KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 5 (Bernama) -- Bursa Malaysia closed lower on Friday amid mixed regional market performance as investors turned cautious over a possible rate hike by the Bank of Japan (BOJ) and upcoming US economic data that may influence the Federal Reserve’s (Fed) interest rate decision next week. At 5 pm, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBM KLCI) pared most earlier losses to settle 4.55 points easier, or 0.28 per cent, to 1,616.52 from Thursday’s close of 1,621.07. The benchmark index, which opened 0.37 of-a-point lower at 1,620.70, moved between 1,609.67 and 1,621.25 throughout the day. The broader market was negative, with decliners outpacing advancers 604 to 439. A total of 550 counters were unchanged, 1,151 untraded, and 18 suspended. Turnover declined to 3.17 billion units worth RM2.24 billion from 4.48 billion units worth RM2.75 billion yesterday. Rakuten Trade Sdn Bhd vice-presiden...
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...