For the Mongolian Stock Exchange (MSE), 2018 has already been a wildly successful year with the highest growth in 27 years, an IPO that was oversubscribed 16.5 times over and the first ever dual-listing request on the exchange filed by a Toronto-listed company. The rapid growth of the stock market has been encouraging for not only MSE but the Mongolian economy as a whole. However, some economists have begun to raise concern over a potential bubble on the stock market.

But what is an economic bubble? The term is used a lot when explaining international financial crises such as the 2008 US market crash. Essentially, a bubble is an economic cycle which sees a rapid escalation of asset prices (stock, housing, etc.) followed by a contraction. The prices of the asset consistently increase to a large amount until investors are no longer willing to buy it, causing a massive selloff and subsequent deflation of the bubble.

The history of economic bubbles dates back to the 17th century, where a flower essentially caused the collapse of the Dutch economy. Considered to be one of the earliest documented cases of an economic bubble, the Tulip mania saw a boom in demand of tulips as the first one was imported into the Dutch Empire from the Ottoman Empire.

Demand for the flower exploded as buyers banked on the idea of selling the flowers at a higher price in the future. The expectation that the prices of tulips would continually increase created the first documented case of a speculative bubble.

Rare varieties of the tulip popped up on the market, driving prices even higher. Some people were even trading in their land or houses for rare tulips. The bubble finally burst in 1637 when a buyer failed to show up for a large purchase which acted as a wake up call that the prices of tulips were unsustainable. The bubble finally burst and led to many people to lose considerable amounts of money.

Seeing as Mongolia’s stock market is a relatively young and underdeveloped, the country’s experience with economic bubbles are mainly exclusive to foreign investment in the mining sector.

On the stock market, bubbles usually form due to a change in investor behavior, which Mongolia is currently in the process of. A large number of people have increasingly banked on the stock market, evidenced by 10,000 new accounts created in just the month of February at MSE.

Add in the fact that Erdenes Tavan Tolgoi is about to register 2.5 million Mongolians as shareholders and will likely authorize secondary market trading soon, the activation of the stock market is increasing rapidly.

The last two IPOs on MSE, ITools and LendMN, both set records for subscription. In addition to being the first information communication technology company on MSE, ITools saw their IPO oversubscribed three times over. Riding the wave of momentum, LendMN’s IPO was oversubscribed 16.5 times over, shattering ITools IPO.

The fact that LendMN offered 12.5 percent of its shares to the public to raise 2.5 billion MNT but received orders totaling over 40 billion MNT is a signal of the increased demand in the stock market.

One of the major issues that economists bring up when citing a potential bubble on the stock market is the fact that share liquidity has worsened on Mongolia’s stock market. Share liquidity is the ability to trade a substantial amount of a financial asset at close to current market prices.

On the Australian Securities Exchange Glossary, chief market analyst Michael Kemp explains that share liquidity refers to the “ease” by which shares can be traded. There are two defining characteristics for this ease, one of which is speed or how fast a stock can be sold on the secondary market.

The second is price. In order to be qualified is liquid, a stock must be able to be sold without significantly lowering the price.

The share market liquidity of stocks traded on MSE in 2017 were calculated using average daily trading volumes. The result was that stocks in 2017 had liquidity of 3.2 percent, down 0.1 percent from 2016.

In terms of market capitalization, MSE had a dramatic surge of one trillion MNT in a matter of one year. By the end of 2017, market capitalization reached 2.4 trillion MNT, a 65.6 percent increase year on year.

Despite the massive growth in numbers, the Financial Regulatory Commission (FRC) itself has raised concern over the decrease in liquidity, confirming the possibility of a bubble on the stock market.

The concentration of shares into the hands of a small group of investors has also been mentioned as an obstacle to improving share liquidity by FRC. A number of publically traded companies on MSE only trade up to five percent of their shares on MSE. FRC has tried to diversify this concentration by actively encouraging companies to trade at least 30 percent of their company on MSE.

FRC believes this will help improve the transparency and openness of a company, leading to a better share liquidity. In connection to this, And Energy and ITools both offered more than 30 percent of their company on exchange.

Another important factor in improving share liquidity and avoiding a bubble is not getting caught up in the volume growth on MSE. It is more important to focus on the quality of the stocks being offered on the market, said FRC.

Published Date:2018-03-19