12/30/2011

Tough to get retail investors into stock market

Where have all the retail investors gone? Why is it that so few are interested in the stock markets? Despite all the efforts to woo them, systems and designs tweaked for their benefits, the best stock market in the world, the fastest high speed computers to hand millions of trades in a few seconds, where are the traders? Is it that Singaporeans are allergic to trading stocks?

No body knows why, or no one wants to see what is really wrong with the market? Everyone playing the 4 proverbial monkeys, see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing and do nothing. It is sad that there are so many super talents, including foreign talents, but no one knows or wants to know the truth. And yet, everyone in the industry knows what went wrong. What a farce!

And they all appear to be in a state of shock! Why ah? Why Singaporeans did not want to dabble in stocks? Stock market got no pulling power? We do not have this, we do not have that, we need more marketing to lure the suckers to buy snake oils!

Just flash back the memory to 1993, everyone, housewives, students, hawkers in the market, were all in the market, dabbling in stocks. Everyone was talking nothing but stocks. PhDs and highly qualified professionals were giving up their jobs to be in the market. And we have stocks, plenty of stocks from two markets to trade with. No need big foreign funds, no need high speed computers, no algos, and the stock markets were roaring.

The stockbrokers were smiling, the remisiers were hard pressed for time to breathe, the employees were in glee with 12 months bonuses. Property booms because there was so much liquidity and many people became rich. There was buzz, big buzz instead of big bust.

Today, with high speed computers, big foreign funds, plenty of them, algos, big trading volumes, but you could hear a pin drop inside a broking house. The industry is dying. The broking houses will go into the red if things did not turn around. The remisiers will become taxi drivers or housing agents if these are still available. Anything will be better than to become a remisier. The staff in the brokerages will see retrenchment coming.

A lucratic industry turning to a ghost town. 10,000 people will soon lose their jobs. What is happening? No one knows. All the people supposed to know did not know. Can you believe it? Then who should know? God knows.

9 comments:

Ⓜatilah $ingapura⚠️ said...

Relac lah.

Big players waiting on side lines hanging onto their cash, keeping their powder dry.

Can you blame them?

Stock broking is getting rid of the humans and moving quickly toward machine "intelligence" -- in every realm -- from customer and account services to trading itself

Anonymous said...

Redbean, You want Singaporeans to gamble? You encourage people to play share?

Chua Chin Leng aka redbean said...

My article was a follow up to an article by Anita Gabriel in the ST today titled, 'Drumming up retail buzz in SGX.'

As for replacing humans with machines, some ignoramus thought they could do it but many companies ended up investing in online systems only to find it unworkable as the cost was just too much and the return peanuts.

They are crying for retail investors to come back to feed the big funds. They initially thought they don't need the retails with the big funds churning with their high speed computers.

Now they realised that without the retail investors to feed the big vacuum cleaners in the market, the vacuum cleaners will go hungry and will pack up.

They also forgot that brokerages need commission to survive and feed their staff and overheads. Where is the money coming from?

They have dug a hole so deep that they didn't know what's wrong.

Anonymous said...

Why no retail investors?

Because retail investors find it very difficult to make a profit in share investing/trading nowadays.

1.Corporate scandals/blow-ups due to audit irregularities

2. No protection. "You went in with your eyes wide opened hor"

3.retail investors getting retrenched. No job where got money to invest.

Here's an obvious idea.
Every employee is a paying customer of a few hundred businesses.
Retrench that employee and a few hundred businesses lose a paying customer.

Every employee that loses his job and can only find a lower paying replacement job .... is going to affect a few hundred companies that depend on that employee as a customer.

Anonymous said...

hahahaha ... these scums laid the HFT traps only to realise the victims no longer have bullets to be suckerered. Even the high rollers are getting sued by the casinos... where got anymore uncle auntie to sucker ??? wait wait wait.. hmmmm... maybe more CPF can be released for stock "investment" ? like that horrrr... sinkies can't compraine when money get sucked into a big black hole marr. lagi, the money is legitimately siphoned into the kitty again but this time without the term CPF.. hey pappy... you heard it her first horrrrrr !!

Anonymous said...

if uncovered shorting can be allowed, maybe can stimlate some interest?

Anonymous said...

If 9 out of 10 lose money, what will happen? If 99 out of 100 lose money, what will happen? Or what is happening?

Anonymous said...

With the kind of money people are making from flipping commercial and residential properties, who wants to dabble in the stock market that is behaving like the weather nowadays. Sunny one moment and wet the next.

Today they tell you the US economy is good. Jobs are being created, people are starting to buy homes and the market soared. But, beware! Tomorrow may be a different story in the news and the market will slump.

Anonymous said...

Best when the casinos closed shop so no more cheating 'cng kay'.