Crescent Wealth’s Australian Islamic Equity Fund rated world’s best

Sydney, October 17 2013 – Islamic fund manager Crescent Wealth’s Crescent Australian Equity Fund has recorded returns more than double the Australian Stock Exchange’s ASX 300 benchmark in the September quarter, ranking it as the world’s best performing Islamic equities fund in the period, according to Bloomberg. The fund was also the best performing Australian equities fund for the September quarter as rated by Morningstar.

Crescent Australian Equity Fund (CAEF), returned 23.0% for the three months to September 30, significantly outperforming the 10.3% gain on the ASX 300 over the same period. Issam Eid, Crescent’s portfolio manager, said the fund’s exposure to small caps during the quarter and individual stock picking, particularly within the resources, energy and mining services sectors, were the largest contributors to the high return.

“We believed that the market was holding down the miners and that a number of stocks were significantly undervalued and we have seen something of a fight back over the past few months,” Mr Eid said.

“At the same time, we took the view that valuations of large caps and defensive stocks on the Australian exchange looked expensive and we positioned our portfolio accordingly. Our fund is also precluded from investing in banks which proved advantageous as those stocks came off somewhat during the period.”

In the mining, resources and energy sectors over the past six months, Crescent Wealth’s equities fund has invested in stocks in the gold, iron ore and mining services sectors (Independence Group NL, Oceana Gold Corp, Mount Gibson Iron Ltd, WDS Ltd and Titan Energy Services Ltd.) In the residential property and information technology sectors, the fund invested in companies including in GBST Holdings (GBT) and On the House (OTH).

“Looking forward over the next six to 12 months, we see continued upside to the CAEF portfolio and expect our holdings in natural resources and mining (BHP Billiton Ltd and Rio Tinto Ltd), IT (Runge Pincock Minarco Ltd and ASG Group Ltd), and consumer discretionaries (Harvey Norman Holdings Ltd, Vita Group Ltd and McPherson’s Ltd) to perform well,” Mr Eid said.

The Crescent Australian Equity Fund, launched in late 2011, is Australia’s first licensed Islamic managed fund. It is open to all investors, including private and institutional. Through its Board of Islamic scholars, Crescent Wealth applies a number of filters to ensure all investments held in the fund are in accordance with Islamic principles. Industries that are prohibited include alcohol, tobacco, weapons, pork, conventional financial services, gaming and media.

Crescent Wealth’s Diversified Property Fund also performed strongly over the last two quarters returning 3.38% over the past quarter, outperforming the Morningstar benchmark by 2.0%. Portfolio Manager for the Crescent Diversified Property Fund, Andrew Smith, said there have been a number of standout performers for the fund over the last quarter, including Stockland and Charter Hall.

Crescent Wealth’s Managing Director, Talal Yassine, said he was pleased about recent performance as it would highlight the potential for Islamic compliant financial products in the Australian market.

“There is enormous potential for Islamic funds in Australia mirroring the significant expansion we have seen in similar funds overseas. Crescent Wealth is proud to be the leading Australian pioneer in Islamic investing and will continue to work hard to deliver innovative products for investors,” Mr Yassine said.

To find out more about Crescent Wealth, please visit their website www.crescentwealth.com.au or call 1300 926 626 (within Australia)

+612 9696 9800 (Outside Australia).

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Where Is Google Parking Its $40 billion Cash?

Published on Aug 7, 2012 by WSJDigitalNetwork : Tech giant Google has found a new place to park some of its $40 billion cash hoard: bonds backed by car loans. Katy Burne reports.

         

HANG SENG OFFERS FIRST YUAN ETF TRACKING GOLD.

Uploaded by cctvnewschannel on 31 Jan 2012 - Hang Seng Bank announced that it's going to launch the world's first yuan-denominated Exchange Traded Fund, or ETF, that will track the international gold price.

The new ETF represents another step in the offshore development of yuan-denominated gold, after the Hong Kong Gold and Silver Exchange launched physical transactions in October.

The fund tracks the London gold fixing price in US dollars, and will hedge against foreign exchange rate movements between the yuan and the greenback. One board lot of 100 units of the ETF is priced at 3,500 yuan, excluding fees.

On the Money: Taking Stock (Russia)

Uploaded by RussiaToday on 28 Jan 2012 - How fast will Russia's equity markets get back to normal life after the fall in December? What can pump them back up? What about investment risk during Russia's presidential campaign? And which sectors could improve the health of the Russian economy? OtM is joined by Ben Aris, Simon Fentham-Fletcher, Artem Arkhipov and David Cranield.

FITCH DOWNGRADES 5 EUROZONE COUNTRIES.

Uploaded by cctvnewschannel on 27 Jan 2012 - U.S ratings agency Fitch has cut the credit ratings of Italy, Spain and three other euro zone nations as the region's debt crisis deepened. Fitch cut Italy by two notches to A- from A+, while Spain was lowered to A from AA-. Belgium, Slovenia and Cyprus were also downgraded.

Meanwhile, Fitch put all five nations' credit outlooks as "negative". However, investors were still optimistic over the Greek debt swap deal with its private creditors and the Euro rose against the US dollar for a fifth straight day.

Part 2: Irresponsible packaging & selling of Investments

A history of the Meltdown - The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010: The Men Who Crashed The World : 29 Dec 2010

Part 1: Irresponsible packaging & selling of Investments.

A history of the Meltdown - The Secret History of the Global Financial Collapse 2010:
The Men Who Crashed The World : 28 Dec 2010

Trader on the BBC says Eurozone Market will crash

Uploaded by nsotd4 on Sep 26, 2011 - In a scary and painfully frank interview a freaked out BBC interviewer is visibly shaken when market trader Alessio Rastani predicts that the "Market is Toast." Apparently there is nothing Euro governments can do.

Making Money Out of Market Crash.

Uploaded by TheRealNews on Aug 21, 2011 - Bill Black: Technical traders love volatility; Obama raising big money on Wall St.

Money Chat - Personal Financial Budget

malaysiakini on Mar 30, 2011 - Money Chat is a brand new personal financial awareness series brought to you by Komunitikini, Malaysia's leading online community portal.

Hosted by Carol Yip, a financial coach and also author of financial books, the programme offers tips on how to manage your money wisely in easy to follow steps. Where needed workbooks and financial sheets can be downloaded free for your use.

Money Chat contains three segments per episode - a short sketch of different spending scenarios, a how-to segment to help solve your personal financial book-keeping woes, and also chats with selected celebrity guests to see how they manage their money!

For Segment 2 of Episode 1, there's a link to a financial budget planner which is downloadable free to you!

And the celebrity offering for Segment 3 is none other than radio and stage personality, Patrick Teoh! So how do you manage your money Patrick?

Who Benefits From Deflation?

TheRealNews | November 19, 2010 | - Pollin: Deflation is dangerous to overall economy, but Fed policy is no solution.

U.S. Bond Bubble Ready to Burst:

While the World Focuses Attention Elsewhere.

Markets Rally on China's Announcement That Yuan Will Float More Freely.

June 22, 2010 — Market analysts say The New York Stock Exchange and other world markets are extending a rally Monday which began after China announced it would allow its currency to appreciate against the U.S. dollar. Critics say the Chinese have kept it unofficially low to boost their exports. A stronger yuan will make imports, including American goods, more affordable for Chinese buyers. VOA's Laurel Bowman has that story. VIDEO INSIDE:

Keiser Report: Gold grows on Armageddon, Australian property rush!

June 22, 2010 — In Episode №53 Max Keiser and co-host, Stacy Herbert, look at the latest scandals of financial news presenters speaking in tongues, EU commissioners threatening the return of dictatorships and European fund managers piling into Australian property. In the second half of the show, Max talks to the Financial Time's John Authers about his new book, The Fearful Rise of Markets. Video Inside

The Wrong Reason to Dollar-Cost Average

Pop writes about the intersection of our lives and economics at Pop Economics. There, you can find biweekly posts on everything from how your behavior affects your personal finance decisions to what the Fed’s most recent move means to you — not to mention some killer pop art. He recently wrote: Resistance is futile: Why buy-and-hold beats value investing.

The fact of the matter is: Most of us dollar-cost average when we invest because we have to. We get paid biweekly or monthly, and we invest our savings as soon as we receive it. We don’t have gigantic piles of money sitting around that we must choose to invest in a lump or over time.

But because dollar-cost averaging is personal finance 101, you’re going to find arguments as to why it’s the “best” way to invest anyway all over the place.

The refrain goes something like this: Let’s say that rather than put all your money into a mutual fund at once, you invest a set amount, say $1,000 per month, over time. When the fund is at $100 per share, you’ll buy 10 shares. When it’s at $150, you’ll only buy 7 or so shares. That way, you force yourself to buy more shares when they’re cheap and fewer when they’re expensive! You’ll see that argument at lots of reputable sites.

The problem with that explanation is that it suggests if you did have the choice between investing over time or all at once, you should invest over time. That doesn’t make sense, and here’s why.

1. Dollar-cost averaging works in reverse when you retire anyway.

Just as you might put $1,000 per month into stocks when you’re in the wealth accumulation stage of your life, you’re going to withdraw, say, $10,000 per month from your portfolio when you retire. And yes, that means you’ll be selling more shares when they’re cheap and fewer when they’re expensive — just the opposite of the supposed benefits dollar-cost averaging gave you when you started!

2. When you rebalance your assets as you age, it’s unrealistic to keep the strategy up.

Most of us invest a lot in stocks when we’re young and less in stocks (and more in bonds) as we age. Conventional wisdom holds that you should have, say, 90% in stocks and 10% in bonds when you’re in your 20s, but closer to 40% in stocks near retirement. But how do you get from one allocation to the other?

Dollar-cost averaging would seemingly dictate that you should slowly re-balance your portfolio as you age every month. In other words, when you hit, say, age 30, you’d sell a bit of your stock portfolio and buy a little bit of bonds each month as you got older. Aside from falling into the trap described in point one, how many of us could keep that up? And if we could, the transactional costs associated with the process, such as commissions from trading ETFs, would eat into our savings.

3. If you do have a lump-sum to invest, and choose to dollar-cost average, you’re throwing your asset allocation off, big time.

Pretend you’re in your 30s, have $100,000 saved so far in a 80/20 stock/bond mix, and come into a $100,000 inheritance. Hearing of the merits of the dollar-cost average approach, you choose to trickle the money into the stock market over time.

Well guess what? On day one, your asset allocation would be 40% stocks, 10% bonds, and 50% cash. Not exactly the aggressive asset allocation you intended, right? Just because you mentally put the $100,000 inheritance into a pile of money separate from your retirement savings doesn’t make it actually so.

And if you believe the stock market generally rises over long periods of time. The short-term volatility you’re trying to smooth out doesn’t matter anyway. The best time to invest will always be ASAP.

Something dollar-cost averaging is good at

At the end of the day, the completely rational individual would choose to make a lump-sum investment instead of to dollar-cost average. But exactly zero of us are completely rational. So there’s one big reason I can see someone choosing the DCA route, despite the arguments against.

In two words: “Loss aversion.” Humans fear losses more than they love gains. This tendency is well-documented by economists. So if you invested all $100,000 in a lump sum and the market dropped 5% the next day, you’d leave with an emotional scar. But alternately, if you began a DCA program and the market rocketed 5% the next day, you wouldn’t be nearly as sad.

That’s not rational — but it is the way we think. If you can’t get over that hump, you might decide that the cost of dollar-cost averaging is worth your emotional well-being. Just don’t pretend it’s making you money.

Stock Market Scares Investors.

March 09, 2010 | CBS Exactly a year ago, stocks hit a 12-year low, dealing a 401-K-O to a lot of retirement accounts. As Anthony Mason reports, after a remarkable comeback, millions of investors missed out.

SC to amend the guidelines on unit trust funds.

EDGETV | February 23, 2010 - The Securities Commission is amending the Guidelines on Unit Trust Funds to facilitate a multi-class structure for unit trust funds, said its chairman Tan Sri Zarinah Anwar.

Investment

Investment or investing is a term with several closely-related meanings in business management, finance and economics, related to saving or deferring consumption. An asset is usually purchased, or equivalently a deposit is made in a bank, in hopes of getting a future return or interest from it. The word originates in the Latin "vestis", meaning garment, and refers to the act of putting things (money or other claims to resources) into others' pockets.

Types of Investments

The term "investment" is used differently in economics and in finance. Economists refer to a real investment (such as a machine or a house), while financial economists refer to a financial asset, such as money that is put into a bank or the market, which may then be used to buy a real asset.