Petronas Chemicals kills shorties again as Brent crude spikes to $119! Plus the mystery of Poh Kong's cheapness...

 

Short-sellers increased their bet even past 4pm, from 366,200 to 543,200 shares averaging $5.26485 by the close, perhaps believing strongly that such a liquid, expensive company that is still incurring losses would naturally fall with a long weekend looming & having already risen 37% from last week's low, up from an average of only $5.04-5.05 before the afternoon started.  If the IDSS sellers all covered their shorts by the close, they would have lost $116,813, continuing their streak of bad luck all week that began on Friday, March 6th.

As news of the still exponentially escalating mutual attacks on gas & oil fields in Iran & other Gulf states spreak, brent crude spiked from $113 all morning to a $119.13 high even as US light sweet crude kept a huge discount by trading up to $98.96 at the same time, compounding the woes of Petronas Chemicals shorties!

Poh Kong, recommended to paying clients on Dec 26th, mystifyingly remained almost unchanged since that call, on the last day of the year's dividend entitlement date. After the close, it announced a quarterly profit 60% higher than '25's corresponding number & a 20% hike q-o-q on the 2nd highest revenue ever. 1H '26 EPS is 21.23 sen, 71% higher than 1H '25 while NTA is 16% higher, or 36 sen. 2026's turnover is shaping up to be the best ever, as is this year's EPS which looks more likely than not to handily beat the record 29.54 sen last year.

Despite NTA increasing 4-fold since 2008, average quarterly revenue more than tripling in the last 17 years & EPS rising 6-fold since the recession year after that, the current price is 3.37-4.06x the lowest levels seen in that era. Profit margin is 9% which is a 7-year high while ROE is only 20% lower than the highest figure in '08, when the price peaked at 73 sen. 

When compared to competitor Tomei, which has superior ROE of 18.8%, Poh Kong would be trading for at least $1.50. If their lows of 76c & 64.5c in '22 were compared to their current levels, the latter would be priced for at least $1.60. Their prices post pandemic were only 13% apart while the former is now 61% higher! Meanwhile the larger company's book value per share has advanced $1.20 since the post-pandemic high of $1.80 while the latest quotation is strangely 62 sen lower than that record high, with its competitor's peak at the time only 8 sen above.

Be that as it may, Grahamian net-net has advanced 20 sen per share since a year ago to $2.08 from $1.88 & I am confident that the jeweler's market price will advance above $1.50 within the year, just as it rose 63% to its peak a full 5 months after gold's peak of US$1,921 per ounce in 2011.

Miracle Streak : Guan Chong scores a maiden Win! {19th Mar '26}

 

Cocoa products outfit Guan Chong scores a maiden win after a semi-speculative punt earlier in '26 pays off with the latest dividend already bagged & thus the run is buttered up to another high!

Miracle Streak : Petronas Chemicals takes advantage of the Short Squeeze to eke out a Record beyond 1,400! {18th Mar '26}

 

The ongoing war, unfortunate as it is, leads indirectly yet again to unprecedentedness beyond the latest century with #34 Petronas Chemicals sold down to less than $900 invested, erasing $1,677 in floating losses just a fortnight ago, with a 2nd sale just below $5!

Petronas Chemicals short-seller Carnage 8 days apart!

 On 9th March, the seller of petroleum distillates' stock opened 51 ticks above Friday's strong close & then mowed down the sellers in frantic trading up to 62 ticks above that $4.80 open, causing massive grief to shorties of over two million shares brought over from the previous week, allowing me to exit from $4.99 to as high as $5.31 within the first 5 minutes of trading before the price deflated down to $4.55 by lunch break & then cascaded to as low as $4 before closing at $4.12.

I did not monitor the stock's short positions after that, but noticed that it plummeted to as low as $3.61 the very next day, perhaps allowing shorties to recoup some of their massive losses [ since the average short-sold price was below $4.10 ]. However, due to the escalating hostilities, the stock recovered swiftly in 4 of the next 5 days, vaulting 37% to close at $4.95 today. The 3.5% correction yesterday likely lured many to try shorting again & throughout the afternoon, I monitored the mounting IDSS short positions, which exceeded $1 million by 3pm & escalated to $2.015 million, averaging at $4.759 before the aggressors prudently halted their sales.  As I predicted, the price closed just off the intraday peak of $4.96 despite over 1 million shares parked at $4.95 to sell as buyers desperate to close their short positions by buying at ever higher bids crystallized their losses, reminiscent perhaps of the Nintendo shorties over in Japan chasing the latter up 1,440 yen higher than the closing just before the Middle East war commenced!

Such are the pitfalls of overconfidence in the thesis that a highly liquid large cap, relatively expensive  & incurring big losses in the past few quarters will naturally fall after rising a massive 26% in one day [ March 6th ]. If timing is not on the shorties' side, it can be pretty painful: on March 12th, the shorties' selling comprised just over 10% of the volume traded of 44.656 million when the price closed at $4.60, up a massive 46 ticks when their sale price averaged aptly at $4.44468[ the previous  day, the 11th, sported even worse figures for the bears:878,700 shares averaging only $3.95837(closing $4.14)]. The next day, Friday 13th, their outstanding sold volume shrunk by nearly half to 2,247,100 averaging $4.698928 & the stock closed at $4.75 after touching $4.80 intraday. On Monday 16th, the same number shrunk by almost two-thirds to 850,100 shares averaging $4.665339 & the price took a breather to close at the day's low of $4.58. However, today, the volume ballooned by more than double to nearly 2 million: 1,982,800 shares averaging $4.77165 with the price closing 18 ticks higher! It'll be interesting to see whether the 1.5 million or so remaining non-IDSS short volume will be able to escape profitably given Brent crude futures rebounded to above $103 after dipping to $100.86 intraday on the continuing war escalation around the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint!

Petronas Chemicals oversaw a paper loss that was as large as $2,414.50, or -44%, at its April 9th '25 low of $2.75. However, due to the Iran war, I managed to squeeze out of 56.7% of my highest position ever in the stock with a narrow $77.93 gain boosted by a $194.12 'contra' gain on 128 shares fortuitously added the day before the dividend went ex-, after collecting $271.60 in dividends in the last 3 years subsequent to exiting completely in April 2021 [realized profits from '15-'21 = $577.78 + dividends of $159 + at least $500 worth of shareholder doorgifts & meals]. The red ink amounting to several hundred ringgit of the last 8 days has turned to $19.48 in the black before commissions & I intend to exit close to the best possible prices during the remaining days of the week!

Miracle Streak : Guocoland Hat3ricks & clinches the 14th Century mark ! {17th Mar '26}

 

Today, takeover target Guocoland M'sia improbably cements the fourteenth century milestone with a hat3rick sale 4 ticks below the offer price, after Tokyo-listed Yaskawa Electric delightfully clinched the 1,300 mark neatly as the Century stock last year!

Stock specuvesting odyssey consecutive market day Milestones [contributors] :

100 : 22 Dec '20 [ Landmarks, MKH, MSC, Handal ]

200 : 19 May '21 [ Melati Ehsan ]

300 : 14 Oct '21 [ Emico ]

1st Ever FULL YEAR of trading income : 31 Dec '21 [Alibaba ]

400 : 10 Mar '22 [ Unisem ]

'Unbreakable' '17-'18 record of 462 days BEATEN! : 15 Jun '22 [MPHB Capital]

500 : 8 Aug '22 [ KL Kepong ]

1st Ever 2 FULL YEARS trading income : 30 Dec '22 [ HapSeng ]

600 : 4 Jan '23 [ Subur Tiasa ]

700: 2 Jun '23 [ EP Manufacturing ]

800: 26 Oct '23 [ TAS Offshore ]

1st Ever 3 FULL YEARS trading income : 29 Dec '23 [ JCBNext ]

900: 22 Mar '24 [ White Horse ]

1,000: 13 Aug '24 [ YTL Power ]

1st Ever 4 FULL YEARS trading income : 31 Dec '24 [ Supermax ]

1,100: 2 Jan '25 [ Hartalega ]

1,200: 29 May '25 [ Peterlabs ]

1,300: 22 Oct '25 [Yaskawa 安川

Electric]

1st Ever 5 FULL YEARS trading income : 31 Dec '25 [Pasdec ]

1,400: 17 Mar '26 [Guocoland M'sia]

Miracle Streak : Thong Guan scores a Maiden Win [ while Inch Kenneth Kajang could pop on Cepco's limit up]! {16th Mar '26}

 

Plastics packaging and F & B player Thong Guan serves up a first ever win, bringing the streak to the doorstep of another century mark, even as nervousness over today's public sale of ¥285.7 billion ofNintendo shares by 2banks puts pressure, additional to war bearishness, on the stock to drop below ¥10,000...

Today, I also increased my stake in Inch Kenneth Kajang, 15 years past its Centenary as a English listed plantation outfit domiciled in M'sia, based on its 20% stake in Concrete Engineering Products which was the only stock out of nearly 1,000 which went limit-up in the face of war bearishness. Buyers began to emerge in the former shortly after the latter reached the capped price for the first time since 2008 but it was inexplicably dumped down by 6-7 sen in the afternoon, perhaps by loss-cutters, yet heavy buying close to the day's highs returned for the first 15 minutes after 3pm.

Based on a partial writeback of a $43 million impairment of the latter, the former's price could pop by 16% of its current price if today's pop doesn't vanish tomorrow. It has however been in a 13-year bear market due to cumulative losses of $135.042 million since 2013, which gobbled most of its $180.8 million cash pile at the time. However, nearly $32 million was also spent on buybacks from 2013-2019, leaving a small cash position of $4.83 million at the end of '25, with the balance of $13.4 million perhaps used in lease, overheads & equipment expenditure. However, it has recouped another $33 million last year selling 14.91 acres of its 346 acres of landbank to Metro Kajang Holdings. Above is a tracking of the two abovementioned companies' stock prices & an AI-rendered estimation of potential upside to IKK's stock price:

Miracle Streak : Shorts are murdered by Nintendo 任天堂 as it ups for 3 straight days on Pokémon Pokopia, while S'pore's Sunright quietly claims a fresh record ! {13th Mar '26}

 

As the Pokémon franchise owner continues to forge further into 5 figures in Tokyo in defiance of war-ravaged markets, S'pore semiconductor tester Sunright, the 2nd highest earner thus far after a scorching '17-'18 ascent, is pared again to inch closer to the millennium + four centuries mark due next week!

Nintendo 任天堂 continues to rise against the gravity of war ravagings, averaging ¥10,199.14 trading 15,872,300 shares today, versus yesterday's ¥10,005.95 trading 18,848,400 shares [ including 1,489,700 matched 16 ticks above the last done price] & 32,505,800 shares traded on 3/11 after its latest Pokémon Pokopia game release stunned many by selling over 2.2 million units in the first 4 days! Short-sellers had more than tripled their bet against the stock rising by 6th March, to 1,471,600 shares while margin buying had declined 11.5% to 9,566,300 shares by that date. To give some context to these figures, note that the total short position has increased by 3,543,300 shares from 405,200 shares in the last 15 days & comprised about a quarter of Friday's traded volume versus 2% the day before the outbreak of Gulf hostilities.

Needless to say, it was a proverbially unlucky Friday the 13th for the gamer's shorties this week despite the Iran war pummeling most other stocks' prices, even as data updated till today[ the date of which conversely represents a lucky number for me] shows the margin buying/short-selling ratio for Nintendo [see graph above] has dropped almost to 2x, down from nearly 30x before the outbreak of the current conflict !!!

Miracle Streak : Nintendo 任天堂 defies the Nikkei's 1,000-point drop gravity while 31st scorer Petron serves up another Record with a Hat3rick ! {12th Mar '26}

 

On a day whenNintendo 任天堂 again defies the Japanese market plunge thanks to Pokémon Pokopia hype, Petronquickly capitalizes on the global fuel supply chaos to deliver a hat3rick after spending 2025 in massive paper losses, pushing the run closer to another century mark!

Miracle Streak : Public Bank is the 35th Winner in '26 ! {11th Mar '26}

 Today, local banking giant Public Bank finances a fresh record in its 60th Anniversary year on ex-divvy day, while

Nintendo 任天堂, bought just four days before the unforeseen outbreak of unrestrained war, breachesthe ¥10,000 mark in Tokyo, +18% in 2 weeks, since falling through it in Feb. Glad I didn't even look @ it since last Monday despite it being the most expensive stock purchase to date!

Miracle Streak : Timberwell scores a HAT3rick close to the Takeover price! {10th Mar '26}

 

Thanks to a trio of sales of takeover target Timberwell, the latest being a half cent short of the buyout offer, the indefatigable run comes within striking distance of a fourteenth century!