Indonesia’s Exchange Plans to Extend Trading Hours By One Hour From July - Bloomberg

The Indonesia Stock Exchange plans to begin trading an hour earlier by July to align itself with regional markets, President Director Ito Warsito said.

The bourse is seeking approval for the extension from Indonesian regulators, Warsito said today in an interview in Tokyo. The move will bring Indonesia’s trading hours more in line with other Asian markets such as Hong Kong and Singapore, and may boost trading volumes, he said.

“Right now, the emerging market is more dependent on what happened in the morning in Hong Kong and Singapore because we open later,” Warsito said on the sidelines of a conference organized by Daiwa Securities Group Inc. “But if we open the market earlier, global investors will already have a trading strategy in Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia, unlike right now, where Indonesia is left behind.”

Warsito’s comments on the bourse’s plans come the same week that the Hong Kong exchange extended its own hours to complement China’s trading times. Hong Kong’s trading day from March 7 began 30 minutes earlier while the lunch break was reduced to 90 minutes from two hours.

Trading hours in Jakarta are from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. local time, with a 1 1/2-hour break from Monday to Thursday and a 2 1/2-hour break on Friday for prayers. Stock trading in Singapore starts at 8 a.m. Jakarta time and 8:30 a.m. in Hong Kong.
Attracting Investors

“Longer trading hours will enable us to synchronize trading with the regional markets,” said Soni Wibowo, vice president of PT Bahana TCW Investment Management in Jakarta, which manages about $2 billion. “But, I don’t think it will be what attracts more investors. Investors are focusing more on the fundamentals and attractiveness of the Indonesian market when deciding to invest, not the trading hours.”

About 3 billion shares traded each day on average this year in Jakarta, compared with 163.6 billion in Hong Kong, Asia’s third-biggest stock market after Japan and China.

Indonesia’s bourse also expects the Jakarta Composite index (JCI) to rise 25 percent to 30 percent in 2011 as profits for listed companies grow, and as the number of initial public offerings increase, Warsito said. The stock gauge has fallen 3.1 percent this year, after surging 46 percent last year.

To contact the reporters on this story: Anna Kitanaka in Tokyo