STI neutral today

The volume of STI today is so thin, almost nothing moved :P In the morning, there was a brief selldown, perhaps profit taking? Then it got fiercer and fierce, though on low volumes after news came out that DBS underdeclared its exposure to CDO by around 2 times. Around afternoon, buyers came back to push up STI to close at 3369 (down 0.04%) with a volume of 1.6 billion.

DBS really something. No wonder some of my forum friends called it D-B-Ass. Nonsense... To think that I believe that Singapore banks would not do such thing as underdeclare their exposure like other foreign banks. Nah, all the same. I wonder if DBAss would get some punishment for misleading investors with their statement that their exposure is less than actual. Their spokesperson gave no reason for giving the wrong amount initially. Crap.

2 news from sgx announcement caught my attention.

1. Swiber successfully placed inaugural bond issue for S$108.5 million, consisting of S$54 million 3 year fixed rate tranche and S$54.5 million 3 year floating rate trance issued under mulitcurrency medium term note programme underwritten by citicorp investment bank. This bond issue is met with very strong demand despite the overall bad market sentiment surrounding bonds. The capital raised is used to expand the fleet size of Swiber.

2. JP morgan and affiliates pared down their stakes in Yongnam from 9.38% to 8.50% around 21st Aug. Could be bad or good, because selling off stakes could have a lot of reasons. But if they buy, it could only mean one thing - they have confidence in the future price of the stock. Neutral news.

Lianbeng suddenly have lots of buyups towards market close, size is around 300-500 lots per transactions. At market close, 850 lots are transacted. Hmm...interesting news coming out next week? They are always insiders who know more than normal retailers, so the best gauge is not react to news but to react to the volume and price action of the stocks before and after the news. Something fishy going on, or am I thinking too much?

Total portfolio losses now stands at 14.7k.

Dow up 25 pts, Europe mostly green.

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LS, here's the information that I think you'll need. Give you an example.

Lianbeng announced a dividend of $0.0022 per share. That works out to $2.20 per lot (0.0022 x 1000 per lot = $2.20).

Their XD is 25th Sept and date payable is 10th Oct. Other information like buy in last cum date and record date are not relevant for us.

Since the XD is 25th Sept, I'm going to see Lianbeng's counter with the remark CD besides it all the way from now till 24th Sept. If I'm holding the shares before and on XD (i.e. before 25th Sept and 25th itself), I'll be entitled to the dividend payable on 10 Oct. That will mean that if I sold on and after it turned XD, I'll still get my dividend.

However, if I buy after XD (i.e. on and after 25th Sept), I'll not get the dividend already. The dividend is given to the seller whom I bought the shares from. If I buy before XD (i.e. till 24th Sept), I'll get my dividend.

To simplify things, if you're holding shares (doesn't matter contra or actually holding in CDP account) when the stock declared XD, you'll get the dividend. It doesn't matter if you sold on XD, you'll still get dividend. If you buy when you see CD (doesn't matter contra or actually holding in CDP account), you'll get the dividend too. If you buy after you see XD, too late already, no dividend.

Hope it's clear :)