KUALA LUMPUR (July 2): Trading volume at China-based sports shoe maker Multi Sports Holdings Ltd’s counter surged significantly today, making it the second most traded stock across Bursa Malaysia at the time of writing.

As at 3.24pm today, the counter saw some 46.04 million shares traded, and the share price had dipped by half sen or 4.17% to 11.5 sen per share.

The highest trading volume that the counter had seen in June was merely 2.76 million shares, which was on June 17.

When contacted, Interpacific Securities Sdn Bhd senior remisier Sam Ng reckoned that Multi Sports’ (fundamental: 1.45; valuation: 2.1) trading volume today might be driven by proprietary trading activities.

“Every bit of change on the stock means over 4% fluctuation. It might be some churning activities by proprietary traders,” he said.

Proprietary trading occurs when a trader trades stocks or other financial instruments with the firm’s own money, instead of depositors’ money, so as to make profit for itself. Essentially, it means a trading firm trades for direct gains instead of commission.

Another dealer, who declined to be named, said he is uncertain why Multi Sports is heavily traded, but noted that it seemed a "normal" phenomenon in relation to China-based, Malaysia-listed companies.

(Note: The Edge Research's fundamental score reflects a company’s profitability and balance sheet strength, calculated based on historical numbers. The valuation score determines if a stock is attractively valued or not, also based on historical numbers. A score of 3 suggests strong fundamentals and attractive valuations.)