Friday 29 Mar 2024
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KUALA LUMPUR: Bursa Malaysia Bhd, through the launch of Bursa Marketplace, an online platform that provides investors with market information and trading ideas, seeks to boost retail participation in the stock exchange.

Speaking to the press after the launch of Bursa Marketplace yesterday, Bursa Malaysia chief executive officer Datuk Tajuddin Atan said that growth in retail participation should be seen on two fronts.

“Firstly, there should be growth from existing investors who have been trading all this while. The key point here is also to bring in the converts — those who are not trading yet,” said Tajuddin, whose contract has been extended by three years effective April 1.

Tajuddin said he hoped that  such an information platform would help draw young investors aged between 25 and 35 to the local stock market.

According to Bursa statistics, local retail participation accounted for 19.71% in terms of total value traded (of RM43.4 billion) in March, and 48.99% in terms of volume traded (of 37.9 billion shares).

The Bursa Marketpace is a first-of-its-kind virtual marketplace that engages investors with market knowledge, insights and trading ideas as they chart their “Trip to Trade” and at the same time grow their financial literacy.

“The Marketplace is a place for conversation, where we’re bringing all participants including brokers, analysts and opinion leaders about the capital market in one place,” Tajuddin explained, likening this concept to “market-in-the-pocket” for all Malaysians — where online access to comprehensive, objective and accurate information about the marketplace is available.

With this, he hopes this will move investors from investing based on rumour or hearsay, to being informed investors.

Tajuddin said Bursa will monitor the progress and growth of this platform through the opening of CDS accounts and the increase in volume and value traded by retail investors.

The launch of Marketplace is in collaboration with its partner S&P Capital IQ. Tajuddin did not disclose the amount spent on the Marketplace, but noted that it will eventually be investing more and more in the website (www.bursamarketplace.com).

Among the tools available in the Bursa Marketplace is the “Alpha Factor”, a quantitative tool that ranks stocks based on price momentum, valuation, historical growth, capital efficiency and earnings quality.

In addition, there will also be the “cashtag” tool for the digital and social media savvy, which allows users to click on stock symbols and see what the Twitterverse is saying about that stock.

Tajuddin said Bursa completed its “IT refresh” last year, whereby its capacity in terms of trading platform, storage, volume, and network has increased by 200% to 300% from its previous capacity.

On updates on the pipeline of IPOs, Tajuddin responded that there is currently no indication for it to move out from what was identified earlier.


This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on April 29, 2014.


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