment platform called Rakuten Trade for online stock investment.

I just put in the minimum starting fund requirement of RM100 in KDI Save and RM250 in KDI Invest respectively for a trial to test its performance. I've used my friend's referral code during registration and got RM10 as a result. Therefore, my invested amount in KDI Invest has become RM250 + RM10 = RM260.

After invested for about a week, this is my portfolio performance so far. 

My KDI Save has gained RM0.08 (0.08%) from RM100, equivalent to 2.92% p.a over a period of 10 days.

My KDI Invest has gained RM2.03 (0.78%) from RM260, equivalent to 28.49% p.a. over a period of 8 days.

I would say, this investment result is pretty impressive. Hope that KDI can keep up this kind of performance for a long period of time.

Currently, KDI only has 2 investment products: KDI Save and KDI Invest.

KDI Save is similar to Opus Money Plus Fund (MPF), Touch n Go (TNG) GO+, StashAway Simple, and other money market fund (MMF). It is quite impossible to incur losses, and its return is expected to be just slightly higher than the bank's fixed deposit rate. This is a kind of investment of low risk low return.

KDI Save's return is daily calculated and daily credited into your account. Currently, for an investment amount of RM100, you can get RM0.01 per day. KDI does not incur any management fee, pretty similar to fixed deposit savings with bank.

KDI Invest is an A.I. operated ETF investment fund. It invests into ETF funds listed in the US market, which coverage is around the world.

The investment profit or loss of KDI Invest is daily updated in its returns value. Being an ETF fund, its fluctuation is pretty small.

You can decide your KDI Invest portfolio risk profile to be set as either Very Conservative, Conservative, Balanced, Growth or Aggressive Growth. That will determine the level of fluctuation of your daily profit or loss.

Invested amount of RM3,000 or less in KDI Invest is free from fund management fee. More than that, there will be a management fee of 0.3% to 0.7% per annum. On top of that, there is also an ETF transaction fee of 0.2% to 0.4%. per annum. This amount of fund charges is considered very minimal, compared with the charges of majority of the mutual funds in the market.

Both Malaysian and non-Malaysian who has bank account in Malaysia can invest with KDI. You can sign up your account in their website or via their mobile app.

If you want to get an additional RM10 in your KDI Invest account, you can sign up using this referral code: 114053

After signing up, before you can gain access to KDI and start investing, you need to wait for 1 or 2 days for the processing of your KYC verification. You will receive an email from KDI once your account application is approved.

Please remember that, in order to get your RM10 for using my referral code: 114053, you are required to transfer a minimum of RM250 from your bank account to KDI Invest within 30 days upon account creation. If your KDI Invest account is not activated with an initial investment after the expiry date, you will miss your opportunity of getting that RM10.

e-LATiH - thousand over free online training courses with cert by HRD Corp

FYI, there is an online e-learning portal called e-LATiH by HRD Corp (formerly known as HRDF, under MOHR), which you can freely register for an account to enroll for a selection of 1000++ free online courses.

The URL of e-LATiH is: https://elatih.hrdcorp.gov.my/

This online e-learning portal is open to Malaysian and also non-Malaysian. Basically, everyone are free to use it without much restriction.

Categories of the courses, which could be either in English, Malay or Chinese, including:

• Leadership or organisational development
• Education, skills development or languages
• Marketing and innovation
• Management / business management and corporate governance
• Public relations, customer service or communications
• Purchasing, logistics, supply chain or electronic business
• Process and operation
• Quality management and productivity
• Safety and health
• Sustainability
• Scientific or technical, statistics or research and development
• Wholesale or retail or electronic commerce
• Building, construction, maintenance or landscaping
• Creative arts, journalism or entertainment
• Digital technologies and digital transformation
• Engineering
• Financial services and financial technology

The courses are conducted in the form of pre-recorded video. Upon completion of watching the full video, you will be given a Certificate of Completion by HRD Corp. No examination is needed for most of the courses, while some courses may have assessments in the form of quizzes or short assignments.

You can start learning anytime, and complete a course at your own pace with no specific deadlines.

Which handphone can you buy with your monthly fixed income?

Handphone is a necessity nowadays.

Every now and then, new models of handphone are being introduced into the market, with price tag ranging from a few hundred ringgit to a few thousand ringgit.

From the perspective of personal finance management, one simple formula to evaluate your affordability for new handphone is that: the handphone price should not exceed your one week worth of net income for each year of usage.

Therefore:

• If you tend to change a new handphone every year, your handphone cost should not exceed 1/4 of your net income (equivalent to 1 week of net income).
• If you tend to change a new handphone every 2 years, your handphone cost should not exceed 1/2 of your net income (equivalent to 2 weeks of net income).
• If you tend to change a new handphone every 3 years, your handphone cost should not exceed 3/4 of your net income (equivalent to 3 weeks of net income).
• If you tend to change a new handphone every 4 years, your handphone cost should not exceed 1 month of your net income (equivalent to 4 weeks of net income).

If you are going to trade in your old handphone when buying a new handphone, your cost will then be the selling price of the new handphone deducted by the preloved selling price of your old handphone.

With this simple evaluation method in mind, the tables below show the maximum cost of handphone you can buy, relative to your monthly salary.

and the table below maps the handphone price range with some popular handphone models for your reference.

Assumptions and conditions:

• Net income = Salary - EPF contribution - SOCSO - EIS - income tax PCB
• Employee's portion of EPF contribution = 11%.

You might probably be interested to also read about:

• Which models of car can you afford with your monthly fixed income?
• How much housing loan can you afford with your monthly fixed income?