Pacific Mutual Fund Bhd, an investment management company under the OCBC Group, with internal resources to manage both local and global investments for its clients, notes that global economy is still growing steadily and remain in a low inflationary condition but foreseeing some profit taking in the equity markets as they have had excellent gains this year.
Commenting on the outlook for the last quarter of 2017, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of Pacific Mutual, Teh Chi-cheun, said, “The US stock market is at all-time highs and equity markets globally has been very buoyant, even with on-going geopolitical risks. This bull market does need to have a short breather and the trigger could be earnings of US corporations which could miss expectations in the third quarter of 2017 due to the recent hurricanes and higher base effect compared to 3Q2016.”
“Naturally, with the rise in equity prices, valuations for major market are also relatively expensive as compared to their 5-year average. Hence, more volatility is expected in the near term, especially so if corporate earnings growth is slower than expected.”
Teh added, “That said, the global economy is doing fine with stable growth and inflation has peaked after energy costs stabilised. The Eurozone will lead global growth as their retail spending and consumer confidence recovers with pick-up of world trade. And in the US, there could be a slight uptick in GDP due to rebuilding activities from the aftermath of the hurricanes. There are also countries within the Asia region that we intend to increase exposure to.”
In a statement today,, Pacific Mutual announced income distributions amounting to RM10.2 million for investors of six of its funds. The company declared annual income distributions of 4.5 sen per unit for Pacific Premier Fund and 1.5 sen per unit for Pacific Income Fund.
The company also declared quarterly distributions of 0.4 sen per unit for Pacific Cash Fund and 0.3 sen per unit for Pacific OCBC Cash Fund. In addition, monthly distributions are as follows: 0.2 sen per unit for Pacific Islamic Cash Fund and 0.3 sen per unit for Pacific Cash Deposit Fund.
