Tan Kin Lian claims structured products are bad in his column in My Paper, saying "I am not aware of any structured product that has produced a good outcome for the investor."

A structured product is a packaged investment product that is based on derivatives such as options. It guarantees protection of the principal (your initial invested amount) if you hold it to maturity.

In Tan's view, an ideal investment fund is an index fund (as mentioned in my post on buying low-cost index funds), or sometime very similar to an index fund. The fund should have no upfront sales charge, low fund management fee, and low expense ratio.

My previous post has a list of MAS-authorised index funds.

Tan Kin Lian is the retired CEO of NTUC Income. He maintains his blog at http://www.tankinlian.blogspot.com/.

http://www.salary.sg/2007/structured-products-are-bad/