As Singapore broadens retail investing, who moves before the news?

Wider access does not necessarily create equal informational footing.

Singapore’s equity market is entering a period of renewed activity. Retail participation in cash equities reached a four-year high in 2025, whilst retail investors accumulated about $2.6b in net purchases of Singapore stocks. At the same time, policymakers are actively seeking to strengthen the local equities market.

As participation broadens, a less visible question deserves attention: What happens when markets appear to move before public news reaches everyone?

This matters because market fairness is not only about whether information is eventually disclosed. It is also about timing. If prices or trading positions shift materially before earnings announcements, smaller investors may feel they are reacting after better-informed participants have already moved.

Markets naturally anticipate news, and pre-announcement activity does not automatically imply misconduct. Investors may respond to industry trends, analyst expectations, supply-chain information, or superior interpretation of public data. Yet repeated movements before formal announcements raise a harder question: When does informed expectation become an informational advantage that weakens confidence amongst those who arrive later?

Singapore’s market is already showing why timing matters
This question is not theoretical. In February 2026, SGX reported that monthly notional traded value in its MSCI Singapore Index Futures reached a record $49b, boosted by institutional flows and position-taking around earnings announcements by index heavyweights.

This is not evidence of wrongdoing. It does, however, show how sophisticated market participants position around anticipated earnings information, making the timing and distribution of market expectations increasingly relevant.

For Singapore, the timing is important. Easier digital access, lower transaction frictions, and renewed interest in local equities are bringing more individuals into the market. Yet wider access does not necessarily create equal informational footing.

India’s equity markets offer a useful comparison. They combine sophisticated institutional activity with rapid growth in retail participation. Around earnings announcements, movements in prices, trading volumes, and derivatives positions can emerge before formal disclosures. The Indian experience makes visible a broader challenge relevant to Singapore: Participation can expand faster than confidence in informational equality.

Information gaps become behavioural gaps
Uneven information does more than affect prices. It changes behaviour.

Retail investors are often more sensitive to losses than to equivalent gains, a behavioural tendency known as loss aversion. When a share price moves sharply before an announcement, an investor who arrives late faces immediate uncertainty: Has the opportunity already passed, or is the worst still ahead?

This can encourage hesitation, premature selling, or avoidance of announcement periods. Repeated exposure to such experiences may shorten investment horizons and reinforce the belief that markets reward speed and access more than patient analysis.

The behavioural effect can become self-reinforcing. A perceived information disadvantage increases fear of losses. Greater fear reduces willingness to remain invested through uncertainty. Shorter investment horizons, in turn, make investors more sensitive to the next price movement.

A market can therefore be technically transparent yet still feel unequal for participants who repeatedly find themselves reacting after major movements.

For Singapore, where trust is a core strength of the financial system, this matters. Securities Investment Association Singapore (SIAS) has long emphasised the importance of a level playing field in building investor confidence. As retail participation expands, sustainable participation requires not only wider access but also continued confidence in the price discovery process.

Why this matters for businesses
The issue is not only about investors or regulators. It matters directly to listed companies.

Corporate communication shapes how uncertainty develops around a firm. Companies that communicate clearly and consistently reduce the space in which rumours and fragmented signals dominate expectations. Where communication is irregular or difficult to interpret, investors may rely more heavily on trading signals and speculation.

For businesses, disclosure should therefore not be viewed only as a compliance event. Perceived information gaps can affect investor trust, shareholder participation and the credibility of management communication. Sharp unexplained movements before announcements may also shift attention away from business fundamentals towards speculation about who knew what, and when.

Singapore’s market framework already recognises this concern. SGX’s corporate disclosure policy requires issuers to monitor unusual trading activity, and the Exchange may require an announcement when such activity cannot be explained by known factors.

The managerial lesson is straightforward: Transparency is part of value creation. A listed company does not create value only through earnings growth or strategy. It also creates, or destroys, trust through the way information reaches the market.

From wider access to sustainable participation
This is where a sustainability mindset becomes relevant.

A sustainable capital market is not simply one in which more people can trade. It is one in which participation can endure because investors believe the system remains credible, businesses communicate responsibly, and market institutions respond to emerging information gaps.

The interests of stakeholders are connected. Retail investors need confidence that participation is worthwhile. Listed firms need a trusted investor base and credible price discovery. Regulators and market operators need fair, orderly and transparent markets. When one part weakens, the effects can spread across the system.

Singapore does not need to replicate the experience of larger retail-heavy markets to learn from them. India’s experience shows why rapid participation growth should be accompanied by close attention to information timing, investor behaviour, and corporate disclosure.

Markets will always move before some news. Investors analyse, anticipate and disagree, and that is part of price discovery. The more important question is whether those movements reflect genuine insight available through analysis, or advantages that leave a growing segment of investors consistently behind.

As Singapore strengthens its equity market, the next challenge is not simply getting more people to invest. Markets are built on information, but they are sustained by trust. Maintaining that trust may become one of Singapore’s greatest competitive advantages.

This piece is inspired by insights from the doctoral research of DBA candidate Soni Patnaik, under the supervision of Dr. Firdaus Khan and Dr. Muniza Askari.