MONEY MASTER

Malaysia's budget 2017 has been successfully tabled by Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak on last Friday. In the midst of a low oil price and weak external environment, economists have said that the Budget 2017 was one that hits the right note while maintaining fiscal discipline.  The theme of the budget 2017: Accelerating growth, ensuring fiscal prudence, enhancing well-being of the Rakyat. Prime Minister Najib presenting Budget 2017 last Friday Here's a quick look on what Budget 2017 has to offer: Operating Expenditure: RM214.8bil, Development Expenditure: RM46 bil RM260.8 billion has been allocated for expenditure, representing an increase of 3.4% from previous year. According to some economists, the higher allocation for expenditure will help to drive the economy in 2017. From the breakdown, we could see that RM214.8 billion is for operating expenditure (82%) as compared to only RM46 billion for development expenditure (18%). This continu...

Will this ever come to an end? The oil price continues its decline and Dow opens with a drop of 150 points. Wall Street Update The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 150 points in opening trade. Shares of Exxon Mobil held about 2 percent lower in pre-market trade after the firm reported a 58 percent drop in profit, hurt by low oil prices. The world's largest publicly traded oil company also said it would cut spending this year by one-quarter, Reuters reported. Google's latest earnings report is encouraging, helped by a 17 percent rise in advertising revenue. A key advertising metric of aggregate paid clicks increased 31 percent from the previous year, beating consensus expectations of about 22 percent. The positive earning results have made Alphabet, Google's parent company to be on pace to top Apple as the world's most valuable company. U.S. crude oil futures were more than 4 percent lower in morning trade, hovering just above $30 a barrel. Concer...

Saudi Arabia is not afraid of low oil price and this will send the already gloomy oil & gas industry even further downwards. Saudi Arabian Oil Co. is maintaining investment in oil and natural gas projects and has formulated a new strategy in response to cheaper crude as it studies options to sell shares in its parent company and downstream refining and chemical operations, Chairman Khalid Al-Falih said Monday at a conference in Riyadh. The state-run producer, known as Saudi Aramco, can sustain low oil prices for “a long, long time,” he told reporters. It is a signal that the Saudi is sending across....that this is a fight they will not lose.  “Saudi Arabia is well-documented to be the clear lowest-cost producer -- we have scale, capabilities, and technology to help us maintain our low cost as we go forward,” he said.  He also mentioned how the company encourage fiscal discipline and in the company's investments capacity, oil and gas had not slowed down. LOW...

It is easy to think that the nightmare for oil ended in 2015 but the market is showing us otherwise.  Crude oil's nightmare continues in 2016 as the price fell toward $30 a barrel. A supply response to lower prices continues to be slow in coming and signs of a China's slowdown is hurting the oil & gas producers.  The low oil price is hurting the oil & gas sector   HOW LOW CAN IT GO? The drop in oil prices has been accompanied by a fresh round of bearish commentary, with Morgan Stanley calling for prices to fall as low as $20 per barrel while Guggenheim sees crude reaching $25 per barrel. With the continuous drop, the latest range of investment bank forecasts has them dropping as low as $10 a barrel before finally bouncing back. So, will it be $25, $20 or even $10? How low can it go?  Primarily to blame was the 14 per cent slump on China's markets this year, which is being driven by concerns over growth that could ultimately hit oil demand....