Make The World A Better Place

As the world is in the midst of the worse financial crisis ever since The Great Depression, lifestyle of the people around the world has been affected (except for the few super rich), as they tried to cope with the impeding low demand and retrenchment. But what if, there are a small group of people where, they have been living in poverty all their life?

There is this landfill in Payatas, The Philippines, which is notoriously known over the world as Smokey Mountain. For over 35 years, the smoking dump site has grown to become a stark and heart-tugging reminder of the desperate conditions of humanity.

Everyday, children, as young as four years old, are forced to pick through newly arrived garbage to collect material to sell. Can you imagine? Childrens, living in a landfill and collecting garbage for a living?!..

Worse still, these earnings are not enough to even buy food for the day. So, in order to earn enough to feed everyone, the entire families are forced to climb the mountain each day, hoping to earn enough to feed everyone. On 10 July 2000, after a period of heavy rain, a trash slide occurred in the Payatas dump, claiming over 200 lives, including many children. There are over 20,000 children living on Smokey Mountain.

In response to the plight of these children, The Lighthouse Center For Children Foundation currently provides food to these underprivileged children, now numbering over 500 children daily. This figure used to be 2000 children per day, but support and donations have been getting harder and harder to obtain.

The foundation hopes to be able to feed 5000-10,000 children every day if it can raise additional funds. Besides, the foundation also embarked on a Literacy Program for the Payatas children.

Most of the children are not attending school, but helping, at their tender age, to support families. Nevertheless, these children have dreams, and surely their dreams will be anything other than keep on staying in the landfill. Sadly, their dreams are hindered by the reality of poverty and its vicious cycles.



Totedaddy has kicked off with a cash sponsorship of USD 10,000 to enable the children to celebrate Christmas. FusionExcel International has also pitched in a USD 5,000 in cash sponsorship. The money raised will help fund the projects already in place, and help fund additional projects aimed at providing better housing, and a means of livelihood for the Payatas community. Besides, footballers such as former Arsenal midfielder Ray Parlour and former Manchester United winger Lee Sharpe also play a role in this good cause, entertaining and inspiring these kids with their footballing techniques.

It is hoped that by creating better awareness to the plight of these children, more support can be garnered towards their betterment. Do you want to play a role in making the world a better place? Visit Christmas For Payatas. Together we can bury poverty!

Distribution For the Financial Year ending 30 November 2008

Public Mutual will be declaring distributions for the financial year ending 30 November 2008.

Distributions will be applicable to unit holders of Public Islamic Balanced Fund (PIBF) and Public Far-East Dividend Fund (PFEDF) respectively, who remain in the Register as at 30 November 2008.

The rate of distributions will be as below:

PIBF 1.00sen

PFEDF 0.35sen

The continuous declaration of distributions of Public Mutual funds during this tough times is a sign of its strength in the unit trust industry.

Most Outstanding Islamic Fund Manager Award for 2nd consecutive year

Again, Public Mutual won the Most Outstanding Islamic Fund Manager award at the 5th KLIFF (Kuala Lumpur Islamic Finance Forum) Islamic Finance Awards 2008 ceremony. This is second consecutive year that they won this award.

The award was presented by Y.B Tan Sri Nor Mohamed Yakcop, Minister of Finance II to Public Mutual’s Chairman Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Dr. Teh Hong Piow during the award presentation ceremony which was held on 18 November 2008 at the Istana Hotel Kuala Lumpur.

The 5th KLIFF Islamic Finance Awards 2008 is organised by The Centre for Research and Training (CERT) together with the host, Halal Industry Development Corporation (HDC), and in collaboration with Dow Jones Islamic Market Indexes (DJIM), the International Institute of Islamic Finance (IIIF) and Messrs Hisham, Sobri & Kadir (HSK).

Tan Sri Teh expressed pride that once again Public Mutual is bestowed this prestigous award. “This award represents the 121st award won by Public Mutual since 1999. Winning this award not only reinforces our position in the Islamic unit trust industry but also affirms our commitment to excellence,” he added. Tan Sri Teh dedicated the award to Public Mutual’s board of directors, the management, staff, agency force and the investors for their unwavering support and trust over the years.

Public Mutual is a leading player in the private Islamic unit trust fund sector in Malaysia. As at end September 2008, it manages 24 Islamic funds with total Islamic assets under management of RM8.5 billion. This represents 50.7% market share of the private Islamic unit trust industry. The company is also the most awarded Islamic unit trust fund manager in Malaysia, winning a total of 32 Islamic Fund Awards. This includes the "Best Islamic Fund Manager in Asia 2006 & 2007" awarded by Failaka Advisors, Dubai, a recognised leader in the field of Islamic fund research.

Public Mutual is Malaysia’s largest private unit trust company with 67 funds under management. It has over 2,000,000 account holders serviced by over 40,000-strong unit trust consultants. As at end September 2008, the total net asset value of the funds managed by the company was RM24.1 billion.

Special Service Charge of 5% on All Equity Fund

Public Mutual is offering a Special Service Charge of 5% when you invest in their equity funds for a limited period. The offer period is from 3 November to 3 December, 2008.

As in my earlier post titled "Unit Trust is still the way to go", investing in unit trust is still the better choice despite the global financial crisis. In fact, this is best time to invest in unit trust. With this Special Service Charge offer, they will be bring in more funds to continue investing in value counter that had been battered down, counters that are still fundamentally strong and profitable. Investment at the current lower price will surely increase your potential earnings in the future.

Besides, this special service charge will be extended to all cash transactions (including standing instructions, Ringgit Cost Averaging instructions and switching of low-load units) into the equity funds during the said period.

This is indeed an opportune time for long term investors to take advantage of this attractive offer of lower service charge to increase their investment into the equity funds to meet their long term investment goals.

The world's most renowned investor Warren Buffett had in his recent article titled
'Buy American. I Am" published on 16 October 2008 in the New York Times, quoted the following in explaining why he began to invest heavily in stocks: -

“I can't predict the short-term movements of the stock market. I haven't the faintest idea as to whether stocks will be higher or lower in a month - or a year – from now. What is likely, however, is that the market will move higher, perhaps substantially so, well before either sentiment or the economy turns up. So if you wait for the robins, spring will be over.”

Public Mutual: Distribution For the Financial Year ending 31 October 2008

For the financial year ending 31 October 2008, Public Mutual declared final distributions to two of their funds, namely Public Industry Fund (PIF), Public Islamic Bond Fund (PIBOND) and Public Equity Fund (PEF)

Unitholders of these 3 funds, who remain in the Register as at 31 October 2008 will be entitled to this distributions.

The rates of the distributions are as follow

Public Industry Fund (PIF)
7.50 sen per unit

Public Islamic Bond Fund (PIBOND)
4.00 sen per unit

Public Equity Fund (PEF)
5.00 sen per unit

Unit Trust is still the way to go!

At the current level of the KLCI, anyone who had bought unit trust in the past one year must have been feeling jittery right now. Generally, it has dropped off 20% of the value when they bought one year ago. So what now? Is it time to redeem for cash now?

Well, this question depends on the individual. If you need this money, of course you are forced to sell off your unit trust. Or maybe you have some investment ideas, or you foresee some great chances to increase your earning, by all means, sell off your units. Do not risk incurring opportunity cost.

But, if you sell off your unit trusts just to keep in the savings account, then the answer to the question above is a definite NO! The reasons are simple:

1) You suffer losses by selling off your unit trusts at current price.
2) You denied yourself a chance to recover back your losses.
3) Your money will lose out to the effect of inflation.

Investing in unit trust can be ANYTIME. Yes, even during the current financial crisis, as long as you are doing dollar cost average. Dollar cost averaging is a concept to minimize your risk, especially during the current crisis.

Of course it is possible that after you buy in, the price will continue to drop off. But with dollar cost average, you are picking up units at price lower than your 1st time to purchase, therefore covering your losses from your 1st investment.

Unless you are a stock market expert, normal people can never know exactly when the market will rebound, but we do know that historically, everything that fall down will climb back up again! So pick up the units gradually when the market is low (though no one knows whether this is the bottom or not).

For those who invested lump-sum and suffering paper loss now, if you don't need the money now, DON'T SELL. Unit trust has a better chance of recovering, with medium risk.

Consider this, even during this crisis, there are still investor buying into unit trust. These money enable the fund manager to do bottom-fishing, accumulate stocks at low price, and this will enable the funds to recover their price more swiftly when the market recover.

If you are buying into a blue chip stock, can you have this privileged? NO! Not at all, you can only hope it reached the price above your buying price, provided that the company's earnings and prospects remained positive. What if the counter you bought do another Transmile (a former blue chip counter who drop from RM13 to the current 55 sen at time of publishing)?

Therefore, unit trust remain the best bet for the general public to invest in, especially during the current crisis where we can get more units at less price.