This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on April 3, 2018 - April 9, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Pacific Mutual Fund Bhd, an investment management company under the OCBC Group, expects greater market volatility ahead.

Its chief executive officer and executive director Teh Chi-cheun said year-to-date, market performance has been “decent”, following a good run in 2017.

“We expect markets to continue on an uptrend albeit with even more market volatility ahead. In short, expect a ‘choppy’ market,” he said in a statement yesterday.

Teh noted that policies and political issues that could cause markets to be volatile include rising trade tensions although its base case assumption is no full-blown trade war, the impact of interest rate hikes in the US, tapering in the eurozone, changes in the US administration, Brexit negotiations and geopolitical risk be it in the Middle East, Russia or North Korea.

“Locally, the impending [14th] general election (GE14) may cause a slowdown in activities as investors and businesses await Parliament’s dissolution and the various political posturing and campaigning [involved for GE14]. That said, for the local bourse (Bursa Malaysia), there are pockets of opportunities in this environment,” he added.

Meanwhile, Pacific Mutual announced income distributions amounting to RM15.8 million for seven of its funds. It declared annual income distributions of five sen per unit for Pacific Pearl Fund; 2.5 sen per unit for Pacific Dana Aman; 1.7 sen per unit for Pacific Dana Murni; and 2.5 sen per unit for Pacific Focus China Fund.

The company also declared a quarterly distribution of 0.4 sen per unit for Pacific Cash Fund.

In addition, monthly distributions were declared for Pacific Cash Deposit Fund at 0.3 sen per unit and Pacific OCBC Cash Fund at 0.25 sen per unit for March 2018.