Go for multi-asset investments in tough times

Embrace multi-asset investments in volatile market

Investors will need to undertake dynamic multi-asset allocation for managing their investment portfolio in the current low interest rate environment.

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What is multi asset investing?

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Why multi asset investing?

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Meanwhile, Michael Chang Wai Sing, chief investment officer for fixed income at RHB Asset Management (M), said investors could consider having an exposure in fixed income instruments such as bonds as well as foreign exchange (forex) instruments.

“Asian credits are a sweet spot as Asia, especially China, is recovering and is expected to recover further into the rest of the year and into 2021, ” - Michael Chang Wai Sing

PETALING JAYA: Investors should undertake a dynamic multi-asset allocation in managing their investment portfolio, in view of the current low interest rate and volatile market environment.

Diversification into the appropriate asset classes is key in managing risks and optimising returns, especially when uncertainty is rife in the market, according to panellists at the “Investing in Volatile Times: Stocks, Fixed Income or Multi-Asset?” webinar organised by RHB Asset Management.

According to Schroder Investment Management (S) Ltd South-East Asia head of multi-asset product Reginald Tan, investing in dividend yield stocks offer good and stable returns, at a time when the equity market is volatile.

While corporate earnings have taken a hit as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and more companies have turned conservative in managing their cash, Tan believed that this is set to change moving forward as the global economy recovers.

“Companies experienced a short-term hit over the last one or two quarters due to Covid-19 and there were dividend cuts, but going into 2021, we will definitely see a rise in dividends.

“You cannot conserve cash forever, ” he said.

Tan added further that a low interest rate environment and a pick-up in economic activity are positive for high dividend yield stocks.

Meanwhile, Michael Chang Wai Sing, chief investment officer for fixed income at RHB Asset Management (M), said investors could consider having an exposure in fixed income instruments such as bonds as well as foreign exchange (forex) instruments.

Fixed income instruments are low-risk in nature and typically offer better returns than any average fixed deposits in banks, particularly at a time when interest rates have been lowered.

“Asian credits are a sweet spot as Asia, especially China, is recovering and is expected to recover further into the rest of the year and into 2021, ” said Chang.

However, he cautioned that investors should be selective as they invest into the credit space.

“There will also be opportunities in the forex space. If you have a certain view on forex, you can also use that to enhance your returns for the fixed income, ” stated Chang.

As for the opportunities in the equities universe, RHB Islamic International Asset Management Bhd CEO Mohd Farid Kamarudin told StarBiz that investors should consider stocks in sectors that are capable of evolving and adapting to the new economic environment. A potential sector is information technology (IT).

“Of course, we can also look at companies from different sectors that provide services to the IT-related players, ” he said.

Moving forward, Tan from Schroder said that investors will need to practice caution in the stock market, amid the rally that has continued since mid-March this year.

“A double-dip (in the stock market) is possible as fears of Covid-19 remains to be felt and investors engage in profit-taking.

“However, there are expectations that politicians, central bankers and governments will step in to help paper over the cracks, ” he said.

Over the past several months, Bursa Malaysia has enjoyed a rally fuelled by liquidity and a boom retail investor participation. This was in line with the rally witnessed across key stock exchanges globally.

Bursa Malaysia’s bellwether index, FBM KLCI, has surged by almost 30% since the year-to-date low in March after the market tumbled on Covid-19-induced panic.

Yesterday, the index gained by 1.07% or 16.78 points to 1,583.5 points as investor sentiment seemed to be boosted by Bank Negara’s 25 basis point-cut in the Overnight Policy Rate a day earlier.

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Christopher Columbus statue toppled by US protesters

Protesters raise their fists as they stand on the base of a statue of Christopher Columbus in front of City Hall during an "International March for Black Lives" protest against police brutality in downtown Columbus, Ohio. - Protests continue across the nation over police brutality and systemic racism have taken place following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis last month. (Photo by SETH HERALD / AFP)

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WASHINGTON: Protesters in the US city of Baltimore pulled down a statue of Christopher Columbus on Saturday, local media reported, the latest monument to be toppled in anti-racism demonstrations.

Statues of figures connected to colonialism and slavery have been ripped from their plinths in the United States and around the world since Black Lives Matter protests were sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis in May.

Footage published by the Baltimore Sun showed protesters using ropes to pull down the statue of Columbus – the Italian navigator who reached the Americas in 1492 – near the city's Little Italy district and rolling it into the Inner Harbor on the night of July 4.

Long hailed as the so-called discoverer of "The New World," Columbus is considered by many to have spurred years of genocide against indigenous groups in the Americas. He is regularly denounced in a similar way to Civil War generals of the pro-slavery South.

President Donald Trump earlier mentioned the sailor in his speech to mark the July 4 holiday, when Americans typically celebrate their 1776 declaration of independence from Britain.

"Together, we will fight for the American dream, and we will defend, protect, and preserve the American way of life which began in 1492 when Columbus discovered America," he said in an address in which he railed against protesters demanding racial justice.

"We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters, and the people who, in many instances, have absolutely no clue what they are doing," he said.

"We will never allow an angry mob to tear down our statues, erase our history, indoctrinate our children."

The president last month signed an executive order pledging to enforce prosecution for protesters who vandalise public memorials, promising "long prison terms" for "lawless acts against our Great Country!"

A statue of Columbus was taken down in San Francisco last month because the explorer's actions "do not deserve to be venerated," city officials said, and another was removed from California's state capital Sacramento.

Elsewhere, a statue of Belgium's King Leopold II – who ruled over a brutal regime in Africa – was removed in the port city of Antwerp and a monument to slave trader Edward Colston was ripped down in Bristol in the United Kingdom. - AFP

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The start-up economy

THE global start-up economy generates nearly US$3 trillion in value, similar to the gross domestic product of a G7 economy.

Seven of the Top 10 largest companies in the world are in technology. This is the highest concentration of any industry sector among the top global companies and 2019 saw close to Us$300bil in venture capital investments.

Silicon Valley remains in the top spot for start-up ecosystems, followed by New York, London, Beijing and Boston.

This was revealed in the Global Startup Ecosystem Report 2020 (GSER2020) report by Startup Genome. It was based on data from one million companies across 150 cities worldwide.

By the end of 2019, things were getting less rosy and the Covid-19 pandemic battered it further. This caused start-ups to experience a drop in consumer demand and venture capital funding that resulted in a wave of layoffs. Tech giants like Wework and the stable of unicorns funded by Softbank began to falter.

Every crisis creates opportunities. During the Great Recession of 2007-2009, 50 unicorns including Facebook, Linkedin, Palantir and Dropbox were created.

A major beneficiary of this democratisation of tech is the Asia-pacific region, which has gone from having 20% of top ecosystems in 2012 to 30%, the report said.

Of the 11 new ecosystems, six are from the Asia-pacific region.

The Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) has partnered with Startup Genome to benchmark Kuala Lumpur’s performance versus 250 ecosystems globally.

Kuala Lumpur is ranked in the Top 10 emerging ecosystems in performance, and top 20 emerging ecosystems in talent.

Malaysia has positioned itself as an ideal locale for start-ups, with low costs, high quality of living and talent, fasttracked visas and government support, according to MDEC.

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Deleted memories and masked conversations by the West and Hong Kongers

Hong Kongers and the West have forgotten that Hong Kong was a forced ‘concession’ territory from China at gunpoint. The colonial history books that Hong Kongers want to preserve portray China as corrupt, evil and oppressive, as if Britain occupied Hong Kong for democratic purposes.

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STATUES represent memories of the past, both glory and shame. With Bristol taking down the statue of slave trader, later philanthropist Edward Colston (1636-1721), US protestors have started taking down statues of Civil War or slave-tainted personalities. Law and order President Trump want to protect statues against desecration.

Who is right?

History contains more icons of past glories and few memories of bad losses. One of the worst defeats in British military history is remembered in the comic phrase “up the Khyber Pass” when in 1842 British forces retreated out of Afghanistan and lost 16,000 troops and civilians, with only one survivor. Up the Khyber Pass means today an expletive project without an exit strategy, blunders both the Russians and Americans repeated in Afghanistan.

The prestigious magazine Foreign Affairs devoted a whole issue in January/february 2018 on how countries have grappled with their past brutality. Museums and public education help explain why these events occur and how we should deal with them as a community. Remembering is painful, discussion is difficult and blaming deepens the divide.

All individuals, families and nations have blunders, tragedies and scandals that they prefer to forget. They deal with these in their own way.

Some forget, others hide their shame, a few atone for their past crimes by engaging in philanthropy or doing good deeds, and smart ones hire PR firms to make them look good. But memories and instant history that we watch unfold today are over-whelming. Today’s eight billion smartphone/cameras record all events real-time.

Reducing complex events and trends as tweets and soundbites paint the world as false binaries of black and white, good versus evil. Instead of finding solutions to the mess we are in, quasi-religious emotion over-rides rational process. So we delete or cancel what we do not like or blame them on someone else. Such emotion is understandable at a time of pandemic, shock and trauma. New York Times columnist David Brooks identified what America is going through as five epic crises all at once - bungling the pandemic; dealing with racism; political polarisation; quasi-religious struggle; and economic depression. From this side of the Pacific, it looks more like America going through her own “cultural revolution” – a rite of passage for every community in times of profound change.

Since July 1997, Hong Kong is still going through her painful cultural revolution.

Under the One Country Two Systems philosophy, no colonial statues or street names were changed. But Hong Kongers and the West have forgotten that Hong Kong was a forced “concession” territory from China at gunpoint.

The colonial history books that Hong Kongers want to preserve portray China as corrupt, evil and oppressive, as if Britain occupied Hong Kong for democratic purposes. Today, Britain is haunted also by her slavery history, just as Australian aborigines, New Zealand Maoris and Canadian native Americans bear the brunt of post-colonial injustices, with serious social problems that the elites have ignored for years.

How can Americans condemn others’ human right abuses, when America has the highest number of people in jail, of which the majority are African Americans and Hispanics? None of us are so clean of sins that we can morally judge others.

In other words, if your memory of what happened is very different from my memory, how can we communicate with each? And if I delete what you consider an important statue that represents to you very important values and meaning, who judges who is right?

Behind this deep social divide is the debate over the use of face masks. Throughout East Asia, there are few cultural taboos against wearing masks when the pandemic started.

Indeed, East Asians avoided much of the pandemic spread because most people instinctively wore masks because they understood the dual benefits of protecting self and others.

In the US, however, there is aversion to wearing masks, beginning with US President Trump as if it is a challenge to individual ego and right against any state interference in individual freedom.

The pandemic and the economic lockdown have put this conflict between individual “good” or right that leads to public harm. Individual freedoms or rights are not absolute at the expense of others.

As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof says in “Refusing to Wear a Mask is like Driving Drunk”: it is “reckless, selfish behaviour that imperils the economy and can kill or endanger innocent people.”

You get double whammy of hurting the economy and lives at the same time.

In “Covid-19 and the End of Individualism”, Cambridge economist Diane Coyle reminded us that humans are social beings whose every decision affects other people.

To monitor and evaluate this interactive and interdependent risk requires the state to monitor where the communal risks lie, using tools such as contact tracing apps.

But these apps can also be used for commercial or national security purposes.

The real problem is that the public good versus individual privacy and rights issue is extremely controversial with few good answers. Increasingly, we become aware that an individual or virus can take down an entire economy, supply chain or defense system. The marginal costs of such a viral attack is very small compared to the ensuing disaster. This pandemic alone cost US$10 trillion this year and perhaps US$30 trillion to 2023. Deleted memories that interrupt our social discussion on how to cope with the post-covid world is far more complex than we could have imagined. What civilisational model fits an individual and the communal good in this age of climate change, social inequality, disruptive technology and intense geopolitical rivalry?

This civilisational conversation is only just beginning. Every family, community and nation engage in their internal conversation in different ways, because all have painful memories to resolve. Some do it through mega-phones, shouting slogans at each other, others do it quietly below the radar screen.

Our conversations with our loved ones, parents, spouses, partners, friends, are often conducted through silences rather than outright open quarrels.

But if we are to remain a family, community or nation, that conversation must be conducted, however painful and difficult.

We must find the common threads that bind us, or else they will break us.

by Andrew Sheng

Views expressed here are solely that of the writer’s writer’s.

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WhatsApp Tips: How to clear WhatsApp cache when you are running low on phone memory

HIGHLIGHTS

• Media files received on WhatsApp can occupy a lot of memory on our smartphones.


• Deleting media files from WhatsApp’s memory also erases them from your phone memory.


• However, this trick can be used only on Android smartphones.

WhatsApp is arguably one of the most popular social messaging apps in the world. Every day millions of users exchange messages on WhatsApp in the form of text, videos, voice recordings, GIFs, stickers, location, documents and more. These files often end up taking a lot of space on our smartphones. And if you use the Facebook-owned social messaging app frequently and are actively involved in a number of groups, it can also lead to WhatsApp media files and documents increasingly filling up your phone memory.

This problem can be exacerbated if you are already running low on phone memory. Thankfully, WhatsApp offers you an easy technique using which you can delete media files and messages from not just the app's memory but also from the phone memory. This can help you free a lot of space on your smartphone, particularly, if you are running low on phone memory.

But here is a thing. This trick only works in case of Android smartphones and it won't work if you are using an iPhone. So, while you can free app space and iCloud space, you will have to manually delete the videos and messages from the Photos app of your iPhone, if you want to free your iPhone memory.

If you own an Android phone, here are steps you need to follow to clear WhatsApp media cache:

- Tap on three dots on the top right corner of the app.

- Tap on the Settings option.

- Now tap on Storage Usage option.

- Now you will see all your WhatsApp contacts in the order of the memory that they consume on your smartphone.

- Tap on a contact then tap on Free Up Space option.

- Now you will see a breakdown of files that you have shared with that contact along with the space that the contact is consuming.

- Select the data like images, videos and voice messages that you want to delete.

- Tap on Delete Items option.

- Tap on Clear Messages to confirm.

The videos and messages will automatically be deleted from the gallery.

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