Consult widely on reviving interest in the stock market

IN A letter to The Business Times in October, a reader wrote of the large losses he had sustained in the local stock market over many years even though he had invested in good-quality companies. He also told of the exodus of well-known names through privatisations and a general malaise shrouding the market that has prompted home-grown firms to seek listings overseas, mainly on Nasdaq.

While some may brush off such complaints as the gripes of just about any disgruntled investor, the concerns are valid. The writer was responding to a recent commentary along similar lines, which pointed out that although Singapore equities are not alone in experiencing poor performance, with many other markets in the same boat, they nevertheless do suffer from depressed valuations and lacklustre liquidity, which is worrying.

None of these observations is new. Comments on the moribund state of the market stretch back decades and crop up all too regularly. In 2015 for instance, 1,225 remisiers wrote to then-finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam appealing for measures to spur trading; in 2019, Bloomberg described the Singapore equity market as “incredibly shrinking”; and in 2021, South China Morning Post said the bourse’s “zombie” condition was undermining Singapore’s reputation as a financial hub and more importantly, that the condition may be irreversible.