SET bullish but changing, for the worse.

Thai Stock market bullishness confined mostly to large cap stocks. Why?

The Thai stock market, like many others around the world, has been buoyant of late.  No least because of a perceived pick-up in Thai economic growth. Also because of the belief there will be elections held say within a year.  The SET benchmark index recently hit an all time high and is hovering just above that around 1830, going into the first days of February. Contrary to many nay-sayers here, Thai stocks have been on a roar... really?  No, not so fast, as the rise of the market has been mostly confined to a bunch of very large capitalized shares which make up the bulk of SET benchmark index.  In fact a closer look shows that not only has the rise been focused on very large SET companies, in fact retail investor participation has lately dropped to below 50% of total market volume.  Alarming.  This is significant as in the past retail investors usually made up some 65 to 80% of total market SET trading volume.

The local brokerage industry should ask themselves' why local retail investors are in such great numbers recently reducing investing in the Thai stock market as a savings alternative; evenwhile domestic interest rates remain soo low and the stock market has been more bullish. One reason surely must be due to the ineptness of their industry which serves stock investors.  One senior executive not long ago confessed to me "its a failure of the industry".

Confidence and trust are among the most important elements required to attract investors, and it seems this is ebbing...at least when as it concerns the local retail investor community.  This is a (big) shame, because here there are many smaller and mid sized listed companies which are attractive -besides make up the bulk of the Thai economy.  Retail investors exiting is bad news for those firms, as they will loose a large percent of people which invest in such companies, vs. institutions which most only consider/invest in large capitalized stocks due to their obsessive liquidity requirements. 

Just last week a new attractive property fund was offered to investors, called the "Bualuang Office Leasehold fund".  Here is how I ended up writing the head of investment Banking at Bualuang,  BBLAM : http://www.bblam.co.th

To the Attention of:  Mr. Soravis Krairiksh -and/or to whom this may concern, 

Just this week your firm offered the "Office Leasehold Fund" the first official selling date was stated last Monday, January 29.  When we called the BBL bank at 9.01 AM on Monday, we were told it was already all sold out.  Obviously there was large​ p​re​-booking and so a certain amount of unfairness, besides not adherence to SEC/SET rules​?  Why was this/your fund all sold out even before the official offering date?  Can you please give us some answers on this as we are confused and disturbed by this seeming unfair practice.

Regards,
Paul A. Renaud.
www.thaistocks.com