In the early part of the year, a TikTok video by 17-year-old Zoe Gabriel went viral in the region and sparked a fierce debate among netizens over the meaning of luxury. In it, the Filipino teen, who lives in Singapore, thanked her dad for gifting her with her first “luxury handbag” and excitedly ...

Millennial Musings: Redefining a life of ‘luxury’

A rather wide protection gap has been a constant thorn in the Malaysian insurance landscape. For instance, only 25% of working adults among the lower-income household have some form of life insurance/family takaful cover, far lower than the 59% of working adults in the general population.

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Insurance: Insurtech players eyeing digital insurer licences

Additional Tier 1 (AT1) bonds, otherwise known as perpetual bonds issued by local banks, are investment instruments favoured by some institutional investors and high-net-worth individuals seeking attractive yields and returns.

According to information provided by the Bond Pricing Agency...

Cover Story: A wake-up call for investors of AT1 bonds

ChatGPT is an open-source generative artificial intelligence (AI) foundation model by OpenAI. If you go to the website, you can ask this AI model questions and get a response generated from all the data on the internet. ChatGPT is currently in its fourth iteration, with processing power in the tr...

Pitfalls & Pitch Calls: ChatGPT and the consumer

If you thought investing in public equities was risky, private equities could be even more so. I was in a front row seat when a company I had invested in through an equity crowdfunding (ECF) platform went belly up. Sad to say, RM2,000 went up in smoke after several years of investment.

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Comment: Valuable lessons learnt from losing money through ECF

(April 19): Ray Dalio plans to set up a branch of his family office in Abu Dhabi, part of the hedge fund billionaire’s deeper push into the Middle East.

The Bridgewater Associates founder has cultivated a close relationship with the United Arab Emirates leadership over several deca...

Ray Dalio set to open branch of family office in Abu Dhabi

China and Hong Kong’s markets have surged by a third since the lows last November, as the easing of pandemic curbs puts these economies back in business. Yet, with short- and long-term opportunities on the horizon, it is not too late for investors to consider increasing their allocations to Chine...

Investing Strategies: Abrdn: Not too late to increase allocation to Chinese equities

On Feb 1, the US Federal Reserve raised the fed funds rate by 25 basis points (bps) to a range of 4.50% to 4.75%. The decision of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) was unanimous. 

FOMC chairman Jerome Powell acknowledged that inflation was moving in the right direction and t...

Pitfalls & Pitch Calls: Fed funds rate hits 4.75% ceiling amid tailwind from China’s reopening

Global shocks, both economic and geopolitical, have become more frequent in recent years. Amid such a volatile environment, do economic growth forecasts matter anymore? In the last one year alone, we have seen global growth forecasts being revised, upwards and downwards, multiple times, and in al...

Comment: Uncertainty shocks the new normal

If there is a chart that matters the most to investors, it is the price chart — the higher, the better. But sometimes, they let their guard down when it comes to other equally important things, particularly when trading on cryptocurrency exchanges. Questions they should be asking themselves inclu...

Cover Story: What’s next after the crypto winter? 

KUALA LUMPUR (March 7): Women in Asia are taking the reins in building their financial security though investing, and thus challenging the view that Asia compared to the West is still a patriarchal society.

Rising number of women investors can reshape economies

During the pandemic, “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) start-up Split processed more than RM100 million in transactions within two years. Yet, co-founder Dylan Tan bit the bullet last November to exit the business and launched a new, yet similar, solution for consumers.

Sugar, the brand name ...

Feature: Is ‘save now, buy later’ a good alternative to BNPL?

To keep abreast of stock market news, retail investors tend to visit several investment websites and forums for the most up-to-date information. There is no one-stop centre that they can go to and exchange opinions with other investors. 

To address these pain points, Indonesia-base...

TheWall: Stockbit wants to be the Facebook for investors

(Feb 14): Danny Lee, who previously ran private equity investments for the family office of Alibaba Group Holding Ltd co-founder Joe Tsai, is seeking to raise about US$200 million for his own fund targeting wealthy individuals looking to diversify their investments.

Lee, a veteran ...

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