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