The World Mysterious 1,000 percent stock gains baffle traders in Indonesia

UNEXPLAINED gains in Indonesian stocks are fueling calls for tighter regulation in Southeast Asia’s biggest equity market.

Tornado devastates Texas

Panhandle town, killing three and injuring dozens

PERRYTON, Texas—A tornado ripped through the Texas Panhandle town of Perryton on Thursday, killing three people, injuring dozens more and causing widespread damage as another in a series of fierce storms carved its way through Southern states.

The National Weather Service in Amarillo confirmed that a tornado hit the area Thursday afternoon. But there was no immediate word on its size or wind speeds, meteorologist Luigi Meccariello said.

Perryton Fire Chief Paul Dutcher told reporters that three people were killed in the storm.

He said at least one person was killed in a mobile home park that took a “direct hit” from a tornado. Dutcher said at least 30 trailers were damaged or destroyed. At 6 p.m., firefighters were rescuing people from the rubble.

First responders from surrounding areas and from Oklahoma descended on the town, which is home to more than 8,000 people and about 185 kilometers northeast of Amarillo, just south of the Oklahoma line.

Storm chaser Brian Emfinger told Fox Weather that he watched the twister move through a mobile home park, mangling trailers and uprooting trees.

“I had seen the tornado do some pretty serious destruction to the industrial part of town,” he said.

Nearly 50,000 customers were without electricity in Texas and Oklahoma, according to the poweroutage.us website.

Ochiltree General Hospital in Perryton on Facebook said “Walking/wounded please go to the clinic. All others to the hospital ER.”

The hospital also said an American Red Cross shelter had been set up at the Ochiltree County Expo Center.

“We got slammed” by patients, said Kelly Judice, the hospital’s interim CEO.

“We have seen somewhere between 50 and 100 patients,” Judice said, including about 10 in critical condition who were transferred to other hospitals.

Patients had minor to major trauma, ranging from “head injuries to collapsed lungs, lacerations, broken bones,” she said.

Chris Samples of local radio station KXDJ-FM said the station was running on auxiliary power.

“The whole city is out of power,” he said.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Thursday he had directed the state Division of Emergency Management to help with everything from traffic control to restoring water and other utilities, if needed. By evening, the weather front was moving southeast across Oklahoma. The weather service said a second round of storms would continue to move through that state and parts of Texas through the evening while the risk of severe weather, including tornados, remained for the metropolitan Oklahoma City area.

Elsewhere in Texas and other Southern states stretching to Florida, heat advisories were in effect Thursday and were forecast into the Juneteenth holiday weekend with temperatures reaching toward 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius). It was expected to feel as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius).

The storm system also brought hail and possible tornados to northwestern Ohio.

A barn was smashed and trees toppled in Sandusky County, Ohio, and power lines were downed in northern Toledo, leaving thousands without power. The weather service reported “a severe thunderstorm capable of producing a tornado” over Bellevue and storms showing “signs of rotation” in other areas.

It was the second day in a row that powerful storms struck the US. On Wednesday, strong winds toppled trees, damaged buildings and blew cars off a highway from the eastern part of Texas to Georgia. AP

Known as “deep fried” shares among local traders, they often have concentrated ownership, low trading volume, scant analyst coverage and elevated valuations relative to peers. In the past three years, at least 83 Indonesian companies have swung by 1,000 percent or more from peak to trough, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s about 10 percent of total stocks listed, a higher proportion than in neighboring Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines.

While wild stock swings for illiquid shares are nothing new in emerging markets, the moves have become so extreme in Indonesia that regulators on Monday introduced a new watchlist board to quickly spot what they perceive as troubled companies as a way to protect investors. The list will include firms with no revenue growth, low share prices, thin liquidity and undergoing debt re - structuring, among other factors. Some traders are pushing for authorities to do even more, while President Joko Widodo has urged regulators to boost supervision of possible market manipulation.

At stake is investor confidence in a nearly $640 billion stock market that’s become so illiquid it’s forced some companies to resort to higher-cost bank loans as a way to raise capital. The International Monetary Fund said in a report last year that Indonesia’s “shallow” financial markets are a longstanding challenge for growth. The ratio of the nation’s stock market cap to GDP is also the lowest among Southeast Asian peers.

“We need the regulators to step in,” said Jerry Goh, an investment manager covering Asian equities at abrdn Asia Ltd.

Not all shares that are volatile are considered deep fried stocks, though traders have expressed confusion over the growing levels of big swings. The results of the gains have minted or propelled the wealth of a handful of ultra wealthy tycoons. Low Tuck Kwong, a billionaire who controls PT Bayan Resources, became one of Asia’s richest men after shares shot up more than 220 percent over six weeks at the end of 2022. A nearly 14,000 percent surge in shares of DCI Indonesia in the five months after debuting in early 2021 put majority owners Otto Toto Sugiri and Marina Budiman into billionaire status.

When shares of coal miner Bayan Resources surged to a record high at the end of December, shareholder Low Tuck Kwong purchased more of the stock, according to an exchange filing. Prior to the surge, Kwong’s net worth was $5 billion, about one-fifth of his total today. Bayan is trading at 16 times priceto-earnings, higher than all of its regional peers. Its free float sits at 2.5 percent, lower than the exchange’s threshold of 7.5 percent.

The puzzling share price moves are weighing on analysts trying to avoid covering companies that could gain notoriety for being out of sync with reality. “We cannot cover stocks if there’s not enough information and fundamentals to support our research,” said Andrey

Wijaya, head of research at RHB Sekuritas Indonesia, in relation to a number of wild price swings. PT Petrindo Jaya Kreasi, which is involved in coal and gold mining, gained nearly 370 percent in the first seven weeks after its debut in early March. That was a windfall for its main shareholder and business magnate Prajogo Pangestu. A week after the company debuted, the stock exchange flagged unusual activity in trading of its shares. The company has no analyst coverage, according to Bloomberg data, and its price-to-book ratio based on the latest quarterly results is at 6.6 times, more than three fold of the benchmark JCI Index. A company representative did not respond to a request for comment while Pangestu declined to comment.

Indonesia’s bourse has worked to increase transparency of its markets, including creating special lists to monitor unusual activity. It also actively talks to companies about significant swings and tries to investigate anomalies. Still, progress appears to be slow and results minimal, according to John Rachmat, senior advisor at Singapore-based Pinnacle Investment. “After so many decades, it’s still a dead end,” he said of regulators’ efforts to curb volatility. Bloomberg News