Investors' high-speed Internet service expected soon
Two initiatives were announced to stimulate stock market trading and investment in Laos this week. Mr Dethphouvang Moularat, LSX Chairman & CEO, announced on Tuesday that the stock exchange plans to launch on-line internet share trading this Q1.
Mr Moularat also confirmed the government will proceed and remove a further 10 percent concession involving foreign investment restriction in trading on the LSX. Changes will now allow foreign investors to own up to 20 percent of listed shares. That figure was a 10 percent increase to previous regulations.
Vientiane: January share volumes so far have failed (in total) to reach the LSX's first year's daily average in volumes, in any one day. A lot of the early session closes have failed to register any trades as was the case again yesterday. At the halfway mark yesterday 41,951 shares had crossed the floor for 254,115,500 kip. The index fell -8.80 to 876.33 indicating EDL-Gen had lost 50 kip to 4,100 and BCEL remained unchanged at 7000. At the 11am close another EDL-Gen 1,000 stocks squared off any losses in a US$519 trade helping the index recover, an anomaly with small trades and indexes.
One of the tricks of trading is that last trade, whether it's for 100 or 100,000 stocks. Regardless of the size of the trade, the index is affected if the share price moves up or down (in the last trade of the day), and the amount has no bearing. A fall of 5 percent (-350 kip) on, say, 100 BCEL stocks would trigger the index to lose 44 points. A 5 percent fall for EDL-Gen (-210 kip) would trigger a 207 point fall, because of the difference in shares /market capitalisation. So before you rush out to buy or sell, look at the trading volume bars. Low volumes usually signal “investor beware”.
vientiane times
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