KUALA LUMPUR: Foreign fund managers are expected to be the main catalyst in driving the Malaysian economy, going forward, says Aberdeen Islamic Asset Management Sdn Bhd chief executive officer Johari Ali Abdullah.
While saying that foreign investors mostly see Malaysia as the safest investment destination currently, he predicted that foreign ownership in the market would increase over the next few years.
“For the first half of the year, foreign institutional fund have been net buyers in the market while local institutions have been net settlers,” he told a press conference in conjunction with the PhilipCapital Fourth Annual Investment Conference.
Meanwhile, PhilipCapital Management Sdn Bhd chief investment officer Ang Kok Heng said the economic outlook next year was expected to remain stable due to strong support from local fund managers.
“The local market is following the current regional sentiment which has started to recover from their weak performance in recent months.
“Even though the United States may scale down bond buying, they are not going to increase interest rates so soon. In a low interest rate regime, it is still very positive for the stock market.
“Interest rates are not going to increase so soon so it will do no harm, Even if interest rates were to pick up, I think it would be generally very low, from 0.5-1 per cent, even if it got to two or three per cent, I think it will still be bearable because dividend yields are still higher,” Ang said.
The one-day conference aims to provide investors the unique platform to explore investments ideas, investment methodologies and trading tools.
Participants will have the opportunity to meet, have insightful discussions and even dissect the thought process of some of the 14 top performance ranking fund managers together with prominent investment and trading specialists. — Bernama