How to Trade Shares or Stocks in Bursa Malaysia

Ever wonder HOW SHARE MARGIN FINANCING WORKS to your benefit?

I am back!

This is my Part 9 of the series on How to Start Trading in Bursa Malaysia.

I was involved in various projects at work that I couldn’t find time to blog. Now that some of the projects have been delegated to my staff I can start to blog again (unfortunately still less frequent).

The topic today is on what is Share Margin Financing Facility (also known in short as SMF Facility). As the subject matter is more technical, I will explain them over a few postings.

For a start, there are TWO types of SMF available to the public to Trade Share in Bursa Malaysia. One version is provided by the Banks and the Second version is by Stockbrokers. I called them different versions because there are a few differences and restrictions due to the laws, rules and guidelines imposed by different governing bodies. I listed below the salient points for each version.

BANK’S SHARE MARGIN FINANCING

1. The Governing body is Bank Negara of Malaysia.
2. Based on Guidelines called ‘Garis Panduan - Garis Panduan’ or GPs from Bank Negara.
3. Customer can drawdown cash from Share Margin Financing Facility based on collaterals deposited just like a collateralised loan. I will explain this further later.
4. Their margin of financing ratio is defined as ‘Total Net Loan Outstanding’ over ‘Total Net Collateral’. This will also be explain in more details later.
5. Price capping is imposed for shares received as collateral.
6. Fixed deposit can be used as collateral.
7. Some banks might even accept fixed assets, such as properties, as collaterals.
8. Interest is charged based on X% + Based Lending Rate (or famously known as BLR).
9. Other than interest charges, there are also other fees such as Administrative Fees, Custodian Fees, Nominees Fees and Legal Fees. Administrative Fees are normally charged once when you applied for the Share Margin Financing Facility. Custodian Fees are fees charged due for administrating your shares collateral. Fees charged by Bursa Depository (or MCD) is part of the Custodian fees. Nominees Fees are charged whenever you received dividend or when you want to participate in corporate exercise as announced by the Public Listed Companies on those shares that you owned and pledged or deposited to the Bank as collaterals. Legal fees are charged at the onset for the Share Margin Financing Agreement that you signed when you applied for the SMF facility.
10. Banks give multiples to the collaterals provided. Each type of collaterals are given different multiples based on the risk assessment.

STOCKBROKER’S SHARE MARGIN FINANCING

1. The rules governing SMF provided by Brokers in Malaysia is government by Bursa Malaysia Rules. Although there are a few stockbrokers that have converted to Investment Banks, their Share Margin Financing facility adhered to Bursa Rules rather than Bank Negara GPs.
2. You can only use the Share Margin Financing account to Trade Shares in Bursa Malaysia (which is buy and sell shares) and not allowed to withdraw cash based on collaterals deposited.
3. A recent relaxation of Bursa Rules allow SMF facility with brokers to be used to subscribe for Initial Public Offering (IPO) shares or subscribe for rights issues just like the Banks’ Share Margin Financing Facility.
4. The defination for Share Margin Financing Ratio is ‘Total Net Collateral’ over ‘Total Net Outstanding’.
5. Price capping is imposed for shares received as collateral.
6. Only accept Cash and Shares as collaterals. Although some Bank backed stockbrokers do accept Fixed Deposits when the Fixed Deposit is deposited with the Bank (which is the parent or holding company).
7. Interest is charged on a fixed rate (no BLR is involved).
8. Share Margin Financing facilities under the stockbrokers are considered as short term thus will required to be ROLLOVER once every THREE MONTHS. Only the outstanding or unpaid Share Purchases are rolled over, not the interest or any other charges. The standard Rollover Fee is 0.25% for every rollover on the outstanding purchased contract amount. More on this later.
9. Most stockbrokers don’t charge Administrative Fees, Custodian Fees and Legal Fees. They normally considered them as ‘absorbed’ or waived. However stockbrokers do charges Nominees Fees for all corporate exercise just like the Banks.
10. Stockbrokers also imposed different multiples for different type of collaterals.

My first posting on How Does Share Margin Financing Works will end for now. Subscribe to my RSS Feeds to be updated on my next posting.

This is Part 6 of my HOW TO START TRADING STOCK IN BURSA MALAYSIA series of articles.

If you missed my earlier posting, you can read them from the link below:

PART 1: OPENING OF CDS AND TRADING ACCOUNT
PART 2 : BUY, SELL AND CONTRA
PART 3 : BURSA MALAYSIA STOCK TRADING FEES AND CHARGES
PART 4 : MARKET AND OFF MARKET TRADES IN BURSA MALAYSIA
PART 5 : TRADING LIMIT AND TEMPORARY LIMIT FOR TRADING STOCKS

To recap my last posting, I introduced the Normal Trading Accounts and Credit or Trading Limit. In today’s posting I will introduce to you a different type of trading account; Collateralised Trading Accounts.

As the name suggests, you will have to deposit collateral for your trading.

DISADVANTAGES OF A COLLATERALISED TRADING ACCOUNTS

(1) You will have to place collateral such as Cash or Stocks into your trading account BEFORE you have any Trading Limit to Buy stocks.

(2) Your trading limit flactuates based on the value of your collaterals.

(3) Brokers has the right to utilise your cash deposit or sell your stocks to settle any unpaid contra losses. You might have different opinion on which stocks to be sold.

BENEFITS OF A COLLATERALISED TRADING ACCOUNTS

(1) You can have higher trading limit than if you opened a Normal trading account as your collaterals will be given a certain multiple to calculate your Trading Limit. Example; if you have RM100,000 cash and the Broker give you 2x multiple thus your trading limit will be RM200,000. If based on the normal criteria, you Normal trading account might be only RM100,000.

(2) You can still Buy stocks eventhough if your Dealer’s Representative (”DR”) doesn’t have any trading limit for the day. I mentioned in Part 5 that you might not be able to buy if your DR don’t have any trading limit.

(3) As you accumulated stocks that appreciated in their prices, you trading limit will eventually increased based on the multiple given by your Brokers. Thus you take advantage of your stocks in your CDS account rather than letting your stocks sit there idle.

(4) Some Brokers will give value to your unpaid Purchase stocks thus further increasing your trading limit.

CAVEATS:

(a) Some Brokers might give less than 1x of your stocks collateral market value. For example; you have 10,000 stock A with market price of RM1.00. Your Broker give 0.75x of your stock value. Thus your Trading Limit is RM7,500 (10,000 x RM1.00 x 0.75).

(b) Most Brokers will give higher multiple for Cash deposit, such as 1x to 3x.

(c) Almost all Brokers have price capping for their stocks. A PRICE CAP is the maximum value that the Broker will give value.

Example 1: Stock A has price cap of RM0.50. Stock A current market price is RM1.00. If you have 10,000 units of stock A, your collateral value will be RM5,000 (10,000 x RM0.50) eventhough based on the market price your stock value is RM10,000 (10,000 x RM1.00). Market price is the stock price currently traded in Bursa Malaysia.

Example 2: Stock B has price cap of RM1.00. Stock B current market price is RM0.80. If you have 10,000 units of stock B, your collateral value is RM8,000 (10,000 x RM0.80). Since the market price is below the capped price, the collateral value is based on the market price.

Some people has the misconception that if the price cap is lower than market price, the collateral value should be based on the price cap. Example; Stock C price cap is RM1.00 while the market price is RM0.90, therefore if you have 10,000 units of stock C therefore your collateral value is RM10,000 (10,000 x RM1.00) instead of RM9,000 (10,000 x RM0.90). Unfortunately its NOT TRUE!

The price cap is the MAXIMUM price acceptable to the Broker and not the MINIMUM price. So remember this as in future articles the issue of Price Cap will be raised again.

PRICE CAPPING

I will deviate a little to expand on Price Capping. This is important as it affects your trading limit not only for collateralised accounts but also for MARGIN ACCOUNTS. I will dedicate a few articles on Margin Accounts in my future posting. I believe many people will be interested to find out more about Margin Accounts.

There are two methods to cap the price of stocks; INDIVIDUAL STOCKS or GROUP OF STOCKS.

The examples above are price capping based on individual stocks. Brokers relied on the recommendation from their Research Department to recommend a price cap for individual stocks. The methodology of setting the price cap will depends on which approached used by their Research Department. They either used the Fundamentals of the company or based on Technical Analysis of the stock’s price movement.

The other methods for setting price cap is by groups. Some Brokers will give a value for all stocks in a certain Sector or in a certain Board. For example; Broker A might set the price cap at RM10.00 for all Main Board stocks and Broker B might set the price cap for IT Sector as RM5.00. There are also Brokers that used ratio (%) instead of value. For example; Broker C might give 100% market value to all KLCI stocks and only 50% to Mesdaq listed shares.

Brokers might used only value for individual stocks or value for group of stocks or ratio for groups of stocks or a combination of value and ratio. When a Broker used both the value and ratio, the collateral value will be based on the LOWER of both. Remember it is the LOWER VALUE.

Example: Stock D is a KLCI stock. Broker D capping is 100% of KLCI stocks but Broker has also capped stock D individually at RM5.00. If stock D market price is at RM8.00, the collateral value of 10,000 units of stock D is RM50,000 (10,000 x RM5.00) and NOT RM8,000 (10,000 x RM8.00). When compared between the individual price cap of stock D at RM5.00 versus 100% of the market value at RM8.00, the LOWER price of both is RM5.00.

I know its heavy reading today but I hope you get the idea. You can post your questions in Comments and I will try to answer them.

This is just an introduction to Collateralised Accounts. Next posting will cover the type of Collateralised Accounts. Yes! There are different types of Collateralised Accounts. Find out in my next posting.