For readers who have been following our investment journey so far, you would notice that we have been regularly investing via our roboadvisor monthly so that we are constantly invested in the market.

The regular investment turned out well for us as we are able to stay in the market and enjoy the continued upside from the market.

However, one of the downsides of our monthly investment into our roboadvisor is that, we are limited to investing into the available underlying instrument offered by the roboadvisor.

For DIY investors, there are often much more attractive counters available in the market that we would want to get our hands on.

For individual us or sg stocks, we often only buy a certain stock once and often do not buy a second or third tranche of the stock. Sometimes, when we buy a stock, we may realize after the fact that our entry price was too high. With limited capital, we may not be able to average down our position meaningfully.

Which is why we have always thought that a service which allows us to DCA into our selected and favourite stocks regularly would make a lot of sense.

Dollar cost average is an important concept that we probably cannot stress enough – it allows you to avoid a bad market timing, and allows you to stay invested in the market.

There are also various studies that show that more often than not, an investor who stayed invested in the market will end up with more returns that another investor who delays their investment into the market. This is simply because the stock market has historically always been on a slow and steady way up.

This also gave rise to the popular saying: Time in the market is better than timing the market.

So when POEMS reached out to us to introduce their new recurring plan, we are quite excited about the product and we wanted to share them with you.

With POEMS’ new recurring plan, you are able to invest regularly from their entire pool of stocks and ETFs in the US, Hong Kong and Singapore market. With the recurring plan, you are also able to choose your own investment interval – either daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly – giving you greater flexibility.

For example, you can set up a recurring plan to invest into the various ARK funds monthly via POEMS. Or if a certain counter which may seem to be overvalued, you can set up a recurring plan to invest monthly into the counter. This removes the need for you to constantly watch the price every single day.

Of course, you can also set up a recurring plan to purchase Singapore stocks and REITS.

Setting up a recurring plan is straight forward: you can just right click the counters you want, enter your monthly investment amount, frequency, start date and end date of the Recurring Plan, and you are all set.

One thing that may deter people from regularly investing is perhaps the fees. For POEMS, they have ongoing promotional fees and the new fee structure is actually quite competitive.

Starting from 1^st of February, here are the ongoing promotions:

• SG market: 0.08%, No Minimum (for all tiers), until 30^th June 2021.
• HK market: Starter – 0.08% Min 30, Premier – 0.06% Min 20, Privilege – 0.05% Min 15
• US market: Zero commission for the first USD2,000, until 30^th April 2021
• US market: If trade value > USD2,000, Starter USD 8.88, Premier USD 6.88, Privilege USD 5.88. Flat rate.

What it means is that, from now until 30^th June this year, if you are investing $500 a month onto a Singapore stock monthly, that will only cost a one off fee of $0.40! You can also dollar cost average as little as $100 a month into your favourite stock for very low fee.

This is definitely better than a lot of the local brokers such as DBS Vickers which is charging a minimum fee of $25.

Zero Commission Fees for US Stocks For Trade Value Less Than USD2,000

For US stocks, this gets even better: from now until 30^th April, for trades less than USD2,000, there will be zero fees charged, though this only applies to the first three trades of the day.

What it means is that you can invest and dollar cost average into your favourite counters for zero commission over the next 3 months!

The recurring plan by POEMS is really quite a good product for investors who has a long term view and has a few high conviction stocks and are looking to dollar cost average into the counter for a long time frame.

Instead of needing to time the market by constantly checking the prices of the stock, one can set up a recurring plan via POEMS to invest into the stock every month, or every quarter.

For investors who are looking for a recurring investment plan to DCA into your counters, do check out the POEMS website for more details. For Mrs Budget and myself, we will be making full use of the zero commission promotion offered by POEMS!

This article is sponsored by POEMS, but all views are that of my own.