OSK-UOB Energy Fund

OSK-UOB launched a new fixed income fund that invest up to 90% of the NAV in fixed income related instruments, such as bonds, money market funds and deposits with financial institutions. Another portion (up to 10%) of the NAV will be invested in the structured instruments that track global energy factor.

Summary of the fund is as below:

• Sales charge: up to 5%
• Minimum initial investment: RM1,000
• Minimum additional investment: RM100

For more details, click on the title on this posting.

Comments: Personally, I would not invest in this fund due to the following reasons:

1. Does not fit into my investment objective/portfolio
2. High sales charge for fixed income fund
3. High risks for those who wants to invest in fixed income fund
4. Energy sector might not be in favour due to current economic turmoil. Therefore, there might be some performance lag for the fund in the immediate term.
   

Amanah Saham Malaysia declares dividend of 6.25 cents per unit

KUALA LUMPUR: Amanah Saham Malaysia (ASM) has announced an income distribution of 6.25 sen per unit for the financial year ending March 31, the lowest since the fund’s inception in 2000.

Last year, ASM paid 7.8 sen per unit in income distribution. The income distribution involved a total payout of RM407.58mil, said fund manager Permodalan Nasional Bhd (PNB) chairman Tun Ahmad Sarji Abdul Hamid.

“The payment will benefit a total of 402,513 unitholders who subscribe to 7.21 billion ASM units,” he told a press conference yesterday.

PNB president and group chief executive Tan Sri Hamad Kama Piah Che Othman said that the fund had the capacity to declare an income distribution of 7.92 sen per unit, but the group decided to reserve the income for the next financial year.

“We feel that 6.25 sen per unit is already in line with the market at this condition,” he said.

He attributed the diminished performance to the global economic downturn and the fund’s 25% increase in the number of units in circulation that had resulted in dividend dilution.

Declining to disclose PNB’s investment strategy going forward, Hamad said PNB’s objective remained creating long-term and sustainable returns for shareholders.

“We are a long-term player; we are looking for opportunity to buy more shares (with good fundamentals and are reasonably priced) that are good for the long term,” he said, adding that PNB was looking to issue more new products this year. He said ASM currently had RM2.1bil in cash.

ASM is a fixed-priced equity-income fund aimed at providing unitholders with a long-term investment opportunity by generating regular and competitive returns through a diversified portfolio of investments.

Up to last Friday, ASM had recorded gross income of RM440.73mil.

Dividend income from investments contributed RM219.33mil (49.76%), profit from the sale of shares generated RM137.84mil (31.28%) and the remaining RM83.56mil (18.96%) came from investments in short-term instruments.

The income distribution was based on the average monthly minimum balance held throughout ASM’s financial year.

Source: TheStar

My Unit Trust Portfolio

I began to construct my unit trust investment portfolio beginning end of June last year and below are some of my holdings in the portfolio.

1. OSK-UOB Cash Management Fund (CMF)
   
2. Pheim Income Fund (PIF)
3. PB Fixed Income Fund (PBFI)
4. Public Far-East Select Fund (PFES)
5. Public SmallCap Fund (PSmallCap)
6. OSK-UOB KLCI Tracker (Tracker)
7. Hwang-DBS Global Emerging Market Fund (HGEMF)
   
8. AmOasis Global Islamic Equity Fund (AmOasis)
9. HLG Global Value Fund (GVF)
10. ING Global Real Estate Fund (IGREF)

The main reason for having this portfolio is to construct a group of funds that invest in different niche areas of the stock markets locally and around the world, based on the following requirements:

• Local funds vs foreign funds
• fixed income vs equity
• for local equity funds, blue chip vs smallcap
• for global funds, equity vs properties
• for global funds, developed markets vs emerging markets
• asian fund
  

My targeted allocation % is shown in the pie chart below.

I will try to report on the fund performances and actual allocation percentage at every month end. Keep coming back for the latest reviews!

EPF Dividend for 2008 is 4.5%

As rumored recently, the EPF dividend for 2008 is 4.5%. This news is certainly not well received, but i guess this is much better than the 2008 returns of other financial instruments in the market. The dividend will be credited into the employee's account by March 23.

Home Loan Calculator

There are many home loan calculators that are available on the Internet. However, I've shortlisted 3 of these home loan calculators that i found useful and used quite frequently:

1. Multi-tier loan calculator with no amortization table: This calculator is good if you have a multi-tier home loan package with different rates. For example, you might have a home loan package with the rate of 2.88% for first year, BLR - 1.8% for year 2 - 5, and BLR - 2.2% thereafter. Most of the online calculators cant calculate for these kind of tiered interests. This calculator will only show monthly repayment amount, total repayment and total interests.
2. Two-tier loan calculator with amortization table: This calculator is good if you have a two-tier home loan package, for example, 4.88% for first 5 years, and BLR - 2.0% thereafter. Another plus point is that this calculator can display the amortization of the loan package.
3. Flexi calculator: This is a quite powerful home loan calculator that you can use to calculate extra payment/interest rate adjustment to the loan payment. Amortization table is also available with this calculator.

If you do find some other home loan calculators that are useful, do let me know!

Hwang-DBS US Access 80

Hwang-DBS Investment Management launched a new mixed asset fund that aimed to provide capital growth through exposure to US S & P 500 index using 20% of the fund size while trying to conserve capital via a minimum of 80% of the fund invested in cash or money market funds. The summary of the fund is as below:

• Sales charge: Up to 3.5%
• Management fee: 1.2%
• Switching fee: 1% of NAV
• Redemption fee: Up to 1% if redeemed in 6 months
• Initial investment: RM1000
• Minimum additional investment: RM 100