SGX's 1st Full Day Trading - 1st Aug 2011

1st August 2011 marked the first full day trading for counters on the Singapore Exchange - SGX. The US debt deal lifted markets across Asia and thus SGX is no exception; it rose 26 points (0.82%) to end at 3215.27. Top volume counter was clinched by Genting, which closed 4 cents higher at $1.94, with a volume of 95,528 lots traded. There was even a transaction at 13:29:27 with 2000+ lots traded.

So I guess the 'full day trading' became a non-event, i.e. no particular news about the effect of full day trading on SGX. Perhaps the actual effects will be seen in a month or two, when dealers / remisiers have enough comments to give a proper full account of this new change. Trading volume seemed alright on 1st August, but hard to say if the volume an effect of US debt deal, or because of the full day trading.

See related:

- Full Day Trading on SGX on 1st August 2011

Full Day Trading on SGX from 1 Aug 2011

It is no longer news to many in the stocks market that SGX will be introducing full day trading from 1 August 2011.  There goes the 90 minutes lunch break which serves as much needed rest for the traders / remisiers. There are two clear advantages:

a) Investors can react faster to news, especially for news in Asia that can impact their stocks. Thus they can trade during the original lunch break to take advantage of market reactions.

b) More trading can happen since the number of hours for trading per day has effectively increased by 90 minutes. This benefits both SGX as well as the brokerage houses.

However, I don't see much advantage for the remisiers. The availability of lunch hours for direct trading, means more clients will switch to online trading at their own computers, essentially cutting down the number of clients for remisiers. Currently, clients who are only free during their lunch breaks, will be more comfortable to call their remisiers and place orders. In furture, they will just click at their computers.

I guess other than technology (online trading platforms), remisiers are now hit by developments of stock exchanges as well.

See related:
- SGX's 1st Full Day Trading - 1st Aug 2011

SGX - Bid Size Changes

From the 1st trading Monday of July (4th July), the bid size for SGX listed stocks will be changed. Thus it was with a bit of a surprise when I saw the prices of stocks this morning, i.e. not the usual price figures that I expected.

SGX website has done up a good summary of the changes, including an illustration. For a quick glance of the changes, here's an extracted table:

I'm not sure how this will affect the market. Not likely to have significant changes in my opinion.