What is the difference between buying the ETFs - Nikko (A35), ABF (G3B) from blue-chips (via Bank - Posb Invest Saver etc) as compared to purchasing them directly?

Hey Zach! To answer your question simply, the main considerations here are:

• Cost per trade
• Flexibility on entry and exit of the stock

If you were to use the BCIP or RSP from any of the banks (eg OCBC BCIP or POSB invest saver)

Pros:

• You can set and forget (one time setup)
• Basically it will auto deduct on every 14th or 15th of the month that stipulated amount
• This is true dollar cost averaging

Cons:

• You don't get to choose the date you want to enter (to buy the stock)
• The costs is really high. considering that it is 1% of every amount that you invest.

If you do it on your own directly by trading via your own brokerage

Pros:

• You decide at what price you want to enter
• Your cost can be cheaper if you use options like cash upfront, at $10 per trade, and if you trade more than $1,000, it will already be more worth it (less than 1%)

Cons:

• It is more tedious to setup, you will need to have your own brokerage and CDP setup
• You will need to enter the market at your own time (ie trying to time the market) Hope this helps! We also wrote a pretty in depth piece here: https://blog.seedly.sg/spdr-sti-etf-vs-nikko-am-sti-etf/