REVISED (Don't know what I was thinking, got some facts wrong, apologies!)Many are calling for shorter trading hours for Bursa. Right now we are open from 9.00am-12.30pm, and the afternoon session is from 2.30pm-5.00pm. Longer hours does not translate to more business, thats a fact. We need to think properly how things work. Let's look at competing markets for morning session, all local time (MY time):
HK 10am-12.30pm (10am)
Shanghai 9.30am-11.30am (9.30am)
Tokyo 9am-11am (7am)
Taipei 9am-1.30pm
Thailand 9.55am-12.30pm
Singapore 9am-12.30pm (9am)
The important markets to consider are HK, Tokyo, Singapore and Shanghai.
You would not have any value by opening
at the same time as them.
As we all know morning
sessions are basically trying to digest and discount what happened in Europe and the US
markets overnight. Bursa has no advantage to open at the same time. You cannot even think of opening earlier than Tokyo (7am our time). Why do you think Singapore opens at 9am? Because HK opens at 10am, and you serve no purpose to open at the same time as HK.
Though stocks in each exchange may be different, but they all have a high correlation to overnight equity markets. By opening at differing time slots, each exchange can capitalise on what happened in other bourses. Traders can move in and out of certain exchanges at various time intervals - not all at the same time. Hence 9.30am should be the better opening slot for Bursa, its a very nice spot. I would even advise that the closing time for morning session be at 12.15pm instead of 12.30pm. Yes, you may be opening at the same time as Shanghai but Shanghai is not so open to international traders and foreign institutional investors.
The afternoon session is way way too long. 2.30pm till 5.00pm. HK closes at 4pm, Singapore at 5pm as well. Following the same argument, 4.30pm would be a nice slot. Collectively we are shaving 75 minutes of trading, which will yield much better results all around.
Announcements
While we are on the hours thingee, Bursa should revamp completely the timing and release of corporate announcements. As things now stand all announcements must be submitted after 5pm for same day release later. However the actual release to the public is all over the place, some are released at 5.30pm, some at 6.00pm some even later, why? Don't give me the bs that the technology cannot handle it, is the Bursa using Windows 92?
Why force journalists and analysts to guess and stay later than they need to to see if there are material announcements? Do a cut off time for all corporate announcements to be only accepted from 4.30pm till 5.00pm. If you failed to make the time cut, tough titties, yours will be released tomorrow. ALL corporate announcements to be released to the public from 5.15pm till 5.30pm, certainly you cannot jam the page loads with such a wide 15 minute slot right!
Plus at the end of the final corporate announcement, put in a line that says "This is the last corporate announcement for the day", so that we all know we can leave. So no more having to wait past 6.00pm or 6.30pm to see when, if, should there be fresh announcements after that 5.30pm threshold. It allows for better efficiency among people who have to work on the announcements for a living.
p/s photos: Im Soo Jeong
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