In this article, I’m going to give you a condensed but concise pros/cons list of five of the most popular investments in Malaysia: fixed deposits, mutual funds/unit trust, stocks, gold and properties/land. I’m also going to give you the tried-and-tested strategies that work well with each type of investment.
Why these five? Simple – because the overwhelming majority of us will start our investing journey with one of them first.
Let’s get right into it.
On 12 January 2019, I attended an investment event organised by multi-award winning Kenanga Group. The name intrigued me right from the start – you don’t come across something like Market Outlook Symposium 2019: Smart Investing or Dare Betting? every day. Held from 9am-2.30pm, the event packed in five speakers (and a lunch break). You can check the agenda of the day and speakers’ profiles here.
I had fun live-tweeting the whole event. Click on the Twitter thread below to read 50+ tweets giving play-by-play account of each speaker’s presentation. Among others, you’ll find stock picks by Kenanga Investment Bank’s Head of Research, a warrants trading tool (that may help you get double-digit ROIs), what to do with your money during bear markets and more.
I’m seated and ready to live-tweet #KenangaGroup‘s #MarketSymposium2019 event, starting soon! Follow and RT this thread for investment outlook in 2019 pic.twitter.com/KcvRakWrce
— Suraya Zainudin (@surayaror) January 12, 2019
Here are some things I learned from the event. Some commentaries are not specific to the event itself, but an overview of the general investment events scene in Malaysia. This article is sponsored by Kenanga, but all opinions are mine.
Accelerate your personal finance knowledge with this regular feature on Ringgit Oh Ringgit – the Link Roundup! I promise you’ll find these 10 links informational 🙂
1. Report: Rising household expenditure driven by food inflation – MalaysiaKini and Research: Malaysian households earning RM2,000 may have only RM76 left after expenses – The Malay Mail
Different headlines by different news publications reporting from the same source – ‘The State of Households 2018: Different Realities‘ report by Khazanah Research Institute.
There are lots of data inside both articles, but here’s what you need to know: the poor spend a much bigger portion of their income on expenses, leaving them without much safety buffer (if any) for emergencies.
With Budget 2019 coming up, I expect lots of financial support given to this income group (as it should).
If you’re into Malaysian stocks, you must have heard of Leigh from DividendMagic, the 28-year old financial blogger. Leigh’s investment of choice is dividend investing, and in his blog he freely (and anonymously) share the stocks he keeps (and sells) and how they perform over the years.
I told Leigh how stocks have always been intimidating for me, and asked if he could teach me how to read financial statements so I will know what information to look out for in that long-ass document. He said yes 🙂 With his permission, I’m sharing what I learned with you people too!
Accelerate your personal finance knowledge with this regular feature on Ringgit Oh Ringgit – the Link Roundup! I promise you’ll find these 10 links informational
1. Shoppers with Strong Religious Beliefs Spend Less and Make Fewer Impulse Purchases – Harvard Business Review
What an insightful read! The study was conducted in the US, but the sample size is big and the research was thorough. I believe the conclusions are applicable to our Malaysian context, too.
If I were to self-rate myself, religiously speaking, from a murtad-to-ustazah scale, I’m probably something like a 6 or 7? Does this mean if I get more religious my financial life will improve further? Penny for your thoughts.
I never really understood Malaysian stocks. Like, I know how to get them and all, but I don’t get them. I don’t know how to answer, ‘Which Malaysian stocks should I buy?’
(For the record, this is how you get Malaysian stocks: open a CDS account, add some money, buy the stocks you want at the price you want and keep it until you want to sell it)
This went on for a while until someone from Asukabu commented on one of my posts and mentioned the app. You can learn about Malaysian stocks, he said. I’m like, okay, sure I like learning, I’ll try it out.
There was this lightbulb moment as I was using the Asukabu app. It kinda clicked after that. Ohhh, that’s how you select a company, from a million* companies out there.
You know you gotta invest. That’s how you can achieve financial freedom. But dude, there’s way, WAY too many investment options out there. Some are legit, some are not. How do you know which ones are investment scams?
As someone who reads/works/writes about finance, I like to think that I can make that snap judgement whether an investment opportunity is legit or not. The last thing I want is an ‘investment’ that actually scams me out of my money, you know? In a Lowyat thread I was recently reading, this girl was lamenting her father’s tendency to get sucked into such ‘investments scams’, which resulted in him losing much of his money. Fella’s retired, too 🙁 My heart breaks for this girl.
So I thought, Imma write about what I know about spotting un-legit investments.
Starting something new: link love – where I curate the best articles about personal finance! I also like to add the ‘personal’ part of finance in, so they are not aaallll about money. Here are the best from the web in December 2015!
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This one woman regretted her RM200k wedding. I am an older sister to a younger sister who is about to get married, and I am worried that she will start her married life with loans, or seriously deplete my parents’ retirement savings just to ‘keep face’ 🙁
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Which is more important – time, money or love? This incredibly personal post by Mr Stingy made me think of life. There’s no point in having money if you don’t have time or love.
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I followed SpeedRent’s development with interest. Did you know that property agents gave him death threats? All because they found a way to do their jobs better. The update now is that their in-built rental agreements are legally binding. Very cool!
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Techies rejoice – in this list, programmers, developers, analysts, and designers bagged 10 out of 25 best jobs for work/life balance. In Malaysia, I’m looking up to these programmers – they are behind some of the apps we use.
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We know that we can use EPF money to purchase a house. Now that the Malaysian property bubble is bursting (or at least stagnating), those of you who are looking to buy property can start looking for bargains. To make it easier, you can apply to withdraw your money via i-Akaun. Online. Without visiting the EPF office. Woah.
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And if you want to buy your first home, here are some available options for you.
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Want to get into stocks but don’t know how to start? Check out Dividend Magic’s handy dandy guide – all you need to know about investing in stocks in Malaysia. Super informative.
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Did I miss anything? Want to add to this list? Tell me via comments!
Are you a stocks beginner in Malaysia?
I found a really cool blog yesterday. Dividend Magic is the pseudonym for a passionate Malaysian stock investor, who I found out is just 26 years old. He posts about the performances of the companies he bought stocks from, which is fascinating. There’s details about dividends received, goody bags from some companies, and annual reports.
Bonus: he covers his personal information with small bottles of liquor, and toys (Iron Man figure and a small Vespa), which cracks me up. I guess he was taking pictures, and went like, “hmm, better cover my name/address” and just looked around and took whatever’s closest to him hahahah
Look. Omg so cute I kenot.
picture credit to Dividend MagicBecause stocks always feel so intimidating, it’s nice to find somewhere to get that human touch, that human explanation, without unnecessary bombastic words and jargon. This definitely made my day 🙂
Go check it out his blog!
(Should I share my experience with stocks too? Very limited, but might be useful. Hmmmmm nak feedback)
