3 Key Takeaways from Bank Negara Malaysia Annual Report 2017

Against a background of broad-based global recovery and the relatively low volatility in the international financial markets, the Malaysian economy performed strongly in 2017. The Annual Report provides an analysis of the developments in the Malaysian economy and outlines the future challenges.

Key highlights:

Why M-REITs are suffering now ??? (March 2018)

Real estate investment trusts (REITs) has been the favorite for those investors seeking stable yet attractive yield. Instead of putting money in bank's fixed deposit, many of us would rather be investing the money into REITs.

CMMT suffers the most YTD with around 30% price drops.

However, things turn worse recently (especially since the beginning of 2018) due to a few reasons. Prices of REITs suffers and no longer considered 'stable' anymore, thus pushing the dividend yield abit higher now.

Dividend yield higher seems to be more attractive ???

[Bursa Malaysia] New trading incentives effective March 2018

Great news for all retail investors!!! You can now have more reasons to expand your investment portfolio and trade more with the new trading incentives that will take effect on 1 March 2018.

These measures were announced on 6 February 2018 by Prime Minister at the World Capital Markets Symposium 2018, hosted by the Securities Commission Malaysia.

What are the incentives???

[Update] EPF MIS approved unit trust funds for 2018/2019

Effective from 1 March 2018 until 28 February 2019, below is the list of Fund Management Institutions (FMIs) and unit trust funds that qualify for offering under the EPF Members Investment Scheme (EPF MIS). For the 2018/2019 period, there are 268 funds from 22 FMIs qualified.

“The list of unit trust funds offered under the EPF MIS is evaluated annually based on the criteria established by the EPF and approved by the Ministry of Finance Malaysia. Any unit trust fund which falls below the minimum eligibility score will be suspended and will not be offered during the period.”

Does your fund in the list this year?

Below are some of the most popular fund houses sorted by alphabet...

[Banks] BR, BLR/BFR and Indicative Effective Lending Rates as at 19th Feb 2018

After the latest Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) hike by Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) in January 2018, all the banks and financial institutions react to increase their lending rates accordingly.

How about Islamic loans ???