Here is an interesting if unorthodox way of forecasting future earnings of the Singapore Exchange Limited. While most financial analysts focus their attention on trading volumes and the market outlook, you might like to ask the SGX's customers: investors and traders. And, it seems, they are voting with their feet.

Tens of thousands of people visit the SGX website each day for price data and information about companies. It is hugely popular (and largely not monetised). But when you look at the number of people visiting the SGX website, you see some startling results. This chart illustrates that interest is much lower now than in recent years. In fact, it's falling off a cliff.


Given the volatility in the market and concerns about recession it's perhaps not surprising that investors are staying on the sidelines. My concern is, they're not just staying on the sidelines. They're not even watching the game!

Measuring web traffic is unorthodox, as I've said. It is also unscientific. The chart doesn't show absolute numbers of visitors. It just shows the percentage of visitors to their website, compared to total internet traffic. Conceivably, the reason why the SGX website garners a lower percentage of total web traffic is that there are many more people who've logged on but are visiting other websites. But even this would indicate that while interest in other areas of the internet is growing, not so the SGX website.

But just as economists count employment ads and pages of advertisements in newspapers to gain a pulse-check on that country's economy, perhaps financial analysts would do well to track website visits as well as the usual round of financial information.


Mark Laudi, who is still watching the game, very closely

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Labels: Alexa, SGX, Singapore Exchange