Diversification of portfolio through unit trusts

For some time, I have thought about diversifying my portfolio geographically (outside of Asia) and across different asset classes (apart from equity). With my limited capital, unit trusts present one of the low-cost avenues for achieving this.

Between the two online unit trust fund distributors Fundsupermart and dollarDEX, I opted for the latter to avoid paying the "platform fee" which Fundsupermart had imposed in 2010.

Since fixed income instruments such as bonds are currently mixing from my investment mix, I decided to initiate a Regular Savings Plan into two funds:

• Franklin Templeton IF Templeton Global Bond Fund A(mdis) SGD-H1 - note: mdis denotes monthly distribution and SGD-H1 denotes the SGD hedged version since the mother fund is managed in USD terms
• First State Bridge - note: this is an Asian balanced fund

Personally, I like the monthly distribution characteristic of the former, and the Asia-centric nature of the latter as this will give me the option of exiting my ILP in future but still retain some exposure to Asian equities.

Meanwhile, I am also on the lookout for a proven and low-cost precious metals fund to benefit from the long-term uptrend of gold and silver prices.

Happy Chinese New Year and good fortune to all !