MONEY MASTER

After a week of waiting and speculation, finally EPF declares 6.15% dividend for the year 2012, which to me it's not bad. A 0.15% higher than the previous year, although still fall short of our expectation of more than seven to eight percent. KUALA LUMPUR: The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) declared a dividend rate of 6.15 percent for the financial year ended Dec 31, 2012. The dividend rate, an increase of 15 basis points over the 6 percent rate paid out in 2011, translates to a record breaking total of RM27.45bil being distributed to its members, an increase of 12.2 percent over RM24.47bil paid out in the previous year, said EPF Chairman Tan Sri Samsudin Osman on Sunday. “Notwithstanding the increasingly complex investment environment, the EPF maintained its steady upwards momentum to post its strongest set of results since the turn of the millennium, underpinning the effectiveness of its long term investment strategy as well as its disciplined and prudent approach,” he said in ...

AS we are entering the Chinese New Year season, let us look into what the Feng Shui master say about the market sentiment in the upcoming water snake year. It looks to me we are going to see a downtrend after the mid year, and then rebound for a month before heading towards downtrend from November until December before the stocks having a recovery towards the end of the water snake year and ushering in horse year in 2014.

After a resilient economy in the year 2012, we are now in 2013 and I'm thinking that we have yet to see the worst from 2012. I'm not sure that whether global economy will be getting worse or getting better, however I know it myself that own economy might turn bad if inflation continue to go up, while salary maintaining slightly higher or the same. Hence, this year, I will set a rather defensive financial resolution sort of to protect the capital, while having slight growth over the year in line with the inflation.The target growth of the stocks portfolio is expected to be about 10%, with the growth mainly in the dividend stocks and oversea stocks. As almost everyone in the country are expecting there will be a slight correction in stock market due to the General Election which is due to held this year, I won't be allocating some portion from the salary to the stock market, at least until second half of the year. Instead, the money will go to the house loan first -...