My mother, my stock market mentor: An editor’s confession

Prologue: This untold story is about a son’s tribute to his late mother for exposing him to the stock market with her simplistic investing mannerism.

What inspired yours truly to pen this confession is the Securities Commission’s (SC) latest Guidance Note on Provision of Investment Advice which aims to penalise half-baked investment gurus who leverage the social media in particular to ply their trade.

 

IT was the transition period between awaiting for his STPM results after having completed his Form Six at St Xavier’s Institution (Penang) in late 1987 and entering Universiti Malaya that yours truly’s stock market indulgence took place.

During the six-month ‘internship’, both yours truly and  his late mother would diligently leave their Island Glades home in Penang at 8.30am to reach Soon Theam Securities Sdn Bhd (those days located near Beach Street) just before the market opened.

For ease of parking, the team would travel ‘to work’ on a Honda C70. The first chore upon arrival was to grab two grandstand seats with a view closest to the gigantic white screen at the trading hall.

This was an era where real-time investing was non-existent with sales transaction still being conducted manually.

Stock market trading days before real-time market trading

Yours truly vividly recall an Indian guy with ear phone-plugged ears who would move about from one end of the white screen to another with a marker pen and duster.

He would diligently update stock prices to the cheers and jeers of the aunty and uncle investors. At 18, yours truly was certainly the youngest spectator around.  

To execute every buy or sell order, yours truly’s late mother would have to squeeze herself through the crowded trading hall to see her remisier (this were the days when the Central Depository System [CDS] account was unheard of).

No WhatsApp, no Telegram

Yours truly’s late mum stood her ground as a staunch retail investor with a one lot (1,000 shares) limit discipline. She wouldn’t allow greed to creep in as she only invested within her means.

If yours truly remember correctly, she dabbled mostly on penny stocks as well as those in the RM1 to RM2 price range. She kept her expectations low – the typical Penangite mentality of making some pocket money.

Like other retail investors of her time, she would do her best to offload her stocks within the T+3 contra period failing which she would pick up her stocks for mid-term holding. One of her bad habits (which unfortunately yours truly inherited) was not knowing when to cut loss (due to emotional attachment).

Being a prudent investor, she would listen and weigh market rumours conscientiously before deciding to make her purchase. Four of her favourite investment counters were LPI Capital Bhd, Sime Darby Bhd, Mega First Corporation Bhd, Muda Holdings Bhd. 

Later in life after she has passed on, yours truly came across newspaper cuttings of listed companies, their financial performance and analyst recommendation preciously kept in a chocolate box, hidden in her closet.

This is testament that yours truly’s late mum made informed decision most of the time although she did (and yours truly was partly guilty) made erroneous decision occasionally by following the herd mentality.

Stock market trading through mobile

On the bright side, what yours truly missed about the good old time was for the mother and son to celebrate their ‘victory feat’ with a plate of nasi kandar (with sumptuous tenggiri head) at a nearby coffee shop.

Nevertheless, those were the times when smart phones (not even analogue mobile phones), WhatsApp, Telegram or social media were non-existent.

Investment guru wasn’t a catch phrase yet although there were a few notable old version KOLs (key opinion leaders) whose influence was limited to the trading floor alone as opposed to a nationwide (or even regional or global) reach with the advent of state-of-the-art information communications technology.

Hence, there was hardly any risk of breaching the Capital Markets and Services Act (CMSA) 2007 for rendering investment advice without a license – an action that is punishable with a fine not exceeding RM10 mil or imprisonment not exceeding 10 years or both, if found guilty.

Fond memories

Looking back, yours truly is ever grateful to his stock market exposure at a tender age.

As yours truly matured to become a business journalist, such exposure enabled yours truly to think outside the box with non-plain vanilla-styled narratives.

At half-century-old, yours truly can sense that the exposure which is embedded in the subconscious mind is becoming vivid by the days.

A typical characteristic of Penangites is that they are very fond of giving stocks nicknames – one counter (already delisted) that resonates with your truly till today is Or Kim (literally black gold) a.k.a timber-related Aokam Perdana Bhd.

Yours truly would always recall how Aokam – a counter associated with entrepreneur extraordinaire Teh Soon Seng (who later fled to Shanghai where he breathed his last in March 2018 aged 59) – would peak at RM31.50 only to plunge to 60 sen.

This was the very first instance yours truly came to comprehend how cruel the stock market could be if investors have no control over their greed.

Well, yours truly absorbed so much that cannot be mastered from textbooks during the six-month internship. Without his late mother, yours truly wouldn’t be able to be crafty and witty with his stock market diction.

Moreover, being an English primary school teacher, she passed down both mastery of the language as well as layman’s stock market vocabularies and jargons that money cannot buy to yours truly.

Indeed, she stood tall among yours truly’s media mentors – Charles Raj, Chong Cheng Hai, S. Sivaselvam and KH Lim, to name a few – by having imparted a basic understanding and love for stock market-related activities in yours truly.

Like what Rafiki told Little Simba in the The Lion King (1994), “(S)he lives in me.” – Jan 8, 2021

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