More on Bursa Trade Securities

As mentioned last week, Bursa Trade Securities, a new trading system for Bursa will be implemented next week, Monday December 1 if this Saturday's final test run goes smoothly. Since this new system, the fourth for Bursa, is new to everyone, it would be advisable for Bursa to quickly and aggressively inform the public and the users (brokers, remisiers, dealers and investors who may be trading from the internet or simply for viewing purposes only) the salient features of the system. Like any new systems, familiarisation is needed for brokers and investors. Borrowing the words from Bursa's general advertorial out only today, "Investors should note that understanding and utilising an extremely fast system requires added vigilance and care on their part to reduce transactional errors"

The practical features of Bursa was mentioned here before and it would be good to relook at them again. Below are further practical features/information on Bursa Trade that I am aware of recently and wish to share with you. Like anyone else, I am totally new with this system and you may have to verify yourself the correctness of the information provided below or may want to add further comments on the features of the system here.

1) For Remisiers/Dealers-your trading screen needs to be reset again (one off only) to incorporate some additional fields eg Theoretical Opening Price and Theoretical Closing Price, Odd Lots/Buyin and Stock Status-which provides details of Reserves and Suspension details.

2) For Internet Users-your e-broking houses will guide you via their website to a new trading platform.

3) Odd lots orders will need to be carried forward to the next trading session unlike the previous system.

4) Off market trades (or DBT-Direct Business Trade)

-No more upper/lower limit 10% of price to be traded for shares RM1 and above. The limit has been lifted to 15% in the new system. For share price below RM1, the upper and lower limit has been changed to 15 sen.

-Any trades more than 15% up to 99% in price requires Bursa's approval which will come within 3 market days(previously 10 market days).

-If DBT is to be done between 830am to 10am, PriceWap(information available from Trading Department) will be used while after 10am, VolWap will be used (available on the trading screen, calculated hourly).

-DBT can be done during lunch time.ie 1230-230pm.

-once DBT is done, the buyer/seller cannot be amended anymore.

5) Trade cancellations

-According to circulars from Bursa RR10 and RR11, there are 3 ways Bursa can cancel trades in the market. (i) If it is Bursa's own mistake, 2) If both parties (buyer/seller) agree to cancel the trade -but a penalty of RM1,000 per cancellation must be borne by the party who did the mistake and 3) If Bursa suspects the trade is tantamount to manipulation, market rigging and no change in beneficial ownership. Bursa can cancel the trade at anytime before T+3.

Kindly also refer to http://www.bursatrade.com/ for further information.

* Snows bury Northern Europe!! (picture China Daily)

* Bloomberg: London, Midtown Manhattan, Tokyo office rents post first drop since 2002.

* Bloomberg: Qantas says profit may fall 64% in this financial year.

* TheEdge: Temasek agrees to subscribe at least USD542m of Standard Chartered's Rights Issues. It currently owns 19% of the bank.

* This is worrisome. World Bank says China's 2009 GDP growth expected to slow to 7.5% (from 9.2%) as economic crisis spread. (CNBC)

* Finally BNM did what other central banks have been doing. OPR has been reduced by 25 basis points to 3.25%. Also the SRR has been reduced to 3.5% from 4%. The last SRR cut was in September 1998. According to analysts, the reduction will affect mainly banking and consumer related sectors.

* MISC's proposed RTO of Ramunia is off due to unsatisfactory due diligence findings!!! This is going to be bad for Ramunia and shareholders. Seems that everyone is caught unaware!!