Standard & Poor's (S&P) Taiwan Investment Funds Awards yesterday honored the 19 top performers among 850 funds in the nation's fund industry, who captured a total of 39 awards this year.
The top five companies winning the awards are Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, Shinkong Securities Investment Trust (
Merrill Lynch Investment Man-agers was also honored by the event's co-organizer, the Chinese-language Smart magazine (智富雜誌) as "Fund Group of the Year."
According to Smart publisher Leon Tung (童再興), who is also president of the operating-services center of PC Home Publishing Group's (電腦家庭), most of the 19 winners had a very positive return last year with nine three-year funds garnering a 50 percent return.
Tung said the return of this year's five top 10-year funds doubled. Three of those are linked to the booming local stock market, which he said indicated that the benchmark TAIEX is likely to climb to 8,500 points in the coming year.
"Despite the economic recession, funds remain a very promising long-term investment tool," Tung told a press conference yesterday prior to the award ceremony.
Investors poured money into the nation's stock markets after President Chen Shui-bian (
To help boost the mutual-fund sector, the government last year loosened controls on mutual-fund managers' overeseas investment. Earlier last year regulators raised the percentage of assets insurers can invest overseas and removed the limit on overseas purchases by mutual-fund managers.
Also attending the award ceremony was William Reidy, managing director of S&P's Asia-Pacific Investment Services, who said that the agency estimates the fund's performance will be rewarding this year with the economic recovery underway both in the US and Asia and low interest rates boosting the equity markets.
The agency also forecasts that the US' S&P 500 index is likely to reach 1,230 points by the year's end from Tuesday's close of 1,140.58 points, Reidy said.
He suggested investors arrange their asset allocation by putting 60 percent to 65 percent of assets in equities, 10 percent in bonds -- preferably those associated with equities -- and the remaining 25 percent in cash.
In the US, information-technology industries will continue to see aggressive growth while telecommunication, utility and energy sectors may see a single-digit growth, Reidy said.
In Asia, the China growth story will continue to attract investors, although S&P urges investors to place investment in China via Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, that is, Chinese companies registering offshore to ensure company transparency, he said.
In addition to asset-allocation diversification, Reidy also urges investors to manage fund investments for the medium- to long-term for at least three to five years.
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