Max Keeling - Expat Wealth

18/09/2021

Great lunchtime meal at Braci…with obligatory wine pairing 😀

06/06/2021

Sunday drive in da jungle

15/02/2021

Are you a UK expat living in Singapore? Need some pointers on sorting out your wealth? Join me on Thursday 18th Feb at 7:30pm for an informative webinar on making smart decisions with your money.

Register: link in bio

I'll cover 3 key areas you should be considering including your UK pension, Singapore savings, and legacy planning and UK inheritance tax.

13/02/2020

I’m getting round to starting a podcast! Are you interested in seeing behind the scenes of how I do it? Do you want to start your own podcast?

28/10/2019

Neil Woodford has been in the press a lot this year. Should you care?

You should focus less on Woodford and more on the fundamental issues.

In this video, I offer 2 key takeaways.

Woodford is getting a lot of bad press but I think individuals need to look past the headlines and understand the REAL issue. Do you understand your own approach to investing?

If you use an adviser - do you understand their approach to investing on YOUR behalf. Once you know this - what does the evidence show? Is this a high confidence approach for the future?

At the end of the day, we all want our money to work hard for us to achieve longer-term lifestyle goals.

For many that is leaving their full-time job as soon as possible to enter a new phase in their life.

With that goal in mind, you want to be looking for approaches that work over 10-20 year periods because you are likely to be fully consumed with work and home life to be monitoring your investments all the time.

https://www.maxkeeling.com/blogposts/what-the-neil-woodford-story-teaches-us

12/09/2019

What I'm Listening To: "So Why Do It?" DFA Podcast

I have been listening to this interview with Dimensional Fund Advisors (DFA) VP and Head of Financial Adviser Services, David Jones. If you have been following me for a while then you will know I am a big advocate of DFA!

It's a great intro to Dimensional's overall investment approach and how it's based on decades of academic theory and research. The key highlight for me is that investors should not worry about forecasting the future, timing the market or picking specific stocks, sectors or funds to invest in.

David explains:
"The academic research says there’s very little persistency in people being able to systematically pick stocks or systematically time markets to advantage. So why do it? You don’t have to, in order to have a successful investing experience."

If you want to know how DFA funds can help you with your long-term financial plan, then talk to me. I'm one of the select few in Singapore that is able to offer DFA funds to clients.

Thirty years ago when David Jones started out in financial services, he became acutely aware about the prevalence of high fund management costs and investment solutions that let investors down time after time. He transformed the business he was running to a fee-based practice and discovered Dimensio...

10/09/2019

The Curse of Intelligence

An interesting exploration of how and why smart people struggle with investing:

"Some of the smartest people outside the world of finance can also be terrible investors."

Why?

"Because they assume success or wealth in one arena (their job) will easily translate into another (the markets). Smart people are often the most dangerous in terms of poor decision-making ability because they tend to be overconfident, make things too complex, and over-think things."

The article concludes that 'emotional intelligence has a much bigger impact on the success or failure of investors'.

If you feel that you might be falling prey to the 'curse of intelligence' then working with a financial coach can help you avoid some of these issues and help to improve your rational decision-making skills when it comes to investing.

Before I really knew anything about human behavior, incentives, and how the markets really work, I was always blown away by the sheer amount of intelligence I would come across in the investment world. Most of the people I’ve interacted with throughout my career are highly educated at some of the ...

08/09/2019

Vision Building Inspiration: Taking Time Out To Do Nothing

A mini-retirement or a short sabbatical is a regular feature on my clients' goals-based financial plan. However, often the idea of taking a break from work can make the person feel guilty for stepping off the corporate (or entrepreneurial) ladder.

This article suggests that doing nothing is actually very good for you. And even just taking a half-day sabbatical has major mental benefits. Instead, we often feel like this:

"Protecting and practising fallow time is an act of resistance; it can make us feel out of step with what the prevailing culture tells us. The 24/7 hamster wheel of work, the constant accessibility and the impatient press of social media all hasten the anxiety over someone else’s judgment. If you aren’t visibly producing, you aren’t worthy. In this context, taking time to lie dormant feels greedy, even wasteful."

What steps can you take to carve out 'fallow time' in your day to day work life? This downtime might inspire a change in major life goals!

We need to rest, to read, to reconnect. It is the invisible labor that makes creative life possible.

06/09/2019

Infographic: BlackRock Global Investor Pulse 2019

A fascinating visual summary of BlackRock's annual Global Investor Pulse survey about people's current views on investing.

What comes across very clearly is that those who have taken steps to invest for the future have a better sense of well-being than those that have not. Investors are:

43% more positive about their financial future

24% happier

36% higher level of well-being

19% less stressed

And working with a financial advisor makes a big difference too!

Can money make you happier? Not in the way you think. Learn what we heard from people around the world through our annual Investor Pulse Survey.

04/09/2019

Are you following a superstar fund manager or an investment strategy?

I've talked a fair bit about Neil Woodford over the last few weeks because there are so many valuable lessons that investors can learn from the situation.

I came across this graph recently, which demonstrates how his investing strategy completely switched from large-cap to small-cap companies between 2014 and 2019.

This begs the question - were investors aware of this? Did they understand what this meant? Presumably, most would not have been aware as they would simply have been looking at the past performance of this individual and NOT on the specific approach he was taking.

For example, when Woodford left Invesco after 26 years to start his own firm, St James's Place followed him and moved £37bn of investors money to his new fund. Were they aware of the change in investing strategy?

This Bloomberg article summaries the switch in strategy "raised the risk profile of Woodford’s funds and largely remained unnoticed. That contrasts starkly with the approach taken by index funds, which are easy to predict because they are based on additions and exclusions of companies in the benchmarks they track."

The lessons that I take from this is don't believe that one person can predict the future of the stock market by selecting specific stocks because they can't do this consistently over a long period of time.

The article also reports that an index fund with similar exposure to Woodford's fund had better results and for lower fees. Stick with investing strategies that are easier to understand and track.

Neil Woodford’s troubles gives advocates of passive investing another reason to slam actively managed funds.

02/09/2019

Investors Emotions in Graphic Form

This is an interesting collection of charts and graphs that attempt to show investors emotions, from as far back as 1998.

It's clear that investing in the stock market can be a rollercoaster of emotions so an advisor can work with you to prevent some of the knee-jerk reactions that can be bought on by these heightened emotions. Doing nothing and staying the course is one of the toughest disciplines to master - especially on your own.

31/08/2019

Real Estate vs The Stock Market

I often have discussions with clients about where real estate should sit within their financial plan. I would argue that your main residence should not be considered an asset as it's illiquid However, most people are far more comfortable investing in a house than they are the stock market.

This article debates various studies trying to compare real estate to investing in the stock market. I think one of the key things to remember is it's impossible to review the price of your house on a minute by minute basis. And even if you could, you can't buy or sell a home with a simple click of a button on an app. For the most part with house, we accept that we are in it for the long-haul and over that time, the value of your home can go down as well as up.

Like any investment, houses have fees, taxes, volatility swings just like the stock market. Don't get tied up in thinking that your home IS your future financial plan.

Home ownership is often called both the American Dream and the biggest investment of your life. It’s debatable whether a house is truly an investment or not, especially when we’re talking about your primary residence. Whether it’s an investment or not, house prices do change over time and the ...