My Sentiments about Fine Wine Investments
I was recently having a very personal chat with one of my investors whom I regard as a close friend after all these years. And we got on talking about wine investment and what makes it tick and what makes it lackluster as compared to the share market. So, I thought I’ll share with you my experiences with investments on the whole.
As you know, Sure Holdings is one of the few, if not the only wine investment company that charges one of the lowest fees, even our 1% admin fee when buying and selling your wines is unmatched in the market. Most companies out there are charging between 6-8% on fees easily. I have heard from some clients that they paid as much as 15% in storage and fees when they bought wines through other investment companies. Merchants can charge up to 15% margin when they sell their wines, this can be a problem when an investor is looking to make a good return. Especially if your investment needs to increase 15% before you start making a return.
So how do we sustain our business? We never want to increase our fees because what keeps us going is when you, as our investor, is happy and you’re making money from your wines. Our philosophy is you will continue to invest and tell your friends and family to invest with us also. Our admin fee is only 1% because we want you to enjoy the most of what you make from buying and selling of your wines. We sustain from a large volume of transactions and a large high net worth investor base.
Sure Holdings is an ethical company and we are transparent and accountable. We present you every month with reports on your portfolio and we update you on what’s going on in the market to keep you in the know.
We even manage your wine and monitor it in the warehouse for a service fee of only half a percent of the value of your portfolio each year.
Investments is something close to my heart, as I have seen my late father made lots of money from the stock market and lost it all in the stock market. It is not easy to lose everything over night and having to live frugally and worry about the next day. Luckily, I was only 16 years old then and I helped out by teaching piano lessons to support my studies right through to university. I have seen my late father struggle from riches to rags. Therefore, it has left a deep impression in me that I want to see my investors make honest money and not lose everything like what my late dad had experienced.
To be honest, there are many unscrupulous wine investment companies that offers great promises but at the end of the day, they could not even produce the storage reports of the wine to their clients nor even the portfolio in black and white. Everything is done verbally with no concrete proof of where the wine is or how much returns it is making. It makes me angry because the code of ethics is sorely lacking in many of these fly-by-night companies.
The reason why wine investment may appear lackluster compared to the share market is because it is a long term investment. Wine Investment lacks the ‘high’ you get from buying and selling your shares at a rapid pace. In wine investment, you buy wines and keep it in the long term for about 3-5 years and then you sell them for a profit. It is a long term and stable investment hence it lacks the rush that the share market offers, which we as investors are so accustomed to. But fine wines are assets that last right up to 50-100 years. Your portfolio can even outlive you, therefore it makes a good and reliable retirement plan or a trust for your children.
Fine wine investment is a highly stable investment. I have first hand experience in this. I have been dabbling in the share market too and made substantial gains from the share market. Unfortunately, I have also incurred substantial losses in my shares and I was so afraid that history is repeating itself all over again, just like my late father. But the one thing that helped me turn around was my fine wine investment, which luckily I have started investing early on. I sold part of them for a profit and used the proceeds to carry on with my life without feeling much of the pinch, despite the heavy losses incurred in my shares. Fine wine investment is truly a stable investment and most importantly an investment that I can truly rely on in the long term.
Therefore, I highly recommend that you diversify your portfolio into fine wines, share market, funds and property because each type of investment offer diverse time frames and different strategies, hence it yields different profits at different stages. Buy one or two cases of fine wine every now and then to diversify your portfolio. You can’t just buy one case of wine and expect it to make good returns for you. That’s unrealistic expectations. Know that you can always fall back on your wine investment in the long term.
Every single wine that you have in your portfolio is a great wine. It is not recommended to you on a whim neither was it recommended because a wine merchant has offered me a good deal. Every wine recommendation that I make to you is the product of careful research of the wine and relentless negotiations with chateaus, merchants and negociants; to get you the best investment wine with the best price.
Our philosophy at Sure Holdings is to help investors make money and to have a stable investment that you can rely on in future. My experiences with investments as a child and as an adult now has shaped how Sure Holdings operates: integrity, transparency and a fine wine investment company with a heart.
Sincerely yours,
Kimmy Goh
– Asia’s First Class Mandarin Speaking Wine Investment Expert
