Business

Tuesday October 6, 2009

Traders: Unusual market movements normal

By FINTAN NG


PETALING JAYA: Share traders believe there is nothing “unusual” about unusual market activities (UMAs) at a time when the stock market is consolidating after rising since late July.

Some, like TA Securities Holdings Bhd research head Kaladher Govindan, said there could be any number of reasons for the UMA queries by Bursa Malaysia over the past two weeks, including market talk of reverse takeovers, especially when a company’s share price was trading at an attractive valuation.

Last Friday, audio equipment maker Hock Lok Siew Corp Bhd (HLS Corp) was queried by the market regulator on the high daily volume in recent trading of the company’s shares.

Engineering firm LFE Corp Bhd and industrial parts manufacturer Tracoma Holdings Bhd were also queried late last month after their share prices hit new highs.

Kaladher told StarBiz that more often than not, this sort of market activity happened when a major shareholder came up with a new business plan or when a new major shareholder emerged in a company.

In the case of HLS Corp, the latest transactions showed a company principal officer, Ng Chin Nam, had acquired 100,000 shares on Sept 30. This raised his stake in the company to 0.11% or 105,200 shares.

LFE, on the other hand, in a Sept 28 reply to a Bursa Malaysia query of the same day, said a newspaper report that the company was bidding for RM1bil worth of jobs to replenish its order book could be the reason for the run-up in the shares.

A broker at a local investment bank said such market activity was “nothing unusual”, especially in a period when the market was going through a consolidation as shareholders could be rebalancing their portfolio.

LFE surged 140% to 41 sen while Tracoma climbed 64% to 32 sen on Sept 25.


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