Prosperity, love and election talk

FEBRUARY is turning out to be a quite an eventful and interesting month.

For some of you, especially married ones, this is the month wallets are lighter after ringing in the lunar new year last week and filling up "ang pow" to hand out to children and unmarried ones in your circle of friends and relatives.

With children these days being very vocal about how much each aunty and uncle contributed to their ang pow haul, you'd probably have put in a bit more than you wanted to as a face-saving move to ensure you didn't end up being the one that gave the least.

Then, late last week, there was Valentine's Day, which you were either hotly anticipating or dreading, depending on your relationship status and wheather you're a romantic at heart.

That would probably also have meant more money outflow as the less creative of us looked to roses and candy to proffer the loved ones, notwithstanding their outrageously jacked-up prices on that day.

February is also crunchtime for corporates, with all eyes watching to see how companies fared financially in the final quarter of 2012, and for that full year (for those whose year-ends coincide with the calendar year). Companies have to release their financial results for that quarter by the end of this month.

February is also a month to be kept on tenterhooks as speculation grows that sometime soon, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak will make a move to dissolve Parliament, paving the way for the 13th general election to be held.

Parliament will automatically dissolve on April 28 if there is no move to dissolve it earlier, with an election held within 60 days from that day.

But for stock market investors, punters in particular, February is probably a month you'll want to forget as the market continues to look listless after taking a dive from around mid-January.

The market has been weighed down by pre-election jitters as people speculate about when it will be held and its outcome. The benchmark FBM KLCI has shed 3.6 per cent so far this year.

Influencing all these events will be the state of the country's economy. Bank Negara Malaysia is expected to announce the country's fourth-quarter gross domestic product data no later than February 20, according to its website.

Second Finance Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Husni Hanadzlah said about two weeks ago that economic growth for 2012 would probably reach five per cent or more, outdoing a targeted growth rate of between 4.5 per cent and 5.0 per cent.

For sure, between prosperity, love, election fever and financial and economic data, there'll be plenty this month for Malaysians to weigh that might influence investment decisions.