Invest Positively

Whether by stealth or by design, trades by algos - the new breed of investors who trade using superfast computers and complicated mathematical programs - now make up a big portion of the trading activities on the stock market. Data furnished by the Singapore Exchange shows that on an average trading day in the second half of last year, algos were involved in as much as 34 per cent of the daily stock turnover. A further breakdown shows roughly two-thirds of these trades performed by algos were with institutional investors, while the rest were with retail investors. It is also interesting to note that unlike huge markets such as New York, where a big proportion of trades is executed by computers competing against other computers, direct trades between algos are relatively insignificant here - accounting for only about 4 per cent of trading activity. In particular, some of them offer other investors an opportunity to get in and out of stocks easily with their continual...

The Singapore Exchange (SGX) and the Securities Association of Singapore (SAS) on Thursday sent brokers a Guidance Note which outlined the type of investment advice that trading representatives (TRs) are allowed to offer their clients, thus clarifying a grey area that has existed ever since the rules were tightened in the wake of 2008's US subprime crisis. "TRs are allowed to give ERA (execution-related advice)/recommendations on listed-excluded investment products (EIPs) to clients provided they state the rationale for their ERA ," said SGX and SAS. "This could be based on technical or fundamental analysis conducted by the TRs, reports issued by other research analysts, or market developments/performance/events," the note added. On June 29 last year, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) issued a consultation paper on proposed changes to the Financial Advisers Act that dealt with exempting ERA for EIPs, these being financial instruments that ...

EX-DBS Vickers trader Dennis Tey Thean Yang was sentenced to 16 weeks in prison on Wednesday for spoofing the securities market in the first case brought jointly by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and white-collar crime police. Tey was granted bail of S$80,000 by District Judge Jasvender Kaur pending an appeal against his sentence. Tey, 33, pleaded guilty earlier this month to eight of the 23 charges he faced related to his attempt to artificially move prices through fraudulent securities orders. A broker at DBS Vickers Securities (Singapore) when the offences were committed in late 2012 and 2013, he was also charged with misusing other people's trading accounts without consent. He could have been jailed for up to seven years and fined up to S$250,000 for each charge, or both. Spoofing refers to the practice of price manipulation by entering and cancelling large buy or sell orders in the market to give a false impression of market conditions. According to...

A tough economy can force companies to reassess the value that they had attached to their assets and businesses, and sometimes that reassessment results in a write-off or an impairment. But as the write-offs and impairments pile up, regulators and investors must be extra vigilant against listed companies that claim an irreversible loss on an asset's value but fail to properly explain why that loss had to be incurred. In particular, social shopping network platform YuuZoo Corp and investment services firm ISR Capital are two recent examples where clarity from the companies is sorely needed. The need for those explanations exists on a few levels. Most fundamentally, when a company says that it is not actually worth what was previously declared, shareholders need to understand why the discrepancy existed. From a prudential perspective, shareholders also need to guard against possible shenanigans, because write-offs and impairments could be the result of over-aggressive reve...

A former trader at DBS Group Holdings Ltd's brokerage unit on Friday was convicted by a Singapore court for spoofing the securities market in the city's first such criminal case.

ISR Capital's largest shareholder David Rigoll on March 7 sold another 17.9 million shares in the company for S$804,030, or S$0.0448 per share.

Shares of ISR Capital extended their losses on Thursday, a day after the company disclosed that David Rigoll, its largest shareholder, has not only resigned as an executive director but breached a moratorium by offloading some of his stake in the open market.

ISR Capital, under stress for links to penny stock saga mastermind John Soh Chee Wen, has lurched into yet another wave of troubles.

If you believe the bond documents, Noble Group Ltd. really is for sale. The Singapore-listed commodities trader raised $750 million selling dollar notes Monday that mature in five years. A clause provides for immediate repayment if the company is acquired. But that would only be triggered if Noble were rated investment grade at the time. Bloomberg

The stigma of being linked to alleged penny stock crash mastermind John Soh Chee Wen sent ISR Capital shares plunging to new lows yesterday when it resumed trading after being suspended for more than three months.

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has frozen the assets of certain unknown customers of Singapore broker-dealer Maybank Kim Eng Securities on suspicions of insider trading.

Shares of ISR Capital will resume trading on March 6 under a cautionary warning, following the revelation that investigators believe the company and its stock were influenced and manipulated by the chief suspect in the 2013 penny stock crash, the Singapore Exchange (SGX) announced on Wednesday.

ISR Capital on Wednesday reported a net loss of S$8.3 million for the 12 months ended December 2016, a shift from its profit of S$0.7 million a year ago, dragged by other operating expenses of S$7.3 million.

EMAS Chiyoda Subsea (ECS), the 40 per cent-owned unit of Ezra Holdings, is seeking bankruptcy protection in the US in a move that will ring fence some US$90 million in fresh funds to be injected for its financial and operational restructuring.

A district judge denied bail to Malaysian businessman John Soh Chee Wen on Tuesday, as prosecutors added seven new charges of witness tampering to the alleged "mastermind" of the 2013 penny stock crash and suggested additional involvement manipulating the stock of ISR Capital.