SGX – The elephant that no one wants to see

It was not just an elephant that no one sees, but no one wants to see or talk about as if there is a dark force telling them not to say anything about it. SGX held a public dialogue and it was a damn big deal. It never happened before! They never think it was necessary to do so. Mohamed must go to the mountain, don’t expect the mountain to come to Mohamed. So there was a public forum, for what, to hear about the elephant, to talk about the elephant? Anyone going there with any inkling of hope that something meaningful would come out of it must have his mental faculty checked.

The people in charge in the SGX and MAS are not idiots. They are the super talents of the land, the crème ala crème of our establishment. They did not know what is happening, they did not know the elephant was there, they could not see the elephant? Heard of the emperor’s new clothe? Who in his right mind, earning millions happily would dare or want to risk telling the emperor he is naked and get slapped?

So what did SGX try to do in the dialogue? As usual, telling the good stuff and hoping the audience would hear only the good stuff. They said, ‘bo how seow bo kong’ if you know what it means. The stock market is very healthy, really, as good as it could be, we are performing better than many major markets in the whole wide world. Ok, enough of ‘how seow’. And sure enough, the remisiers and everyone in the industry present at the forum could not stomach the ‘how seow’ being thrown at them. They did not want to hear the ‘good stuff’.

Hey, don’t think the remisiers, dealers and sundry are really daft, blindly reading the media and hearing only what people wanted them to hear. They are the practitioners, the people on the ground, losing their pants, their clients losing their life savings, and many are quitting a moribund industry. The stock market is doing well, according to who and on what criteria? No sensible person would say that without looking silly.

Ok, I confess I was not at the session, knowing what it would be like it would be a futile and time wasting effort to be there. The only thing good coming out of it, if you think it is good, is for the letting out of steam and frustration, to tell them to look at the elephant.  Luckily the remisiers and dealers did not riot or throw their shoes at the panel. But many would leave the forum more frustrated than ever, knowing that no one that is in a position to do something was there to listen and to want to do something right. They were there to tell everyone that everything was fine, just like when they first decided to bring in the foreign funds and introduced all the changes to make high speed computer trading a bliss, at the expense of the rest of the players, taking advantage of computer power to cheat and fleece the innocents.

Remember what they said? The big funds, the computers plugged into the system, were the way going forward. This was the new thing and must follow market practice. There would be plentiful of liquidity and plentiful of trading activities. The stock market would spin out of control and everyone would be doing roaring businesses. Oops, this last sentence is just my exaggeration. But they did said the future was so bright and business would be so good that tomorrow could only be better. The rest is history.

Yes the stock market is very healthy. In another six months or so, maybe half of the remisiers and dealers would also pack up and leave. The broking houses would be operating on half strength and trying to break even in a losing battle in the best stock market in the world. Now, if the market is so good, why would the Singapore Business Federation rush a paper to appeal to the govt to reinvest in the local stock market that they could not raise fund from the market, a key function of the market, and they had to call the stock market a moribund stock market? Are they lying or someone else is lying?

And if the market is so good, why are the remisiers and dealers fleeing and why are the broking houses starting to make plans to cut staff and downsize? And why were the SGX and MAS deemed it necessary to break protocol, to come to Mohamed, to want to listen to Mohamed? Oops, sorry again, my mistake. They came to tell Mohamed the good news, that everything is fine, just fine.

Ok, let me hold my horses and quote a few comments that Rajan whatsapped to me from SI chat to give you an idea of the farce that happened at the forum and you can make up your own mind on the fruitfulness or futility of the chat session. This is the culture of the establishment. If they cannot convince you, they will confuse you. Remember the clown saying everyday that public housing was affordable? Actually more clowns are still singing the same tune.

 

Ok, here are the quotes:

1. If the remisiers, dealers are frustrated, what would the tens of thousands of lousy listing sufferers from S cheats to sinking SMEs do?
2. The outpour of anger and frustration among dealers and TRs was ‘encouraging’.
3. SGX began the day saying how Singapore exchange healthcare stocks has outperformed…put out a chart that’s says How our index has out performed SSEC since 2007(the grammar and typo errors are inherent in the posts). This went on for an hour, I can’t believe it, …’until a young man from DBSV interrupted and pointed out that they are cherry picking data points. The healthcare computation index was skewed and that if they had used another time period, the outcome would be different. (KNN)
4. He then went on to talk about how sick is the market. At lunch time yesterday half of the counters on sgx were not traded. The top 100 counters has only certain values etc etc. Things get heated up.
5. Soon remisiers one by one poured out their views on how S cheats, lousy SMEs, business trusts etc etc destroyed wealth savings of their friends, themselves and clients.
6. The outpouring was great.
7. It’s heartening to hear TRs questioning the morality, the extend of greed, the damage done to the investing public, the lives of those who depends on the industry from remisiers to backroom were given a chance to air.
8. Heard the young man talked about…remisiers, ex simex driving taxis and colleagues leaving…he grieved at the sorry state of affairs in the industry after years of mismanagement…How billions of market capitalizations were lost…lives broken….

 

The above comments are not new, did not happen yesterday. And you can bet that the people in the govt too knew about it. The sad thing is that all their heads were buried in the sand. No one dares to tell the truth, no one wants to tell the truth, no one wants to know the truth. You can bet Hsien Loong, Tharman, Heng Swee Kiat and every minister know what is happening to the stock market. The big question, why the reticence, why the inaction? Why is everyone looking the other way? This is the biggest mystery. This is the pathetic state of things. Who is responsible for this shit?

 

No one really, no one is responsible though many are taking millions and millions as salaries. ‘No one owes you a living. You die your business.’  Heard of the phrase ‘bo cheng hu’? Did the dialogue achieve anything or meant to achieve anything?

 

Thank you for bearing with me.