KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 5 (Bernama) -- Bursa Malaysia closed higher, buoyed by Bank Negara Malaysia’s (BNM) decision to maintain the Overnight Policy Rate (OPR) at 2.75 per cent, alongside positive cues from Wall Street. At 5 pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) rose 19.30 points, or 1.19 per cent, to 1,635.86 from Wednesday’s close of 1,616.56. The benchmark index opened 6.72 points higher at 1,623.28, and fluctuated between an intraday high of 1,642.44 and a low of 1,622.62 during the trading session. However, market breadth was negative, with losers outnumbering gainers 723 to 497, while 466 counters were unchanged, 1,075 untraded and 10 suspended. Turnover rose to 3.74 billion units valued at RM3.61 billion compared with yesterday’s 2.81 billion units valued at RM2.57 billion.
Quoted directly from today's The Star Business..... links over here IN general, most people have the impression that the money placed in the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) always generates lower returns compared with the returns from their own investments. In this article, we will look into the returns from EPF versus returns from the KL Composite Index (KLCI). We assume that investors are able to generate their own returns equivalent to the returns from the KLCI. Based on our 23 years of data compilation, it is generally true that the average returns generated from EPF are lower than KLCI returns. From 1986 to 2008, the average return of EPF was 6.7%, 2.3 percentage points lower than the average return of 9% from the KLCI ( see table ). However, most people do not understand the risks they need to undertake when they invest by themselves. The standard deviation of EPF is only 1.5%, 22.2 percentage points lower than the standard deviation of 23.7% from the KLCI. We use stand...