15 August 2023
SembCorp’s price rose about 8.8% from S$5.60 to S$6.09 in one single bounce on 7 August, breaking not only the symmetrical triangle but also making the All-Time-High price that many were hoping for. Some traders attributed this price jump to the good 1H 2023 report that SembCorp just presented on 4 August. Unfortunately, the price leaps and bounces turned out to be nothing but a “pump and dump” like exercise.
What is a Pump and Dump?
It is a technique usually used by some rogue traders who want to make more money by pumping up the price of a stock and then dumping the stock they were holding at inflated prices. As a result, the price of the stock will go back down or even go below where the pumping of the stock started.
Isn’t the
Pump and Dump Scheme Illegal?
There are rules about the pump and dump scheme and the Authority has been warning people about such scheme being used. For example, SGX RegCo has warned about some illegal pump and dump schemes being spread in the Telegram Chat Group.
However, the “Pump and Dump” technique has never died. It has been used all the time, and even on stocks such as Gamestop. The use of such a technique is more prevalent in penny stocks where Corporate information is not always available.
Is this SembCorp’s Pump and Dump Case
Illegal?
Most Rule books are actually more referring to pump-and-dump schemes that manipulated the market and not the pump-and-dump
technique used by rogue traders to earn some quick bucks. There is nothing illegal
about using the pump-and-dump technique if there is no evidence of market manipulation.
A good example is GameStop Corp's pump and dump case. Gamestop has a US$6.0 billion market cap today. It was reported that an investor boosted the price of Gamestop from US$ 20 to US$483 in 2021. The price fell soon after by 90% to US$53 in a
few days. Many traders lost their pants. Federal Authorities were
reported to have investigated but there were no results reported. There was
even a Congressional Hearing and some law
sues. Those
interested in the case can refer to this Wikipedia report.
In the case of SembCorp, there were no reports so far about any market manipulation on the pump and dump exercise. The trader(s) who pumped and dumped could be making use of the excellent news report of SembCorp’s 1H 2023 result to carry out their work. As the information is publicly available, there is nothing illegal about using such information.
More About
SembCorp’s 1H2023 result
From SembCorp's financial report, we can extract the following 2 pictures.
Picture 1: The balance sheet
Picture 2: The Income and Expense Report
SembCorp's net profit was mainly from the
lower gas costs. There was a saving of
about S$763 million YOY. This amount is
more than enough to cover the profit gained.
The higher cost of sale on HOH was 12.1% was seasonal. Singapore
weather is always colder toward the end of the year.
Hence, if traders were
observant and had studied SembCorp carefully, they would have avoided this recent pump-and-dump exercise.
Technical
Analysis
Technically, we are seeing SembCorp’s price resting on the trendline T1 which has now turned into a support after the price has broken up on 7 August.
We are expecting the price to make a rebound from the support although the picture may be a bit “shaky”. This is because the price uptrend is still intact with MACD and Chaikin Money Flow in the positive region. The exception is that the price has broken the 15-day moving average as shown in the following chart,
Maybe if the global market condition is good, SembCorp's price can rebounce from Trendline T1. However, the global market is not looking good at the moment. It is about to do a serious correction.
Should SembCorp's price decides to break the support T1, we might expect it to test trendline T2 and maybe even the supports, S1 and S2.
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