EPF Dividend 2016 at 5.7%

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF), with the approval of the Minister of Finance, today declared a dividend rate of 5.70 per cent for 2016, with a total payout amounting to RM37.08 billion.

The EPF recorded RM46.56 billion in gross investment income in 2016, an increase of 5.25 per cent compared with the RM44.23 billion recorded in 2015. This is the highest gross investment income ever recorded since the establishment of the EPF in 1951 and the amount has been growing annually at 11.1 per cent since 2001.

This is a commendable achievement in view of the much tougher market environment. For 2016, the rolling three-year real dividend was 3.83 per cent, 183 basis points above the target.

During the year under review, Equities continued to be the main contributor of income with 57.68 per cent amounting to RM26.85 billion, up 3.23 per cent compared with RM26.01 billion in 2015.

The EPF’s investments in fixed income instruments comprising Malaysian Government Securities & Equivalent and Loans & Bonds in total contributed 34.87 per cent, or RM16.23 billion, of the RM46.56 billion investment income for the year.

Real Estate & Infrastructure asset class contributed RM2.49 billion in investment income in 2016 with annual growth of 46.04 per cent compared with 2015, while Money Market Instruments contributed RM982.28 million of income during the year.

Don't check your stocks every hour every day cause I want to make you Rich maa!

Don’t be a moron. If you check your stocks every day and worry about the daily changes in the stock prices and the variations in your net worth, you’re being dumb.

Most successful investors don’t need to check on their investments every day. The daily changes in stocks are almost always noise, plain and simple, and few 200% returns were determined by the news of one day.

What you should be doing?

I for one always advocate in this blog that investing should always be for the long term and getting rich slowly and steady.

Another thing I frequently will say is to treat investing like a business (again which means for the long term)

Of course you need to occasionally monitor your investments to see how they’re doing. And you may want to set up automatic news alerts through a stock app/Google news to keep you informed on major news in the company. How often should you manually check on things? Probably every few months like during quarterly earnings report with a major review every year. But not every day.

Relax. Once you get set up right, investing is easier than you think. Last year, I trade less and reduced the time looking after my stock investments. And I managed to INCREASE my total income compared to the previous year.

8 Ideas to earn US$

The US$ is at RM 4.44 as of today.

Imagine if you could generate some income in US$ now.

I have come out with some ideas on how to get some US$.

The ideas below are what I think an individual could do. They are all medium to low risks ideas. If some of these ideas aren’t for you, just skip ahead to the next ideas.

Your situation is 100% unique and the only way you are going to make US$ is to ignore the ideas that aren’t right for you. Even if 80% of the ideas in this article are completely useless for you, that still leaves 1-2 ideas for you to consider for making US$ !

1. Invest/trade in US stocks for capital gains

2. Invest in US stocks for their dividends/bonus/splits

3. Invest in a stock options strategy called covered call.

4. Invest in a US property for value appreciation and collect rentals.

5. Open a Foreign Currency account in US$ and earn interest on the balance and future appreciation of US$.

6. Create a blogger site like Ongmali Blogspot, apply for Google Adsense advertisement and earn revenue in US$.

7. Register for EBay etc that allow you to sell something to other people and sell your goods online.

8. Create a website and sell 3rd party goods online.

Analyzing My 2016 Investing

I spent some time during the Chinese New Year holidays to analyse and look at all my 2016 investing.

I think this action makes me a better investor and also make me aware of my strengths and weakness.

I do it on a yearly basis but I know some people who do it weekly and/or monthly. I think monthly is best as you can see your mistakes much earlier. Oh well, I am a bit lazy ....

I have 3 columns ... 1) Stock trading and investments 1) Dividends and 3) Other Income

Overall I did better than 2015 ..

I managed to reduce the number of trades, yet INCREASE my income on stock trading and investments and dividends.

I also made some "Other income" from Google Adsense compared to zero in 2015.

I also started putting money into my KWSP (EPF) account .(more about this in an article later)

I made some terrible mistakes too ...on two stocks which I suffered huge losses. These are speculative stocks and I did NOT cut loss quickly. I must learn from this and remember the lessons in my head.

All the best and good trading everyone in 2017!