Bursa Encourage Intra-day Trading
Filed Under (Bursa News) by Webmaster on 05-02-2009
Tagged Under : Bursa Malaysia, intra-day trading, proprietary trading
BURSA Malaysia Bhd wants to promote more intra-day trading activity on the stock market, its top official said.
“We’re trying to promote more intra-day type of trades because the market is very volatile and some investors like this as they can trade short-term, intra-day,” chief executive officer Datuk Yusli Mohamed Yusoff told reporters yesterday after a financial results briefing.
The exchange is having discussions about this with regulators and brokers, he said.
Bursa already has in place a proprietary day trading facility which is open to some brokers to short intra-day.
“When market conditions are volatile, it is good for these people. Those kind of traders we should try and attract more of into this market because they can still trade in these type of conditions, unlike the more conventional investor who’s only interested to buy when the market is going up,” he remarked.
Currently, many investors are on the sidelines due to continued market volatility, he said.
He expects market uncertainties to remain until there are clear signs of economic stability from the US and other developed markets.
In a move to spur more interest, Bursa plans to introduce direct market access for equities in the middle of this year.
An Asean trading link will also “definitely” be started this year, Yusli said.
He is “cautiously hopeful” that there were will be just as many new initial public offerings this year as the 23 last year.
Efforts to woo foreign companies to list here are ongoing but made more difficult by the tough market conditions. There, however, continues to be interest, he said.
Meanwhile, Bursa has budgeted RM84.5 million for capital expenditure this year, which will be used mainly to improve its information technology systems.
Bursa had RM404 million of cash available for use as at end-December.
However, based on the information available to Pro Trade Shares, proprietary trading is only available for broker’s paid dealer, ie. trading for the broker only and not open to others. The rules are still very strict on intra-day trading. Bursa regulatory section often send warning letters to brokers whenever a particular customer buy and sell the same shares in high volume within the same day, which is basically intra-day trades. However to Bursa regulator, it could be deemed as syndicate playing the stocks.
