The second week of April continued to see index warrants dominating the warrants market with major global benchmarks rallying amid hopes that the coronavirus pandemic may stabilize soon and as central banks around the world took measures to ease the economic burden of the outbreak.
The total warrants turnover came in at RM337.5M which represented a 23.7% drop compared to the previous week amid a shortened trading week due to the Good Friday holiday in Hong Kong and the United States. Index warrants made up 86.6% of last week’s turnover with warrants over the Hang Seng Index (HSI) being the major contributor, constituting approximately 75.0% of the total warrants turnover, while warrants over shares made up approximately 13.4%, followed by warrants over the FBM KLCI and S&P 500® Index (SP500), which constituted approximately 11.6%.
The holiday-shortened week started with an upbeat performance as the HSI futures ended in the green on both Monday and Tuesday, soaring a total 5.3% on both days combined, buoyed by aggressive buying activities. The upward momentum however was cut short as prices see-sawed throughout the next two days to finish 4.4% higher for the week on Thursday. The put warrant HSI-H8M sustained the top spot as the most actively traded warrant by value traded and volume with a turnover of RM101.0M and total traded volume of up to 342.4M units. The put warrant has also ended up in the sold-out list a few times over the week as investors actively positioned themselves in and out of the warrant.
Coming in second and third place among the top traded warrants by value were call warrants HSI-C9J and HSI-C9S with total turnover of RM64.2M and RM52.1M respectively. HSI-C9J rose 44.8% for the week to close at RM0.210 on Friday, tracking gains in the underlying. The warrant saw a total RM64.2M traded last week with up to 305.5M units changing hands.
On the local front, warrants over the local benchmark FBM KLCI came in second after warrants over the HSI, with put warrant FBMKLCI-H8R outpacing the other FBM KLCI warrants to make it to the top 5 list with a turnover of RM12.8M as the underlying rose 3.2% to end the week at 1,356.0. Meanwhile, for warrants over Malaysian shares, call warrants MI-CH, MI-CL and TOPGLOV-C65 were among the popular picks last week.
Top warrants by value traded:
| Warrant name | Value (RM’mil.) |
Issuer | Exercise level | Expiry date |
| HSI-H8M | 101.0 | Macquarie | 23,000.0 | 28 Apr 2020 |
| HSI-C9J | 64.2 | Macquarie | 27,400.0 | 29 Jun 2020 |
| HSI-C9S | 52.1 | Macquarie | 27,600.0 | 28 Aug 2020 |
| HSI-H8Z | 15.0 | Macquarie | 24,000.0 | 28 Apr 2020 |
| FBMKLCI-H8R | 12.8 | Maybank | 1,508.0 | 30 Oct 2020 |
