Thai broker often poor behavior.

Today my letter was published in the BKK Post. Where I dare to raise the often poor broker behavior in enticing retail clients to just trade, rather then invest. While this ill-practice is never mentioned, its one reason the SET has stalled and retail investors all but gone.

Here is what most don't understand:  Thai mkt. officers for the most part with gusto or softly encourage a trading galore behavior as they seek short term commissions, vs. long term client building.  As soon as a stock price goes up a notch, they call and say something like "nobody ever went broke taking a profit".  Or, when Trump has another tantrum state "better stop loss", then the next day when the news is better "well, buy it back".  Its a whipsaw-back and forth where in the end most only the broker profits. Its so very easy to inflame and scare-monger retail clients into over trading hyper activity, which over time almost always results in losses.  Another trap is selling out for small profit ones' few winners while keeping all the losers, in time one has a portfolio of losers.  Realize, mkt. officer behave and says very different things to different clients all depending on their investor savvy/experience -and often take advantage of less sophisticated participants.  Realize, nobody really knows -nor monitors- how mkt. officers actually talk to different clients.  These days its easy to just acclaim "ah here everybody just trades DELTA and all else is stale, so you matters well join that party. But its a trap as "on paper" it looks easy, in practice its almost always a recipee for dissapointment over time. 

Just like a Pharmcacist which has a responsibility to tell how to use a medicine correctly the mkt. officer should also be far more professional/responsible here.....as if not will loose their client as well as their hard earned savings. Not least leave a lasting impression to "never again invest in stocks".  So to never see them again....in fact this is what is happening for very long while nobody addresses this professional shortfall. 

Last not least, Just saying here....had one say a year ago accumulated high dividend Thai stocks (as here advocated for long), and assuming these remained overall stale (some increased, many did nothing and a few dropped), the approx. 7% yield plus the 10% increase in Thai Baht currency vs. US$, one would have generated a total return of around 17%, in US$  -or about the same as broad US stocks during this 1 year same time period.  US stocks get all the rage/attention but are more volatile, pay minuscule 1.2% dividends and well, command more than double the p/e ratio's --while being US bubbly stocks in a declining global hegemony -lead by an increasingly very unpopular president -both at home as globally.

Best Regards,