Malaysia’s largest pension fund declared a 6.15% dividend for both its conventional and Shariah savings accounts for 2025, a year where unpredictable trade policies whipsawed markets. The Employees Provident Fund will pay 79.6 billion ringgit ($20.5 billion) to account holders, according to a statement Saturday. The fund manages 1.41 trillion ringgit and has more than 18 million members, about 60%...
Malaysia’s largest pension fund declared a 6.15% dividend for both its conventional and Shariah savings accounts for 2025, a year where unpredictable trade policies whipsawed markets. The Employees Provident Fund will pay 79.6 billion ringgit ($20.5 billion) to account holders, according to a statement Saturday. The fund manages 1.41 trillion ringgit and has more than 18 million members, about 60% of whom contributed money in the past 12 months. “Resilient equity markets were the main driver of EPF’s income, supported by stable returns from fixed income and the well diversified nature of the portfolio,” Chairman Mohd Zuki Ali said in the statement. The fund expects the global economy will remain resilient thanks to abating inflation and monetary easing, and that continued investment inflows, especially into technology, will help offset possible uneven growth among major economies. The latest dividend compares with 2024 dividends of 6.3% for both its conventional and Sharia accounts — the latter being investments made in line with Islamic principles. For 2025, EPF recorded total distributable income of 82.7 billion ringgit, up 9.5% from a year earlier. Investment assets expanded 12.8% to 1.41 trillion ringgit, driven by portfolio income and net contributions of 66.5 billion ringgit. Equities generated 50.7 billion ringgit, a 7.9% return, while fixed income instruments yielded 26.3 billion ringgit, or 4.3%. Real estate and infrastructure brought in 1.6 billion ringgit, a 4.8% return, while money market instruments added about 600 million ringgit, or 1.6%.
A few years ago I wrote an opinion column about Unite Students, a firm that builds student housing across the UK. It’s a sell, I said at the time . The UK Universities and Colleges Admissions Service had just announced that Britain was on a “journey to a million” undergraduate applications. That seemed pretty unlikely given that both domestic and international student numbers were falling, and tha...
A few years ago I wrote an opinion column about Unite Students, a firm that builds student housing across the UK. It’s a sell, I said at the time . The UK Universities and Colleges Admissions Service had just announced that Britain was on a “journey to a million” undergraduate applications. That seemed pretty unlikely given that both domestic and international student numbers were falling, and that the number of conversations about whether all degrees are worth having was most definitely rising. So here we are. The shares were 940 pence then. They are 504 pence today. Typical headline? “ UK Student Landlord Unite Slumps on Weaker Bookings .” Unite’s miseries have coincided neatly with a fast-building row about student loans in the UK. If you have taken out one of the country’s bizarrely high interest student loans, you will most likely spend the next 30 (or 40) years paying it back in the form of 9% of your gross income every year . Earn much over £50,000 ($67,300) a year, and that makes your effective marginal tax rate 51%. Nasty. I mean really nasty. That burden might once have been worth it. But now? At a time when getting a well-paid graduate job in the low-growth, high-tax, low-productivity UK economy is nigh on impossible, maybe it really isn’t. Britain might not have completed the journey to a million, but it still needs more than the 10,000 graduate jobs a year currently on offer . That’s not a typo by the way. It really is only 10,000. Look at it like that and it begins to seem like the young are paying an awful lot upfront to end with something intangible and of dubious value. The price they are paying for the hope a degree brings is just too high. If this all sounds strangely familiar to those of you without children, it’s because the same story is playing out in the stock market. The US, home of knowledge stocks, is no longer outperforming the rest of the world. Everything related or maybe related to artificial intelligence is in a lot of trouble. Softwa...
Stepping off the night train, full of memories of his life there three decades ago, the writer finds a changed city fighting for survival My first flat in Kyiv was a couple of metro stops outside the city centre, just opposite Volodymyrskyy market, in a nondescript mid-20th century block. The lease was arranged by post. It took me five days to drive there from Edinburgh in an old Polo in November ...
Stepping off the night train, full of memories of his life there three decades ago, the writer finds a changed city fighting for survival My first flat in Kyiv was a couple of metro stops outside the city centre, just opposite Volodymyrskyy market, in a nondescript mid-20th century block. The lease was arranged by post. It took me five days to drive there from Edinburgh in an old Polo in November 1991. Finding my way to Kyiv was easy – one road from Calais takes you straight there – but once I got to the outskirts, I must have used a paper map to navigate through the city. I spoke no Ukrainian, and enough Russian to ask basic directions, but not enough to understand the answer. I could read the street signs. I found a parking space round the back and began to unload my stuff. Recently, I went back. I crossed the road from the square by the metro and went through the market. It’s a neater, quieter place than I remember from the early 1990s, not so much because of the war as from the gradual changes over the intervening years, when peasant farmers around Kyiv became fewer and post-communist supermarkets and commercial food distribution systems replaced the old state shops. In the weeks before and after the 1991 referendum, when Ukrainians voted to leave the Soviet Union, precipitating its quick disintegration, I went to the state shops to queue for cheap, rationed, often scarce items such as bread and hard cheese; the market was a place of plenty and, for locals, high prices. Row upon row of countrywomen in aprons sold huge jars of sour cream, chalk-white towers of cottage cheese wrapped in muslin and pots of horseradish in beetroot juice, alongside vendors from the Caucasus offering persimmons, pomegranates and fresh coriander, and pickle merchants with buckets of Korean carrot salad and wild garlic stalks. All this is still abundant in Kyiv, still locally made, but packaged and stacked on supermarket shelves by big firms. Nobody’s selling homemade sour cream now – p...
Early trials of the drug VIR-5500 showed it shrinking tumours in some patients A new drug for advanced prostate cancer has shown promise in early trials experts have said, with the medication shrinking tumours in some patients. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in many countries, including the US and UK. About 1.5 million men are diagnosed worldwide each year . Continue reading.....
Early trials of the drug VIR-5500 showed it shrinking tumours in some patients A new drug for advanced prostate cancer has shown promise in early trials experts have said, with the medication shrinking tumours in some patients. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in many countries, including the US and UK. About 1.5 million men are diagnosed worldwide each year . Continue reading...
Critics claim the operations are geared at social media, but police say they have enabled real arrests Police officers from Bangkok’s metropolitan bureau had less than 24 hours to prepare for their latest undercover operation. They would be starring as performers of a lion dance at a temple fair held for the lunar new year. Their mission: track down and arrest a suspected thief who had a history o...
Critics claim the operations are geared at social media, but police say they have enabled real arrests Police officers from Bangkok’s metropolitan bureau had less than 24 hours to prepare for their latest undercover operation. They would be starring as performers of a lion dance at a temple fair held for the lunar new year. Their mission: track down and arrest a suspected thief who had a history of evading officers. “The dance was spontaneous. We just did what we did,” said the police captain Lertvarit Lertvorapreecha, adding that nobody had time to practise. In his haste, he accidentally picked up his colleague’s male mask, which he wore with a red silk dress, trousers and tactical shoes. Continue reading...
This is the forum for daily political discussion on Seeking Alpha. A new version is published every market day. Please don't leave political comments on other articles or posts on the site. The comments below are not regulated with the same rigor as the rest of the site, and this is an 'enter at your own risk' area as discussion can get very heated. If you can't stand the heat... you know what the...
This is the forum for daily political discussion on Seeking Alpha. A new version is published every market day. Please don't leave political comments on other articles or posts on the site. The comments below are not regulated with the same rigor as the rest of the site, and this is an 'enter at your own risk' area as discussion can get very heated. If you can't stand the heat... you know what they say... More on Today's Markets: Moderation Guidelines: We remove comments under the following categories: Personal attacks on another user account Anti-Vaxxer or covid related misinformation Stereotyping, prejudiced or racist language about individuals or the topic under discussion. Inciting violence messages, encouraging hate groups and political violence. Regardless of which side of the political divide you find yourself, please be courteous and don't direct abuse at other users. For any issue with regards to comments please email us at : moderation@seekingalpha.com. Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. Any views or opinions expressed above may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank. Our analysts are third party authors that include both professional investors and individual investors who may not be licensed or certified by any institute or regulatory body.
ChatGPT maker OpenAI has received $110 billion in investments from Amazon, SoftBank and Nvidia, putting the technology company's pre-money valuation at $730 billion
ChatGPT maker OpenAI has received $110 billion in investments from Amazon, SoftBank and Nvidia, putting the technology company's pre-money valuation at $730 billion
hapabapa/iStock Editorial via Getty Images In my professional opinion, one of the riskiest electric vehicle companies out there today is none other than Rivian Automotive ( RIVN ). To be clear, I am a big fan of the electric vehicle market. I firmly believe it will be the future of automation. However, I am inclined to believe that the companies most likely to succeed in this space that focus on p...
hapabapa/iStock Editorial via Getty Images In my professional opinion, one of the riskiest electric vehicle companies out there today is none other than Rivian Automotive ( RIVN ). To be clear, I am a big fan of the electric vehicle market. I firmly believe it will be the future of automation. However, I am inclined to believe that the companies most likely to succeed in this space that focus on producing electric vehicles will be some of the major automotive companies. The best prospect in the space, in my view, is none other than General Motors ( GM ), which has seen its market share skyrocket in recent years. Pureplay electric vehicle companies are riskier because they are less financially stable and because their success depends on an acceptable adoption rate of this new technology. Although it has a strong balance sheet, Rivian Automotive is problematic because it continues to generate net losses and hemorrhage cash. Admittedly, the company does have additional funding coming its way. But the downside to this is that it results in shareholders becoming heavily diluted. And even though we can expect production to continue expanding and the company to race toward profitability, it would likely be years of dilutive impact before the business can ultimately succeed in becoming a viable player in the space. Even then, I struggle to imagine it having the financial capabilities needed to capture market share in an increasingly competitive space. This is why, in August of last year, I reaffirmed the company as a 'sell' candidate. Even though the stock has risen drastically since then, I maintain my stance on the matter. I'm Staying Away From This EV Play Author - SEC EDGAR Data Even though I am a big fan, conceptually, of Rivian Automotive, I believe that the company has significant issues that investors should be cautious about. Take the most recent quarter as an example. This would be the final quarter of the 2025 fiscal year . During this time, revenue for the compa...
Pakistan and Afghanistan edged closer to all-out war this week, escalating tensions in a region where the world’s economic superpowers are vying for influence. Pakistan said it bombed targets in the Afghan capital Kabul to punish the Taliban government that it blames for backing deadly attacks by militants inside Pakistan. Later Friday, the Afghan state news channel reported new Taliban strikes on...
Pakistan and Afghanistan edged closer to all-out war this week, escalating tensions in a region where the world’s economic superpowers are vying for influence. Pakistan said it bombed targets in the Afghan capital Kabul to punish the Taliban government that it blames for backing deadly attacks by militants inside Pakistan. Later Friday, the Afghan state news channel reported new Taliban strikes on several border posts. Clashes by both sides were ongoing Friday night, according to local media reports. The violence risks further destabilizing a part of Asia where the US, China and India all have important interests – and which also faces fallout in the event of an American attack on neighboring Iran. Both Pakistan and Afghanistan are threatening to extend the exchange, though they also have reasons to dial it back. President Donald Trump has said he wants to restore American control over Bagram airbase in Afghanistan — vacated when the US army pulled out in 2021 after two decades of occupation — mainly to keep tabs on China. He’s heaped praise on Pakistan’s military chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir , adding to strains in US-India ties. Meanwhile Beijing, one of Pakistan’s oldest friends and biggest financial backers, has been stepping up engagement with the Taliban. All of this forms a backdrop to this week’s resurgence in fighting, which Pakistan’s defense minister called “open war.” The two countries have given sharply varying estimates of casualties in the latest clashes, which followed months of attacks inside Pakistan – most notably by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. The Afghan Taliban denies backing the militant group, which largely targeted far-flung tribal areas but recently claimed a suicide bombing in the capital Islamabad. ‘Too Weak’ “These retaliations are getting worse bit by bit,” said Pramit Pal Chaudhuri , head of South Asia at consulting firm Eurasia Group . Still, he sees limits to the escalation because “both countries are too weak to be doin...