Darkest before the dawn

IN the six years since the global financial crisis, the Singapore market has taken on some characteristics of the typical Singaporean: not too excitable, mostly honest, gets the job done.

Yet after the penny stock crash of October 2013, less-flattering words have been used to describe the market, with adjectives like "comatose" and "moribund" thrown around as if the market was a flightless bird slowly waddling towards extinction.

Half the 800 stocks on the market are currently inactive. Daily securities traded …