Advice to investors: When deciding on an investment, certain fundamental principles must be followed. These fundamentals have stood the test of time and can be used by any investor to evaluate a proposed investment plan. When designing your investment plan, you should endeavour to answer the following questions:


1.    Is the proposed plan based on a sound investment philosophy?

2.    Does the plan provide for emergency reserves?

3.    Can my investments be converted to cash reasonably quickly if required?

4.    Do I know what I want to achieve with my investment? Have I defined my        investment objective?

5.    Over what period do I want to achieve my investment objective? What is my        investment term?

6.    What is my target return? How do I plan to measure investment performance?

7.    Is my expected return sufficient to outperform inflation, net of fees and net of        cost?

8.    Is my investment return expectation realistic?

9.    Do I understand the risk associated with my return expectation? (Do        remember that from nothing comes nothing. Investment return and risk go        hand in hand. Ifyou want to reduce the risk, you will have lower returns. So        you may have to review your investment objective.)

10. Does the plan address institutional risk? Will my money be safe with the        proposed investment institutions?

11.  If investment markets do not perform over the short term, do I have enough        time to see it through?

12.  Does the plan make provision for the diversification of risk?

13.  How will I know whether I am achieving my investment objective? Does the        plan include continuous monitoring?

14.  Does my advisor’s service model make provision for regular reviews?