09 July 2014

5 Wishes for X'mas 2014

X'mas is coming. It's always coming what, right? At worst, it's 364 days away. Darned good excuse either way to make a wish list. So here's my greedy list ... (never know if it might come true!)

Chaos and order begin with the flutter of a butterfly.

1. Give me real ETFs!

Enough of those exotic synthetics already. Then we can have less problems about the average investor not being allowed to invest in ETFs. Let's have real index ETFs and give investor the real means to diversify across market regions with real stocks backing the ETFs. Generate the liquidity as well please. Please?

2. Can I buy just 15 shares of Jardine Matheson Holdings?

It's really a pain given that it's at a price of US$59.84/share in lots of 400 shares. That's quite a fortune at one go. Of course there is the means to buy small lots on the Unit Share board on POEMS. But it doesn't have the same liquidity wor. The spread is even worse.

3. Repeat my order if not transacted.

How hard is it to provide such a feature? Can I have the function on the basic POEMS application for a validity period for my buy/sell orders if it is not transacted within the day? It's a pain to submit a fresh order each day until it happens. That's a lot of mouse clicks you know?

4. To hell with the penny stocks! 

Can we get rid of them for gawd sake? I really hate people selling 1,000 shares at $0.10 when I'm trying to buy 50,000 shares of it. That's just $100. Come on! You're killing me with the sales charges. Enough already. Creep.

5. Bonds galore! 

Why can't those 5%, 6%, 7% coupon paying bonds be made available to retail investors? At $250,000 a pop, they're completely out of reach for most. Why the exclusivity when bonds could really lower the risk profile of an investor's portfolio? Imagine all those education and retirement portfolios aiming to get a reasonably safe yield or 4% extraction for retirement?

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