Straits asia trading halt?!

Wow, can't monitor today, but STI cheong so much, again confirming the rally displayed over the last 3 days.

Volume is still heavy though it's lighter, possibly because of the weekends. HSI overcome the resistance at 20,800 already, must be an exciting day!

The counter that shocks me somewhat was straits asia. During lunchtime when I checked, the counter was trading like 1.15 or something. I was still wondering why it
suddenly dropped so much when I realised that today is the XD date. They are giving off dividends and I didn't know!! I hope this doesn't happen again, I ought to be more aware of this as it could aversely affect my stock price.

Below is the news extract that caused the stock to halt trading at 2pm and resumed trading with a vengeance at 3pm today
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4 May 2007

STRAITS ASIA RESOURCES ACQUIRES NEW COKING COAL CONCESSION IN KALIMANTAN

Straits Asia Resources Limited ( SARL ) is pleased to announce that it has secured the rights over a large coal tenement in Central Kalimantan situated some 50km east of the Mt Muro Gold Mine that it operates for its Australian parent company. The tenement is adjacent to BHP sMaruwai Coal Project, which hosts a world class deposit of high quality coking coal and is currently being brought into production.

A first stage programme of sampling and field mapping on the property undertaken by
consultants, has confirmed that the tenement contains significant outcrops of both high calorific value coking coal of Eocene origin as well as Miocene thermal coal.

A second stage programme currently underway has identified that some 35 outcrops of Eocene coal occur in a two km wide belt that dips southerly at 18º to 50º. Within the belt there are at least eight seams which range in thickness from 0.25m to 2.5m and have strike lengths of 2.5 to 4 km. The exact number of seams is yet to be confirmed and will require further field work including drilling. From initial sampling, the calorific value of the coal is around 8,000 kcal/kg (adb). In addition to the Eocene coal, about 60 coal outcrops of Miocene coal have been located in an eight km long curved formation. The seams generally dip to the east at between 10º and 50º. The
coal seams identified to date are between 0.15 to 1.0 m thick, but in many places the absolute thickness has still to be measured in test pits. Potentially, more than 6 seams within the formation have strike lengths that vary between 3 and 6 km. From previous work it is known that the calorific value of the coal is around 6,000 kcal/kg (adb).

David Toms, Chief Executive Officer explained, A key feature of SARL s expansion strategy is to widen its operating base beyond our highly successful Sebuku Coal Operation. The new Laung Project area is potentially very exciting as it forms part of a region that looks set to underpin the next wave of coal supply growth from Indonesia. Our team s experience in developing projects within Indonesia gives us the expertise and resources to successfully develop this opportunity at a time of increasing demand for coal products.

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Straits asia went as high as 1.31 before closing down at 1.22. I think the research house needs to upgrade tp already. The flag target of 1.21/1.22 has been reached and is far exceeded because of the positive good news. This is a good lesson that not all stocks will far after they declare XD. I've seen 2 stocks that didn't fall this week already. One is ferrochina (even went up sooo much) and the other is straits asia. Theoretically, the price of the stock will drop to reflect the value, but sometimes sentiment for the stock is so strong that the drop will be negated.

Genting didn't break out...oh well. Let it accumulate more first. Support at 0.985 held, so I'm not worried. I guess we really need to wait another 2 weeks. We should see a breakout on the upside or downside by the 3rd week of May. I'll hold on till then, unless something drastic happens.

DBS released a set of marvelous results: 19% increase in year on year, 11% increase quarter on quarter. That fits into the expected quarterly rise in profits of 12% I posted yesterday. I think OCBC shouldn't do too badly either. On hindsight, I should have bought DBS. Buy the leader, not the laggards. And the leader in banking is DBS, or UOB, definitely not OCBC I think. Oh well, we'll see if the same expected profits is true for UOB on monday night.

Today my OCBC call warrants fell a bit. OCBC didn't cheong as much as I like today. Not a problem as it's a fri. Not a lot of people wants to hold overnight because of the uncertainty.

Dow perform magic again. Now it's +34. I haven't seen dow so strong before. It's been the dun-know-how many consecutive rise in price. I've checked the long term charts (since 1935) for dow, and found that it's surprising bullish. Maybe got time I'll analyse more. It's interesting because I've never used such a long charts before. The support/resistance and trendlines for this kind of long term charts will be super significant.

I hope when China market opens on monday, they would realise how much fun they had missed out on their week long holiday. Cheong again! Europe side only 1 red, the rest all green :)

Haven't posted this for some time (i forgot), total loss: 22.2 k