Although I am Singaporean, the first shares that I had were Malaysian shares.
In the old days, we could purchase Malaysian shares in Singapore through over-the-counter trade, the so-called Central Limit Order Book, or CLOB, as the market was known.
When I ventured out from the safe harbour of Fixed Deposit, I brought into CLOB shares, as they were very "hot", "affordable" and "have huge growth potential" at that time. I brought into several counters and if I remember correctly, one of the counters was UEM. I can't remember the other two counters now as the companies are probably no longer in existence.
Unluckily, a couple of months after I brought into CLOB shares, Malaysia unexpectedly introduced capital controls on Sept 1, 1998 (Asian Financial Crisis) and declared the trading of Malaysian shares on Singapore's Clob International to be illegal. This caused the value of Malaysian shares traded on CLOB to freeze and we watched helplessly and in horror their values nose-dived steeply.
Or maybe luckily for me, I had just a short "incursion" into Malaysian shares and had just a small investment there. Some of my friends and relatives are not so fortunate, they had their majority of fortune and stock portfolio in CLOB shares.
I lost 15K and this was a painful tuition fee for me.
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