All About Kwarta

Mutual Funds in general were not spared by the turbulent market for the last two years. It has been understandably challenging to stick to your financial strategies when everything has been going the opposite way. There were a few exceptions with ATR Kim Eng leading the pack. A few years back, I bought a few shares of ATRAM Phil Equity Opportunity Fund. I sold them after almost a year once my target has been achieved. That year, ATRAM and FAMI  were the heavyweights. ATRAM, however, has the worst performing funds in 2015. Probably due to their aggressive selection of stocks. Again, it is important for an investor to realize his risk tolerance and his ultimate goal. Then plan a strategy around those factors. Equity Fund Fund Name ROI ATRAM Alpha Opportunity Fund, Inc. 11.71% ALFM Growth Fund, Inc 4.86%  ATRAM Philippine Equity Opportunity Fund, Inc. -0.56% First Metro Save and Learn Equity Fund,Inc. -1.05% One Wea

The Philippine Stock Exchange ended the previous year at -1.6% - one of the tripartite of the Asian Market losers of 2016, just behind China and Malaysia. This of course trickled down to the country's Mutual Funds (MF) and Unit Investment Trust Funds (UITF) which generally settled in the negative territories. There were a few exceptions however with the top 8 Equity UITFs defying the market downturn (5  for Balanced Fund). I was particularly impressed with BDO's Dividend Fund registering an 8.10% increase. In fact 3 funds from BDO booked positive returns. The funds however were not quite as impressive at the end of the prior year. BDO's Sustainable Dividend Fund and Focused Equity Fund ranked 26th (-15.74%) and 27th (-18.11%) respectively that year (ESG Equity Fund performance was not available for 2015). Also, based on BDO's (and a few others) performance, it tends to show that dividend-focused funds were more profitable than their normal counterparts. But thi