A sense of relief over my Public Bank margin trading account.

I opened a margin trading account on the KL Stock Exchange at the outset of 2005, as I thought a superbull run blowoff was coming at the beginning of that year, if not at the end.

As it turned out, I couldn't have been more off the mark: the lower liners plunged as margin traders like me had their more speculative collateral marked down to zero.

My account didn't incur losses only because I had bought well within the 60% danger point, although the warrants in my portfolio were marked down to zero, and there were several margin calls, which I met with transfers of stocks from my only other trading account with InterCapital.

I even profited mildly(to the tune of slightly over RM2000) by punting counters which had gone limit down at least twice eg GPlus, Talam, Fountain, Ngiu Kee and SAAG.


As it turned out, my first purchases with the margin account included both my biggest winner for 2005-2006, and my longest held stock(mainly because it is STILL underwater!).

They were MNI, which I bought for RM2.66 and sold in late June 2005 for RM3.98(it was taken over by Maybank), and MSNiaga, which I entered at RM3.72(it's down 27.4% to date). Both were purchased on the same day sometime before the CNY of 2005.

Many of my rash (and speculative) purchases in early 2005 sank deeply into the red by June. GHLSys plunged 74% over that period, CFM dropped over 40% and TMS sank by more than half, just to name several losers.


Throughout the rest of the year, my account was nearly dormant, as the overall market refused to budge, and the only other purchases I madewere in November 2005, namely, HL Ind at RM3.06, Talam at RM0.33 and KEuro at RM0.32.

I greeted 2006 with a sense of dread about how I was to service the interest at well over 6% on the margin loan if the market continued to languish in the doldrums, and remisiers I knew were quitting their jobs because the daily volume was critically below the life support line.

In early February 2007, I opened the Star Marketwatch website and saw a stock called CFM listed in the top gainer list. I had forgotten all about it because it had languished in the red for so long. Calling my broker at Public Bank, I cleared all 5,000 shares at RM0.875-0.88, thankful that I had not noticed the stock as it inched up from the 40-50c range, through the 60c range,and then leapt over 3 days to the 80-90c range.

Miraculously, many speculatives in my margin portfolio took turns to leap from February to March, allowing me to sell the likes of GHLSys, Iretex, DVM(I was most relieved to dump that 15,000 shares!), KEuro and so on.

Sadly, the one I should have held on to, Muhibbah,costing me RM0.90, was sold at RM1.14. It's now at RM4.24.

This turn of events allowed me to turn over my capital, selling HLInd for MAS, and so on.

However, until the end of last year, I had just managed to service the interest with my profits, with a little left over to spare.

Since the stampede of the raging bull of 2007, I have managed to double that figure, with profits on both trading accounts leaping and jostling with each other.

I am quite grateful that the bull eventually visited the Malaysian bourse.




As for my trades today, I was lucky enough that 7% of my portfolio gained over 5%, despite the market index being down 0.83%. The highlights were Sin Heng Chan, up 21.6%, MAA, up 7.8%, M3Nergy, up 6.3%,OIB, up 6.0% and PMBTech, up 6.5%. My speculative play of the week,Borneo Oil,is up 3.6%. I pared my holdings for a contra gain of over RM1,600 today.


More importantly, the KL Second Board Index gained almost a point to 108.21 points, while the MESDAQ Index dropped 0.47% to 153.47 points.

I entered Riverview, Rex and I-Bhd today.

On the SGX, my DMX has gained 5.6%.