“Singapore Exchange’s first”
Singapore Exchange was first demutualised and integrated securities and derivatives exchange in the Asia-Pacific area.
On 23 November 2000, SGX became the first exchange in Asia-Pacific to be listed via a public offer and a private placement.
Singapore Exchange Derivatives Trading Limited (SGX-DT) was the first market in Asia to list equity index futures.
The Singapore Exchange Derivatives Trading Limited first introduced financial futures in Asia in September 1984 with the trading of Eurodollar futures.

Advantage to list on SGX
At the forefront of exchanges, SGX is rapidly emerging as Asia's offshore risk management centre for international derivatives. Now it has developed into the gateway of Asia’s financial market. With a policy that welcomes foreign companies and a powerful support of the wide region of Asia-Pacific (great potential in investment), the advantage to list at SGX is self-explanatory. Besides its unparalleled advantage in location, its market-oriented regulatory regime and intelligent regulatory approach also makes it an ideal place to list your company.

The website of Singapore Exchange [url]www.sgx.com[/url] contains a variety of information (in both English and Chinese), and resources investors may be interested and find helpful, from stock quotes and intraday index value in the security market to Future Simulator-a trading simulator which uses real-time data from SGX trading system which is designed to test your skills and knowledge of the futures market with absolutely no risk to your capital. Here I would like to introduce several of its highlights.

Products and services
All kinds of security market products can be traded on SGX, common as ordinary stock and bonds, and special as Real Estate Investment Trust (“REIT”) and Business Trusts. As for the derivative market, only three are available now: equity index futures/options, interest rate futures/options and commodity futures/options. Here I would like to introduce 2 security products that I find special.
Business trust:
It offers investors a new way to invest in cash-generating assets. Business Trusts, instead of companies, are business enterprises set up as trusts. It operates and runs a business enterprise like a company while not being a separate legal entity. Created by a trust deed, it has legal ownership of the trust assets and manages the assets for the benefit of the beneficiaries of the trust. Therefore, investing in Business Trust makes you the beneficiary of the trust.
Stapled security
It is an arrangement under which different securitiesare quoted as an entity and can’t be traded separately, just as a stack of paper that have been stapled together. They are commonly used in Australia for infrastructure businesses, utility businesses and real estate businesses to allow distributions to be made to investors in excess of accounting profits.

Market summary and sector summary:
Apart from providing up-to-date data in both security and derivative markets, SGX also provides a daily market summary that provides investors with a brief impression of the market movement. Such summaries include the ST index, total trading volume, total market value and the number of gainers/losers of the trading day. Also tables of several top 10’s: gainers, losers, volumes, for both stocks and structural warrants are also listed on the webpage for reference.
Sector summary, like the market summary contains specific performance information on individual sectors (multi industry, commerce, and etc). The summary presents trading volume, total value, and number of stocks that rise, fall or remain unchanged in each sector.

SGX Trading Simulator
Considerable enough, SGX designs the SGX trading simulators for the novices in futures trading. With it, you can trade online using real-time data from the live SGX trading system, a real trading environment. The only thing not real is the money you invest-a fictitious S$200,000-which grants you the opportunity to learn how the future trading goes for free. To have a experience with this online trading simulator, all you have to do is to sign up for an account.

Investor education
Being well aware of the role individual investors are playing in the security and derivative market, SGX actively designs a series of investor education devices, which targets to equip them with the right skills and knowledge to make informed investment decisions. To this end, tips for first-time investors are given as basic trading knowledge; information on special events& seminars as well as research reports are presented to enrich investors knowledge; educational articles and selected readings are recommended for extra reading; a variety of calculators (investment, profit& loss, financial, extended settled, dividend discount, and structured warrant calculator) are provided to help investors make more effective decisions; all the investment options are also listed in a lucid way for investors to choose from. The brokerage finder enables investor to find SGX-ST stockbroking member companies. With all these efforts, SGX tries to construct a vibrant retail investment community both domestically as well as overseas in securities and derivatives markets.

In general, SGX is the gateway of Asia-Pacific’s financial market. It is trying to attract more companies to list on it and more investors to put their money in it with great effort.