When I joined the broking industry with OCBC Securities, I set about creating products and services to level the playing field for the retail investors in the markets. For example, we launched the first retail stock lending service — essentially a way for the Retail Joe to do their own Big Short.
This column series known as Chew on This debuted in the 1,000th edition of The Edge Singapore last September. Long before that, 21 years ago, to be exact, I also wrote a monthly column in the rose-tinted world of print media. In 2000, Bee Ong — the precocious editor of Smart Investor, one of the first homegrown magazines focused on finance and business — approached this then rookie associate director at OCBC Securities.
Back then, I had just little more than five years of working experience in the custody department of DBS Bank, lending shares to hedge funds and arbitrageurs trading on CLOB (Central Limit Order Book) and other institutional platforms.
