Bye Bye StashAway!

We have decided to withdraw and stop the monthly investment for one of our StashAway portfolios (Cash - StashAway Risk Index 22%)  for the following reasons:

- Better yield/return in crypto

- Get access to more leverage

I think once one is exposed to DeFi, it will be very difficult to go back to buying stocks or options because the yield/return are simply much higher. Of course, so is the risk but who says stocks can't go to zero? I have a couple - Eagle Hospitality Trust and Ezion (I got out of this immediately after it was suspended for about a year with a 64% capital loss before it got suspended again). 

In my opinion, crypto is here to stay and this is evident in the stance/actions the banks/companies are taking. Just to share a few:

- DBS and MAS

- JPMorgan Becomes The First Big Bank To Give Retail Clients Access To Bitcoin

- Visa buying NFT (CryptoPunk)

Anyway, I can get access to a USD savings account equivalent with 20% interest through Anchor Protocol or 30-50% yield using delta-neutral strategies through Mirror Protocol. Not forgetting the capital gain (currently close to 100% and I am expecting more upside) from my LUNA stash too.

The other reason is very similar to why I stop investing through Syfe too which I blogged about here - Bye Bye Syfe! The invested money isn't working hard enough because I lose the ability to leverage using them. For every 10k invested and pledged as collateral in SCB, I will get access to another 7k to leverage assuming LTV of 70%.

I will not be so extreme (I might be if I am not married/have a baby. lol) and start selling all the stocks and move them to crypto but going forward, I will be putting most of my money into crypto (specifically just Terra) and the plan is to utilize leverage or let CZM buy stocks. Having said that, I will continue use StashAway for my SRS and Baby Ong's investment.

Alright. Let's take a look at the withdrawal process!

Start by selecting the portfolio you would like to withdraw.

Next, select a reason for withdrawal. I selected "not satisfied with the returns". lol.

Select the type of withdrawal.

StashAway trying very hard to change my mind by stating how I could potentially be missing out on a million dollar portfolio over the next 30 years! I believe our next million is going to come from crypto in the next 5 years instead of 30 years so yes, I still want to withdraw.

Click on "Full Withdrawal" and select the bank account you would like to withdraw to. In my opinion, StashAway should allow withdrawal in USD too given that they are accepting USD deposit. To be honest, I was quite annoyed by this because my plan was to use the USD here to repay my SCB USD loan and now I got to convert it twice. USD --(StashAway)--> SGD --(SCB)--> USD

Last confirmation as well as some disclaimer that the final withdrawal amount might be different from what's shown as well as the closure of the portfolio.

The good thing was the withdrawal took only 1 business day. I initiated the withdrawal on 24th August and I see the fund in my bank account on the 25th August.

I guessed I got lucky when the underlying assets were sold at a higher price and I was able to receive a higher than expected withdrawal amount.

I was annoyed (again) when I realized I could no longer access the transactions for the portfolio that was closed which definitely should not be the case. Hence, I had no visibility on how much the underlying ETFs were sold for (unable to update StocksCafe) and what was the FX conversion rate. In my opinion, the withdrawal process and closure of account has room for improvement! But then again, why do they care given that the customer is leaving right? lol. Considering we still cannot export transactions after 3 years...

I had to reach out to support to get those transactions exported before I could update StocksCafe. To be honest, XIRR of 9.59% is still quite decent. If crypto is not your cup of tea and you are not familiar with stocks, robo will be your next best alternative as compared to savings/insurance products.

If you are curious which are the best performing ETFs across the years, you can get a rough idea above which is a summary of the closed transactions. Those with more than 1 transaction means it has gone through re-optimization.

A more detailed breakdown of when the sell/closed transactions happened and the realized P&L. Given that this is my first withdrawal after 3/4 years, that means none of the above sell transactions was triggered by me and it seems like there is at least 1 re-optimization each year (usually at a profit).

Anyway, if you are interested in signing up for StashAway, do use our referral link - KPO and CZM Referral Link. You will get $10,000 free management fees for 6 months and we will get $16!

If you want to extract those transactions information from StashAway, do take a look at this article - StashAway Transactions Parser.

If you are interested in the smart portfolio tracker (StocksCafe) which I am using as shown above, sign up using my link for a longer trial period :) Refer to our Referrals page for more information.

On a side note, Futu's moomoo app sign-up promotion is now slightly different (Pfizer and Haidilao shares are given with deposit and 3 trades each on US and HK markets. T&C here) and has been extended to 19:59 hrs SGT, 31st August 2021! As part of the collaboration, I will be giving away 5 moomoo 'neck-fix and chill' pillow (not for sale but can be redeemed in the app) to 5 randomly chosen readers who signed up through our referral link for this month! More information can be found here - Futu's moomoo August Campaign + Merchandise Giveaway!

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