Bank & Investment | Malaysia Financial Blogger | Financial Freedom Ideas

Investing Rules of Thumb

If you have been reading investing blogs then you have come across some investment rules of thumb. It is a general guideline that you can approximate a value quickly.

Rules of Thumb

The number one rule of thumb is ‘Pay Yourself First’. You need to set aside your money for savings every month before using it for other purposes, including investment and etc.

The question of how much do you need to invest depends on:
• When you started investing
• When you plan to retire
• Whether or not you plan to continue working part-time,
• Whether or not you expect passive income to pay out at the rate which is currently promising you,
• Whether or not you’ll have any pension income or EPF savings

August 25th, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Which Bank in Malaysia Offer Highest FD Rate?

Fixed deposit is still the most popular type of savings in Malaysia. However, with the latest inflation rate still hovering above 3%, and bank fixed deposit rates still not that high, we are actually encountering the risk of getting the real returns in this context.

highest FD rate

Besides that, we also need to have some cashflow for emergencies purpose in the event of a financial crisis. As a rule of thumb, we should keep at least 6-12 months of monthly expenses in the form of cash before looking into any kind of investments or paying off any loans and etc.

August 22nd, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Can the Past Predict the Future?

Numbers don’t tell everything. Outperformance is one period could be simply due to the fact that the market environment suited the stock portfolio. A fund true performance potential needs to be evaluated within the content of market environment during the different periods used.

past performance

As we known, market conditions change rapidly and frequently. A fund manager who is good in delivering strong returns in a particular type of market conditions may fail when market condition changes. As such, in fund selection, you need to understand how different types of market condition affect the performance of a fund.

August 13th, 2011 | Leave a Comment

How to Maximise Your EPF Retirement Savings?

As everybody known, EPF manages its funds with one risk profile and that is extremely conservative. Taking out your money from the EPF to invest makes sense because you can choose a fund that suits your risk profile or investing style.

EPF investment

EPF Investment Scheme allows contributors to withdraw money in Account I for investment purpose. The minimum of savings that can be invested is RM1000 and the maximum amount cannot be more than 20% of the total savings in Account I. However, there’re basic savings rules that you need to follow. Withdrawals can only be done every 3 months which allow you to do dollar cost averaging.

July 19th, 2011 | 1 Comment

Where EPF Invest Our Money?

Have you ever wonder where do Employees Provident Fund (EPF) invest our hard earn money? We knew our finance ministry would not be able to give guarantee returns in the EPF rates or the money received from the stock market. But, we should know how our government utilize our money in seeking the returns.

Top 30 Equity Investment by EPF

Now, it’s possible to gather the information since EPF publish its Top 30 Equity Investments in companies listed on their website. The table below shows the list of Top 30 equity investments listed on Bursa Malaysia by EPF Malaysia as at 31st March 2011.

July 16th, 2011 | Leave a Comment

Exchange Traded Fund vs Unit Trust

Nowadays, local investors can have the new option to invest Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). If not mistaken, FBM30etf was the first ETF, which was introduced by AmInvestment Bank Group in year 2007.

ETF

Basically, ETF is quite similar to open-ended unit trusts. It represents a basket of stocks which is designed to track the performance of the indices. It’s traded like a share and is listed on Bursa Malaysia, so for those who have a CDS account then they can buy or sell ETF at any time during trading hours.

July 4th, 2011 | 3 Comments

Buying Silver as an Investment

No doubt, silver investment is getting hotter nowadays. Global demand in silver continues unabated. When the dollar collapses and becomes worthless, silver and gold values will be increased by world-wide supply and demand.

Back to past few years, new investment vehicles are introduced to the market. Apart from investing in stocks, bonds and other financial instruments, investing in precious metals such as gold and silver became a promising investment strategy to preserve their wealth.

silver investment

As we can see, gold became the most popular of the precious metal investment. However, the gold price has been skyrocketing due to high investment in gold. So, now we should move our focus into silver investment as it used to be traded in the same way as our real money and it’s remains to be valuable for few decades.

June 19th, 2011 | Leave a Comment