Following on the introduction of the ePortfolio in 2016 and the further improvements to the ePortfolio service in 2017, the Malta Stock Exchange continues its good work of developing the range of information available to the public.
Since its establishment, the Exchange published data on listed securities, including opening and closing prices, turnover and so on. But what if there was no trade in a particular security for one or more days? Until now, one could not discover easily what ‘pending orders’ (if any) were outstanding in any listed security. Without this information, it was impossible for an investor to determine whether, for any particular security, there were any potential buyers or sellers and the price at which they were ready to buy or sell specific amounts. Fortunately, this data is now easily available.
The MSE website (www.borzamalta.com.mt) now provides data on best bids and best offers for listed equities, corporate bonds and Malta Government Stocks. The information is available under the ‘Trading Board’ tab. One then points to and expands the ‘Best Bids and Offers’ option and proceeds to the required market segment table (equities or bonds). Each table shows all the best bid and offer data available at the time for each security. Users may then click on the symbol code of any security listed in the table to see the latest five best bids and five best offers.
This information is updated every 15 minutes and is available free of charge.
A big well done to the MSE for this enhancement. Thanks to this information, investors can now easily have a better picture of the current level of buying and selling interest that may be pending for any listed security, irrespective of whether that security has traded or otherwise on any given day. Effectively, apart from the data on the trading history of any security, we now have an idea of the pipeline of waiting buyers and sellers.
Can one now hope that the MSE will consider further steps to extend the range of data available to investors? Another direction of travel could be to improve local investors’ understanding of the data it provides and where and how they can find it on the website.