[SPONSORED] I Tried Bursa Marketplace’s Mirror, Learn & Trade Platform

The idea behind investing in the stock market is easy – buy shares from companies you like, wait for it to grow, and earn a profit through dividends and/or increase in value.

(You can also make money if the share price goes down – that’s called shorting, but that’s not halal and more suitable for more advanced traders so let’s not go there).

But if the idea is so easy, then why do I find it intimidating?

Bursa Malaysia knows that many people have the same feeling. Part of their mandate is to attract more investors to the Malaysian stock market, so they come up with various initiatives, including educational ones, to help us overcome that fear.

The latest initiative – Bursa Marketplace’s Mirror, Learn & Trade Platform or MLT Platform for short – may be the coolest one yet. I tried it out. Here’s what I thought of it.

#1 – Choosing who to mirror is the first step

The premise behind Bursa Marketplace’s Mirror, Learn & Trade Platform is simple – you mirror the trades of licensed equity analysts appointed by Bursa Malaysia. These analysts are experienced professionals currently employed with financial institutions in Malaysia.

And by professionals, they mean professionals. They do this for a living.

At time of writing, there are 9 analysts, and all of them seem amazing (see their bio above). All men though – I was hoping for a bit more diversity.

So, you’re supposed to mirror the trades of these analysts. Very quickly, you’ll find out mirroring ALL trades from ALL analysts is NOT an option – by design, you can only do a maximum of 10 stocks in your portfolio. So which ones should you copy?

I guess you could choose randomly – some of you told me you did that.

Or you could pick the traders based on their performance – how much their portfolio increased in profit. The platform makes it easy for you to see Current Return % too – it’s right there at the main page, under ‘The Traders’.

As of time of writing, Mr Chong of Public Investment Bank is leading the pack by quite a wide margin.

For me, I chose my traders based on my understanding that there are two major types of trading strategies: fundamental and technical analysis.

The former is the one you have to research about the company and industry and macroeconomics and all that, and the latter is the charts one.

I’ve somewhat dabbled in technical analysis before, so I decided to mirror the trades of the technical analysts.

If you look at the analysts, three out of nine described themselves as technical analysts. Nice, this process of elimination helped me narrow my options.

Note: I’m not saying picking the technical analysts is a good strategy, it’s just *a* strategy.

So I did that. Mirrored 10 trades. One week in, so far, so good. Their notes reminded me of what I learned in a technical analysis course I took years ago.

What strategy did you choose in deciding which analyst to mirror?

#2 – It’s a good place to learn stock trading jargon

This is where the platform’s most value comes from. The analysts leave notes sharing why they entered/exited certain trades, and commentary on industries, etc.

I’ll be honest. Reading the notes made me realise how much I *don’t* know about the stock market. I mean, what do these notes even mean?

I can see the value of a platform like this. It’s great to know your own knowledge gap. Pick up The Edge or something and read up on the industries they’re referring to so you can understand their notes.

Or the faster way is to reply and comment on their notes, asking them to clarify. Can y’all do this, please? Tq very much.

#3 – Mirror-trading is not a new idea

When I shared about Bursa Marketplace’s Mirror, Learn & Trade Platform on my social media, some of you asked – oh is it like copy-trading platforms?

And I see where you’re coming from. Mirror or copy-trading is not a new thing. There are platforms out there where you ‘invest’ by putting in (real) money and essentially copying the trades of the platform’s top investors. The idea appeals to those looking for an easy way to make money.

It appealed to me, too. I actually *have* tried copy-trading before. Even with a conservative strategy, I lost all of my money there.

I’m not saying you *will* lose money if you do copy-trading. I’m just saying the odds are not in your favour, despite how easy they make it sound.

#4 – You get to learn your trading personality in a safe environment

Some of you pointed out that using virtual money to trade allows you to make riskier decisions. It’s not real money after all. No emotions.

If that is true, explain why I only decided to trade RM3k out of my RM100k virtual money?? I’m risk-averse even with virtual money okay!

(Note: I’m also the type to hoard all my in-game points and never use them for upgrades, so….)

But still, for me, it doesn’t matter if I profit or lose money from the platform. What matters is that my familiarity with the stock market improved, as well as my motivation to learn more about various public-listed companies in Malaysia.

I find I was reading more articles about the stock market ever since I tried the MLT platform. It’s a nice indirect effect.

#5 – Using the MLT platform as stock picks?

I may not have in-depth knowledge about the stock market, but I do know the ‘stock picks’ sections in financial publications and websites are insanely popular.

Is the Mirror, Learn & Trade Platform essentially doing the same thing here?

According to Bursa Malaysia, the objective of the platform is to provide Malaysians with stock ideas as well as learn from equity analysts on how to manage an equity portfolio. That makes it different from other stock educational platforms, both locally and globally.

I was also told that the analysts on the platform are only allowed to manage and trade stocks/counters that are under their respective house coverage (house = investment bank).

This means that all the stock recommendations that you receive from your dealers/remisiers can be viewed on the MLT platform, straight from the analysts themselves. Again, the analysts share with users their justification and rationale behind each trade they make in their notes.

Bursa Malaysia confirmed that all stock prices showcased on the MLT platform are live, based on the last price done in the actual stock market. This is cool as other virtual trading platforms normally gives users delayed price.

So… yes you can effectively use the MLT platform as real-time stock picks. Give it a shot first and play around with the virtual money. If you want, and if you’re confident in your analysts’ performance, there’s nothing stopping you in taking immediate action and start making trades in the actual stock market.

(Protip: Check the notifications section often – it’ll notify you exactly when analysts enter/exit their trades.)

Disclaimer: This is not investment advice. Obviously you have to do your own due diligence, and only use the money you can afford to lose.

Give MLT a try

It took me 5 minutes to register and figure out the dashboard, another 15 to peek into the trading portfolio of all the analysts and do the mirror-trading. From there, I went in for a few minutes a day to see new notes and view my performance.

What do you think of the platform? Give it a go and let me know what you think. Who knows you might win something in the process too, since #MLTGiveaway is going on!

Link: Bursa Marketplace’s Mirror, Learn & Trade Platform

MLT explainer video: