OREANDA-NEWS. Singapore Exchange (SGX) will detail in “Trade with Caution (“TWC”)” alerts our concerns about unusual trading activities in a company’s stock. The alerts will be more targeted as they will be issued on a case-by-case basis instead of being automatically triggered by a company’s “not aware” reply to a public query from SGX. The alerts may also contain details gathered from SGX’s review of trading activities.

Effective immediately, the new TWC approach is aimed at delivering higher-value information to investors. The changes follow feedback from investors, market participants and other stakeholders about the current high volume of the TWC announcements with little new information. In the financial year ended 30 June 2015, 85 public queries were issued followed by 47 TWC announcements.

Currently, TWC alerts are automatically generated. When trading activity of a share is deemed unusual, which means it cannot be explained by any publicly-known factor, SGX issues a public query to the company. If the company in its reply to SGX says it is not aware of reasons for the trading activities, SGX issues the TWC alert.

“SGX’s public query to a company on unusual share trading already serves as a red flag to investors. To make clearer our concerns about certain unusual activities, we will issue when necessary, the TWC announcements as a second-level heightened alert. We will include, where warranted, information gathered from our review of trading activities much like how we flagged trading activities in IHC and CEFC previously,” said Tan Boon Gin, Chief Regulatory Officer, SGX.

TWC alerts were introduced in March 2014 to draw investors’ attention to unusual trading of a security as well as to remind them that the trading activities were not the result of publicly-known factors.