The largest private unit trust is Public Mutual... it's actually a merger between KL Mutual and Public Mutual not a long ago... approx RM10 billion in investment. The largest unit trust company is Permodalan Nasional Berhad (PNB) with RM72 billion in investment. They managed Amanah Saham Bumiputera (ASB) and the likes of Amanah Saham Malaysia (ASM) for non-bumi.

Regarding the loan thing on ASB, don't apply ASB loan that being offered coz the interest fluctuates... what you can do instead is apply a private loan from Bank Rakyat or Bank Simpanan Nasional at fixed interest rate i.e. Islamic loan and reinvest the money back in ASB.

The highest interest rate at these banks are very much lower than the one offered at commercial banks. For instance Bank Rakyat charges maximum of 5.8% p.a. for a 100K loan... compared to minimum dividend of 7.0% offered by ASB and ASM. If you go to commercial bank you will be charge something like 0.5% + BLR (Base Lending Rate, currently at 6.0%). But do keep in mind that BLR does moves according to economic condition and controlled by Bank Negara. You might get caught if BLR rate is higher than your dividend rate.

As for stock market, it's not for the weak heart... rule of thumb, don't invest all your money in just one stock... diversify your investment. And do some reading on what you're going to invest... don't simply listen to rumours (some are good, most are just crap).

Well, happy investing.

Reminder... not all property is a great investment. You should know that...

Yes, too much diversify is not good for private investor... but 5 stocks is OK for your own monitoring, too much is like 31 and above. The most ideal number within human capability is 30 stocks without losing sight of your investment objectives. But if you're the one who don't have time to do all these monitoring...that's why we have unit trust who have more than one ppl to monitor the investment... but you have to pay them and have no say in your stocks selection.

Btw, It's not that hard to monitor 5 stocks, believe me... you have bought the stocks anyway, just wait for your rewards... It's the stocks selection process that will require much of your time... not the monitoring.

Yes, BLR is not controlled by BNM... but the underlying of BLR calculation based on (Overnight Policy Rate) OPR is controlled by BNM through tightening and loosening of money via Treasury Bill etc. OPR is currently around 3.5% (I think, I'm not into treasury btw), so bank makes profit margin between difference in BLR and OPR. Currently, every banks don't want to produce any price war so BLR is respectedly kept at 6.0%, coz don't want to hurt their margin. However, foreign banks is not subjected to the OPR, that's why we saw some banks like ABN Amro lowering its BLR to 5.5% in June, I think.

That's why I said study first what you want to invest... Diversification apply across every countries, sectors, sub-sectors etc. I'm just giving example to help our fellow friend here...

Brokerage can vary between stockbroking houses, so scout around for the best rate... if I'm not mistaken online transaction brokerage rate is lower i.e. through Maybank2u, CIMB@iTrade, OSK88 etc... normal is 0.3%, for large institution its 0.25%... if you are a son-in-law to Bill Gates and can invest in hundreds of million, you might get 0.1%.

They are called defensive stocks... never really fluctuate in share price performance but return a hefty sum of money in term of dividend. British American Tobacco (BAT) used to be a very good defensive stock which gives dividend of 8.0% (more than savings or FD) but with sin taxes increase, it creates a lot of uncertainty... there a quite few number of them in the market, you just need to look for them.

For bond, the most important thing is yield to maturity... if interest rate goes up (I don't think Malaysia will increase its interest rate just yet), bond price will go down but yield will go up. You want to know why our stock market performed badly lately... that is because foreign funds sold Malaysian equities to park their money in US bond because they believe the interest rate in US will reach its peak (consensus target is around 4.25%), hence yield is high i.e. cheap bonds.

Hi, I just want to say something here to everyone... Make sure you know the mechanism and the cost associated with what you want to invest your hard earned money... Don't just look at the return (or historical return!), you also need to match it with your risk appetite. Everyone have different risk appetite... In my experience, I saw a lot of people lose their money because they have no idea about the product they invest in and just follow what other ppl told them to do... like buy this stock, it will go up! By the time you buy it, the person who told you to buy is selling it.

Just make sure you do a fair amount of research first before going to the expert so that you know what they're talking and more importantly which investment products are suitable for you.

Have a nice day....

Investment trivia - Do guys remember Pak Man Telo or ever heard of him... do you know that he is actually a briliant guy investing in foreign exchange market and really makes a huge amount of money. Yes, he was charge for not having a deposit license but never charged of cheating other people money whatsoever. The problems arise because some of his staff took the money for themselves and hence it is not in the record... he amasses a huge sum of money until his house is full of it (in your normal 'guni') and it was believed that some of his clients are ministers and politician.

By looking at the stock market, I say by the time you finished your SC exams, thing would have been much better. Be sure to check the stockbroking houses background first, some are very good at handling retail investors i.e. large customer database, some are concentrated more to the institutional investors i.e. small retail division. Choose wisely...

My God, this is one heck of a restructuring... I don't cover non-syariah stocks but the fundamental should be the same, I'll see what I can come up with or try to find out from brokers...

Sorry, can't really find any reports on the restructuring and effect to its price. Most brokers seems like not very keen on Berjaya Group... I also found that its quite difficult to price ICULS accurately due to a lot of input variables...

Equity markets are doom, at least for this month and maybe early July... statistically for the last 25 years June is the worst month of the year for KLCI anyway.

Bond markets are also doom with interst rate hike and uncertainty over US interest rate direction (blame it on Bernanke)...

Only futures market getting a little exciting, right? Well, at least for the ppl who short CI...