JEP trade surge raises burning questions

THE Singapore stock market is not a fair one. Through the years, this writer has become all too familiar with how confidential information can get leaked before it gets announced. People in the know can take a punt to their advantage.

The latest example of dubious behaviour on the Singapore Exchange (SGX) is in shares of precision engineering firm JEP Holdings.

From a one-year average of around four million shares traded daily, JEP suddenly rose 17 per cent from S$0.035 to S$0.041 on Jan 9, with 29.5 million shares traded.

That's unusual, but there wasn't any query. Perhaps SGX'…