Living on Equity - part 2

Use this thread to discuss the article: Living on Equity - part 2

Can we start a discussion as to the merits of using a managed fund such as the Navra funds to "help" build your deposit for the next investment property as envisioned in the LOE articles?

As seen in other threads, investors have been querying the short-term performance of the Navra funds and the PDS does state investors should have a longer term outlook of at leat 5 years which seems to go against the grain of using it as a savings plan for the next investment property deposit?

My thoughts are that you can earn the paltry interest provide by bank accounts while saving your deposit or take more of a risk and invest in a M.F. for the short-term where you may well have some wild ups an downs...


(where I've used the Navra fund above - obviously it applies to any M.F.)

It comes down to risk management ... and risk is one of the things the general public understand the least (and worse - they think they DO understand it, but they generally don't).

Some examples (ignoring tax):

Scenario 1: You have a goal of saving $50,000 for a new house within 2 years. You have $25,000 now.

Option 1: Invest the money in a high yielding bank account earning 5.5%pa. Result: after 2 years, you now have $27,825 - and you have FAILED to reach your goal.

Option 2: Invest the money in a high growth managed fund, that returns -10% the first year, and +30% the second. Result: You now have $29,250 - and you have FAILED to reach your goal, but you are closer than option 1. Is this more or less risky than option 1 ??

Option 3: Invest the money in another (slightly more conservative) fund that returns 12% each year. Result: you now have $31,360 - and you have FAILED to reach your goal, but you are closer than both options 1 and 2. Is this more or less risky that either of the other options ?

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Scenario 2: You have a goal of saving $50,000 for a new house within 5 years. You have $25,000 now.

Option 1: Invest the money in a high yielding bank account earning 5.5%pa. Result: after 5 years, you now have $32,673 - and you have FAILED to reach your goal.

Option 2: Invest the money in a high growth managed fund, that returns 5% the first year, -10% the second year, 15% the third year and 25% the fourth year, and 30% the fifth year. Result: You now have $44,148 - and you have FAILED to reach your goal, but you are much, much closer than the other options. Is this more or less risky than option 1 ??

Option 3: Invest the money in another (slightly more conservative) fund that returns 15% each year. Result: you now have $50,283 - and you have SUCCEEDED in reaching your goal. Is this more or less risky that any of the other options ?

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The point I'm trying to make is that RISK is dependent on what it is you are trying to achieve, and the TIMEFRAME in which you are trying to achieve it.

So, is saving for your next IP in a managed fund a better choice than saving in a bank account ? Well, if you can make better returns in a bank account over the period of time you realistically expect to be saving the money - then go for the bank account!

If you are investing money you can't live without - then DON'T invest it in something that isn't capital guaranteed.

If you think a fund/investment has a high chance of going backwards for longer than your target timeframe for that moeny - then DON'T invest it in that fund.

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As for NavraInvest ... there's two arguments at play here.

1. Outperformance of the index ... for this I believe you should take a long term view - see how the fund has performed over 5+ years before judging it.

2. Is this a save place to invest your money while saving for your next house deposit ? ... let's consider the recent December quarter ... performance of the fund for that quarter was 0.27% - that's how much the fund grew by between Oct 1st and Dec 31st. That's not much. Yet, the fund managed to find 2.53% income to distribute !! How ? Trading profits! What we don't know yet is how the fund will perform in a down market - we haven't really had one recently.

With regards to 'parking' $'s in a Managed Funds, I think Sim has hit the nail on the head. It's primarily about your Risk Profile!

If the Risk Profile is high enough then I would assume the Financial Planner may say 'go for it......but be aware of these possible ramifications'. However I think there are some good reasons why most FP's are conservative in their investment recommendations.

Keep in mind, FP's are human too and in the years their recommended 'higher risk' investments go well, the individual investor will be patting themselves on the back, and in the years when the 'higher risk' investments don't perform.........well lets just say the Financial Planner wouldn't always be looking forward to that annual Client Review as it will often be all the Financial Planner's fault.

Having said that, I wouldn't be at all surprised if some old nuggets like 'Past performance is not an indication of future performance' and 'Investing in shares is only suitable for investors who have an investment time horizon of at least 5 years' are just as often used as excuses for poor performance by some less scrupulous Groups as they are as valid warnings

Sim, the line of this thread would seem to be Living on Equity, rather than parking lazy dollars in the fund. By this I mean the implication is that rather than parking spare funds (cash) in the fund if you are truly Living off Equity then you are borrowing against your assets and all monies in the fund are borrowed funds thereby involving you in paying that loan at between 7-8% on your line of credit or whatever. Now if you take it a step further and leverage you have obviously increased your exposure further and hopefully increased your returns (and potentially your losses). This additional borrowed money has to be repaid at approx 7.5-8.3% to your margin lender. Now to average that out all monies are borrowed and repayment runs approx. at 8%. Now I dont know about you but I have not invested for a net 2% return, and this seems to be the obvious area that is being ignored in these discussions.

Having known Steve for over 5 years and in the early days in Sydney most of the presentations were showing returns of between 25-35%, a fact which I highlighted to Steve recently. Also if you remember at that time Steve gave us newies a beta testing disc to test the system and I still have that loaded on my computer which historically shows a return of this 25-35% level.

I cannot understand why anyone would settle for a meagre 10% return on borrowed funds when the underlying debt servicing is running at 8%. Never mind about capitalising the interest and all the other ways numbers can be played with ultimately you still have to pay the piper, I want to know why the huge discrepancy from a system 5 years ago showing 25-35% returns to a now "quoted" return of only 10%, unless this all gets eaten up in administration.

I firmly believe Steve can at least perform to a minimum of 15% p.a. and hopefully a lot more. You can get 11% capital guaranteed on some of the investments you see in the Financial Review every week. Dont know if you can leverage into them, but if you were risk averse you would park your money in them rather than have the fluctuations of a managed fund.

If the scenario is truly LIVING OFF EQUITY then it is all borrowed money, otherwise how do you access your "equity" without selling that equity! Therefore we should be looking at "net" returns and start quoting a "net 2%" return rather than keep on about a 10% "gross" return. Lets talk about what is actually left at the end of the day to "live on"?!

If you are put all "cash" into the fund then fine you are looking at your 10% plus return, but to keep on track with this thread living off equity means borrowing against that equity and making your repayments accordingly.


Time frame of five years plus - fine if that is your horizon. The downside of this is that most people I know whenever that 5 year timeframe expires and they want their funds it never seems that the market is at the optimum time for them to get out. If only they could have help on for an extra year, or perhaps they would have withdrawn at year 4. That is the market. Any specific timeframe cannot offer any better or worse probabilities of success over any other time period. If Steve's system is reactive, it cannot possibly predict that five, ten, two or fifteen years is better to invest for than any other.

Parking spare funds while you find another investment property, also fine depending on your ultimate goals, but the underlying theme is still living off equity and meeting your payment schedules and what is left over at the end of the day to "live" on.

Most people do understand risk, but most people get fed up with FP's using this argument to "apologise" for poor performance - reads like "all care and no responsibility". Try this line of agrument with your employer and I suggest many employees would be shown the door.

Good points.

It would certainly be good if Steve could start addressing some of these questions soon.

Personally I like NavraInvest because of cashflow. No other fund distributes regular income like NI. Its like a property trust but diversifed into Aussie shares.
Other funds may return better cap growth but you have to sell units to realise it and the fees are a factor whereas NI has no fees or only out performance fees.

Also you cant judge NavraInvest on a single qtr performance. The first qtr this fin year was pretty good and the second qtr was on target.

Also some of us that leverage into Navra do it via LOC and our cost is more like 6.7% pa so our margin is 3.3% on a 10% gross return.

In the end it does come down to how much faith you have in Steve and the Navtrade system to continue to deliver a safe positive return over 10% gross pa with no nasty surprises just good surprises

MJK

Spot on !!.