Since The Star and Nang Yang Siang Pao published, in the last few days, about my late reporting of my shareholdings in Latitude, VS and Focus Lumber, many people including news reporters wanted to hear my side of the story.

The reason why I reported late is because of the cumbersome system of reporting to the Bursa Malaysia. To fill up Form 29A & B requires details such as the number of shares and the date I bought or sold. Moreover, the buying or selling prices frequently change. To report the price I have to work out the average price I traded in the whole day.   

To complicate the whole issue, I have margin accounts with TA Securities, Maybank, Kenanga, CIMB, RHB, HLIB, Alliance and Affin. My total margin loan is about Rm 150 million, my average daily trading exceeds Rm one million and the number of shares I buy and sell every day is quite many.

As I have so many trading accounts and I am 83 years old, I do not key in my orders to buy or sell myself. I simply give instructions to my remisiers to buy or sell and at a certain price. I have to watch to see the number of buyers and sellers so that I can change my previous instruction in order to succeed in my buying or selling. For example, if I see there are a lot of buyers willing to take the sellers, I will offer a higher price if I want to buy or sell. If there are less buyers, I will have to reduce my price offer to buy or sell.

A few times I made the mistake of instructing one remisier to sell in the morning the same share that I instructed another remisier to buy in the afternoon. In fact, the authorities had reprimanded my remisers who were involved in these transactions that may seem to mislead investors. Those were honest mistakes.

How I overcome my difficulties?

As a result of the above difficulties, I waited until I have sold enough to own less than 5% of the total issued shares of the company. I just have to fill up one form to state that I have ceased to be a substantial shareholder without the requirement of stating the dates and the prices I sold.

I assure you that I have no intention to mislead people to lose money. I have never recommend readers to buy any share if I am selling.

As you know, I have written many articles about Latitude, VS and Lii Hen which have gone up a few hundred per cent in the last 2 years. If you have followed my recommendations, you would have made huge profit. Of course, if you are too greedy and did not sell, you cannot blame me.

As you know all the shares from exporting companies such as VS Lii Hen and others have fallen sharply in the last few months and if you bought them before they plunge to the bottom, you would be losing money. I must admit that I have also bought VS at around Rm 1.30 before it dive to lower.

I wrote an article to say that investors always over react to good or bad news and VS is a good example. As you can see the price of VS has been consolidating in the last 2 months and I think it will soon go up. In this article I also mentioned that I bought VS.

Focus Lumber:

In fact, since The Star published with my big photo under the title “Koon discloses stake buy after 4 weeks” on 11^th May, 2 days ago, the price of Focus Lumber went up 7 sen and 17 sen respectively with unusually large volume transacted.

In this case, people who have bought earlier would have made some paper profit but those who sold their holdings earlier would regret that they are missing the chance of making more profit.

Human Nature: People always complain

Almost all my followers who have made profit did not express their gratitude. But I often see people complaining that I have misled them. Of course if they bought any down trending stock at or near its peak, they will lose money.

When the round wheel was first invented the farmers complained that it created ruts or furrows on the foot path and they would break their ankles if they were not careful.

When airports were first constructed, farmers were complaining that their cows produced less milk due the roaring noise of the air planes. 

After having given more than 300 scholarships to help poor students to complete their tertiary educations, less than 10 scholarship recipients have come to thank me. The rest of the students continue to complain that the amount I gave them is not sufficient. That is human nature!

Graduates do not need to pay back the money I spent on them. But before they accept my scholarship offers, they must promise me that they will help poor students when they are financially solvent. In this way, after I die, I hope many of my scholarship recipients will continue to do charity on my behalf.