Of Market Moving News and Singapore-based Media

It is just me or did anyone else feel that, most of the recent market-moving news involving some of our stocks came from Singapore-based media? The Muhibbah receivership issue, I believed, was first highlighted by Singapore Business Times. When CIMB and Maybank decided to call off RHB Capital merger, it was first reported by Singapore's Straits Times. Now, when RHB Capital apparently is considering a crazy deal to takeover CIMB, it was again being reported by Singapore's Straits Times.

It is either due to our media is grossly incompetent or our local bankers like to run to Singapore to tell their stories. I think it is the latter. Perhaps, they feel safer to disclose sensitive information to a non-Malaysian media. Our Malaysian bankers seems to be unable to keep their mouth shut. News about potential M&A regularly landed in some internet message board by people who claimed to be investment bankers and the likes. A couple of these news is proven true, a few weeks or months later. The problem with acting on such news is that, you do not know which one is real, which one is not. Now, if they can write on the message boards, it means they will also tells their friends and families to buy. So, there are probably a lot of people that benefited from insider information, at the expense of normal retail investors like us. Our SC probably do not have the resource to catch these buggers on the internet. It is also probably true that, some of our corporate figures do not seems to understand what is insider trading, like this Genting COO who settle with SC on insider trading charges. If you are acting on information that is not available to public, that is not obtained via deep and creative research but rather through some friends working on the deal is not considered insider trading, what is insider trading? Unlike the law-trained Genting COO who consider that a "market tip"-a market tip that is unfortunately unavailable to the general public- Snowball, who know nuts about law, thinks that common sense says that it is insider trading.

It is impossible for SC to regulate. So, the next best thing is to actually subscribe to these news, at least, you have some head start over those who do not. The huge fall due to the Muhibbah's APH issue only happened on the day analysts released their reports, which is a day after Singapore Business Times report on the issue. It shows that quite a number of people may not have access to the news. If the trends of going to Singapore-media to disclose sensitive information continue, one may probably needs to subscribe to these Singapore news services. My main problem is, these sort of subscription is getting unaffordable. Plus, most of the news overlaps with each other. Unlike FT and WSJ that offered me some really cheap student subscriptions, in fact, FT used to offer free subscription if you are a student, Singapore Business Times, do not have a student package. If my memory serve me right, SBT is not a good publication either. Their editorial is not exactly top notch. Gunasegaram of the Star writes better than most of them. I am not sure whether paying around RM100/year for some market moving news that may not relate to company that I own is such a good deal. Any thoughts?