This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily on May 16, 2018

KUALA LUMPUR: Proprietary day traders (PDT) and intraday short selling (IDSS) activities were suspended yesterday for four counters — Excel Force MSC Bhd, MyEG Services Bhd, George Kent (Malaysia) Bhd and Gabungan AQRS Bhd.

Short selling of these stocks were suspended by Bursa Malaysia yesterday morning as their last done price dropped more than 15% from their reference price. The PDT and IDSS activities are only to be enabled at 8.30am today.

At the closing bell yesterday, Excel Force shares were down 23.9% to 52.5 sen, while MyEG was down 29.8% to RM1.27, with a total of RM2 billion in market capitalisation wiped out from these two counters.

Government services provider MyEG and share trading systems provider Excel Force are linked to Wong Thean Soon and Datuk Dr Norraesah Mohamed. Wong is MyEG’s managing director, while Norraesah is MyEG and Excel Force’s executive chairman. Wong and Norraesah are substantial shareholders of Excel Force.

Construction stocks linked to the light rail transit 3 (LRT3) project such as George Kent and Gabungan AQRS were also in the red yesterday. George Kent declined 29.7% to RM1.94, while Gabungan AQRS was down 21.4% to 88 sen.

George Kent and Malaysian Resources Corp Bhd are the project delivery partners for LRT3. Gabungan AQRS was awarded a package to construct a guideway, stations, park and ride facilities and ancillary buildings for the LRT3 project.

It is unclear at this stage what would be the fate of all mega projects such as LRT3.

The newly minted Pakatan Harapan government has pledged to initiate a comprehensive review of all mega projects awarded to foreign countries, as part of its “Ten Promises in The First 100 Days” manifesto.

On Monday, short selling of Eden Inc Bhd was suspended as the daily short selling trade limit had reached 3% of the issued number of shares of the said securities. Short selling under PDT of the stock was only enabled at 8.30am yesterday.

Eden shares closed down 21.7% at 36 sen yesterday. The counter, reportedly linked to Datuk Fakhri Yassin Mahiaddin, the son of home minister-elect Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin, shot up as much as 176% to 47 sen on Monday, the first trading day under the new Pakatan government.