HSI-CVB sold out again

THE warrants market saw a significant decrease in overall turnover which declined by 41.1% (w-o-w) to RM332.1 million as the local bourse was closed on March 28, in conjunction with the Nuzul AlQuran holiday, as well as the closure of the Hong Kong and US markets on the following day, March 29. Turnover for warrants over the Hang Seng Index (HSI) also dropped significantly by 52.3% w-o-w to RM188.5 million. Despite this, HSI warrants continued to dominate the weekly turnover, accounting for 56.8% of the overall turnover.

The HSI Index went through a choppy week to close 0.3% higher, reversing last week losses over the mixed corporate earnings. The biggest move came on Wednesday when the HSI Index plunged 1.4% on the back of an abrupt cancellation of Alibaba’s logistics unit IPO and earnings miss reported by BYD (SCMP, March 27).

Investors’ sentiment was mixed as investors actively traded both call and put warrants over the HSI. Put warrant HSI-HUE and HSI-HSY ranked first and and fifth in terms of volume traded, recording a total of 227.4 million and 90.3 million units traded, respectively. Meanwhile, Macquarie’s HSI-CVB (-16.1% w-ow), was the most active call warrant, recording over 157.3 million units exchanged hands. Interestingly, it was sold out twice last week when the HSI futures tumbled on Monday and Wednesday. Consequently, investors shifted their focus to HSICTP, which was also in the top 5 traded warrant with up to 157.3 million units traded.

On the local front, warrants over YTL Power International (YTLPOWR) were popular among investors, registering trading volumes of 96.1 million, constituting 8.3% of the overall warrants market. YTLPOWRC52, which has the highest exercise price of RM4.88 among its peers, emerged as the top traded YTLPOWR warrant with investors trading up to 27.5 million units.

To view the full list of structured warrants available on Bursa Malaysia, kindly visit malaysiawarrants.com.my.