Chairman buys 700k shares at lows but stock little changed
Noble Group closed at its lowest in four years last Friday at the $1 mark, prompting its Chairman Elman to buy 700,000 shares at $1.0071. Nevertheless, Noble has yet to show any significant pick-up, rising just 1% to $1.01 yesterday.
 
Noble has fallen 12.6% this year alone, most notably post its first quarter results announced on 14 May. Noble said its first quarter profit plunged 62%, dragged by a US$66mn loss from its agricultural unit. Noble shares lost 5.4% in a week after the result announcement and had been drifting lower until its four year low last Friday.
 
Macquarie Equities Research (MER) is Neutral on Noble Group with a 12-month target price of $1.15.

Macquarie Equities Research bearish on SGX
Last Monday, SGX reported that its securities turnover for the month of May was up 22% from the previous month and 45% higher than the same period the previous year at $37.3bn. Bond listings had almost tripled to $21.9bn. Derivatives turnover saw record volumes, with 11mn contracts traded in futures and options. Specifically, Nikkei options volume almost quadrupled to a record 1.1mn contracts from a year earlier, and up 12% month on month while China A50 futures volume more than doubled to 1.6 million contracts from a year earlier, up 7% month on month.
 
The share price of SGX jumped 1.7% from $7.27 to $7.39 on the day after SGX published the above figures. It then suffered a three-day loss along with the overall STI bourse to give up the 1.7% gain made on 4 June. SGX closed at $7.18 yesterday. It has doubled the STI’s year-to-date +1.2% with its 2.7% performance over the same period.
 
Two months ago on 18 April, Macquarie Equities Research (MER) had downgraded SGX to “Underperform” with a 12-month target price of $6.60, stating that the stock faced market headwinds ahead.

Source: Macquarie Research - 11 Jun 2013