On 9 October, Prime Minister and Finance Minister Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim tabled Budget 2027, the fifth and maybe the last of the MADANI government.The headline figure is a record RM510 billion in total spending and investment, up from RM470 billion. Within that, federal expenditure is RM459.8 billion, made up of RM376.8 billion operating and RM83 billion development. The government is forecasting 4.2% to 5.2% GDP growth for 2027 and targets a fiscal deficit of 3.3% of GDP, narrowing to 3% by 2028.This is an expansionary budget, and very possibly the last one before GE16. So the question most readers care about is a simple one. How much more money will I actually have, and when? One timing point before the numbers. Personal income tax changes apply from Year of Assessment 2027. That means

Before diving in, I want to outline my biases in ETF selection. Firstly, my preference leans towards equities over other asset classes. This bias stems from equities' proven track record as the highest long-term return asset class, despite their inherent higher volatility. Consequently, you'll notice that all five ETFs I'm discussing are equity-based. Secondly, my preference is for strategy-based ETFs over those concentrated in specific countries, sectors, or themes. The reasoning is clear: choosing a country, sector, or theme necessitates accurate and timely selection, which may not be ideal for long-term holding. In contrast, a strategy-based ETF dynamically adjusts its exposure according to its investing criteria, offering a more resilient approach for investors. It's also worth noting

Markets continue to face a challenging combination of rising bond yields,persistent inflation pressures and uneven economic performance. Whiletechnology and semiconductor-related companies have continued to benefit from strong artificial intelligence-driven demand, weakness across cyclical andconsumer-sensitive sectors suggests that economic conditions remain mixed. Higher interest rates and elevated energy prices may continue to createperiods of volatility in the near term. Nevertheless, the portfolio remains focused on businesses with durable competitive advantages, strong balancesheets and favourable long-term earnings drivers. Portfolio positioningcontinues to emphasise quality, profitability and exposure to structural growththemes while remaining selective in sectors facing increasing

Buy low sell high I think this is most investors wanted especially in today fast moving stocks In aggregate reatailer investing is the best option !!!

Higher-yielding bonds carry higher volatility and should be sized according to your goals and time horizon, and with a clear understanding of what determines their performance. yields (= government bond yields) could rise further, and a longer dated government bond-heavy allocation may be more vulnerable to “rate risk”. If your bond allocation is concentrated in developed market (DM) government bonds, it may be worth looking beyond traditional index-like exposures (40%–50% of which, by market value of outstanding debt, are made up of government bonds) into active management. Diversification spreads a bond allocation across different return drivers, and emerging market (EM) bonds are one part of that wider opportunity set worth a fresh look. Bonds have been in the spotlight in recent weeks,

investment grade bonds are more sensitive to rates (i.e. a higher duration risk), high yield bonds normally have a lower duration sensitivity, given their higher coupon income during the bond’s life and therefore lower price sensitivity to the present value of the final repayment cashflow. This gives high yield a slight edge from a rate risk perspective, especially for shorter duration high yield bonds. With credit fundamentals remaining strong and defaults low, and the quality composition of the US HY index now improving to more than 60% in highest tier BB-rated debt, high yield debt is presenting itself as a more attractive building block within fixed income. As the yield-to-worst chart earlier shows, the average US high yield bond yields around 8.4% today, providing about 240bps of yiel

The essence of technical analysis lies in quantitative summarisation and statistical observation of historical market behaviour, capital flows and crowd psychology. Price action and candlestick patterns reflect the power tug-of-war, liquidity build-up and risk preference between buyers and sellers at a given time and space. Whether it is the "bullish ascending triangle at bottom" or various moving average and channel breakouts, their function is never to "predict the future". Instead, they identify statistically favourable "high-probability windows" amid uncertain markets. Therefore, technical analysis is essentially probability distribution in statistics, not definite causal relationships why do many retail investors still struggle to profit in the market even after mastering technical pa

What holds the index up is AI. Micron, which makes memory chips for AI servers, has more than tripled this year. Nvidia is up 24%. The market is paying up for anything that sells into the AI boom, and marking down anything AI might replace. Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, has lost more than half its value as investors worry AI agents will do what its software does. The S&P 500 is up 13% this year. You would think most stocks are doing fine. About four in ten of the 500 are down this year, and 66 have fallen 20% or more. The typical stock is up about 6%, less than half the index. In September alone, 391 of them fell while the index slipped just 0.5%. One of this year’s biggest losers is a different kind of business. It is old school. Its work is done by people, by hand, in customers’ hom

Most investors don’t hold only short-term bonds. Longer bonds pay higher yields, and that’s what attracts them. Many of the popular bond funds are intermediate duration, holding bonds that mature in five to ten years. When longer-term yields rise, these funds get hit too. The maths is simple. When new bonds pay more, old bonds paying less have to fall in price until their yield matches. The longer the bond, the bigger the fall.On 1 October, TLT traded as low as US$76.76, the lowest price since it listed in 2002. A fund that holds nothing but US government bonds, at an all-time low. Does that look safe to you? Some will argue that they hold individual bonds, not a bond fund. The price drop is temporary, because you get your capital back at maturity. That’s true, as long as the bond makes it

Some will argue that they hold individual bonds, not a bond fund. The price drop is temporary, because you get your capital back at maturity. That’s true, as long as the bond makes it to maturity. Some never do. The most recent high profile example would be Credit Suisse’s AT1 bonds, which became worthless in 2023. it has been a terrible few years ever since the Fed started hiking rates in 2022, and it isn’t over. On 16 September, the Fed raised rates again by 0.25 percentage points, to 3.75% to 4%. That was its first hike since 2023.Most investors don’t hold only short-term bonds. Longer bonds pay higher yields, and that’s what attracts them. Many of the popular bond funds are intermediate duration, holding bonds that mature in five to ten years. When longer-term yields rise, these funds

Nobody knows who will win the AI race Six weeks in, the votes are coming in. The Anthropic fund (ANTW) has US$19.3 million, more than the other four put together. The OpenAI fund (OAIW) has US$5.7 million. The Meta, Google and SpaceX funds have about US$2 million each or less. Anthropic sells mostly to businesses. Meta puts AI inside Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. Google has the research, the data and the cloud under one roof. If you have a view on which lab wins, Harbor says, you should be able to invest in it. If you can’t decide, buy a few and “adjust ecosystem weights as AI leadership evolves”. Its chief investment officer, Kristof Gleich, went further. He believes 2026 is the year AI stopped being a theme and became an asset class of its own. Harbor Capital, a US fund manager with

Look, you'll know if you’ve been through a few market cycles, that when index gets this concentrated, when stock market gets this volatilethe world  get dangerous. During this rare and temporary extreme in the markets, I'll share how you can safely compound your wealth in the next report set yourself up for passive, work-free retirement income. One that could pay down all your expenses and continue growing over time... Without taking huge risks. And if you want to take advantage of overlooked stock market opportunities, picking up blue-chip outperformers, low-risk high dividend dominators, and more Look into various good stock to choose from ,A flood of capital keeps pushing the biggest AI & tech stocks higher and higher. Today, conditions have changed - bond yields are rising, in

While higher rates do discount more of future corporate profits, fast earnings growth can outrun that. Wall Street analysts expect S&P 500 profits to grow 29% this quarter, and are raising estimates, not cutting them. Historically, stocks typically broke down only after long-term yields climbed 2–2.5% (and they’re up just 1.2% since February’s low).What happens if stocks do stumble? Bonds might be the answer. Since 1990, US Treasuries have typically cushioned the impact when stocks fell 5% or more. And if stocks keep rising instead, that’s fine too: history shows that when bond yields start this high, it has usually meant strong five-year returns. A 5% starting yield, plus the diversification bonds provide, is a compelling combination – even if fixed income isn’t the most popular kid i

Oil matters to inflation more than almost any other single commodity because it touches everything. Transport costs more, manufacturing costs more, even your electricity bill costs more, because an oil price move flows through to nearly every other price in the economy. Brent oil funds is also the top performer on this entire list, which tells you how large this year’s Middle East supply shock has actually been. The risk cuts both ways. The same headline risk that took this up 104% can reverse just as fast if there is real de-escalation, and futures funds bleed a little to the roll from month to month even when the price goes nowhere. Commodities used to mean opening a separate futures account. Futures are leveraged, and they come with quirks like contango and backwardation, where near-ter

Oil matters to inflation more than almost any other single commodity because it touches everything. Transport costs more, manufacturing costs more, even your electricity bill costs more, because an oil price move flows through to nearly every other price in the economy. BNO is also the top performer on this entire list, which tells you how large this year’s Middle East supply shock has actually been. The risk cuts both ways. The same headline risk that took this up 104% can reverse just as fast if there is real de-escalation, and futures funds bleed a little to the roll from month to month even when the price goes nowhere. Commodities usedlike oil  to mean opening a separate futures account. Futures are leveraged, and they come with quirks like contango and backwardation, where near-t

The rise of AI poses a threat to software stocks. A powerful enough AI can customise a company’s software, or at least call into question the value of standardised software that costs more than an AI subscription and doesn’t fully suit a business’s operating needs. Some companies may switch to AI to disintermediate software altogether, which would mean less revenue for software companies. But the reality is that most software stocks are still reporting revenue growth. That’s because the stock market is forward looking, and prices in the future impact on software fundamentals well in advance. That said, investors may have gotten too pessimistic on software and too optimistic on AI. In July, overleveraged AI bets got unwound and software stocks soared. The proxy VanEck Semiconductor ETF (SMH

Nvidia expects $108b in Q3 revenue and projects FY28 revenue to grow about 70%. Management explicitly said customer forecasts point to demand that could support roughly doubling again next year, but it’s guiding to only about 70% growth because it doesn’t currently have enough supply to satisfy all that demand. The largest company in the world by market cap, already $5.5T, shouldn’t be growing like a young company. But that’s exactly what Nvidia is doing. It has boomed for three years running, and in the latest quarter, revenue grew 106% and earnings jumped 126%. These are numbers you’d expect from a young, fast growing company, not a megacap. Yet here we are. It’s earnings season, and investors are watching AI-related stocks closely, trying to figure out if the AI trade is alive or dying.

Broadcom is super plugged into the AI value chain. It doesn’t just produce AI chips for companies like Google, it also makes the networking chips needed to move huge volumes of data fast enough for the AI era. Its overall revenue rose 86% to $29.6b, but AI semiconductor revenue exploded 221% to $16.7b. Hock Tan, President and CEO of Broadcom, said, “In Q4 the momentum continues, and we expect AI semiconductor revenue to accelerate to $21.7 billion, up 236% year over year.” But in FY28, Broadcom isn’t expecting 200% growth anymore in AI semiconductor revenue. Revenue is projected to hit $230b, up from an estimated $115b in FY27. Still, that’s 100% growth. The stock still fell, though. Expectations were even higher. Broadcom guided Q4 revenue to $34.8b, but LSEG consensus was about $35.03b,

For the longest time, Microsoft lumped its cloud business unit Azure together with other businesses like GitHub, Security Copilot and healthcare cloud revenue. That made it hard for investors to know how fast Azure was really growing. Not anymore. Microsoft has finally decided to report Azure separately. Revenue for the June quarter was up 42% YoY, from US$20.7b to US$29.4b. FY2026 Azure revenue came in at US$101.9b, up 40% from US$72.6b. Quarterly Azure revenue accelerated from US$22.4b to $24.1b to $26.0b to $29.4b through FY26. Azure isn’t merely large, growth actually accelerated into Q4 despite the increasingly bigger base. Broadcom is super plugged into the AI value chain. It doesn’t just produce AI chips for companies like Google, it also makes the networking chips needed to move hu

Based on the latest futures market, the probability of a rate hike in September 2026 has dropped to 34.7%, down from more than 50% just a week ago. No rate hike is good news for AI capex. Companies like Alphabet are issuing new bonds to fund their expansion, and a hike would have raised their cost of funds, squeezed profits, and possibly delayed plans to borrow more and expand faster to meet demand. That worry is off the table for now, at least for the next two months, so they can carry on. Commodity prices are one thing worth watching. Not just oil, but copper, corn, and other raw materials that go into whatever we produce. They tend to lead the inflation numbers rather than follow them. The prolonged Iran War sparked fears that inflation would come roaring back. New Fed Chair Kevin Warsh