Thai Financial Market Website Reviews.
April 3th '2003.
Below is an objective review on 97 internet pages which can help you on Thailand, stocks, Asia investing and other related matters to our topic.
While we did a comprehensive search, please feel free to make any suggestions on interesting/related sites you may have found on your own, so we can build on this large list.
Thai Financial Market Website Review April 4, 2003
Prepared exclusively for Thaistocks.com by Mr. Nathan Szabo
Purpose
The purpose of this report was to examine and review all websites relating to Thailand’s financial markets. A special emphasis was placed on websites directly relating to Thai stock market investing. The websites were broken up into six broad categories:
- Stock market research and analysis sites;
- Investment dealers, financial services providers and asset management sites;
- Government, regulatory, trade-association and non-profit sites;
- News providers sites;
- Economic research sites, and
- Special sites of interest.
Extra attention was paid to the first two categories because they were the most relevant types of sites for this review. Throughout the review, the objective was to find websites that offered high quality, original and relevant information to investors free of charge.
Methodology
The ninety-seven websites reviewed in this report were examined over six days using a cable modem internet connection. The software used to browse the sites was Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0, and the hardware was a Celeron 1300Mhz with 256 megabytes of ram. An attempt was made to use a different internet connection and computer to access sites that did not work properly with the original software/hardware. Each of the six categories were reviewed using slightly different methods depending on their relevance to the report. These different methods included:
- The stock market research and analysis sites had the most comprehensive review performed. The criterion for General Appearance focused on how visually appealing the design of the site was. Speed was judged as fast, medium or slow. A fast rating was given if the pages loaded up with minimal wait time, a slow rating was given if the pages loaded at an unbearably slow rate. User Annoyances listed any general annoyances the site had such as design flaws, flashing advertisements, hard to read fonts, etc. The Broken Links category listed any links that did not work properly. The Quality, Depth and Originality of Research categories all focused on the level of research, analysis and information available on the site. Finally, an overall opinion and recommendation as to whether the site would be useful to investors was given in the Overall appeal and user experience section.
- The investment dealers’ category used a condensed review method to assess each site and provide a recommendation. A lot of the sites in this category did not have the same amount of relevant information than in the first category of sites. The focus when reviewing the sites in this category was to review how much market research and information was available free of charge, and not to review the financial services these companies offered.
- The next four sections only gave descriptions of each site with a brief opinion as to the relevance of the site. These types of sites were the least important in this review, but still important enough to discuss and to help aid investors in their research.
It is important to note that the reviewer has no knowledge of the Thai language. All reviews of Thai language sites were done on a best efforts basis, and I apologize in advance if I have made any mistakes concerning my inability to comprehend Thai language websites.
- Stock Market Research and Analysis
1. Site: Stocks in Thailand URL: http://www.stocksinthailand.com
Description: An informative site dedicated to the financial markets in Thailand including stocks, bonds, mutual funds and foreign exchange. Market news and links to key financial sites are included in site. The site is full of information such as market statistics and indicators, but there is a limited amount of research related to the Thai stock market and economy.
Free site or Pay-site: Free
Languages: English
Review:
General appearance: Bright and attractive site
Speed: Fast
User Annoyances: Difficult to click on the top menu buttons (design flaw).
Broken Links: Yes. Individual ‘company information’ links do not work when stock symbol is clicked. ‘Sectoral Indicies’ link contains no information.
Quality of Research: N/A
Original Research: N/A
Depth of Research: N/A
Most info within three mouse clicks: Yes. Information on the site is easy to find.
Site Updates: Daily, but the site has not been updated in the past four business days.
Contact person: editor@business-in-thailand.com
Overall appeal and user experience: Site is well laid-out and could be used as a good source for information, but the lack of any useful research material limits the usefulness of the site. Despite its shortcomings, the site is recommended because of the depth of information available on the site.
2. Site: Qthai.com URL: http://www.qthai.com/en/index.html
Description: An investment website with access to market news, quotes, research and other market info. Only a limited of research is available to non-paying users, the rest is for members only.
Free-site or Pay-site: Pay-site with some free content (3,000 baht per year)
Languages: Mostly Thai, some English. Most options are in Thai only.
Review:
General appearance: Attractive site with a lot of useful info on the front page
Speed: Fast
User Annoyances: Has an English website option, but most of the useful information is still in Thai.
Broken links: Yes. The links on the lower left hand side of the home page are not operational.
Quality of Research: The four research reports available for free came from four different Thai brokerage houses.
Original Research: The research available is secondary research (not original)
Depth of Research: For paying customers, it looks like research reports are available for all SET companies, but only four reports are available for non-members.
Most info within three mouse clicks: Yes.
Site Updates: Daily
Contact person: None available
Overall appeal and user experience: Unless the user is a paid subscriber, there is a minimal amount of useful information and research available. The lack of English language in the English website was annoying, and made the website un-navigable at times. This site is not recommended as a free source of relevant information and analysis.
3. Site: Wright Investors’ Services Thailand URL: http://profiles.wisi.com/profiles/
Description: Wright Investors’ Services is an international investment management firm headquartered in the U.S. The company maintains a global research and analysis database covering most publicly traded companies in the world. In Thailand’s case, WIS has 376 research reports on Thai public companies (all SET companies). Each report includes an updated chart, yearly and monthly returns, key financial results, company contact info and other useful info such as links to external research reports.
Free-site or Pay-site: Free
Languages: English
Review:
General appearance: Straightforward design, information is presented in a clear fashion.
Speed: Fast
User Annoyances: None
Broken links: None
Quality of Research: Fairly in-depth, most of the research is numbers based (quantitative).
Original Research: Yes
Depth of Research: 376 different company reports, with useful links to more research
Most info within three mouse clicks: Yes
Site Updates: Stock prices and charts are updated daily, other financial info looks to be updated quarterly
Contact person: websupport@wisi.com
Overall appeal and user experience: Extremely informative site for individual company research. This site is strongly recommended to investors.
4. Site: eFinanceTHAI.com URL: http://www.efinancethai.com/#
Description: Proclaiming itself as the best Thai financial website, efinancethai.com offers graphs, quotes, research and market news
Free-site or Pay-site: Member site, but not clear whether payment is necessary
Languages: Thai and English. The English section of the website was dominated by the Thai language.
Review:
General appearance: Site is cluttered with advertisements and unprofessional pictures of cartoon characters.
Speed: Medium
User Annoyances: A lot of flashy and irritating advertisements. English section of website is mostly in Thai.
Broken links: Yes. Stock focus, graph, quote, news and links did not work.
Quality of Research: Research was just links to various investment dealer’s daily commentary.
Original Research: None
Depth of Research: Links to market commentary by sixteen different investment dealers
Most info within three mouse clicks: Yes
Site Updates: Latest update was three business days before review
Contact person: webmaster@efinancethai.com
Overall appeal and user experience: Very frustrating user experience, could not find the most basic of information on the site, this site is a mess. Was not even sure about all the services offered by the site. Despite its shortcomings, this site is recommended solely because of the research links it has to sixteen different investment dealers. Other than these links, the site is not valuable to investors.
5. Site: Thai Stock News URL: http://www.kaohoon.com/
Description: Online version of Thailand's famous Thai language daily magazine "Thai Stock News"
Free-site or Pay-site: Free site
Languages: Thai only
Review:
General appearance: Fairly basic design
Speed: Fast
User Annoyances: Sometimes the links don’t work and sometimes they do.
Broken links: Several links are ‘under construction’
Quality of Research: N/A
Original Research: N/A
Depth of Research: N/A
Most info within three mouse clicks: N/A
Site Updates: Unable to say for sure, but there was some technical analysis performed on some charts with the latest dates in the middle of 2000.
Contact person: :info@kaohoon.com
Overall appeal and user experience: Despite the whole site being in Thai, it is obvious that there was not much useful information, research or market news on the site. For example there were only three short ‘real time’ news stories. It does not appear that much work is put into this website. This site is not recommended.
6. Site: Stockk.com URL: stockk.com/world/thailand.shtml
Description: Stockk.com is a virtual investment community network with an international reach.
Free-site or Pay-site: Free
Languages: English
Review: This website provides minimal information relating specifically to the Thai stock market, a full review is not warranted. The Thai content on this website contains only links to various relevant news agencies, economic information sites, investment dealers, banks, and other stock market resources. Overall, there is nothing this site has that a normal search engine could not find for investors interested in the Thai stock market. This site is not recommended due to lack of relevant material.
7. Site: Thai Stock Market Investments URL: http://www.drpunya.com/
Description: A Thai language website that appears to have analysis on the stock market and also computer games. The website owner, Dr. Punya, has also developed a stock monitoring program that recommends certain stocks based on current trends and indicators, this section comes is available only to paying members. There is also a web-board for people to ‘exchange knowledge’.
Free-site or Pay-site: Pay-site, with some free info (900 baht per month)
Languages: Mostly Thai with a bit of English
Review:
General appearance: A fairly attractive intro page with multimedia, but the rest of the site is fairly straightforward with unattractive font colors such as fluorescent purple and green.
Speed: Fast
User Annoyances: The free research provided is very complicated to understand and hard to follow.
Broken links: Yes. FAQ link does not work.
Quality of Research: Dr. Punya claims his stock program had an average annual yield ranging from 28% to 35% (different sectors) from 1991 to 1998. No current performance is given.
Original Research: Yes.
Depth of Research: The program claims to follow 40 different stocks, with reports on 4 stocks given free to non-paying members.
Most info within three mouse clicks: No, site is a bit complicated to follow.
Site Updates: Seems to be updated daily
Contact person: punyap@ksc.th.com
Overall appeal and user experience: This site has a bit of a ‘mad professor’ feeling to it. Other than Dr. Punya’s claims of the successes of his stock picking computer program, there is not much else useful information on this site. It may be worthwhile to subscribe for a month and check out Dr. Punya’s trading system (if one can read Thai), but otherwise this site is not recommended to investors looking for free market information and analysis.
8. Site: Maruay.com URL: http://www.maruay.com
Description: A Thai stock market website
Free-site or Pay-site: Appears to be free
Languages: Completely in Thai
Review: This site is difficult to properly review because of Thai language dominating the site. There appears to be a wealth of different information sources available from all the links available on the site. There does not seem to be any original analysis or research available on the site, most of the links on the site go to external sites. This site is not recommended due to its lack of original content.
9. Site: Thai Investing Page URL: http://www.thaistockweb.com/home.asp
Description: Another basic Thai financial site, with the usual stock market information such as news headlines and market statistics provided on the homepage.
Free-site or Pay-site: Appears to be free, but there is a login page (free?)
Languages: Thai only
Review: This site does not appear to be ‘live’ anymore; most of the links on the left-hand side (both Thai and English) opened up another browser page, but remained at the front-page of the site. The market statistics on the right hand side are updated, but otherwise this site looks dead, or close to it. This site is not recommended.
10. Site: Taladhoon.com URL: http://www.taladhoon.com
Description: Taladhoon.com appears to be an interesting site with a lot of information and analysis within the site. The English links on the left-had side of the homepage lead to a wealth of information in Thai language, including charts, analysis, market statistics, articles and a message board.
Free-site or Pay-site: Free
Languages: Thai
Review:
General appearance: This is a basic designed site
Speed: Fast
User Annoyances: Titles of links on left hand side of page don’t make much sense, such as ‘Get Ready’ and ‘Discover’.
Broken links: Yes. The ‘Library’ link leads to a page where none of the links work
Quality of Research: A lot of the analysis seems to be quantitative, there appears to be a lack of qualitative analysis.
Original Research: There appears to be several different analysts contributing to the site.
Depth of Research: Hard to gauge given everything was in the Thai language, but appears to be fairly comprehensive.
Most info within three mouse clicks: No
Site Updates: Daily
Contact person: N/A
Overall appeal and user experience: There appears to be a great deal of information on this site, it was difficult to fully assess the quality of information given the language difference, but this site outperforms all other Thai language sites in this section. This site is recommended to investors who are able to read Thai.
11. Site: Barton’s Asia Stock Market Charts URL: http://www.asiachart.com
Description: This site provides technical analysis for ten different Asian countries plus the American markets. Short-term and long-term predictions are made for each countries stock exchange using graphs and technical analysis. In Thailand’s case, eighteen different illustrated graphs of the SET, SET sectors and the Baht are analyzed. Charts are also provided for 30 different Thai companies, with accompanying technical analysis. There is also a message board, but it isn’t very active.
Free-site or Pay-site: Free
Languages: English
Review:
General appearance: Another basic site, nothing special design wise. The graphs are large and easy to read and are updated.
Speed: Fast
User Annoyances: Lack of qualitative analysis.
Broken links: None
Quality of Research: The author of the site is obviously skilled in the ‘art’ of technical analysis
Original Research: Yes
Depth of Research: Very in-depth. All relevant Asian countries are included, and each country is analyzed in-depth.
Most info within three mouse clicks: Yes.
Site Updates: Weekly
Contact person: gregory@asiachart.com
Overall appeal and user experience: Most of the analysis is quantitative on this site, there usually isn’t any commentary on the graphs analyzed, just trend lines and other technical points. Despite the lack of qualitative data, this site has a wealth of relevant and original analysis for investors. This site is a must for any TA ‘junkies’. This site is highly recommended.
12. Site: Stock Wave On-line Edition URL: http://www.stockwave.in.th/index.php3
Description: A Thai-language only website that seems to fit into the typical ‘cookie cutter’ type of Thai financial sites. There are news headlines, quotes, market statistics, and links to other Thai sites on the home page. There are numerous other links, but all required a password. It was unclear if this was a pay-site or free-site.
Free-site or Pay-site: Unclear
Languages: Thai
Review: Unable to fully review site given the language difference and the fact that most links could only be accessed by members. In addition to the free market quotes and market news, several non-financial alternatives were available such as the cartoon of the day and recent Major League Baseball scores. This site is not recommended due to lack of access to relevant material.
13. Site: Th@i Stock Frontpage URL: http://stockfrontpage.hypermart.net/
Description: This Thai-language site has not been updated in the past six months. This is another typical site with news headlines and market statistics. All other information available from the site is provided through links from other web sites.
Free-site or Pay-site: Free
Languages: Thai
Review: This site appears to have been left for dead, and is of little use to investors. The comprehensive amount of links provided on the homepage could be of some use of investors looking for particular sites. Other than the links, this site is useless and not recommended.
14. Site: SET50.com URL: http://www.set50.com/main.htm
Description: This site has a wealth of Thai market statistics and technical information relating to the SET 50 index. Each sector of the SET is fully analyzed with different graphs. Short-term buy and sell recommendations are given based on technical analysis. Interesting to note that premium member access was available for free the first time the site was reviewed, but was blocked when it was checked again.
Free-site or Pay-site: Pay-site, with some free content (300 Baht per month).
Languages: Thai and English, but not fully bilingual.
Review:
General appearance: A plain looking site.
Speed: Fast
User Annoyances: None
Broken links: None
Quality of Research: N/A
Original Research: All technical analysis is original
Depth of Research: N/A
Most info within three mouse clicks: Yes.
Site Updates: Daily
Contact person: webmaster@set50.com
Overall appeal and user experience: Site is loaded with information mostly relating to technical analysis and charts. It was unsure what paying members received since when the ‘Premium Member’ options were selected everything worked fine and it seemed like everything was accessible on the site, paying member or not. There seemed to be little qualitative research or analysis available. Although most links and buttons are in English, some areas of the site are useless if one does not know the Thai language. Overall, a good site crammed with free technical analysis of the SET sectors and individual stocks. This site is recommended.
15. Site: Setdd.com URL: http://www.setdd.com/
Description: Billing itself as a ‘New Concept in Trading’ Setdd.com is almost exclusively in Thai, unlike some other Thai investment sites who usually incorporate some English into their sites. It was difficult to guess what type of services setdd.com offers, but the main attraction seemed to be articles. Whether these articles were original research articles is also unclear, everything was restricted to members only (unclear whether it was a pay site).
Review: Unable to give a proper review for this site. The general appearance of the site is more attractive than most of the other sites reviewed in this section. The pages load fast. This site may be of interest of investors who can read Thai.
16. Site: RicherStock.com URL: http://www.richer.s5.com/
Description: This site boasts that one can make more money by following its ‘Buy-Sell’ points in the charts it provides. The site provides the usual market statistics and sector charts with a link to Yahoo for quotes. There is some limited technical analysis provided on the SET INDEX. There is also a broker list and message board provided on the web-site.
Free-site or Pay-site: Free
Languages: Thai, with some English
Review:
General appearance: Bright green?
Speed: Fast
User Annoyances: The Buy-Sell program is hyped on the site, yet only one SET stock is analyzed in this fashion.
Broken links: No
Quality of Research: N/A
Original Research: Yes, technical analysis.
Depth of Research: There is a limited amount compared to the other sites that provide technical analysis.
Most info within three mouse clicks: Yes
Site Updates: Daily
Contact person: richers@richer.s5.com
Overall appeal and user experience: The site does provide some original free content, which is good, but when compared to set50.com and Barton’s Asia Stock Market Charts, the site is outclassed, and investors are better off relying on the other two sites. This site is still recommended even though it is outclassed by some other related sites.
17. Site: Asia Investment Network URL: http://www.equinox.co.th/
Description: This sites fits into the same type of the majority of sites in this section. It provides market news, market statistics and other common market information such as links to other financial sites. The only difference is that this site seems to focus more on the Thai economy than individual Thai stocks.
Free-site or Pay-site: Free
Languages: Thai, English and Chinese
Review:
General appearance: A nicely designed and attractive looking website.
Speed: Fast
User Annoyances: Most of the better looking research and analysis (i.e Detailed Trading information, stock commentary and detailed financial information) was accessible by members only, but the sign-up page was inaccessible.
Broken links: Yes. Application form to become a member.
Quality of Research: Technical Analysis performed on charts was one year old, quarterly EPS figures were from Q4 2001.
Original Research: Yes
Depth of Research: Limited
Most info within three mouse clicks: Yes
Site Updates: Daily, although some information hadn’t been updated in the past year.
Contact person: N/A
Overall appeal and user experience: Without access to the members’ section, this site is not any more useful than most other Thai investment sites that offer the bare essentials (i.e news, statistics, charts). This site is not recommended; the key information and analysis has not been updated in over a year and the market data and news sections are limited.
Best Regards,
Paul A. Renaud.
