PSE launches online trading platform

MANILA, Philippines - The Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) has formally launched its online trading platform through brokerage firm BA Securities Online.

The Internet-based trading platform, PSETradex, is seen to encourage more investors and make the country’s stock exchange more competitive, officials said.

“The launch of the PSETradex is a very welcome development. We view this as a new opportunity to tap into the retail investing market not just locally but especially offshore such as China, Hong Kong and Singapore,” said BA Securities Inc. president Bryan Lao Ang.

BA Securities became the first brokerage firm to offer the new service to its clients.

“The PSETradex is an initiative of the PSE that presented itself as an obvious course of action to meet our goal of expanding the investor base in the stock market,” said PSE president and CEO Hans B. Sicat said.

PSETradex, a Web-based trading management system, will allow users to trade shares of stocks, monitor the order status, manage their stock portfolio and gather relevant information using their own computers or smartphones.

“Against our peers, our retail participation rate indeed lags behind. This is the reason why we believe that expanding the online trading capability of our brokers can become a potent strategy to have more Filipinos invest in the market,” Sicat said.

Last year, a poll involving 133 active brokers showed that total investor accounts rose 4.1 percent to 525,850 accounts from 505,054 accounts in 2011. However, stock market investors are less than one percent of the Philippines’ population of more than 90 million.

The PSE said PSETradex will help the local bourse in encouraging more trading participants to offer online trading services.

“This will support the increasing preference of retail investors to trade online,” PSE said.