Robo-advisors recommendations

[Kanto]

I honestly was just trying to help.

If you are going to argue against index investing as a long term strategy, on a board mostly focused on passive investing, you are going to have to bring more to the table.

I would love to see how your clients outperformed the S&P500 long term (after Fees), and without taking excessive risk.

Frankly recommending private REITs, through your own services, should get you banned IMO.

[robster]

Hi,

I can see there hasn't been a lot of activity in this section of the forums but I hope someone can give me some advice regarding robo-advisors.

I have already opened an iDeco and started my tsumitate NISA, both with SBI. I still have some money after investing in the two and am looking into robo-advisors to (hopefully) gain a bit more money with my investments.

Investing in stocks is totally new for me and while I know it's cheaper to open an online brokerage account, I don't have confidence in doing it myself. I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations of robo-advisors that might be suited for someone like me with an easy to control interface. I have read about THEO from the retirejapan blog but the posts were all made a while back and I am sure there are new changes and/or companies nowadays.

Thanks for reading !

Unless I am missing something... if you have already opened iDeco and NISA accounts, you already have both the ability and knowledge (and motivation) required to open an online brokerage account (it should be easy if you are already in SBI), and together with the generous advice that will come from this forum, you are totally equipped to avoid the needless extra costs that will arise from using a robo-adviser. A nice slick interface is about the only tangible advantage they offer, but that's hardly worth an annual 0.65% of your assets...

[atreju]

Hi,

I can see there hasn't been a lot of activity in this section of the forums but I hope someone can give me some advice regarding robo-advisors.

I have already opened an iDeco and started my tsumitate NISA, both with SBI. I still have some money after investing in the two and am looking into robo-advisors to (hopefully) gain a bit more money with my investments.

Investing in stocks is totally new for me and while I know it's cheaper to open an online brokerage account, I don't have confidence in doing it myself. I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations of robo-advisors that might be suited for someone like me with an easy to control interface. I have read about THEO from the retirejapan blog but the posts were all made a while back and I am sure there are new changes and/or companies nowadays.

Thanks for reading !

Unless I am missing something... if you have already opened iDeco and NISA accounts, you already have both the ability and knowledge (and motivation) required to open an online brokerage account (it should be easy if you are already in SBI), and together with the generous advice that will come from this forum, you are totally equipped to avoid the needless extra costs that will arise from using a robo-adviser. A nice slick interface is about the only tangible advantage they offer, but that's hardly worth an annual 0.65% of your assets...

I agree with you Robster. I still have a Theo account, and it under-performed even my lousy company-sponsored J401K index fund. Since the market drop in the end of Feb/ beginning of Mar Theo is still at a loss. I'm just waiting it to raise to a certain amount that will make sense to withdraw the money, pay fees, and still have some (small) profit. Robo-advisors are useless, in my opinion.

[mighty58]

I know this is replying to a post that is several months old, but there is so much misleading information in bushidobryan's post above that I feel compelled to respond, as I’m sure there will be others coming across it for the first time.

I would not invest into an Index fund. We called them loss leaders when I was a Fidelity.

They are loss leaders for Fidelity, who’s entire business model is the taking of fees. With Fidelity now offering zero-fee index funds, and because there’s always some cost associated with running a fund, Fidelity is eating that cost (or recouping it in others ways such as stock lending). For us investors though, zero fees is great.

I would target screens 'thoughtful indexes'

Any actively managed fund (whether by human or by algorithm) will incur larger fees, and research indicates that actively managed funds underperform the index over the long term. Even with a great strategy/fund manager, it is very difficult to outperform the market net of those extra fees. One or two years of outperformance? Of course. But consistently over, say, 10 years? No.

I would also, put some money into the private markets over time.

Hahaha, really? And perhaps you’d like to explain for us how a non-HNWI retail investor would go about accessing the private markets? It's true that the highest performing private equity firms like Blackstone have outperformed the S&P500 on a consistent basis. Given that though, there is intense competition amongst institutional and accredited investors just to get access to Blackstone and other top-quartile PE funds. The rest of the private equity and venture capital world, however, returns on average the same as the SP500 (7-8% annualized) in the long term. So again, please explain to me how I can access the likes of KKR or Bain Capital as a small retail investor in Japan.


Stick to indexing folks.

[adamu]

I know this is replying to a post that is several months old, but there is so much misleading information in bushidobryan's post above that I feel compelled to respond, as I’m sure there will be others coming across it for the first time.

bushidobryan was banned for having a conflict of interest, and not living in Japan, for what it's worth.

[mighty58]

Ah, good to know. Still, as the post remains up, felt it was still worthwhile to rebut it.