I guess I am getting too old to understand modern day practices or maybe it’s that the younger generation just don’t care about correctness. I could not understand how the Trinidad & Tobago Stock Exchange could have been so confused with the change in name for JMMB Group and listed them on their trading system as Jamaica Money Market Brokers Group Ltd. It was one thing to call the company by the incorrect name in publication of trading but a totally different thing to have the incorrect name in the official trading information as well as the fact sheet on the company.
I remember the days when there were heavy trading in stocks in Jamaica, in the 1990s when the market trading data was manually compiled and the indices computed manually. Back then, it took quite a while for the final report to be issued because they had to make sure the information was correct. Now we have errors being reported daily and there is no information going out to public to correct the errors.
I don’t understand for example why Sterling Investment could have told shareholders in their circular reporting the allocation for rights, for them to subscribe to, that the number of shares in issue is 40 million units and that the record date for the stock split was March 8 this year, and that the notice was published on the JSE website, yet a check on the trading sheets show no change in the trading prices of the stock with the last trading price, the highs and lows still at $134 nor the amount of shares in issue.
The last time we checked, the Manager at the exchange explained that there was a computer programming problem that prevented the highs and lows from being corrected in the case of the three Lasco companies. But that was from 2013, surely they must be able to sort that out by now and certainly, they ought not to be sending false data to the public without some notation to indicate what is the correct. One has to question where is the FSC in all of this?
A check on the JSE website still shows the number of issued shares of Sterling as 4,014,547, vastly different from what the rights issue circular says is the number. The Jamaica Stock Exchange is spending much to roll out a system of direct trading, all kudos to them, but they must pay greater attention to the little details that are of import. It cannot be right to leave errors out in the public for long periods without correction or at least a note as to the correct information. For example there are trading sheets posted with erroneous trading data because the markets hours were either extended beyond 1 PM or corrections were make after trading ended and the report released.
Recently a reader wrote of his concern about small trades which he asked his broker to avoid, here is what was said “the purchase of 200 Brow and 100 SVL: can you try to avoid such transactions by whatever means possible: deleting buy orders when only small volumes are available, deleting orders when only a small balance is remaining to be filled, etc- whatever you can do. This is retrograde step which JSE has taken and they are wrong in saying that is a global standard. I sure that it is not.”
The reader is absolutely correct. I had a case where a small amount of Cable & Wireless shares were traded, based of the various fees charged by the JSE and the brokers I ended up owing the broker although I sold the stock, that by the way is not a joke. I get the impression that the stock exchange sees investors the way the government sees tax payers, just milk them and ignore their pleas for we have the power. Whatever happened to customer friendliness or the customer is king or queen? Barbados has a system where small trades as routed through the odd lot market. Why can’t we do the same or better yet, treat orders as one trade for fee purposes when such orders are filled from many smaller amounts. Whatever the system the present one is wrong.