It’s All In The Planning!

A US-BASED professor has slammed the financial industry for perpetuating investment fallacies that do little to educate retail investors about risk and return, writes Genevieve Cua in Singapore’s The Business Times. These fallacies include the oft-repeated maxim that diversification reduces risk, and that risky assets such as stocks become safer as the holding period gets [...]

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This appeared today in The Malaysian Insider regarding a move by the Monetary Authority of Singapore to ban the use of financial products with misunderstood names. Hopefully, Bank Negara Malaysia can take the cue and see how the use of these terms can be regulated here too: If you have ever been sold a financial [...]

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Here is an interesting story that appeared in today’s issue of The Business Times in Singapore. It’s saying that owing to the global financial crisis Malaysians appear to be the most averse among Asians to higher risk investment products. They have become more conservative in their choice of financial instruments. According to the Life Outlook [...]

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I’m sure you have heard of it. Madonna and her beau, Guy Ritchie, have gone their separate ways after eight years of marriage. Divorced. And there’s a huge settlement in her ex-hubby’s favour. He’s reportedly walking away with assets worth around USD60 million which includes a 1,200-acre country estate, a London pub and a cash [...]

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Last month, I had mention about the new ”Beyond Savings” initiative that had been introduced by the Employees’ Provident Fund (EPF) and which would come into effect on 1 Feb 2008. One of the enhancements in this new strategic initiative is the introduction of the concept of “basic savings”. The understanding of this concept will [...]

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Members of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) will pay 50 per cent less in service charges for investment in unit trusts from January 1, 2008. The EPF announced that the service charges would be capped at three per cent, and fund management institutions cannot impose service charges beyond that. This move as approved by the [...]

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This is a press statement released by the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) yesterday. I shall comment on parts of this statement later when more details are available: About 11.4 million Employees Provident Fund’s (EPF) members are expected to benefit from a comprehensive plan which will promote savings and enable members to have more funds to [...]

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Here is a comparison of the top 10 largest investment holdings for each of the three global property funds available here in Malaysia: ING Global Real Estate Fund (31 July 2007)(Source: ING Funds Distributor, LLC) * Mitsui Fudosan Co Ltd (Japan) 4.64% * Westfield Group (Aust) 4.24% * Mitsubishi Estate Co Ltd (Japan) 3.89% * [...]

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Malaysia’s first equity-based exchange traded fund (ETF), launched by the AmInvestment Bank group, made its maiden appearance on the Bursa Malaysia last Thursday (19 July 2007). The introduction of the equity ETF as a viable alternative investment instrument had been inevitable but now that it has made its debut on the Bursa Malaysia, more ETFs [...]

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Frankly, I’m quite disappointed with the level of professionalism displayed by all banks today. In the quest for profits and more profits, the banks have failed to train their younger staff properly. The trend was seen starting about 10 years ago. It was still tolerable then, but not now. If you don’t know what I’m [...]

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