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KUALA LUMPUR (Jan 29): Stock prices of rubber glove makers Top Glove Corp Bhd, Hartalega Holdings Bhd and Supermax Corp Bhd rose today in Bursa Malaysia morning trading before cutting earnings due to speculation that retail investors were buying glove stocks in an epic match against short sellers. inspired by the recent rally in US company GameStop Corp.
As of 9:02 am today, Top Glove had risen 64 sen to RM6.85, Hartalega added 60 sen to RM12.80, and Supermax was 19 sen higher to RM6.75.
Yesterday, news reports citing users of the bursabets forum on Reddit reported that Malaysian retail investors were looking to buy stocks of medical glove makers to raise their stock price and squeeze short sellers, taking inspiration from the recent GameStop rally.
Malaysian retail investors were reported to have discussed buying shares of glove makers and complained that share prices had fallen in recent months even as company profits were growing.
“We are going to fight in our markets tomorrow (today),” Reuters said, citing a user named ‘_Revenant_’ who started the bursabets forum.
Today, chat groups have been formed on social media to promote glove swapping. These include two Telegram chat groups known as “TOP Glove Investor Discussion!” and “Malaysia GLOVE Union”.
TOP Glove Investor Discussion! It indicated that it has 27,321 members, of which 13,115 are online.
Malaysia GLOVE Union said it has 8,393 members, of which 4,224 are online.
“Every glove is united in this group! Join us if you haven’t already,” said Malaysia GLOVE Union.
Today in Bursa, the rise in glove stock prices was seen as having a major impact on the overall market after Malaysian markets closed yesterday for the Thaipusam holiday.
Shortly after the markets opened today, Top Glove and Hartalega share prices had risen to their highest level yet at RM7.12 and RM13.42 respectively, while Supermax’s intraday high so far was RM7.16.
Top Glove, Hartalega and Supermax are components of FBM KLCI.
In the broader market, the 30-share KLCI had risen 14.47 points to 1,595.09 at 9:01 a.m. before cutting earnings for a 0.33-point increase to 1,580.95 at 9.46 a.m.
Comments from Bursa and the Malaysian Securities Commission (SC) could not be immediately obtained at the time of writing this report.
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