Remember CLOB Shares?

[alvin]

I was too young to know what happened during 1990s where Singaporeans could trade Malaysia shares on CLOB.

I bet there were a lot of blood on the street followed the 97 asian financial crisis. It is true that history of boom and bust always repeat.

I found this article while I was trying to find more info on CLOB:

Confessions of a former stock-market speculator
Lorna Tan
Sun, Feb 03, 2008
The Sunday Times

MR PATRICK Lim, the associate director of financial advisory firm PromiseLand Independent, recalls vividly the anguish he felt when he lost nearly $380,000 on the stock market in less than seven hours in 1998.

This was when Malaysia unexpectedly introduced capital controls on Sept 1, 1998 and declared the trading of Malaysian shares on Singapore's Clob International to be illegal.

This caused the value of Malaysian shares traded on Clob to dive steeply.

Before that fateful day, Mr Lim had borrowed cash to fund his stock purchases and had several equity margin accounts with banks and finance companies.

Almost all of the securities pledged were Clob shares traded in Singapore. All were speculative counters or penny stocks.

After Malaysia imposed the capital controls, banks and finance companies would no longer allow investors to borrow money using Clob shares as collateral.

Investors like Mr Lim had to either put up fresh collateral that would be acceptable to financial institutions or repay the loans.

And he had only one day to do it, failing which his shares would be forcibly sold on the open market.

"Because of the six-figure loan I had taken, there was no way I could raise the capital, so my whole Clob portfolio was sold off," said Mr Lim.

At the time, Mr Lim had Clob shares such as Idris, Promet and Berjaya, which were the hardest-hit and were sold down aggressively, no thanks to margin calls by banks and finance companies.

"Having lost about $380,000 during the Clob fiasco and paid humongous 'tuition fees', I have learnt that, in any form of investment, one should never indulge in speculation," said Mr Lim.

He cautioned investors not to borrow or leverage to invest.

"Invest only the money that you can afford to lose," he added.

[alvin]

Anyone has any CLOB story to share?

[equilat]

Hi Alvin,
Its very painful for people to share the CLOB debacle. A lot of us lost 6 digit figure like above. Lets not bring back dark memories.

[Dennis Ng]

Anyone has any CLOB story to share?

Hi Alvin,
yup, I did own some Clob shares, luckily at that time I didn't have much money, so I invested about S$10,000 and I think I probably lost 95% of the money there.

I once met one elderly man who got very emotional when I spoke about Stock Investing. He told me please don't talk about stock investing to him....later then I found out from him he retired with about S$1 million and lost over 90% of it in Clob shares...it was a mistake that he could NEVER recover from, since he's retired and has no income...

[candy_chia]

Was also a victim of CLOB shares but lost only $3k plus at that time as had little capital, but subsequently was drained of $20k capital to ACCA scam.

My mum-in-law earned her millions from shares (FA - by keeping track of financial news on company performance & TA knowledge mainly through memory of prices performance), avoided all scams through the decades but still succumbed to investment in $50k Lehman notes due to "professional advice" of bank advisor.

Think we should always be prudence with our investment fund (makes sure this is opportunity fund we can afford to lose) even if the bull market has commenced

Should not throw caution to wind as "Nothing is really new as HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF in one way or another. like Jim Rogers mentioned in his book, A Gift to My Children.

The World Tomorrow and How Jim Rogers Sees It
http://www.masteryourfinance.com/forum/ ... ory#p25213

CLOB saga
http://stocktaleslot.blogspot.sg/2006/03/clob-saga.html

Lehman notes saga
http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_165 ... 03-19.html
http://www.lehmannotes.com/

Anyone has any CLOB story to share?

Hi Alvin,
yup, I did own some Clob shares, luckily at that time I didn't have much money, so I invested about S$10,000 and I think I probably lost 95% of the money there.

I once met one elderly man who got very emotional when I spoke about Stock Investing. He told me please don't talk about stock investing to him....later then I found out from him he retired with about S$1 million and lost over 90% of it in Clob shares...it was a mistake that he could NEVER recover from, since he's retired and has no income...

One elderly who queue in front of me to fill in the lists of CLOB holdings, (all shares in CLOB accounts to be transferred to accounts in the MCD for eventual trading on the KLSE) during the CLOB saga (Malaysian shares via Singapore's Central Limit Order Book system were under suspension in trading in September 1998), invested with his life saving of about $500,000.

http://business.asiaone.com/Business/Ne ... 86890.html

[ilovecck]

Was also a victim of CLOB shares but lost only $3k plus at that time as had little capital, but subsequently was drained of $20k capital to ACCA scam.

My mum-in-law earned her millions from shares (FA - by keeping track of financial news on company performance & TA knowledge mainly through memory of prices performance), avoided all scams through the decades but still succumbed to investment in $50k Lehman notes due to "professional advice" of bank advisor.

Think we should always be prudence with our investment fund (makes sure this is opportunity fund we can afford to lose) even if the bull market has commenced

Should not throw caution to wind as "Nothing is really new as HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF in one way or another. like Jim Rogers mentioned in his book, A Gift to My Children.

The World Tomorrow and How Jim Rogers Sees It
http://www.masteryourfinance.com/forum/ ... ory#p25213

CLOB saga
http://stocktaleslot.blogspot.sg/2006/03/clob-saga.html

Lehman notes saga
http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_165 ... 03-19.html
http://www.lehmannotes.com/

Anyone has any CLOB story to share?

Hi Alvin,
yup, I did own some Clob shares, luckily at that time I didn't have much money, so I invested about S$10,000 and I think I probably lost 95% of the money there.

I once met one elderly man who got very emotional when I spoke about Stock Investing. He told me please don't talk about stock investing to him....later then I found out from him he retired with about S$1 million and lost over 90% of it in Clob shares...it was a mistake that he could NEVER recover from, since he's retired and has no income...

One elderly who queue in front of me to fill in the lists of CLOB holdings, (all shares in CLOB accounts to be transferred to accounts in the MCD for eventual trading on the KLSE) during the CLOB saga (Malaysian shares via Singapore's Central Limit Order Book system were under suspension in trading in September 1998), invested with his life saving of about $500,000.

http://business.asiaone.com/Business/Ne ... 86890.html

I remembered told me she lost $30k that time (almost all her savings), she told me during that time almost all clob shares would go up, anyone who got $$$ will want to buy. That time really a lot of ppl lose until take off pants (hokien). Maybe I will ask her more about it. She was very cool though when she told me about it, machiam like "old bird" telling story...