Two weeks ago I wrote a blog piece explaining why I think ASX companies should be forced to report quarterly instead of twice a year. (VIEW LINK) As a long term investor, I don't say that lightly. Quarterly reporting is a circus. But the long gaps we have between results announcements creates too many opportunities for information leakage. At the time I was worked up about the trading in Surfstich shares prior to its massive downgrade. One of the readers, Frank, wrote in the comments field that he sees this sort of behaviour all the time. If you want a current example, he said, just take a look at Beacon Lighting (BLX). No news, share price off significantly, and lots of small trades going through on market (indicative, in his view, that the instos with the information had to sell to retail investors without it). Yesterday Beacon put out a profit downgrade and the share price fell more than 20%. You would laugh if it weren't such an awful indictment on the integrity of our market.
Patrick Poke
I hadn't noticed Surfstich, but I certainly saw what was going on with BLX. Very questionable indeed. ASIC really should be paying closer attention to issues like this in my view.